subject: [Wikitech-l] Google, Wikipedia and internall affairs

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 03:38, giskart wrote:
> I have noticed that google also have in his index the "talk:something" namespace and "user:something", "User talk:something" on the English and the Dutch wikipedia. The others i do not know.
>
> And it also haves in his index the MetaWikipedia.
>
> I find that google should not index our internall affairs. Only the aricles, nothing else.  And that the MetaWikipedia is not especialy for the general public. I should also not be in the index of google.
>
> Am I alone about this ?

Our internal affairs aren't exactly internal -- it's an open, public
discussion and everyone's welcome to participate. If Google helps people
find the discussion, that's fine by me.

If something isn't meant for the general public, it shouldn't be put on
a public web server with an open content license. ;)  If you're afraid
to have your name or your customary handle attached to your opinions in
the public record, don't use your real name when you speak in public.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Clutch" is now way out of control

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> In fact, I join your call for Jimmy to look at the situation with Clutch.

I am investigating it now.  I will be reading all versions going back
to 13 Sep 2002, to sort out as best I can who is doing what and for
what reason.

In the meantime, I call on Clutch and RK to try to defuse the
situation themselves as best as possible.  I join Toby in recommending
that everyone avoid the use of terminology such as "vandalism" and
"ban"... even if you think those are justified.  If you have a really
burning need to say those words, just send me a private email, which I
will read in a spirit of holiday joy. :-)

Based on a recent private conversation in which I ended up blowing my
stack and calling someone a "fascist asshole" over something
relatively minor, it is fresh on my mind as to how quickly legitimate
disagreements can turn sour.

A day or two of relaxation is surely in order for all concerned
parties.  I highly recommend it.

And rest assured that I'm studying the situation and hope to have a
beneficial solution soon.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary.org wasn't reserved!

body:
Who did you register it with?  It might be easiest if you just hang on
to it for the moment, and then transfer it to the nonprofit once I get
501(c)(3) approval.  That way, you can get a tax deduction, and we transfer
it once to the right entity.

I trust you to hold on to it until then.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> FYI: I just registered this domain name and would like to donate it to the
> Wiktionary Project. So I need to know the details on how to transfer the
> registration to Jimbo. I, along with all the Wiktionarians I've heard from on
> this topic, would also like to have the Wiktionary project moved to this url
> soon and have Wiktionary.com (which is already registered to Jimbo) to point
> to it.
>
> WikiKarma payment was in cash
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: giskart

body:
Hi,

I have noticed that google also have in his index the "talk:something" namespace and "user:something", "User talk:something" on the English and the Dutch wikipedia. The others i do not know.

And it also haves in his index the MetaWikipedia.

I find that google should not index our internall affairs. Only the aricles, nothing else.  And that the MetaWikipedia is not especialy for the general public. I should also not be in the index of google.

Am I alone about this ?

Giskart


subject: [WikiEN-l] NOTES on Jehovah's Witnesses: Controversial Issues

body:
I'm pretty sure that my response will not make either side happy, as I
conclude that both sides are wrong in this controversy *and* that
neither side needs to be banned.  There's a long analysis here and
then a conclusion at the bottom.  People only marginally following
this can just skip to my CONCLUSION.

Clutch launched the article on Sep. 26, 2002, apparently thinking of
it as a "scratchpad" where people could work "until what is factual
and what is not can get hashed out sufficiently to be put in the
article on Jehovah's Witnesses in a neutral manner."

He included some external links, presumably so newcomers to the
discussion could get up to speed on the criticisms being discussed.

For the next 14 days, the only activity was a low grade edit/revert
war with Modemac.  Modemac kept deleting the external links; Clutch
kept restoring them.

I think that at this point, Clutch was clearly in the right.  Those
external links were valid and useful.  Eventually, he lost this
battle, as the links are not in the current version at all.  Maybe he
just gave up.

Finally, on Oct. 10, discussion took off when Wesley added some new
information.  Modemac weighed in again, by simply deleting the
external links again.

Then, on Oct. 14-15 Modemac weighed in, usefully this time, by adding
the bulk of the text that is still there.  This was edited and
expanded in the usual wikipedia fashion by Vicki Rosenzweig, RK, Ed
Poor, and Soulpatch.

On Oct. 20, RK returns and adds section headings and introduces the
first "Changing Doctrines" material.

There were only a few other edits, relatively minor in nature, until
Dec. 12, when the current controversy broke out.

At this point, Clutch returned and removed a ton of material from the
article, with the stated reason "Removing material already
incorporated on the Practices of Jehovah's Witnesses page".  I have
not verified this claim, but if true, it is consistent with Clutch's
originally stated view of the purpose of the page.

After that, there's a ton of edits back and
forth... delete/revert/delete/revert.

It does not seem to me that IN THIS CASE, RK and Clutch are disputing
anything about the actual _content_ of the article in question.
Clutch feels that this article needs to mostly go away because the information
in it is in other articles.  RK feels the opposite, but mostly opposes what he
sees as heavy-handed unilateral action by Clutch.

There is NOTHING on the talk page about this particular controversy.
(There is discussion there of various _content_ controversies.)

On the talk page, RK says "The problem is that I have already tried to
do so three times. Each time I started doing this the pro-JW faction
came in and vandalized the entry by immediately deleting the material
I was adding, which included many specifics."  (To fully understand
what he's talking about, you need to read the full context on the talk
page.)

He wrote this at 15:07 Oct 14, 2002, but he must be referring to some
other article, because his first edit is at 14:07 Oct 14, 2002, and he
had only made that one edit.  I'm assuming he's referring to the main
Jehovah's Witness article.  Were people deleting stuff from there?

