from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 06:02, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > Now, we are well aware that page-count fever has gripped Wikipedia for
> > some time. The obsession with breaking the 100,000-page barrier on the
> > English stifled any implementation of reforms for fear of reducing the
> > count. Concerns about languages which don't use the ASCII comma
> > character have been shrugged off. Well, today I've seen enough.
>
> What? Why are you blaming the English Wikipedia for this?

I'm rather curious how you came up with that interpretation of partisan
wrangling.

>  If anything *AT ALL*
> people on en.wiki wanted a much more conservative count in order to put-off
> hitting 100,000 articles. There was general agreement on that point.

Aha, again demonstrating the obsession over the count. Why was it
important to hit or not hit 100,000? Because of an offhand remark made a
couple years ago about "we hope to reach 100,000 articles"?

When did this become our holy mission?

Did the messianic age begin when the counter flipped into six digits?
Have we all been betrayed by a sinister being who wants to make us look
bad by leading us astray and "inflating our count"?

What the *heck* does it matter?

Bad to whom? Embarrassing to whom? Is it solely the use of the word
"article" that throws us off? Are we obsessed with proving that our
"articles" are so fricking wonderful that every single one of them must
be the greatest pinnacle of writing prowess or we must lock it in the
basement of shame and never admit its existence?

Go open up a paper encyclopedia sometime. Look at it. A fair chunk of
the articles are *one paragraph long*. Do their editors worry themselves
over the metric they use to stamp "over 60,000 articles!" on the cover?
Or do they just count the number of entries at some point and say "at
least this many"?

> We could have a separate count that has the more conservative definition

Why? What good is yet another arbitrary number? Why do we want it? What
is it for?

> So you want to inflate the count then by removing the comma requirement? I
> don't think that's such a good idea for en.wiki since it further weakens our
> already weak article definition.

Mav, thanks for proving my point again about count-mania. Are you
seriously suggesting that the pseudo-random number spit out on the front
page actually *defines* what articles are in a meaningful way?

Incidentally, if I were to change the count right now on the English
Wikipedia, we'd get:

the comma count : 109062
for length > 0  : 116199 <-
for length > 500:  90991

The "inflation" would be a meagre 6.5 percent.

> The whole point of the comma
> count is to exclude small articles

Why? What's *wrong* with small articles?

Some "articles" *are* small.

Some non-"articles" are very long.

Some genuine "articles" of short to medium length don't contain a comma.

Many "junk pages", lists, and disambs do contain a comma.

Length and commas are just non-starters here. They provide no useful
information.

> Other languages don't use ASCII commas much if at all so the count is
> worthless for them.

You speak as though it has worth for English. It does not.

> > Unless a better count system is proposed, I will replace the comma check
> > with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve hours.
>
> And what about the people who get the digest after your 12 hour deadline? How
> about the other people who only check or respond to Wikipedia posts during
> the week? Shouldn't they have a say in this?

They had their say months ago when no one was able to decide what to do.
Do you really think a new consensus is going to come in 24 hours? 48? A
week? A month? A year? I think you're sorely mistaken if so. But,
please, feel free to prove me wrong.

Tell you what. I'll hold off until Wednesday night. Come up with a
consensus on a better system by then, or comma-count shall be replaced
with not-blank-count circa 07:00 UTC, 13 March. (11pm on the 12th here
in PST.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:

>Only my concern is that we should not make a decision in the
>place where people can't participate. Yes, every one can
>discuss here but only if they speak English. It seems most
>of wikipedians in ja.wikipedia knows almost nothing about
>what is going on the administration stage like here or
>village pump in en.wikipedia.
>
>If you are talking about only en.wikipedia (since this
>mailing list is in English), forgive me about my
>misunderstanding.
>
>My suspecion is that we should stop using universal system
>for all of editions. Different languages need different
>coordination. The couting artciels should depend on the
>language of edition. Therefore, the discussion here should
>be irrelevant and we should move this to each wikipedia's
>village pump.
>
There are very few rules that should apply across all language
Wikipedias.  Perhaps some very serious things like NPOV or not insulting
each other, but in most areas I agree with your intent.

At the same time, the much larger number of participants in the English
Wikipedia means that more subjects get discussed with a wider range of
opinions.

When much later an issue arises in one of the other languages it would
be a good idea for somebody to translate a summary of the English
discussion with a fair representation of all sides.  After that there is
no need to come to the same conclusion as the English speakers.

Eclecticology

>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
--- Takuya Murata <takusi at manjiro.net> wrote:
> >Hum, you are very right with language issue
> >But, even if this list is in english, it is the
> main
> >list, so issues discussed here are likely to impact
> >all wikipedias
>
> Then, we should stop this. Please don't claim this
> is a
> policy then you've got to conform that.

I am sorry Takuya but I didnot understand what you
meant there...
Do you mean we should stop to try to set a common
policy all together, and just all of us go our own
way, with policy defined on each wiki separatly ? This
could cause trouble in terms of software development
if only.
As for claiming...well, I was not aware I was claiming
anything...and I am not one that follow very well
policies :-(

> >Besides, that the french silliness with comma
> hunting
> >that has been going on for about a month, that
> explain
> >this subject being raised again. But the issue is
> not
> >new :-)
>
> My opinion is simple enough. We should stop
> governing non-
> English wikipedias by English'd government.

Sure.
We can also claim we don't have exactly the same goals
as they were defined on the english wiki; we can claim
we don't use the same means; we can claim the
community doesnot function the same way. We can claim
each wikipedia has a set of individual references. We
may.
But, still, we share common software, that requires
common agreement on some points.
I would like us to share more than just software. I
think that though each wiki can be different from the
other, each with its particularities, it would be nice
if we didnot think of each as a separate "nation" with
an independant government. I would prefer only one
government, with members from all wikipedias (and
enough members from all for decisions not to be
dominated by one language college). Now there is you
and Aoineko on the Japanese to speak up, we are quite
a bunch from the french, germans and polish are quite
present also; there's Elian and Giskart, and others...

This doesnot mean regionalism cannot be taken into
account, no ?

> >> Therefore, the discussion here
> >> should
> >> be irrelevant and we should move this to each
> >> wikipedia's
> >> village pump.
> >
> >Yes and no.
> >It is not irrelevant, for some people thrive on
> >monitoring the number of articles, and many
> >internationals are eager to go up in the rank.
> >For those, it is important that the numbering
> >technique be the same, for the comparison to stay
> >valid.
>
> Why do we have to compare in the first place? We are
> not
> doing race where who reaches first milestone among
> non-
> English editions.

I wonder sometimes why I so often find myself
defending other people opinions ?!?
I wholeheartedly agree with you here

But, I also know some french people would be very very
disappointed if they could not go on with that race.
That is just so.
You know...guy's stuff...car race...naked women (or
men...no offense meant) ...football...beers...that's
is not something I understand very well...;-)

> >On the other hand, it would be interesting that
> >discussions go in parallele in pump (of coffee shop
> >:-)) for everyone to feel involved
>
> Not feel but all of people must be involved. Unless
> that, we
> can claim the consensus is based on the public.
>
> >My feeling is that counting technique should maybe
> be
> >related to the language family.
>
> That is my point. Couting should vary according to
> the
> language or something like family.

yup
then english, german, french, spanish, esperanto,
nederlands...all same family :-)))

> By the way, I posted an issue at village pump of
> ja.wikipedia. Hopefully they give me (not us,
> though) more
> thoughts.

cheers :-)

ps : Brion, you have my support whatever your
decision. C'est un panier de crabe de toutes fa?ons
;-)

__________________________________________________
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list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Off-topic: e-mail troubles

body:
I've been having troubles with my e-mail server, which should now be
resolved; anyone who's sent me any direct e-mail (not through the lists)
in the last day or so, I haven't gotten it -- please re-send.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Off-topic: e-mail troubles

body:
I've been having troubles with my e-mail server, which should now be
resolved; anyone who's sent me any direct e-mail (not through the lists)
in the last day or so, I haven't gotten it -- please re-send.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Off-topic: e-mail troubles

body:
I've been having troubles with my e-mail server, which should now be
resolved; anyone who's sent me any direct e-mail (not through the lists)
in the last day or so, I haven't gotten it -- please re-send.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Hi,

The comma count doesn't make sense to me.
I would suggest size with a threshold of 100 bytes, or even 200 bytes.

Yann

--
http://www.forget-me.net
Alternatives sur le Net
http://keys.indymedia.org/showkey.py?key=0A34CBDA
gpg --keyserver keys.indymedia.org --recv-key 0A34CBDA


from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
>Hum, you are very right with language issue
>But, even if this list is in english, it is the main
>list, so issues discussed here are likely to impact
>all wikipedias

Then, we should stop this. Please don't claim this is a
policy then you've got to conform that.

>Besides, that the french silliness with comma hunting
>that has been going on for about a month, that explain
>this subject being raised again. But the issue is not
>new :-)

My opinion is simple enough. We should stop governing non-
English wikipedias by English'd government.

>> Therefore, the discussion here
>> should
>> be irrelevant and we should move this to each
>> wikipedia's
>> village pump.
>
>Yes and no.
>It is not irrelevant, for some people thrive on
>monitoring the number of articles, and many
>internationals are eager to go up in the rank.
>For those, it is important that the numbering
>technique be the same, for the comparison to stay
>valid.

Why do we have to compare in the first place? We are not
doing race where who reaches first milestone among non-
English editions.

>On the other hand, it would be interesting that
>discussions go in parallele in pump (of coffee shop
>:-)) for everyone to feel involved

Not feel but all of people must be involved. Unless that, we
can claim the consensus is based on the public.

>My feeling is that counting technique should maybe be
>related to the language family.

That is my point. Couting should vary according to the
language or something like family.

By the way, I posted an issue at village pump of
ja.wikipedia. Hopefully they give me (not us, though) more
thoughts.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
>Hi,
>
>The comma count doesn't make sense to me.
>I would suggest size with a threshold of 100 bytes, or even
200 bytes.

We should not set the threshold arbitrary. Needless to say,
the size of an article indicates nothing about the usefulness
of the article. So does the comma. Actually in this point,
Brion's idea is clever, which seems the most fair among other
suggestions.


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please sign this anti-war petition

body:
And yet that still doesn't make it any less Spam.
Zoe
 > The letter that I sent DIDN'T say that it should be sent to the UN, it
>was
> to be signed on the internet (not email)and given all at once to the UNSC
> when they were considering approving the US's resolution to authorize war
on
> Iraq. Luckily, even without your help, the petition collected over 85000
> signatures, much more than any chain letter.

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] End the personal attacks and slander

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Your central assumption - that using non-English characters on the en:wp
>violates "protocol"... ("master Luke!")
>
he's right. English wikipedia, english language.
BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could
translate this for me:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer%3ATarquin

>which is nonsense : we use umlauts,
>and accented spanish characters.
>
but they are fundamentally latin letters. we know how to read them.

>You seem to think that 1. using a Chinese sig in the Talk pages interferes
>with people understanding the Encyclopedia...
>
nope, but it interferes with us known who is saying what.

>and 2 that most other people
>cant see them - with UNICODE to read them...
>
I can see them on my Mac (OS X) but not Win 98 SE.

>
>


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] New texvc

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Changes:
> * cases envinonment supported
> * \left and \right must be followed by delimiters, and must balance.
>     It could generate some parse errors on previously accepted
>     input. It could happen in two cases:
> 	* this input was invalid latex anyway
> 	* some valid delimiters is not on texvc's list
> * \big \bigg \Big \Bigg supported (they must be followed by
> delimiters)
> * \ddots supported

Thanks, that is very much appreciated. A couple of things:

* [ and ] don't work with \Big; they work with \left/\right though. The
synonyms \lbrack and \rbrack should be supported.
* the input <math>\Bigg\mid abc \Bigg\mid</math> returns the same text,
without any TeX rendering.
* the absolute value symbol doesn't work after \left or \big, neither
in the form | nor in the form \vert (which should be supported).

I would still wish for an eqnarray* environment, to break long lines of
equations into separate lines.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
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from_name: Athymik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Le dim 09/03/2003 ? 13:28, Anthere a ?crit :
>
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > For months and months we've talked about revamping
> > the article count
> > system, but nothing's changed. The article count is
> > still an extension
> > of the "comma count" used to filter out empty
> > articles in a search back
> > in the UseMod days.
> >
> > Currently, a page is counted as an "article" for "we
> > have X articles"
> > purposes if it is:
> >   * in the article namespace (so excludes talk
> > pages, user
> >     pages, Wikipedia: help and utility pages)
> >   * not a redirect
> >   * contains a comma (!)
> >
> > Now, we are well aware that page-count fever has
> > gripped Wikipedia for
> > some time. The obsession with breaking the
> > 100,000-page barrier on the
> > English stifled any implementation of reforms for
> > fear of reducing the
> > count. Concerns about languages which don't use the
> > ASCII comma
> > character have been shrugged off. Well, today I've
> > seen enough.
> >
> > While the English wiki has galumphed along for ages,
> > secure in its place
> > as The World's Largest Damn Wiki, the smaller
> > languages are in intense
> > (though friendly) competition with one another for
> > runner-up positions.
> > "In real life," Youssefsan tells me, "people look
> > for economic growth;
> > here for page growth. Both use 'creative
> > accounting.'"
> >
> > On the francophone Wikipedia, we have been exposed
> > as the slaves to the
> > comma count that we all are but are ashamed to
> > admit. See:
> >
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=CULTe&action=edit&oldid=33814
> >
> > (Those who have trouble with my PGP-signed mail, go
> > to fr.wikipedia.org,
> > look up article 'CULTe', and hit 'Modifier cette
> > page'.)
> >
> > Yes that's right, people have started adding commas
> > as hidden comments
> > just to increase the stupid comma count. NO MORE, I
> > say! Ils ne
> > passeront pas!
> >
> > Unless a better count system is proposed, I will
> > replace the comma check
> > with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve
> > hours.
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> Oui !
> The french wikipedia has become a hunt place for
> commas !
> Even in articles less than 10 words long...

Ouhl?l?... Warning commas-hunters ! Anthere is back !!!

Anthere, take a look at [[SHA-1]] and tell me how many commas are there?
There is only one, and it is not needed, from a stylistic point of view.
This article is a very good example : Some articles may not have commas,
unless they are long and complete enough to be considerated as articles.

That's why I have added commas to every article which doesn't have
one... C'est aussi simple que ?a.

> Why not a mix between the comma method, and a certain
> number of words ? (at least people will know how to
> count ;-))

Greater-than-zero-size check is simple and efficient enough...

--
Athymik (athymik at ifrance.com)
Cl? publique	http://athymik.devveb.org/public_key.asc


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] Benutzer:Tarquin

body:
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:14:58PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
>
> BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could
> translate this for me:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer%3ATarquin

It's a translation of the text you left there in Nov '02
A little bit more than just a translation: He made full
sentences :-)

	Regards,

		jens


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mailing list

body:
Hi All,

Would it be possible to slightly reduce the number of messages being sent to this list? In the last 48 hours there's been over 90 messages sent to wikien-l, a lot of which have just been bickering. Perhaps I'm alone in this but seeing 15 messages with the subject "Stevertigo sysop? (was: [WikiEN-l] automatic sysopping)" doesn't inspire me to read them all, and reduces the chances of me reading the important messages on this list. I think maybe the mailing lists would be better used for providing information and for urgent announcements (i.e. rampaging vandals) than for arguments about whether or not someone should be allowed to sign their name using various symbols. I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss things, just why not use a Talk page somewhere and send one message to this list saying 'A discussion of XYZ is happening at [[ABC]], please come and contribute'?

Also, could an [[Application to be a sysop]] page be set up somewhere? If people want to be a sysop then they can add their name to this page. Every Sunday (for sake of argument) someone could send one email to this list detailing who has applied, then people can go and debate on that page the merits of each applicant. After one week if there aren't any outstanding objections the applicant can be made a sysop, if there are objections let the debate continue (maybe each applicant should have their own page?). Perhaps the names of new sysops could also be sent out in the weekly email. I just don't think that people becoming sysops is that urgent an issue that it needs to be discussed here.

Anyway, sorry for ranting a bit but my day hasn't been particularly fun and being confronted by an Inbox full of messages, most of which were barely worth reading, didn't cheer me up!

Andrew [[Ams80]]
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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
RK wrote in part:

>Christopher Mahan wrote:

>>A slanderous innuendo? Where? I missed it? Dang...

>I posted the quote in my letter, where Stevertigo
>explicitly accused me of promoting segregation against
>Chinese languages.  (This is a really sick thing for
>someone to claim, by the way.)

I think the problem may be that some people have a hard time
understanding why segregation of languages is a sick claim.
It seems obvious to me that you support segregation of scripts
(not *languages* as such) -- Latin script only on [[en:]].
I don't see why this is sick either; in fact, you've given good reasons.

Words like "segregation", "discrimination", and "inequality" are not dirty.
This is not to say that SV isn't trying rhetorical tricks with them.
But it's hard for people to judge that here on the lists.
For instance, did he say that it followed that you were bigotted?
("racist", Susan Mason's word, is indefensible, I agree.)

A general principle: People should try to not offend others,
and also people should try to not be offended by others.
Not every offensive statement was intended to be offensive,
which both readers and writers of statements should keep in mind.

(My personal opinion is that everyone should sign comments on [[en:]]
with a signature whose Latin-1 portion serves to identify them uniquely.
This includes anonymous users, who can at least sign "138.23.202.213".
Accordingly, I add attributions to comments in talk pages that I edit.
OTOH, this isn't vital to enforce, except perhaps for administrators.
Thus, Stevertigo's compromise signature is OK, even with its Kanji,
since only he uses ":sv" as the Latin-1 portion of his signature.)

-- Toby


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

body:
At 12:34 AM 3/10/03 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I switched my username from anonymous56789 to LittleDan. Now do I have a
> > chance at becomming an admin?
>
>Daniel,
>
>please describe in your own words how you think the current process of
>page deletion, page protection and IP banning works. If you name the right
>pages and describe the process correctly, I have no objections to making
>you a sysop.

When did we start having quizzes for sysops?

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unicode in plain text (Was: End the personal attacks and slander)

body:
Stevertigo wrote at last:

>Ps. Victoria - I dont know whats going on... Im sending these plain text
>only...
>ah, its the Unicode... needs html... ok...

Unicode doesn't need HTML, it works just fine in plain text.
Indeed, the whole *point* of Unicode is to work just fine in plain text.
If your emailer won't send Unicode in plain text,
then the problem is on that end.

[The above is a general comment on Unicode in plain text,
but the below is for SV and can be replied to offlist.]

BTW, you're actually sending out both plain text *and* HTML.
But the plain text isn't in Unicode, and doesn't include the Kanji!
So you might want to look at that; feel free to send me test emails
if you think that it may help (since I'll look at what's really sent out
and not just at how it appears on a given system set up in a given way).