Is there really a "pro-JW faction"?  Are there any Jehovah's Witnesses
working on this article?

--------------

CONCLUSION

I conclude, preliminarily, that Clutch and RK were both wrong to
engage in a pointless edit war without also, at least, opening a
discussion on the talk page about the merits/demerits of getting rid
of the article or keeping it.  But neither do their actions amount to
bannable vandalism.

I further conclude, preliminary, that Clutch and RK both made claims
about consensus which are, at best, unverifiable from the talk page.
When there is no discussion on the talk page about what should be done
with the article, no conclusion can be drawn about consensus.

Generally speaking, making claims about consensus is wrong.  If it
really were consensus, then there would be no controversy left about
it.

Unless more information is pointed out to me about this controversy, I
will conclude by simply asking two things:

1.  Folks, please try not to get into simple back-and-forth
edit/revert wars.  Let the other person win for awhile, and make your
case on the talk page.  Try to meet the other person halfway.

	a.  For people in Clutch's position here: Ask before making any major
	changes. Apologize if you make a major change that upsets someone, and
	let the reversion stand until you can resolve the other person's concerns.

	b.  For people in RK's position here: rather than merely reverting, revert
	and make a comment on talk page, a comment that presumes good will on the
	other person's part.  Try not to call people names like "pathological liar".

2.  Let's not be so hasty to call for bans, nor so hasty to cry
vandalism.  Not every asshole action the other person takes is
vandalism.

------------------

I have no opinion about whether the material in this article is in
other articles.  I have no opinion about whether this article should
continue to exist.  I only have the opinion that the right way to
figure it out is to *talk* about it, not to engage in demands and
counter-demands, edits and reverts.

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] AOL proxy vandal alert

body:
I've already blocked about a dozen IPs from this person and they keep on
comming back for more. This person makes 2 or 3 vandalism and then gets a new
IP. I know these are AOL proxies so they will have to be unblocked soon.

--mav


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 05:25:33AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>On Oct. 20, RK returns and adds section headings and introduces the
>first "Changing Doctrines" material.

It is of note that the Changing Doctrines material was a straight dump
of material RK had already written and put on another page on the
Wikipedia, so it consisted of paragraphs and paragraphs of duplication.
Secondus, the material wasn't even directly related to the topic of the
article that he dumped it in.  RK's information dump would have been
appropriate in the talk page, but not the article proper.

I will refrain from characterising RK's action, but I invite you to look
at what he added, then imagine if you were a Jew, and someone dumped
something like that in the article on Judaism, how would you feel?

At this time there are no JW's working on the JW related articles.
Marj Tiefert made one or two minor spelling corrections almost a year
ago, but decided not to get involved when she saw the edit wars and
controversy escalating.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] AOL proxy vandal alert

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>> I've already blocked about a dozen IPs from this
>>person and they keep on comming back for more.
>>This person makes 2 or 3 vandalism and then gets
>>a new IP. I know these are AOL proxies so they will
>>have to be unblocked soon.
>>
>Why bother blocking, then?

So that they will go away when the run out of IPs. Then a while after that we
can unblock the IPs. This should be obvious.

-- mav


body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 05:25:33AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >On Oct. 20, RK returns and adds section headings and introduces the
> >first "Changing Doctrines" material.
>
> It is of note that the Changing Doctrines material was a straight dump
> of material RK had already written and put on another page on the
> Wikipedia, so it consisted of paragraphs and paragraphs of duplication.
> Secondus, the material wasn't even directly related to the topic of the
> article that he dumped it in.  RK's information dump would have been
> appropriate in the talk page, but not the article proper.

I don't agree with you on this.  The Changing Doctrines material is
directly applicable to the subject of the article, "Jehovah's
Witnesses: Controversial Issues".  That material is about the
Jehovah's Witnesses.  And it is a controversial issue.  So it belongs
directly on that page.

Characterizing copying and pasting of legitimate information as an
"information dump" is not very helpful.

> I will refrain from characterising RK's action, but I invite you to look
> at what he added, then imagine if you were a Jew, and someone dumped
> something like that in the article on Judaism, how would you feel?

If the article were titled "Judaism: Controversial Issues" and it
dealt with some points that were (a) about Judaism and (b)
Controversial Issues, I'd be fine with it.  Did those paragraphs need
NPOV-tidying?  Then that's what should have been done, then.

----

Are you operating on a theory that no material should ever be
duplicated in the wikipedia?  I would agree with a milder claim that
_often_ we should avoid duplicated material, and that duplicated
material _often_ signals a need for refactoring.  But just saying
"This is duplicated from elsewhere" is not a sufficient reason to just
summarily delete something (over and over and over and over and over).

--Jimbo


body:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 06:54:16AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> It is of note that the Changing Doctrines material was a straight dump
>> of material RK had already written and put on another page on the
>> Wikipedia, so it consisted of paragraphs and paragraphs of duplication.
>> Secondus, the material wasn't even directly related to the topic of the
>> article that he dumped it in.  RK's information dump would have been
>> appropriate in the talk page, but not the article proper.
>
>I don't agree with you on this.  The Changing Doctrines material is
>directly applicable to the subject of the article, "Jehovah's
>Witnesses: Controversial Issues".  That material is about the
>Jehovah's Witnesses.  And it is a controversial issue.  So it belongs
>directly on that page.

I have to apologize to RK, and everyone else.  What I said about the
Changing Doctrines material in that particular article was wrong.