-- Toby


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban [[User:Michael]] please?

body:
On Saturday 08 March 2003 07:04 pm, Lee Pilich wrote:
> This might sound petty, but I spent two hours last night (not fifteen
> minutes) clearing up after this fellow, including removing faked comments
> he added to [[Talk:Crass]] and attributed to other users (at least, I
> *would* have removed them if he didn't add them at such a prodigious rate,
> making edit conflicts inevitable). If it had only been fifteen minutes, I
> would have never written to the list.

Speaking of which, what ever happended to the idea of allowing Admins the
ability to see the IP a user is using? Camembert's time could have been much
better spent working on what he wanted to work on instead of repairing the
damage and sloppy work done by Michael.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 6]]


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

body:
In a message dated 3/9/2003 7:24:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, vr at redbird.org
writes:

> >Daniel,
> >
> >please describe in your own words how you think the current process of
> >page deletion, page protection and IP banning works. If you name the right
> >pages and describe the process correctly, I have no objections to making
> >you a sysop.
>

Is this the new standard test for sysops?

LittleDan has been making some good, solid contributions. I think he should
be made a sysop.

Danny (guess I'm BigDan now)
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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Footnotes?

body:
I think it would be nice if the Wiki syntax could facilitate
footnoting of articles. For example:

    Some text.<footnote>foo</footnote>
    Some more text.<footnote>bar</footnote>
    Even more text.

could produce the following HTML:

    Some text.(1)
    Some more text.(2)
    Even more text.

foo

bar

--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image usage

body:
From: "Mirko Thiessen" <mt at mirko-thiessen.de>
> All images on that site are drawings from a 1905 field guide, and so
> they should be public domain. BUT all images were (as they describe on
> their page) scanned and reworked with a graphics tool in order to
> change contrast, lightness and hue. I don't know, if this makes the
> owners of the website new copyright holders.[...]
> Can anyone tell me, if I am allowed to use these images?

Hi Mirko,
If you rework them yourself also
I would think you'd be just as much
a re-author of the images. I'm not
sure of the legalities, but I was under
the impression that if you use other
images to create a third image but
not for profit that this was allowed
under artistic expression. Again,
I'm not sure of the legalities but
projects I've worked on for schools
have followed this procedure, of
course the field of education can
get away with a lot in this regard...
akin to cutting and pasting photos
from magazines to make a collage
for a class project.

Are there sites which one could
look up the legalities of this issue?

I can pass it by our school district legal
advisor and I'll see what I can learn
about it... It's definitely a situation that
could come up again and again...

Cheers,
Jay B.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Benutzer:Tarquin

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:14:58PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
>
>
>>BTW, I would be very grateful if a german-speaker on this list could
>>translate this for me:
>>
>>http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer%3ATarquin
>>
>>
>
>It's a translation of the text you left there in Nov '02
>A little bit more than just a translation: He made full
>sentences :-)
>
>
not what I meant ....
what I wanted was for someone to translate my text *into* German --
someone beat you to that page and had already translated into german by
the time you got there!
:-)

>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chinese sigs...

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>>Tarq: he's right. English wikipedia, english language.
>>
>>
>
>Y'all are making a fuss over a sig for the talk page? -SV
>
>
Yup. :)

>
>
>>T: but they are fundamentally latin letters. we know how to read them.
>>
>>
>
>Ah, do we? Mitwirkender vom englischen Wikipedia.  Ich kenne gerade gen?gend
>Deutsches, um Verbindungen manchmal hier zu bilden.-SV
>
>
>
No, not "understand" -- "read".
As in "recognize individual symbols".
I don't know what "Mitwirkender" means, but if a user went by that name,
I can *pronounce* it (or some approximation) and form a mental label for
them.
Chinese characters, fascinating though they are to look at, are just
squiggles to me -- I lack the knowledge to obtain meaning from them.
(please, nobody jump on the racism bandwagon. Arabic characters are
squiggles to the Chinese, and so on)
If only one person is "squiggles", we can cope. But that's Prince. So no
more squiggles please.
(I saw someone using geometric symbols as a sig too)

>
>


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>The comma count doesn't make sense to me.
>>I would suggest size with a threshold of 100 bytes, or even
> 200 bytes.
> We should not set the threshold arbitrary. Needless to say,
> the size of an article indicates nothing about the usefulness
> of the article. So does the comma.

I think Brion's idea is good. The counting of articles can't be done by
commas or by finding the minimum number of bytes you need for a good
article.
Why not do it the other way? Count them all which are not empty, remove
the redirects and the only 'non articles' remaining should be lists etc.
Why not 'mark' them? Lets add a #DONTCOUNT and every author, admin, or
maintainer can simple remove lists etc. from the count by adding this mark.
And which pages are removed can be decided by each wiki for itself.

yust my 2 cents

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Youandme

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
On 8 Mar 2003 at 14:15, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Unless a better count system is proposed, I will replace the comma check
> with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve hours.

If I may propose sth in these heated discussion...
Just thoughts for the purpose of the
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics
and not for the new type of main page counter
(comma counting, or any other, will be sooner or later hacked
and again we will need to improve our security system :-)

Count the total length of all the the pages (uncompressed wiki!)
then divide it by
1) the number of articles
or
2) 1800 (DTP's standard length of A4 page in latin chars)

(excluding Wikipedia:, Talk: namespaces, etc of course)
Present both numbers, total length one of the ratios
I think that:
- the total length can be quite easily compared to paper
encyclopedia's size - one can very easily estimate
the length of one paper page
- the ratio roughly gives the amount of work spent
on creating articles (but not quality, perhaps one should
divide by total number of edits?)

If we need to compare latin-based wikis with nonlatin-based
wikis perhaps multiplying the ratio by the average latin
word length would be sufficient.

Hmm... nevertheless the idea is accepted by the whole
community or not I will try to count like that
Polish Wikipedia progress on my own.

Regards
Youandme


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sysop requests

body:
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 12:04:55AM +0100, Mirko Thiessen wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> you want fifty more sysops, and I would like to ask, if I may become a
> sysop.
>
> I am contributing since September 2001 under my username "Cordyph",
> almost every day.
>

Hello,

I worked with Cordyph on some articles. I trust in him being a cautious
sysop.

Best regards,

JeLuF
(sysop)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
From: "Thomas Corell" <T.Corell at t-online.de>
> Why not do it the other way? Count them all which are not empty, remove
> the redirects and the only 'non articles' remaining should be lists etc.
> Why not 'mark' them? Lets add a #DONTCOUNT and every author, admin, or
> maintainer can simple remove lists etc. from the count by adding this
mark.
> And which pages are removed can be decided by each wiki for itself.

I'd like to be able to put a
#DONTCOUNT on the
Interlingua, and other, wordlists
so as to give a fair accounting
of the number of pages that
are acctually articles instead
of wordlists. This would be
helpful.

Cheers,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
On 9 Mar 2003 at 21:54, Youandme wrote:

> Count the total length of all the the pages (uncompressed wiki!)
> then divide it by
> 1) the number of articles
> or
> 2) 1800 (DTP's standard length of A4 page in latin chars)

Opss... forget about the second one as it's just scaling
of the total length.

Youandme


from_name: Oualmakran Youssef

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Hello,

> In this particular case, Brion's motivation is that the French has
> seen people adding commas for no good reason, right?  I absolutely do
> NOT want the French to get the feeling that we're changing the rules
> in order to penalize them.

That is a job for an ambassador ;-) Unfortuantely, I am very busy now.
Can anyone give me a summary ? I am willing to translate any message
linked to the French Wikipedia and send it on the mailing list and
our village pump.

Does someone have any question about French Wikipedia ?

Regards

Youssef aka youssefsan


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cross Wikipedia Image copyright

body:
On the dutch wikipedia I, together whit the others off cource, are looking
out for possibel copyright violations of images.

There is a system where there is asked permission to the owner of pictures
and the credit and the permission is included to the picture discription
page.

The problem is users are importing pictures from other wikipedias whit a
note like "from the English wikipedia" or "from the german wikipedia".

And when you look at that image on that wikipedia almost never there is a
comment about the source of that image.

Also some Wikipedias have a different view about clear copyright
violations, like this;
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin

I have to explain to a user of wikipedia NL that the image she has made by
taking a frame from a televison broadcast not can be used. But it is very
difficult to inforce a strong copyright policy when the other wikipedias
are not taking the image copyright more serious.

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
> Unless a better count system is proposed, I will replace the comma check
> with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve hours.

Good idea -- basically if something non-blank exists in the article
namespace, it should be an article, even if it is a stub. If we add
categories, we may want to exclude all articles with [[Category:Stub]]
from the count (or from an alternative count), but that can wait.

We should not count #REDIRECTs. We should trim whitespace (blanks, tabs,
newlines) before doing the bytecount.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Stevertigo sysop?

body:
> -+- Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:
>> Alright. I formally request sysop status. Talk amongst yourselves.
>> -??????:Sv

> Opposed. Reasons: low-quality and irritating edits in the past, an
> obvious delight in contributing to controversies, and an incoherent
> style of arguing.

I have no objections to Steve's sysop request. He may not be perfect, but
he certainly qualifies according to our current "trusted contributor"
requirement, unlike "Throbbing Monster Cock", who was the reason we
created that requirement.

Let's not be arbitrary here.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

body:
> I switched my username from anonymous56789 to LittleDan. Now do I have a
> chance at becomming an admin?

Daniel,

please describe in your own words how you think the current process of
page deletion, page protection and IP banning works. If you name the right
pages and describe the process correctly, I have no objections to making
you a sysop.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> I have to explain to a user of wikipedia NL that the image she has made by
> taking a frame from a televison broadcast not can be used. But it is very
> difficult to inforce a strong copyright policy when the other wikipedias
> are not taking the image copyright more serious.

Instead of deleting images copied from the English Wikipedia which you
suspect are violations, I suggest trying to educate your users to add a
more comprehensive note like

"From the English Wikipedia, original photo in the public domain (NASA)."
"From the English Wikipedia, by en:User:Foo, contributed under the GNU
FDL."
"From the English Wikipedia, used there under US fair use law."
"From the English Wikipedia, no source cited."

Then people who care about copyright violations can inquire on the English
Wikipedia (e.g. put a notice on the user's talk page) where no source has
been cited. In fair use cases, it has to be checked if a local equivalent
exists (usually the case in European countries). In cases of violations,
it should be easy to get the respective image deleted from en by simply
putting it on the Votes for deletion page. Then it should be equally easy
to delete it from the other Wikipedias which use it.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problems with Susan Mason

body:
> Oliver reported: The offending quote was, "What? Chinese people aren't
> allowed to
> contribute to the english wiki?" It was RK who characterised this as
> racism, saying, "Susan Mason effectively called me a racist".
>
> Susan's statement was of course badly worded, but I don't see it as an
> accusation of racism, myself: it's about what writing systems one uses,
> not about what race one belongs to. And please let's not argue about
> whether or not one *could* interpret as racist. My point is that Susan
> didn't use the word "racist"...

Fine work, Oliver. As if there was any doubt. I think the unsubstantiated
accusation of racism merits banning. At least temporarily.
Robert is one of those... and we know what I mean by that.  Its really not
my idea of a good time to get into twenty little edit wars about this or
that. And  RK's reactionist tendencies are more than annoying, disruptive
and non-cooperative.. they are insulting, and violating, and if a version of
him from any other cultural persuasion, came along, and he ran into himself,
their personalities would clash in an instant, and the basis of it would be
perspective and nothing more. Its the spirit of NPOV, in a nutshell that
Robert has yet to take to heart... and I hate to single anyone out like
this, because stubborness in people - an unwillingness to concede even a
point, is hard to communicate with.

Susan may be a bit loopy, but she's starting to mellow out, it seems. Shes
talking things over more. Making alliances and giving greater
consideration... but its RK who's still an ominous presence, though he has
shelter of others... who have deemed his contributions valuable. I dont
dispute the man's contributions as 'valuable,'  I dispute them as being
'contributions' - in the spirit of contributing.  It's amazing to me that
the community has allowed  his standardized, accusatory rampages (not worth
repeating) to persist, whilst he can voice complaints of Susan's, mine and
others, "accusations." If the accusation alone is the offense... let us not
be inconsistent with regards to whom we speak of.  Give me Wikilove or give
me death... -Esteban


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] The issue has been resolved

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:
> It has been resolved rather amically, although I'm left with a
> rather bad aftertaste about nobody but myself (and Tarquin a bit)
> making a principled stand against users deleting other users signed
> comments.

It's very bad form for users to delete other users signed comments in
the heat of a debate.  Eventually, it does make sense to refactor some
talk pages in an NPOV fashion, simply summarizing old arguments.  Not
many people ever do this on wikipedia, but it wouldn't be an offensive
thing to happen in some cases.

(Of course, there's generally little harm to just making archival talk
pages and leaving them there forever, and I personally wouldn't want
to step into the hornets nest of refactoring old talk pages.)

> When I first joined I got the impression that certain users were
> even banned for this behaviour, and thought that such principles (in
> order to be principles) would have to be applied accross the
> board. This has not been the case, and I'm not happy.

For ip numbers, we're more willing to ban than for signed in users,
based on the simple principle that ip numbers tend to be "pure
vandals" more often than signed in users.

In cases other than "pure vandals" (i.e. simply replacing text with
curse words, or making obvious 'joke' edits to the detriment of a
serious page, things like that), there are difficult judgments to be
made, weighing a number of different factors.  It's not unprincipled,
but it is complex.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] META tags

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> As search engines are not logged in, and the META tags contain no
> information that would be displayed, we could add META tags for anons
> only, so logged-in users won't get the META tags.

That sounds very clever.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] automatic sysopping

in_reply_to: <000801c2e4e6$ff6f7220$c679e90c@attbi.com>; from stevertigo@attbi.com on Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:20:29PM -0800

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Its not a lack confidence...  Its the expectation of responsibility
> balanced with other things...

When I say that I want to de-mystify the sysop position, this is
exactly the sort of idea that I want to counter.  Basically, there is
an expectation of responsibility, professionalism, good will, for
_everyone_, not just sysops.

> I ''totally'' agree with the demystification, and
> politicization... but I dont think that Joe Anon should just show
> up, do some stuff for a couple of weeks...

Traditionally, the only reason to even have sysops is not as a title
of nobility, but because there are/were certain irreversible or
hard-to-reverse commands that are very useful.  We just want to make
reasonably sure someone isn't going to start trashing the database.

> I guess Im also curious about SSL and sysopdom, and the such... If
> someone really wanted to 'fork' the wikipedia they could get access
> pretty easily couldnt they? -Stevertigo.

SSL access is a different thing from sysop status.  SSH access has a
much higher standard, and is *really* just a technical thing.  I have
to know someone pretty well, or have someone vouch for them that I
know pretty well, they have to have a reasonably good cause, some
computer skills, etc.

Someone wishing to fork would not need SSH access, but if I knew them,
and if they had a reason why it would be helpful, a desire to fork
would not preclude them.  (Although, I don't want people to *fork*,
really.)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] enough with the chinese character names!

body:
I don't see any need for a policy on this (though I'm open to
discussions), but I think it's pretty silly to sign your name using
Kanji.  The argument that people should learn Kanji at a young age is
basically irrelevant in this context, since I've seen your Kanji, I
know what they link to, but I have no idea what the Kanji themselves
are.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] automatic sysopping

in_reply_to: <8hS8TvFhpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 02:02:00AM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> > But we really should consider adjusting the software so that it
> > happens automatically.  I want to de-politicize it and de-mystify it.

> First we need to clean up the undeletion process and keep a log of
> page protection/unprotection, otherwise things could get messy if a
> sysop ran amok.

I agree!  The reasons why we don't currently do auto-sysopping are
good ones.  But there is a side-effect that isn't good, i.e. the
notion of sysops having special authority over non-sysop users.

--Jimbo


subject: Stevertigo sysop? (was: [WikiEN-l] automatic sysopping)

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> My name is a diminutive of "Victoria", so it means "victorious", and my
> last name means "rose branch".

And "Jimbo" means hillbilly, so...  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legality of internet-encyclopedia.info ?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Is what Fred is doing even legal under the GNU FDL?

Generally, yes, but in terms of the actual details, he could probably
use some help figuring out exactly what the license requires.  I think
it's sort of complicated.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] FDL question

in_reply_to: <200303072319.h27NJ6h24960@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 03:19:06PM -0800

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> 2) would it be better for the project, if they consider adopting the
> FDL, to link to the wikipedia articles rather than forking them?
> (mostly a rhetorical question, though I'm aware I don't usually think
> of *all* possibilities).

I think it's hard to say.  Our NPOV/encyclopedic approach would make
for a nice reference work of the kind he's contemplating, but at the
same time, POV book reviews are very useful.  I can totally see why
another project might use our work as a 'reference' standard to get
started, and then deviate from NPOV according to their own purposes.

(One of the reasons for NPOV is precisely this: our work can serve as
a useful reference for lots of purposes because it is so neutral.)

> 3) what considerations would you encourage Roos et al. to make before
> committing (or not committing) to the FDL?

I think it's really great if lots of people are using compatible
licenses.  Wikipedia could be the first major project in a huge
movement of free content.  Incompatible licenses would hinder that
process.

Having said that, the GNU FDL is complicated and was clearly not
written with a wild and wide-open wiki environment in mind.  The stuff
about "Cover Pages" and the like are hard to mentally think about in
an online environment.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] internet-encyclopedia.info

in_reply_to: <BA8E8166.DFB%fredbaud@ctelco.net>; from fredbaud@ctelco.net on Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 05:03:34PM -0700

body:
I think this is great, then.  I don't personally think it will be very
successful, but I think that the experimentation made possible by GNU
licensing is exciting and interesting.

> Also you can't go GNU and expect no one to ever use it.

Right, I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought otherwise.

Here's what I think: for *us*, NPOV and international-friendliness are
core values.  If people agree with those things, but want to fork for
some other reason, I hope that we can find ways to resolve the issue
and keep everyone together, for the good of the project.

But if people want to fork for other purposes, that's fine, and I
won't try to talk them out of it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop fabricating claims of racist segregation

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> --- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I already am having problems with Susan_Mason, who has
> > falsely and ridiculously accused me of bigotry against
> > Chinese people.  Now, however, Stevertigo has made the same
> > slanderous innuendo against me by saying that I am
> > promoting "segregation" of languages! That is more than
> > uncalled for, it is hateful.
>
> A slanderous innuendo? Where? I missed it? Dang...

"Segregation" implies a lot, in American English.  It's not a very
friendly word to use in a context like this.

> Kanji being the primary element of the written language of the second
> largest world economy, of a technologically advanced and pionering
> nation where the internet is concerned, and the official writ of 140
> million people, I dare say that blaming people for using it is
> narror-sighted at best.

I disagree completely.  Should we go over to the Japanese wikipedia
and start writing in romaji and then accuse the Japanese of being
"narrow-sighted at best" if they don't care for it?