I was confusing it with material in the "Doctrines of Jehovah's
Witnesses" article, which is as I described.

I do stand by what I said about the material in the Changing Doctrines
section having been resolved.  The fact that it is already covered in
the "Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses" page and hasn't undergone any
edits in a long while seems like prima facie evidence to me that it is
NOT controversial, and so doesn't belong in the "Controversies" page.

>Characterizing copying and pasting of legitimate information as an
>"information dump" is not very helpful.

I have to apologize to RK again, because it was not him, but someone
from the IP 165.155.128.132 who added that material.  I believe someone
once told me that was RK's IP, but I can't be certain.

I will let you judge for yourself.  Here is the material from the
Doctrines page I was referring to.

     Controversies about changes in religious doctrine

     Many religions (e.g. Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity,
     Jehovah's Witnesses,* Orthodox Judaism, Islam) teach not only that
     their followers should accept a given set of doctrines as true, but
     also that these doctrines have never changed, and never will
     change. In stronger or weaker terms, religious authorities in these
     faiths have repeatedly stated throughout history that their
     doctrines of faith are infallible,* and that the group has never
     reversed or significantly changed their position.*

     For those people who do not have an agenda of preserving
     institutional religious authority, these changes are clearly seen
     to be a major change or reversal of position. The claims are held
     to be false. For example, Roman Catholics completely reversed their
     official position issued during the Middle Ages that "there is no
     salvation outside the church". Vatican II clearly reversed this
     position, and more recent statements concerning salvation for Jews,
     not to mention Protestants, has also clearly stated an opposite
     position. Similarly, Orthodox Jews hold beliefs based on the
     medieval works of Maimonides, which they claim are identical to the
     beliefs expounded in the Torah (five books of Moses). However
     non-Orthodox Jews, as well as non-Jewish historians, have shown
     that many of these did not develop until over a millennium after
     the time of Moses.

     It is virtually impossible to get a Catholic Christian, Jehovah's
     Witness or Orthodox Jew to admit that there was a change or
     reversal in their basic religious doctrine. This dispute occurs
     because it is ingrained in their theology that doctrine never
     reverses itself. Most traditional religious believers in
     Christianity, Islam and Judaism hold that they are the recipients
     of an authentic revelation from God. In their view, it is
     imperative for them to maintain that the received revelation was
     accurate. (Some might admit that the initial revelation was
     limited, thus allowing the possibility of a subsequent revelation
     to offer additional details or clarification.) However, according
     to the traditional religious view, once someone claims that the
     revelation was in error, or not really divine at all, the belief
     system would then no longer be internally consistent. In this view,
     religion falls apart if a doctrine is changed or questioned. This
     is the view of Fundamentalist Chrisitianity, most branches of
     Islam, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews today.

     Religious liberals, as well as people not involved in any religion
     at all, reject this position as being logically flawed. The flaw is
     that many fundamentalists are unable to admit the possibility of
     any position between completely right and completely wrong. No
     in-between state of affairs is considered. In the
     non-fundamentalist view, religion is not damaged or compromised if
     a belief is changed or questioned. This effect could only come
     about if one set up an absolutist system in the first place. In
     other words, if the religion teaches that "All these doctrines must
     be accepted in toto, or the entire religion will crumble", then of
     course the religion will crumble as soon as an error is found or a
     change in doctrine comes about. The flaw is that this is a case of
     circular reasoning.

     Another criticism of the claim that doctrines do not change is that
     such claims are not intellectually honest, and instead are
     self-serving. This view is held to be self-serving because a group
     gives to itself, and in particular its leadership, a putative
     divinely sanctioned role that is denied to those outside the power
     structure. The resulting suppression of dissent is thus
     self-serving. In hierarchical religions, such as Catholic or
     Orthodox Christianity, this can set up a chain of command, and
     claim that divine revelation is reserved to a powerful few who then
     set up a self-perpetuating system to make sure that the power
     hierarchy is never challenged.

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] AOL proxy vandal alert

body:
The vandal has either run out of IPs or lost interest. I'm going to bed now
but when I arrive at work (in about 10 hours) I will unblock the IPs the
vandal was using and periodically monitor Recent Changes. If somebody else
feels up to it, they can unblock the IPs sooner and then keep on eye on
Recent Changes.

--mav


body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> I have to apologize to RK, and everyone else.  What I said about the
> Changing Doctrines material in that particular article was wrong.

I always say: apologies are not important, future action is.

> I was confusing it with material in the "Doctrines of Jehovah's
> Witnesses" article, which is as I described.

I will study this article, too, now.

> I do stand by what I said about the material in the Changing Doctrines
> section having been resolved.  The fact that it is already covered in
> the "Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses" page and hasn't undergone any
> edits in a long while seems like prima facie evidence to me that it is
> NOT controversial, and so doesn't belong in the "Controversies" page.

There appears to be some confusion about what the purpose of the
"Controversies" page is about.  You started the page with one purpose,
but it seems to me that virtually everyone now has a different purpose in
mind.  This seems to be the source of a great deal of tension.

You seem to think of the word "Controversies" there as "Controversies
within Wikipedia as regards what should be in the article".  If that's
what is meant, then the page should never have been started in the
first place -- that's what the Talk pages are for.

Most people are thinking that the purpose of the page is to detail
"Controversies about Jehovah's Witnesses and their beliefs".  These
will be controversies, even after we've written an uncontroversial
article about them.

If you think we should eliminate this article, and incorporate the
information in it elsewhere, then we should all talk amiably about
*that* (on the Talk page, not here).