> On a more serious note, Robert, how would you feel if the Internet
> had been createdn by the Soviets, and the ligua franca was Russian,
> and the script was cyrillic, would you not want to sign your own name
> the way your parents meant for you to rather than with less-than
> perfect cyrillic approximations?

I for one would not.  If I were writing in the Japanese wikipedia, I
would write my name in katakana, as a gesture of professionalism,
kindness, and respect.

But this is all pretty irrelevant, isn't it?  Stevertigo is not doing
this to preserve the traditions of his parents, but to be cutesy.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Problems with Susan Mason

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>("racist", Susan Mason's word, is indefensible, I agree.)

>I know that defending Susan Mason is very much a minority pursuit around
>here, but I should point out that at no point on [[Talk:Idolatry]] (where
>this all started) did Susan accuse anyone of racism. I've just checked all
>of this user's edits on that page, to make sure.

Then I owe Susan an apology.
What I was trying to do was to draw a contrast
between the neutral word "segregation" and the value-laden word "racism".
(Segregation is not racism, except of course for segregation by race.)
It's not really relevant whether anybody actually called anyone a racist.
The point is, if people are not charging one with bigotry,
then one shouldn't be offended as if they were.

>Susan's statement was of course badly worded, but I don't see it as an
>accusation of racism, myself: it's about what writing systems one uses,
>not about what race one belongs to. And please let's not argue about
>whether or not one *could* interpret as racist. My point is that Susan
>didn't use the word "racist", and the statement can be interpreted in
>other ways.

In fact, this is basically my point. ^_^

>P.S. - Jimbo and Toby - don't take this as a personal criticism. You're
>both great people, and it's just unfortunate that your messages were the
>ones I found to use as examples...

I'll take it as a *correction*, not a *criticism*.
And thanks for the compliment.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Death to the comma count!

body:
I totally support Brion's fervor to change this.  But I'm not so sure
about the "greater than zero" criterion.

The "comma" trick was a good kludge to get at the idea that random
junk is not an article.  Pretty much anything with a sentence or two
will have a comma (in English) and thus will constitute an article,
though perhaps just a stub.

It would be interesting to see some quick statistics, if that's
possible, on some various methods, and how the counts are affected.

>zero bytes = ? articles
>100  bytes = ? articles
>500  bytes = ? articles
>1000 bytes = ? articles

Any single statistics is going to be limited in the information that
it conveys.  It might also be fun to look at: total bytes in all
"articles" (defined different ways), average bytes per page in article
namespace, histogram of number of articles of various lengths, etc.

Of course, it's easy for me to sit here and type up a dream list of
statistics.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

in_reply_to: <F39P7Ilhlye8PWUE33l0000b71f@hotmail.com>; from name12323@hotmail.com on Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 09:26:14PM -0500

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I switched my username from anonymous56789 to LittleDan. Now do I have a
> chance at becomming an admin?

Yes, you're good as far as I'm concerned.  Someone said that you
pranked around a bit when you started, but I guess those days are
over.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

in_reply_to: <F147I0grajA2OPQ5yPK00051af0@hotmail.com>; from wiki_tomos@hotmail.com on Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 07:59:10AM +0000

body:
Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
> 2. English-centrism

I would say that if at all possible, within the parameters of trying
to come up with a better and more reasonable counting system, that any
changes should benefit (if possible!) the non-English wikipedias more
than the English wikipedia.

In this particular case, Brion's motivation is that the French has
seen people adding commas for no good reason, right?  I absolutely do
NOT want the French to get the feeling that we're changing the rules
in order to penalize them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image usage

in_reply_to: <001d01c2e650$f7057f60$c679e90c@attbi.com>; from stevertigo@attbi.com on Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 07:31:33AM -0800

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> page..... ) it should be fair game.. especially if you know the
> original source, and... if you modify the image a bit
> yourself... Look at the Redd Foxx portrait which i merged from two
> crappier photos I found on the web...

This is almost certainly a useless activity.  Merging two photos into
one doesn't reduce the copyright problems, it compounds them.  The new
work would be a "derived work" from both the originals, and a
violation of the copyright on both of the originals.

> neither one of these can directly be tied to this one, and theirs
> were rip- offs anyway...

"I ripped it off from someone who ripped off the original copyright
holder" is not a valid defense.

> But either way, Ive run across a few images that were questionable
> in origin, and the solution to removing any tie to the original is
> to modify the image...

This solves absolutely nothing.

> A company I worked for was engaged in the shady business of scanning
> other peoples high-end catalogs for use of the images on the
> web. After consulting a lawyer, who said that it was ok to use the
> images provided there were seven changes made to them... seven
> degrees of removal from the original...  I don't know if this holds
> water well enough for here.. (Most places dont worry at all...)
> but... in the strictest sense, its not hard to alter a photo with a
> few different operations...

This is just wrong.  I strongly encourage people not to follow this
kind of advice here.

--Jimbo


subject: Fwd: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please sign this anti-war petition

in_reply_to: <F168kgWuMFXTFf5Q4Aw000629e2@hotmail.com>; from name12323@hotmail.com on Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 11:04:05AM -0500

body:
But please, not on the list.  I can't stress this enough.

We are in a time of great global tension.  For the wikipedia itself,
this is not relevant.  We are doing something big and timeless.  15
years from now, whatever happens next month will be in the history
books, for better or worse.

With tensions running this high, particularly between the U.S. and
some European allies, there's a chance of fractious debate and
comments here, on wikipedia.  But the wikipedia is non-political, and
we are all united (globally) by a very uncontroversial humanitarian
purpose.  We should not discuss the global political situation here,
because (a) it isn't consistent with our mission and (b) it'll only
get people mad at each other.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <b4gh35$8dv$1@main.gmane.org>; from giskart@wikipedia.be on Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 11:00:53PM +0000

body:
Giskart wrote:
> There is a system where there is asked permission to the owner of
> pictures and the credit and the permission is included to the
> picture discription page.

What kind of permission is asked?  The only acceptable permission for
us is quite strong: the image needs to be released under the GNU FDL,
or under some compatible conditions.

Merely asking people for permission to use the image here, on our
website, is not good, because it makes licensing a nightmare.

Also, as a matter of principle, we are Debian-like in our attitude,
i.e. we prefer free to non-free very strongly.  (Fair use is a
complication here, though.)

> I have to explain to a user of wikipedia NL that the image she has
> made by taking a frame from a televison broadcast not can be
> used. But it is very difficult to inforce a strong copyright policy
> when the other wikipedias are not taking the image copyright more
> serious.

Actually, a frame from a television broadcast is one of the easier
"fair use" examples.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Problems with Susan Mason

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> I know that defending Susan Mason is very much a minority pursuit
> around here, but I should point out that at no point on
> [[Talk:Idolatry]] (where this all started) did Susan accuse anyone
> of racism. I've just checked all of this user's edits on that page,
> to make sure.

Right, well, I did too, and that's why I said that what was said was
not, in and of itself, a bannable offense.  If Susan Mason is not Lir,
then only some gentle correction is necessary.

You can count me very much in the camp of people who thinks that Susan
Mason probably is Lir, and who thinks that it's only a matter of time
until this comes out clearly.  I hope I'm wrong.

> P.S. - Jimbo and Toby - don't take this as a personal criticism. You're
> both great people, and it's just unfortunate that your messages were the
> ones I found to use as examples...

No, that's fine.  I'm very interested in fairness, and you're right
that it's important that we not get into "witch hunt" mode.

--Jimbo


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Aha, again demonstrating the obsession over the count. Why was it
> important to hit or not hit 100,000? Because of an offhand remark made a
> couple years ago about "we hope to reach 100,000 articles"?
>
> When did this become our holy mission?

Well, as it turned out, a press release was created and sent out and
we got press coverage about it.  For better or worse.

> the comma count : 109062
> for length > 0  : 116199 <-
> for length > 500:  90991

This is interesting.

> Tell you what. I'll hold off until Wednesday night. Come up with a
> consensus on a better system by then, or comma-count shall be replaced
> with not-blank-count circa 07:00 UTC, 13 March. (11pm on the 12th here
> in PST.)

How about we wait a bit longer than that, but set a good deadline.

This seems like a good place for us to have an experiment in voting,
since it's a relatively minor issue, since there are a variety of
opinions, etc.

Erik, will you take the lead in designing a page to present the
alternatives and to collate the votes?

(I nominate Erik because he's a strong advocate of voting, and this
gives him an opportunity to show how a voting system can shine.)

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] internet-encyclopedia.info

body:
A note on status of Internet-Encyclopedia. Be down for a while while Mysql
issues are resolved. But in response:

I'm not internationally unfriendly, just fluent in American English. And see
that as the de facto linqua franca. We'll just have to see if point of view
articles work out in practice. Folks would have to repond to a point of view
article not by editing it to change the point of view but by writing a new
article from a new point of view.

Internet-encyclopedia contemplates editors continuing to participate
actively in wikipedia anyway. Otherwise they would lose touch with both the
other editors, who are potential internet-encyclopedia editors, with the
content of articles and their history. It is only through that involvement
that articles in internet-encyclopedia could reflect the best of what is in
Wikipedia and add value to it.

It is contemplated that while on Wikipedia, editors would follow the NPOV
standard. I would never have asked to be a sysop if I was not willing to do
that while on Wikipedia.

It's interesting how much I have adopted some of Larry's ideas (butting
heads with him was probably my main motivation for doing
Internet-Encyclopedia).  I think there is a case for selecting  well-done
articles and presenting them in an alternative format. (He called that
"sifting") Also I think there is case for real experts should they choose to
edit being accorded a certain respect and exemption from the hurly burly of
wiki process, hence the notion of signed articles, which would be exempt
from the normal editing process, (although a parallel article on the same
subject could still exist).