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] requested feature: User Contributions page include comments field?

body:
On a users "User Contributions" page, can someone please modify it so
that the comments a user made to accompany the articles edit shows up?

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Eloquence wrote:

>Giskart wrote:

>>I find that google should not index our internall affairs.

>I disagree. Google is not a Wikipedia search engine, it's an Internet
>search engine. The goal is to collect and index the knowledge of the
>Net. Part of this "knowledge" are our user pages and even our
>discussions, which often have nothing to do with particular articles.
>Furthermore, people should discover through Google that Wikipedia is not
>just an encyclopedia but a community.

I agree.
But it's also worth noting that there's probably no point
in Google's indexing page histories, edit pages,
what links here, user contributions, and the like.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Log page code consolidated

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>Header text of logs, like the Recentchanges header text, could be
>editable separately.

Speaking of which, why isn't the header text of special pages
editable with the normal wiki user interface?
When I first found Project Sourceberg,
I thought that it was so neat that I could edit its Recent changes!
(Of course, we'll need [[Special talk:]] to go with this.)

-- Toby


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
giskart wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I have noticed that google also have in his index the "talk:something" namespace and "user:something", "User talk:something" on the English and the Dutch wikipedia. The others i do not know.
>
>And it also haves in his index the MetaWikipedia.
>
>I find that google should not index our internall affairs. Only the aricles, nothing else.  And that the MetaWikipedia is not especialy for the general public. I should also not be in the index of google.
>
>Am I alone about this ?
>
You're not alone.  Much of what happens on talk pages is pretty
"wild-west".  I think that we all want to continue that as part of the
process for arriving at consensus on NPOV for articles.

Perhaps one of our more technically minded Wikipedians can respond about
the technical feasibility of keeping talk pages out of the Google index.

Eclecticology


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical NPOV and wikipedian NPOV

body:
Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org> writes:

> There are a lot of scientists who DO believe in a creator God, but keep
> quiet so they can retain their jobs in academia.

Oh please.  Find me one scientist fired for coming out as a theist...

No one working in scientific academia has there job under threat because of
their acceptance or non acceptance of the existence of God.

Really.  No one cares.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Google, Wikipedia and internall affairs

body:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 11:03:06AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>Not that I'm aware of. We exclude _edit pages_ since they're the
>equivalent of 404s; and we exclude some dynamically generated pages
>because spidering them puts extra load on the server as zillions of
>"show next XX items" links are followed.

Brion, what is the mechanism for telling Google not to follow a link?
Pragma: no-cache?  In mod_wiki, it would be cool to make
"googleable" be an attribute of the page one could turn on and off.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 10:49, Giskart wrote:
> I have not really a problem whit the fact that google also finds the
> non-articles but I do that the talk pages sometimes haves a higher
> ranking then the articles. Those pages are competition whit the articels.

Then the article better be brought up to snuff so it gets a better
ranking! ;)

> I only bring it up because I had the impression that a couple of months
> ago was decided to exclude the non-articles from the search machines.

Not that I'm aware of. We exclude _edit pages_ since they're the
equivalent of 404s; and we exclude some dynamically generated pages
because spidering them puts extra load on the server as zillions of
"show next XX items" links are followed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 10:34, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Perhaps one of our more technically minded Wikipedians can respond about
> the technical feasibility of keeping talk pages out of the Google index.

It would be very easy, but I don't think it's desireable to do so.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion re: DB patches

body:
Brion has taken the time to write the very necessary bot patch, which is
great. I found this in CVS in the "maintenance" directory: bot.sql --
this is an SQL file that modifies the table structure accordingly.

I would like to recommend that when we alter database structure, we
create patches of the form

	patch-01-bots.sql
	patch-02-recentchanges.sql
	..

in a subdirectory of maintenance/ called "db-patches", and a separate
file "patches.txt" describing the nature of the patch and the date when
it was written. This way we can keep better track of which patches need
to be applied after, say, CVS updating in a few weeks.  This is the way
the Scoop project does it (they also order their patches by release tag,
but we don't have any releases), and it works rather well.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
I added a little hack to the Recent Changes page on test.wikipedia.org.
Not the nice one we talked about, but it could be expanded to that.
Please tell me what you think.

Note: I only had to patch Skin.php for that; it should show on all pages
that use the Recent Changes function, though. As a pure display
component, it shouldn't interfere with other new toys like "hide the
bots" ;-)

Magnus


body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 10:55, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Brion, what is the mechanism for telling Google not to follow a link?
> Pragma: no-cache?  In mod_wiki, it would be cool to make
> "googleable" be an attribute of the page one could turn on and off.

The cache obviously doesn't kill google, or our entire site would be
missing from their index. ;)

What we use seems to be:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Supposedly it works, though I've made no attempt to test it. (Our
robots.txt blocks off everything that directly uses the /w/wiki.phtml
link, ie everything but simple page views and the default views of
special pages.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature Request: Bot user accounts and/or disable 'hide minor edits' for non-logged-in users

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> I agree, truly new pages are never minor.
> The exception is new redirects; like Brion, I mark these minor.
> But I don't mark any other new pages minor and wouldn't want to.

Here's another, though.  Sometimes a user might want to save a page
often while working, due to exploding web browser problems.  So the
user might save a new page before he or she is really done working on
it at that moment, and might make the save minor so that other people
don't jump into something not yet completed.

And then when they finish the new article's first draft, they publish it as
a regular edit.

Maybe.

The main thing is that people shouldn't abuse it, and at least some people should
always be eyeballing the minor edits for trouble.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 11:16, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Note: I only had to patch Skin.php for that; it should show on all pages
> that use the Recent Changes function, though. As a pure display
> component, it shouldn't interfere with other new toys like "hide the
> bots" ;-)

The current version still lists the same diff/history link for every
change; it seems to make more sense to list these links just once, i.e.
at the top of a change, and also to remove the other redundancy below
the change:

* (diff | hist) A crappy page (5 changes)
** 07:26 by 209.162.23.113
** 07:22 by 209.162.23.113 - minor edit
** 07:20 by 209.162.23.113 (ook)
** 07:17 by 209.162.23.113 (oop)
** 07:15 by 209.162.23.113 - new page

Even better, of course, would be to show the correct diff links for the
individual changes.

The format certainly has its advantages, such as being a simple bulleted
list and thus generally rendered very fast, instead of a very large
table. From a usability perspective, I still think "diff" and "hist" are
pretty ugly.

Is this already checked in? It doesn't seem to be. Should we perhaps
create an experimental tag on CVS for stuff like that?

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Weird Science

body:
on 12/16/02 10:32 AM, tarquin at tarquin at planetunreal.com wrote:

> Could our scientists and philosophers take a look at [[The Logic of
> Scientific Discovery]], [[Ideological assumptions
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_assumptions>]],
> [[Pre-columbian transatlantic contacts
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-columbian_transatlantic_contacts>]]
> and other contributions of 200.149.93.63 & 200.149.94.243
>
>
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=200.
> 149.94.243>

Very interesting. The Pre-Columbian contacts article is reather ordinary and
pedestrian, containing only a few of the existant wild theories. Not long
ago such theories were the cover article in Atlantic Monthly and one book at
least was published by the New York Times. So long as they are not presented
as fact I don't see a problem. He gives, after all, a whole slew of
references.

The other, Idealogical Assumptions, seems a  bit creative, although fun to
read.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
Got the "toggle" thingy running with just a few lines of JavaScript.
Please test on all browsers.

Oh, the file at test.wikipedia.org is the only copy, so maybe we should
store that somewhere ;-)

Magnus

Erik Moeller wrote:

>On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 11:16, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>
>>Note: I only had to patch Skin.php for that; it should show on all pages
>>that use the Recent Changes function, though. As a pure display
>>component, it shouldn't interfere with other new toys like "hide the
>>bots" ;-)
>>
>>
>
>The current version still lists the same diff/history link for every
>change; it seems to make more sense to list these links just once, i.e.
>at the top of a change, and also to remove the other redundancy below
>the change:
>
>* (diff | hist) A crappy page (5 changes)
>** 07:26 by 209.162.23.113
>** 07:22 by 209.162.23.113 - minor edit
>** 07:20 by 209.162.23.113 (ook)
>** 07:17 by 209.162.23.113 (oop)
>** 07:15 by 209.162.23.113 - new page
>
>Even better, of course, would be to show the correct diff links for the
>individual changes.
>
>The format certainly has its advantages, such as being a simple bulleted
>list and thus generally rendered very fast, instead of a very large
>table. From a usability perspective, I still think "diff" and "hist" are
>pretty ugly.
>
>Is this already checked in? It doesn't seem to be. Should we perhaps
>create an experimental tag on CVS for stuff like that?
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>
>


body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 12:38, giskart wrote:

> I find that google should not index our internall affairs.

I disagree. Google is not a Wikipedia search engine, it's an Internet
search engine. The goal is to collect and index the knowledge of the
Net. Part of this "knowledge" are our user pages and even our
discussions, which often have nothing to do with particular articles.
Furthermore, people should discover through Google that Wikipedia is not
just an encyclopedia but a community.

If people want to search only particular namespaces, they can use the
Wikipedia search engine.

Regards,
Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] I am taking a break (contains flaming content)

body:
Danny, you've been doing good work and I hope you come back soon.

I too thought it was strange when he accused Moses of being a Muslim.

I just requested that someone modify the "Special:Contributions" page to
show the users comments when they made each edit.  Noone has replied
back to me yet.  However, it was RK I had in mind when I made that
request.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] How to improve Talk pages

body:
I think we need to have an open ended discussion about "Talk" pages and
what we could do to improve them. I see primarily the following
problems:

- It tends to be cumbersome to search for the right place to insert a
comment in a huge thread with sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly
indented comments.
- Many users, newbies or not, tend to quote, indent etc. in uncommon
ways. It's a bit like email in that respect: Give people too many
options to make mistakes, and they will do so.
- Edit conflicts are very likely especially in near-realtime-talk. This
is *very* distracting and one of our biggest usability issues.

Here's what I think we can do:

- Auto-merge after edit conflicts. Do a paragraph-wise comparison, merge
when paras are the same or new, trigger conflict when paras are
different. Show warning when another user has recently started editing a
page.
- Make better use of existing comment demarcation. When a user inserts a
sig --~~~ this could be used to also render a "reply to this comment"
link. This link could lead to a blank edit form, the content of which
would be automatically inserted in indented form after the comment in
question.
- Have better context-sensitive help. Our current editing screen is nice
and all, but it could use some refinements to direct users to pertinent
information.