Will it fail? I certainly hope it is only a modest success, not sure I could
afford a big success like Wikipedia.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 03:42:38 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] internet-encyclopedia.info
>
> I think this is great, then.  I don't personally think it will be very
> successful, but I think that the experimentation made possible by GNU
> licensing is exciting and interesting.
>
>> Also you can't go GNU and expect no one to ever use it.
>
> Right, I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought otherwise.
>
> Here's what I think: for *us*, NPOV and international-friendliness are
> core values.  If people agree with those things, but want to fork for
> some other reason, I hope that we can find ways to resolve the issue
> and keep everyone together, for the good of the project.
>
> But if people want to fork for other purposes, that's fine, and I
> won't try to talk them out of it.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
On Sunday 09 March 2003 04:00 am, Brion Vibber wrote:
> For months and months we've talked about revamping the article count
> system, but nothing's changed. The article count is still an extension
> of the "comma count" used to filter out empty articles in a search back
> in the UseMod days.
>
> Currently, a page is counted as an "article" for "we have X articles"
> purposes if it is:
>   * in the article namespace (so excludes talk pages, user
>     pages, Wikipedia: help and utility pages)
>   * not a redirect
>   * contains a comma (!)

This is true.

> Now, we are well aware that page-count fever has gripped Wikipedia for
> some time. The obsession with breaking the 100,000-page barrier on the
> English stifled any implementation of reforms for fear of reducing the
> count. Concerns about languages which don't use the ASCII comma
> character have been shrugged off. Well, today I've seen enough.

What? Why are you blaming the English Wikipedia for this? If anything *AT ALL*
people on en.wiki wanted a much more conservative count in order to put-off
hitting 100,000 articles. There was general agreement on that point. But the
agreement stopped there and different people had different ideas on just what
to do and no consensus emerged. I and several others wanted to have the
article count to only count pages in the article namespace that were more
than 500 bytes. However, if this were implemented now, it would reduce
en.wiki's count to below the 100,000 mark and most other wikis would have
their counts cut in half or worse though.

We could have a separate count that has the more conservative definition
(perhaps with a threshold that could be set per wiki). Call it
{{HEADLINEARTICLECOUNT}} maybe. But the {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} count should be
the same for all wikis for comparison purposes (threshold=50 or 100 bytes
perhaps - or we could simply keep the comma count for {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}).

I think this method would be able to satisfy the huge en.wiki that is mildly
embarrassed of its inflated count and many of the other wikis that are vying
for second place.

> While the English wiki has galumphed along for ages, secure in its place
> as The World's Largest Damn Wiki, the smaller languages are in intense
> (though friendly) competition with one another for runner-up positions.
> "In real life," Youssefsan tells me, "people look for economic growth;
> here for page growth. Both use 'creative accounting.'"
>
> On the francophone Wikipedia, we have been exposed as the slaves to the
> comma count that we all are but are ashamed to admit. See:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=3DCULTe&action=3Dedit&oldid=3D33
>= 814

So you want to inflate the count then by removing the comma requirement? I
don't think that's such a good idea for en.wiki since it further weakens our
already weak article definition.

> (Those who have trouble with my PGP-signed mail, go to fr.wikipedia.org,
> look up article 'CULTe', and hit 'Modifier cette page'.)
>
> Yes that's right, people have started adding commas as hidden comments
> just to increase the stupid comma count. NO MORE, I say! Ils ne
> passeront pas!

That's not a good thing - esp for small articles. The whole point of the comma
count is to exclude small articles so adding commas in HTML comments is
cheating for any language that uses ASCII commas as often as English does.
Other languages don't use ASCII commas much if at all so the count is
worthless for them.

> Unless a better count system is proposed, I will replace the comma check
> with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve hours.

And what about the people who get the digest after your 12 hour deadline? How
about the other people who only check or respond to Wikipedia posts during
the week? Shouldn't they have a say in this?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 7]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] http://fi.wikipedia.org/

body:
I was just over there looking at that. Has that address but all links seem
to be back to www.wikipedia.org.  Does it exist and what is it's status? You
link to this from the link Suomi under other languages on the main page.

Is it just a place holder, or a seed in Finland of a Finnish wikipedia.

I ask as I journey every day to Finlind via Batmud and could juice this if
it were a real thing.

Fred


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problems with Susan Mason

body:
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Susan suggests that RK is racist against Chinese people because he
> complained about your use of Kanji for your username.  That's more or
> less the same argument, and ridiculous in both cases.

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:

> ("racist", Susan Mason's word, is indefensible, I agree.)

I know that defending Susan Mason is very much a minority pursuit around
here, but I should point out that at no point on [[Talk:Idolatry]] (where
this all started) did Susan accuse anyone of racism. I've just checked all
of this user's edits on that page, to make sure.

The offending quote was, "What? Chinese people aren't allowed to
contribute to the english wiki?" It was RK who characterised this as
racism, saying, "Susan Mason effectively called me a racist".

Susan's statement was of course badly worded, but I don't see it as an
accusation of racism, myself: it's about what writing systems one uses,
not about what race one belongs to. And please let's not argue about
whether or not one *could* interpret as racist. My point is that Susan
didn't use the word "racist", and the statement can be interpreted in
other ways. This mailing list often seems to get into these "Chinese
whispers" situations where people's positions get distorted, and I think
we should all be sure to check our sources. We should be experts at that,
working on an encyclopaedia project!

Oliver

P.S. - Jimbo and Toby - don't take this as a personal criticism. You're
both great people, and it's just unfortunate that your messages were the
ones I found to use as examples...

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Problems with Susan Mason

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Has anyone done an analysis of Wikipedia from a game theory
> perspective? I'd be interested in seeing a good analysis of the way
> different "rules of the game" influence the content of various
> strategies for information-sharing such as listervs, newsgroups, etc.

As a former finance PhD student with a strong interest in game theory,
I think about it a lot, and not just in the context of wiki, but also
in broader contexts of software design to facilitate useful
communities, etc.  It's a fascinating field that might someday be a
subdiscipline of economics, sociology, and the like.

I don't know of any serious research or analysis, though.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

in_reply_to: <200303101637.EEU98922@vmms8.verisignmail.com>; from takusi@manjiro.net on Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 10:40:08AM -0600

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:
> I more like United Nations style than that of federal
> government and states in the United States. We probably
> should reflect the opinion of each edition not convey the
> central opinion to each.

Well, I think that this analogy is stretched, but some things like
NPOV and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (not a joke book, not political
propaganda, etc.) are non-negotiable.  I'll also stick up for the
rights of individual contributors to NPOV articles even under the risk
of going against their government or popularity in their home country.

At the same time, I do recognize the need for local variation due to
cultural differences, etc.

So I think that the "Federal" model is better than the "UN" model.
But I really don't care for the analogy much, particularly not in
these times of global tension.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

body:
> At 12:34 AM 3/10/03 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>> I switched my username from anonymous56789 to LittleDan. Now do I have a
>>> chance at becomming an admin?
>>
>> Daniel,
>>
>> please describe in your own words how you think the current process of
>> page deletion, page protection and IP banning works. If you name the right
>> pages and describe the process correctly, I have no objections to making
>> you a sysop.

> When did we start having quizzes for sysops?

Daniel has forwarded an off-topic petition to this list, a telltale sign
of newbie-ish behavior. He's also new to the community. Is it too much to
ask whether he understands how the process works? The last thing we need
is sysops who delete pages willy nilly.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
Takuya Murata wrote:

>I more like United Nations style than that of federal
>government and states in the United States. We probably
>should reflect the opinion of each edition not convey the
>central opinion to each.
>
They both have flaws
    US system with electoral college?
    UN system with Security Council vetos?
☮ Eclecticology


body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>My point is that Susan
>didn't use the word "racist", and the statement can be interpreted in
>other ways. This mailing list often seems to get into these "Chinese
>whispers" situations where people's positions get distorted, and I think
>we should all be sure to check our sources. We should be experts at that,
>working on an encyclopaedia project!

Oliver's observation highlights one of the things that I find
interesting about Wikis as opposed to listservs. Both are open-ended
enough that anyone can say anything (unless a moderator exists).
However, the Wiki approach neatly eliminates the "Chinese whispers"
problem. Instead of a serious of sequential responses (which
inevitably either peter out or stray from the point of the original
message), Wiki articles cumulatively refine the original message. The
listserv approach tends to accumulate *lots* of information, whereas
the wiki approach accumulates *better* information, with a presumably
higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Has anyone done an analysis of Wikipedia from a game theory
perspective? I'd be interested in seeing a good analysis of the way
different "rules of the game" influence the content of various
strategies for information-sharing such as listervs, newsgroups, etc.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------


from_name: Takuya Murata

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia slo...o...o...w

body:
>MOnday afternoon GMT -- wikipedia seems awfully slow........
>I keep getting "connection refused" messages too :(

That is usual. I think it depends on your Internet
connection. I quite frequently get a time-out every day.


body:
>Aha, again demonstrating the obsession over the count. Why
was it
>important to hit or not hit 100,000? Because of an offhand
remark made a
>couple years ago about "we hope to reach 100,000 articles"?

Actually, milestone is important. While some seems
meaningless including most active wikipedians, some statics
are important, including the number of register users and
the number of articles.

We want to know what we have achived, where we are heading
for and better, we want to show off such.

>Why? What's *wrong* with small articles?

Because some people short articles are useless. It is a
wrong concept. Needless to say, the length of an article
indicates nothing about the usefulness of the article.