The alternative would be to replace the talk page with threaded
discussions a la Kuro5hin/Slashdot. Individual comments should still
have all wiki capabilities, but users would not be allowed to edit other
users' comments, and there would be a clear thread structure. Also,
stuff like signing etc. would no longer be necessary.
Issues with this idea:

- editing other users' comments is sometimes desirable
- archival? perhaps thread creator and sysops could have
  "archive this thread" link
- being able to write wherever you want can be good to alert users, e.g.
put important notices at the top - this requires advanced features like
"sticky" posts in a discussion forum
- should deletion of one's own comments be possible?
- revision history?
- having two different "modes" of writing can be a usability
  problem, too

Weighing the different arguments against each other, I think we should
concentrate on the edit conflict issues, and perhaps try to somewhat
streamline the reply process. Having a threaded forum seems to be too
different from the existing wiki process to work well, although I am
still somewhat undecided here. The edit conflict issue is relevant to
all pages, not just talk pages.

What do you all think?

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Google, Wikipedia and internall affairs

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 06:38, giskart wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I have noticed that google also have in his index the "talk:something" namespace and "user:something", "User talk:something" on the English and the Dutch wikipedia. The others i do not know.
>
> And it also haves in his index the MetaWikipedia.
>
> I find that google should not index our internall affairs. Only the aricles, nothing else.  And that the MetaWikipedia is not especialy for the general public. I should also not be in the index of google.
>
> Am I alone about this ?

The meta and talk pages should certainly be indexed. It's important for
Wikipedia that the process of Wikipedia be
indexed/public/searchable/accessible. The "edit" pages and automatically
generated pages don't need to be indexed.

If a Talk page competes with the article that's not a problem with
google--that points to a deficiency in the article. Or perhaps the talk
page has more interesting content. That's often the case.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack, part 2

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Have a look at the new version, and tell me that ain't cool ;-)

That ain't cool:

http://math.ucr.edu/~toby/Recentchanges.bmp

(Sorry, bitmap was the best format that I managed to get for this scrreenshot.)
This was with Netscape 6 for Unix with JavaScript turned on,
but it looks just the same with Javascript turned off
(which is how I normally surf).

-- Toby


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I don't frequently post on this list, but I do read it and have been following the discussions taking place here.

I am on the verge of getting into a major flame war with RK. Rather than do that, I have decided to follow Ed's example and leave Wikipedia for a while. I will be back if and when I hear that he has calmed down. Sorry, but I will not be told that my contributions will be looked at "charitably" by him or that I am buying into an anti-Semitic line. I will not watch as he suggests a new contributor is a "Muslim posing as a Jew." I will not cooperate with him if his idea of working together means that he sets the tone. For anyone who doesn't know what I mean, I suggest you look at the titles and explanations he has given to his changes (and not just to my work) over the past few days.

I may not be a very vocal contributor, but I think I've added something to Wikipedia in the almost-a-year that I've been here. Hopefully things will go back to the pleasant, slightly less chaotic way they once were.

Good luck

Danny


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Great on Mozilla 1.0.1 (but the + is kind of a small mouse target)
>
Yes, I'll try to make an icon that changes to "-" soon.

>Lists are expanded by default in JavaScript-less lynx; the +s show up as
>selectable, though useless, links, which is potentially distracting.
>
>Opera 6.1/Linux doesn't seem to work... the lists are hidden, and
>clicking the + signs doesn't seem to do anything. :(
>
Opera doesn't work at all, because it can't change the layout of a
loaded page. I can get it to hide/show, but there's a blank space where
the writing would be in hidden mode. Weird.

IE works great as well. I guess we'll have to detect the browser and
enable the JavaScript thingy for Mozilla/Netscape/IE only, if we want to
make it default (which IMHO would be nice). Otherwise, a user setting
would do.

Magnus


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Weird Science

body:
Could our scientists and philosophers take a look at [[The Logic of
Scientific Discovery]], [[Ideological assumptions
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_assumptions>]],
[[Pre-columbian transatlantic contacts
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-columbian_transatlantic_contacts>]]
and other contributions of 200.149.93.63 & 200.149.94.243

<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=200.149.94.243>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 17:00, Magnus Manske wrote:

> IE works great as well. I guess we'll have to detect the browser and
> enable the JavaScript thingy for Mozilla/Netscape/IE only, if we want to
> make it default (which IMHO would be nice).

We should only consider using it when the redundancy problems are
addressed. The current view suggests a dynamic history view (i.e. diff
would point to differences between two specific revisions, links would
point to selected revisions) but does not provide it, instead all
diff/title links for an expanded view point to the same location. So
either this functionality should be added or the view changed to remove
the redundant information; otherwise we have a serious usability
problem.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Giskart

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
  > Our internal affairs aren't exactly internal -- it's an open, public
 > discussion and everyone's welcome to participate.

I know and understand that.

 >If Google helps people
 > find the discussion, that's fine by me.

I have not really a problem whit the fact that google also finds the
non-articles but I do that the talk pages sometimes haves a higher
ranking then the articles. Those pages are competition whit the articels.

I only bring it up because I had the impression that a couple of months
ago was decided to exclude the non-articles from the search machines.

 > If something isn't meant for the general public, it shouldn't be put on
 > a public web server with an open content license. ;)  If you're afraid
 > to have your name or your customary handle attached to your opinions in
 > the public record, don't use your real name when you speak in public.

I am not afraid about that. I stand after my (broken) words. My IRL-name
is on my user page. I find that a sysop should show his/her/it real name.

 > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 10:55:44AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 11:03:06AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> >Not that I'm aware of. We exclude _edit pages_ since they're the
> >equivalent of 404s; and we exclude some dynamically generated pages
> >because spidering them puts extra load on the server as zillions of
> >"show next XX items" links are followed.
>
> Brion, what is the mechanism for telling Google not to follow a link?
> Pragma: no-cache?  In mod_wiki, it would be cool to make
> "googleable" be an attribute of the page one could turn on and off.

robots.txt file is right solution.
And googlability is property of classes of pages, not individual pages,
so such atribute is misdesigned.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
You Wrote:
>Is this what I get for signing-up the other day?
>A good old 'Nigerian Scam' E-Mail?
>How secure is your site?
>
>Chagur

woohoo!  I'm rich!

kq

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56829,00.html (not the
payment you're expecting, but payment nonetheless).  :-)


body:
Have a look at the new version, and tell me that ain't cool ;-)

    http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges

Someone really needs to have a look at the diff and hist things and
1. make them look nicer
2. make them work correctly

Magnus


from_name: Andre Engels

in_reply_to:
<3DFE39F1.9070402@epost.de> from Magnus Manske at "Dec 16, 2002
 09:39:13 pm"

body:
> Have a look at the new version, and tell me that ain't cool ;-)
>
>     http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges

That certainly ain't anywhere near cool. I get two parts of the page being
showing on top of each other. Somehow, just before "(unreadable) Magnus Manske
(uploaded "Arr_r.png": arrow right)" my browser (Netscape 6.2 under Linux)
sees a command "go to the top of the page", causing in everything being
written over so as to make it unreadable & unusable.

By the way, I'm having the same type of problem with the multi-language search:
The Polish results go to the top of the page rather than the bottom,
overwriting things. If I search without using 'Polska' (should be 'Polski',
btw) as one of the chosen languages it works like it should.

Andre Engels


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>>Have a look at the new version, and tell me that ain't cool ;-)
>>
>>    http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges
>>
>>
>
>That certainly ain't anywhere near cool. I get two parts of the page being
>showing on top of each other. Somehow, just before "(unreadable) Magnus Manske
>(uploaded "Arr_r.png": arrow right)" my browser (Netscape 6.2 under Linux)
>sees a command "go to the top of the page", causing in everything being
>written over so as to make it unreadable & unusable.
>
>
It is degined for decent browsers only ;-)

It also won't work under current Opera, due to Opera not implementing
all standards.

Magnus


from_name: John Grygo

subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
Is this what I get for signing-up the other day?
A good old 'Nigerian Scam' E-Mail?
How secure is your site?

Chagur

----- Original Message -----
From: "DR AHMED ABDUL" <drahmedabdul1 at netzero.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 4:30 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

> FROM THE DESK OF
> DR. BELLO MUSA
> N N P C.
>
>
>
>
> ATTN,
>
>      MUTUAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP-STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.
>
>
> I am Dr. AHMED ABDUL The chief accountant of The
> Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and I
> head five man tender board in charge of contract award
> and payments approvals.I came to know of you in my
> search for a reliable person to handle a very
> confidential transaction which involves the transfer
> of a huge sum of money to a foreign account.
>
> There were series of contracts executed by aconsortion
> of multinationals in the oil industry in favour of
> Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) among
> which were for the following:-1. The expansion of the
> pipelines network within for a crude down stream
> products distribution and subsequent evacuation:- $8,
> Billion United States Dollars.2. Contract for the turn around maintenance
>  (TAM) of the various refineries in the country $115 million Uited States
Dollars.
> 3. The construction of storage tanks for petrolwum
> products (depots) $190 Million United States Dollars.
>
> The original value of these contracts were delebrately
> over invoiced in the sum U$69,000.00 (sixty nine Million
> United States Dollars Only) which has now been
> approved and is now ready to be transferred, being
> that the companies that actually executed these
> contracts have been fully paid the projests officially
> commissioned.It does not matter whether or not
> your comapny does contracts project of that nature
> described here, the assumption is that your company
> won the major contract and sub-contracted it out to
> other companies.
>
> Consequently, my colleaques and I are willing to
> transfer the total  amount to your account for subsequent disbursement,
>  since we as civil servants are prohibited by the code of conduct bureau
(civil service laws)
> from opening and or operating foreign accounts in our
> names. Needless to say, the trust imposed on you at
> this junction enormous. In return, we have agreed to
> offer you 20% of the transferred sum, while 5% shall
> be set aside for incidental expenses (internal and
> external) between the parties in the course of the
> transaction, and the remaining 75% is for us,The
> Nigerian  officials.
>
> Modalities have been worked out at the highest level
> of the ministry of finance and the central bank of
> Nigeria for the immediate transfer of the fund within
> 14 working days subject to your satisfaction of the
> above stated terms.Our assurance is that your role is risk free,
> I accord this transaction the legality it
> deserves and for mutual security of the fund, the
> whole approval procedures will be officially and
> legally processed with the name of any company you may
> nominate as the bonafide beneficiary of the
> above mentioned amount.
>
> Therefore, when the business is successfully concluded we
> shall through our same connections withdraw all
> documents used from all the concerned government
> ministries for 100% security risk free.Once more, I
> want you to understand that having put in over 19
> years in the civil service of my country, I am very careful
> to have my image and career deemed.
>
> Please contact me immediately through E-mail whether
> you are or not interested in this deal, if you are
> not, it will enable us scout  for another foreign partner
> to carry out this deal but where you are interested
> send the required documents.One blank letter head, one
> invoice sheet and your bank particulars through my
> above address as time is not on our side in the business.
> Send by Email for security reasons.
>
> Thanks as I await in anticipation for your fullest
> co-operation.
>
> Very truly yours,
>
> Dr. Ahmed Abdul
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Imran Ghory

body:
On 16 Dec 2002, at 21:39, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Have a look at the new version, and tell me that ain't cool ;-)
>
>     http://test.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges

Any chance of getting the number of changes stat onto the "Short
Pages" listing ?