I strongly believe the mere stub article of Japanese author
written in English is much more precious than the list of
songs with some stupid criteria.

>> > Unless a better count system is proposed, I will
replace the comma check
>> > with a greater-than-zero-size check within twelve hours.
>>
>> And what about the people who get the digest after your
12 hour deadline? How
>> about the other people who only check or respond to
Wikipedia posts during
>> the week? Shouldn't they have a say in this?

Brion's proposal is fair. While there is still objection,
greater-than-zero-size is more fair than comma counting.
After change, we can still keep debate.

>They had their say months ago when no one was able to
decide what to do.
>Do you really think a new consensus is going to come in 24
hours? 48? A
>week? A month? A year? I think you're sorely mistaken if
so. But,
>please, feel free to prove me wrong.
>
>Tell you what. I'll hold off until Wednesday night. Come up
with a
>consensus on a better system by then, or comma-count shall
be replaced
>with not-blank-count circa 07:00 UTC, 13 March. (11pm on
the 12th here
>in PST.)

I am afraid we don't reach the consensus this time too. I
suggest that we should at least change the counting system
of ja wikipedia in the exact way you proposed. Leaving
unfair system around is more injust than keeping debate
hoping to reach the consensus.

Besides, it figures no one supports the current comma
counting system, then why do we have to wait to overthrow it?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

body:
---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 12:31:36 -0800
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!
>To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
>Takuya Murata wrote:
>
>>Only my concern is that we should not make a decision in
the
>>place where people can't participate. Yes, every one can
>>discuss here but only if they speak English. It seems most
>>of wikipedians in ja.wikipedia knows almost nothing about
>>what is going on the administration stage like here or
>>village pump in en.wikipedia.
>>
>>If you are talking about only en.wikipedia (since this
>>mailing list is in English), forgive me about my
>>misunderstanding.
>>
>>My suspecion is that we should stop using universal system
>>for all of editions. Different languages need different
>>coordination. The couting artciels should depend on the
>>language of edition. Therefore, the discussion here should
>>be irrelevant and we should move this to each wikipedia's
>>village pump.
>>
>There are very few rules that should apply across all
language
>Wikipedias.  Perhaps some very serious things like NPOV or
not insulting
>each other, but in most areas I agree with your intent.
>
>At the same time, the much larger number of participants in
the English
>Wikipedia means that more subjects get discussed with a
wider range of
>opinions.

Needless to say, we can't use this as excuse for ignoring
the minority.

>When much later an issue arises in one of the other
languages it would
>be a good idea for somebody to translate a summary of the
English
>discussion with a fair representation of all sides.  After
that there is
>no need to come to the same conclusion as the English
speakers.

I more like United Nations style than that of federal
government and states in the United States. We probably
should reflect the opinion of each edition not convey the
central opinion to each.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sysop Requests

body:
Of course not. He's radically opposed to the NPOV.

Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: daniwo59 at aol.com [mailto:daniwo59 at aol.com]
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 9:31 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sysop Requests

Ed,

I would also oppose giving out random sysop to everyone who posts here. Our most recently banned contributor, Clutch, was also a frequent poster on this list. Would that have made him a sysop too?

Danny

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New texvc

body:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Brion, please apply that patch.

New patch is on test.wikipedia.org and in CVS. Ready to install on
production wikis when you say the word.

> Oh, and there's no need to copy texvc_test to all w/math/ directories.
> It shouldn't even be built by default.

Okay, thanks. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> That's rather what I was hoping to avoid by setting an ultimatum. Now
> we'll never reach a firm decision. :P Very well, have a vote. Perhaps I'll
> be pleasantly surprised. :)

O.k., the firm deadline is next Monday, March 17, 2003.  Brion has to
give up all of his weapons of mass destruc... oh, wait, no, that's a
different firm deadline.

We haven't heard from Erik about setting up a wiki page about this,
but if he declines to take the lead on vote collation, etc., we'll do
it anyway starting in a couple of days.

--Jimbo


body:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> How about we wait a bit longer than that, but set a good deadline.
>
> This seems like a good place for us to have an experiment in voting,
> since it's a relatively minor issue, since there are a variety of
> opinions, etc.

That's rather what I was hoping to avoid by setting an ultimatum. Now
we'll never reach a firm decision. :P Very well, have a vote. Perhaps I'll
be pleasantly surprised. :)

In the meantime, I'll go ahead and change the count system for the
Japanese wiki specifically, as requested.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

WikiKarma: fixed the several-dozen-redundant-checks-of-new-talk-table-
for-every-page-view-by-an-anon-user bug.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Three new sysops

body:
I added the following three users to the Administrator list:

* LittleDan (Daniel Ehrenberg), as discussed here
* Cordyph (Mirko Thiessen), as requested here
* MyRedDice (Martin), as requested via Talk Page

My "threat" to promote familiar old-timers was no more serious than
Jimbo's "willy-nilly" thing, but I'm glad that it encouraged a couple of
people to step up to the responsibility.

Uncle Ed, aka Ed Poor
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] New texvc

body:
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:30:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > Changes:
> > * cases envinonment supported
> > * \left and \right must be followed by delimiters, and must balance.
> >     It could generate some parse errors on previously accepted
> >     input. It could happen in two cases:
> > 	* this input was invalid latex anyway
> > 	* some valid delimiters is not on texvc's list
> > * \big \bigg \Big \Bigg supported (they must be followed by
> > delimiters)
> > * \ddots supported
>
> Thanks, that is very much appreciated. A couple of things:
>
> * [ and ] don't work with \Big; they work with \left/\right though. The
> synonyms \lbrack and \rbrack should be supported.
> * the input <math>\Bigg\mid abc \Bigg\mid</math> returns the same text,
> without any TeX rendering.
> * the absolute value symbol doesn't work after \left or \big, neither
> in the form | nor in the form \vert (which should be supported).

All fixed. \Big [ in fact worked, it's just ] what is magical
(support for optional arguments in tex requires some magic,
I just forgot to cast proper spells on \Big)

\Bigg \mid throws syntax error now (what you saw was
IMG alt text - texvc accepted it thinking \mid is a delimiter,
while tex rejected it).

> I would still wish for an eqnarray* environment, to break long lines of
> equations into separate lines.

You mean something like {matrix} but with left alignment instead
of centering or more than that ?

----
Brion, please apply that patch.
Oh, and there's no need to copy texvc_test to all w/math/ directories.
It shouldn't even be built by default.
-------------- next part --------------
diff -ruN math.7_mar_2003/lexer.mll math/lexer.mll
--- math.7_mar_2003/lexer.mll	2003-03-07 15:59:38.000000000 +0100
+++ math/lexer.mll	2003-03-10 11:30:03.000000000 +0100
@@ -9,8 +9,8 @@
 let literal_mn = ['0'-'9']
 let literal_uf_lt = [',' ':' ';' '?' '!' '\'']
 let delimiter_uf_lt = ['(' ')' '.']
-let literal_uf_op = ['+' '-' '*' '=' '|']
-let delimiter_uf_op = ['/']
+let literal_uf_op = ['+' '-' '*' '=']
+let delimiter_uf_op = ['/' '|']
 let boxchars  = ['0'-'9' 'a'-'z' 'A'-'Z' '+' '-' '*' ',' '=' '(' ')' ':' '/' ';' '?' '.' '!' ' ' '\128'-'\255']
 let aboxchars = ['0'-'9' 'a'-'z' 'A'-'Z' '+' '-' '*' ',' '=' '(' ')' ':' '/' ';' '?' '.' '!' ' ']

@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@
   | literal_uf_lt		{ let str = Lexing.lexeme lexbuf in LITERAL (HTMLABLEC (FONT_UFH, str,str)) }
   | delimiter_uf_lt		{ let str = Lexing.lexeme lexbuf in DELIMITER (HTMLABLEC (FONT_UFH, str,str)) }
   | literal_uf_op		{ let str = Lexing.lexeme lexbuf in LITERAL (MHTMLABLEC (FONT_UFH, str," "^str^" ",MO,str)) }
+  | delimiter_uf_op		{ let str = Lexing.lexeme lexbuf in DELIMITER (MHTMLABLEC (FONT_UFH, str," "^str^" ",MO,str)) }
   | "\\" alpha + 		{ Texutil.find (Lexing.lexeme lexbuf) }
   | "\\sqrt" space * "["	{ FUN_AR1opt "\\sqrt" }
   | "\\," 			{ LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF, "\\,"," ")) }
diff -ruN math.7_mar_2003/parser.mly math/parser.mly
--- math.7_mar_2003/parser.mly	2003-03-07 17:02:00.000000000 +0100
+++ math/parser.mly	2003-03-10 11:22:15.000000000 +0100
@@ -72,6 +72,7 @@
     LITERAL			{ TEX_LITERAL $1 }
   | DELIMITER			{ TEX_LITERAL $1 }
   | BIG DELIMITER		{ TEX_BIG ($1,$2) }
+  | BIG SQ_CLOSE		{ TEX_BIG ($1,sq_close_ri) }
   | left expr right		{ TEX_LR ($1,$3,$2) }
   | FUN_AR1 lit			{ TEX_FUN1($1,$2) }
   | FUN_AR1hl lit		{ let t,h=$1 in TEX_FUN1hl(t,h,$2) }
diff -ruN math.7_mar_2003/texutil.ml math/texutil.ml
--- math.7_mar_2003/texutil.ml	2003-03-07 17:04:08.000000000 +0100
+++ math/texutil.ml	2003-03-10 11:27:35.000000000 +0100
@@ -246,8 +246,8 @@
     | "\\ddagger"          -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\ddagger ", "‡"))
     | "\\Dagger"           -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\ddagger ", "‡"))
     | "\\colon"            -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH, "\\colon ", ":"))
-    | "\\Vert"             -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\Vert ", "||"))
-    | "\\vert"             -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\vert ", "|"))
+    | "\\Vert"             -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\Vert ", "||"))
+    | "\\vert"             -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH, "\\vert ", "|"))
     | "\\wp"               -> LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF,  "\\wp ", "℘"))
     | "\\weierp"           -> LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF,  "\\wp ", "℘"))
     | "\\wedge"            -> LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF,  "\\wedge ", "∧"))
@@ -320,12 +320,14 @@
     | "\\dots"             -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH,"\\dots ", "..."))
     | "\\quad" 		   -> LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF, "\\quad ","  "))
     | "\\qquad"		   -> LITERAL (HTMLABLE (FONT_UF, "\\qquad ","    "))
-    | "\\mid"              -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH,"\\mid ", " | "))
+    | "\\mid"              -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH,"\\mid ", " | "))
     | "\\neg"              -> LITERAL (HTMLABLEM(FONT_UFH,"\\neg ", "¬"))
     | "\\langle"           -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\langle ","⟨"))
     | "\\rangle"           -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\rangle ","⟩"))
     | "\\lang"             -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\langle ","⟨"))
     | "\\rang"             -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLE (FONT_UFH,"\\rangle ","⟩"))
+    | "\\lbrack"	   -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"[","["))
+    | "\\rbrack"	   -> DELIMITER (HTMLABLEC(FONT_UFH,"]","]"))
     | "\\ddots"            -> LITERAL (TEX_ONLY "\\ddots ")
     | "\\clubs"            -> LITERAL (TEX_ONLY "\\clubsuit ")
     | "\\clubsuit"         -> LITERAL (TEX_ONLY "\\clubsuit ")


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
Hasn't there been some progress?

Lir -- trouble on the hoof, vicious and underhanded, mean, unabashed troll
Vera Cruz -- uncommunicative, heedless, ugly, occasionally abashed troll
Susan Mason -- willfully stupid noisemaker pretending to be just
another contributor

All three are on my personal banned list, but Susan is the most
tolerable of the three that is, barely tolerable.  Is this evolution
or just my imagination?

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [WikiEN-l] Three new sysops

body:
Dear Uncle Ed,

Re:
|
|My "threat" to promote familiar old-timers was no more serious than
|Jimbo's "willy-nilly" thing, but I'm glad that it encouraged a couple
|of people to step up to the responsibility.
|

I'm quite responsible.  I just don't want to be a sys-op.

Tom P. (no uncle, please)
O88


body:
TARQ: > Hi Stevertigo. If you have such a thing for kanji, I have a
suggestion:
> we currently have pages for latin letters: A
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/A>,B <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/B>,C
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/C>, and Greek letters. How about a page
> for each letter of Kanji <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji>? --
> Tarquin <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tarquin> 13:40 Mar 10, 2003
> (UTC)

Ha ha ha. Already in the works, buddy See [[User:Stevertigo/Sand box]] -SV
:)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Footnotes?

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> > Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> >
> > > I think it would be nice if the Wiki syntax
> could facilitate
> > > footnoting of articles.
> >
> > I don't think footnotes are suitable for webpages.
> > Unlike paper, the user has to travel (potentially)
> a long way for
> > related information.
> > I have been trying to reintegrate them into the
> text where I see them in
> > articles -- I suggest we try and write without
> them
>
> It can be some time useful to make a
> sentence/paragraph more easy to read
> and redirect the reader to a more detailed paragraph
> (for exemple in the
> article introduction).
>
> Aoineko

hello Aoineko,

hidden anchors then ? :-)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] a more "confident" username

in_reply_to: <F57ggnar7EHCsVJH1oA000178e6@hotmail.com>; from name12323@hotmail.com on Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 03:27:29PM -0500

body:
Maybe I was confused.  I thought someone said that.  I apologize.

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> >Someone said that you
> >pranked around a bit when you started, but I guess those days are
> >over.
>
> Who said that about me? I never "pranked around".
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
>
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] New texvc

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:30:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > I would still wish for an eqnarray* environment, to break
> > long lines of equations into separate lines.

> You mean something like {matrix} but with left alignment instead
> of centering or more than that ?

Yes, and it should also use the larger display style rather than the
inline style for formulas, which makes a difference when you have
integrals, sums and limits.

In LaTeX it's called \begin{eqnarray*}...\end{eqnarray*} and in
AmsLaTeX they have \begin{align*}...\end{align*}. They're almost
identical, so if you support one you may as well throw in the other for
the same price. Syntax is the same as the matrix environment. The stars
are there because we don't want equation numbers.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Bug: Newline within a Link

body:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> This is from my bug page http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AKeichwa:
> Let's learn [[Italian
> language|Italian]].

The bug's in your editor, I'm afraid. Wiki syntax doesn't cross
linebreaks. For one thing, this helps contain damage from Markup Gone Mad;
a lone opening tag that isn't closed turning an entire page into
gibberish.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: Various topics - not page count

body:
>>>Various topics - not page count (My responses with >>>)

SYSOP:JIM:  But there is a side-effect that isn't good, i.e. the
notion of sysops having special authority over non-sysop users.

>>>I wouldnt worry too much about accusations of "tyrrany" - alot of these
come from the antagonist-anarchisticts.. who operate under their own
assumptions about how the world and everything in it should or shouldnt
work.

SYSOP: ED: (Danny?)I would also oppose giving out random sysop to everyone
who posts here.
 Our most recently banned contributor, Clutch, was also a frequent poster on
this list.
Would that have made him a sysop too?

>>>First of all, I think we need to have summaries written up as 'case
histories' for each user
banned, written NPOV... so LIR's page would not be summed up by Zoe, for
example, or anyone
else who had animosities with.. Second, Clutch got out of hand, But then,
once again so do others.. It was I who in large part suggested taking some
action... and immediately after an edit war with me, he was banned.. I cant
help but think that his political persuasions didnt help him any. His crime
was nothing more than getting frustrated, and using increasingly POV
language in articles...out of frustration with equally POV people.

IE:JIM: Generally, yes, but in terms of the actual details, he could
probably
use some help figuring out exactly what the license requires.  I think
it's sort of complicated.

>>>Not to mention its overall purpose: Does it attract or detract from
Wikipedia?

IE:FRED: Will it fail? I certainly hope it is only a modest success, not
sure I could
afford a big success like Wikipedia.

>>>Maybe.

PWS:JIM:"Segregation" implies a lot, in American English.  It's not a very
friendly word to use in a context like this.

>>>Yeah, I used it.. And I did it not to stir up bees. I noticed there has
been no
answer to my assertion that pressures on Susan, based on accusations of
racism, were misplaced.

IMAGE USE:JIM: This is just wrong.  I strongly encourage people not to
follow this
kind of advice here. What kind of permission is asked?  The only acceptable
permission for
us is quite strong: the image needs to be released under the GNU FDL,
or under some compatible conditions.

>>>Understood.  I guess this just means, WP will  be light on images... a
better safe than
sorry policy then?

SUSAN:TONY:pleaded to have Vera Cruz banned. She was driving me and a whole
stack of other people absolutely crazy.  But Susan Mason is doing OK.
It's still early days and she's looked at that invisible line a couple
of times, but not crossed it.

>>>Very well said. And s a general rule; My degree of pissed doesnt
necessarily
 correlate with their degree of offense.

KANJI:JIM:The argument that people should learn Kanji at a young age is
basically irrelevant in this context, since I've seen your Kanji, I
know what they link to, but I have no idea what the Kanji themselves
are.(1) ..... I for one would not.  If I were writing in the Japanese
wikipedia, I
would write my name in katakana, (2) as a gesture of professionalism,
kindness, and respect. But this is all pretty irrelevant, isn't it? (4.)
Stevertigo is not doing
this to preserve the traditions of his parents, but to be cutesy.

>>>1. accustomization. 2. Well thats you. 3. Its not worth even discussing.
4.) . cutesy? Hmm. I dont think exporing
a 3000 year-old system of ideographs, and sharing this exploration in some
small
way with the community,  however  inconvenient, is "cutesy." As for
heritage,
what human heritage is not mine?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Cliches

body:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> >Are you on a windows box Daniel? Start|Program Files|Accessories|Character
> >Map
>
> Nope, debian linux with KDE.

AltGr+apostrophe, e

(Failing that, try KCharmap. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] META tags

body:
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> I'd use titles of pages linking to given article as meta keywords
> (if there are too many, get most important of them) and first
> paragraph or two (if first paragraph is too short) as meta description.

Using pages linked to an article sounds like a bad idea, because it means
that we should do one more search of the complete table of links for each
page loaded. Therefore, it is a much better idea to use links from rather
than links to the page. In validity of the resulting keywords the two methods
don't differ much, I think, and the second is more economical on our
resources.

Andre Engels


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Footnotes?

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> I think it would be nice if the Wiki syntax could facilitate
> footnoting of articles.

I don't think footnotes are suitable for webpages.
Unlike paper, the user has to travel (potentially) a long way for
related information.
I have been trying to reintegrate them into the text where I see them in
articles -- I suggest we try and write without them


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Death to the comma count!

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 04:53:27 -0800, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> How about we wait a bit longer than that, but set a good deadline.
>
> March 17th seems to be popular for deadlines at present!

It's the day when all the beer turns green. :-)
Ec.

>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search problem - Polish Wikipedia

body:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> I have come across this error during this complex search
> "Historia not informatyki"

Try "historia and not informatyki".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)