(It'd make it easier to differentiate between newbie experiments and
vandalism.)

Imran


from_name: DR AHMED ABDUL

subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
FROM THE DESK OF
DR. BELLO MUSA
N N P C.

ATTN,

     MUTUAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP-STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.

I am Dr. AHMED ABDUL The chief accountant of The
Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and I
head five man tender board in charge of contract award
and payments approvals.I came to know of you in my
search for a reliable person to handle a very
confidential transaction which involves the transfer
of a huge sum of money to a foreign account.

There were series of contracts executed by aconsortion
of multinationals in the oil industry in favour of
Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) among
which were for the following:-1. The expansion of the
pipelines network within for a crude down stream
products distribution and subsequent evacuation:- $8,
Billion United States Dollars.2. Contract for the turn around maintenance
 (TAM) of the various refineries in the country $115 million Uited States Dollars.
3. The construction of storage tanks for petrolwum
products (depots) $190 Million United States Dollars.

The original value of these contracts were delebrately
over invoiced in the sum U$69,000.00 (sixty nine Million
United States Dollars Only) which has now been
approved and is now ready to be transferred, being
that the companies that actually executed these
contracts have been fully paid the projests officially
commissioned.It does not matter whether or not
your comapny does contracts project of that nature
described here, the assumption is that your company
won the major contract and sub-contracted it out to
other companies.

Consequently, my colleaques and I are willing to
transfer the total  amount to your account for subsequent disbursement,
 since we as civil servants are prohibited by the code of conduct bureau (civil service laws)
from opening and or operating foreign accounts in our
names. Needless to say, the trust imposed on you at
this junction enormous. In return, we have agreed to
offer you 20% of the transferred sum, while 5% shall
be set aside for incidental expenses (internal and
external) between the parties in the course of the
transaction, and the remaining 75% is for us,The
Nigerian  officials.

Modalities have been worked out at the highest level
of the ministry of finance and the central bank of
Nigeria for the immediate transfer of the fund within
14 working days subject to your satisfaction of the
above stated terms.Our assurance is that your role is risk free,
I accord this transaction the legality it
deserves and for mutual security of the fund, the
whole approval procedures will be officially and
legally processed with the name of any company you may
nominate as the bonafide beneficiary of the
above mentioned amount.

Therefore, when the business is successfully concluded we
shall through our same connections withdraw all
documents used from all the concerned government
ministries for 100% security risk free.Once more, I
want you to understand that having put in over 19
years in the civil service of my country, I am very careful
to have my image and career deemed.

Please contact me immediately through E-mail whether
you are or not interested in this deal, if you are
not, it will enable us scout  for another foreign partner
to carry out this deal but where you are interested
send the required documents.One blank letter head, one
invoice sheet and your bank particulars through my
above address as time is not on our side in the business.
Send by Email for security reasons.

Thanks as I await in anticipation for your fullest
co-operation.

Very truly yours,

Dr. Ahmed Abdul


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>This was with Netscape 6 for Unix with JavaScript turned on,
>>but it looks just the same with Javascript turned off
>>(which is how I normally surf).

>Obviously, the contents invades the top and sidebar. Does it do that all
>the time, or just on that new Recent Changes version?

Only on the new Recentchanges -- not Watchlist, not old Recentchanges.

>Anyway, it does *not* appear do be a fault of the script, rather one of
>the browser. Of course, as the script uses some "advanced" features,
>many old browsers will not display it correctly. I cannot help that. We
>will, of course, have the "old" RC mode as well, if we ever use this on
>wikipedia.

In the meantime, I'm having trouble keeping track of
the TeX testing going on on the test site '_`.

>So far, I know about these browsers:
>* IE 6 (probably 4 and above) work
>* Mozilla (and thus Netscape 7) work
>* Opera does *not* work
>* Netscape 6 and below won't work

The phrasing of this list implies that Netscape 6 is not Mozilla.
Unlike Netscape 4 and below, it is.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
Chagur wrote:

>Is this what I get for signing-up the other day?
>A good old 'Nigerian Scam' E-Mail?
>How secure is your site?

As Giskart said, it's the list, not the site in general.

Please, list administrators, why are we still accepting posts
from addresses that aren't subscribed to the list?
It's been long enough now to change that!

-- Toby


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Its not about the JWs. It is about NPOV.

body:
Clutch writes:
> It is of note that the Changing Doctrines material was
> a straight dump of material RK had already written and
> put on another page on the Wikipedia,

You have this backwards. This essay on changing doctrines
was originally written for the subject of Jehovah's
Witnesses. After it was finished, it became apparent that
it would be useful somewhere else as where.

Further, this is not the section that Jimbo was referring
to. This is '''not'' the section that was part of the edit
wars. Rather, it was specific controversial issues within
the essay that he (and I) are referring to.

Clutch writes "RK's information dump would have been
appropriate in the talk page, but not the article proper."

Sigh. Stop attacking the analysis as an "information dump".
As the clear consensus on the Talk page explcitly states,
others agree that this material is necessary here for a
discussion of the topic.

Clutch then adds "I will refrain from characterising RK's
action, but I invite you to look at what he added, then
imagine if you were a Jew, and someone dumped something
like that in the article on Judaism, how would you feel?"

Huh? THIS WAS ALREADY DONE TO THE JUDAISM ARTICLES. There
are very detailed section explicitly showing the changing
of doctrines in Judaism; this section became so long that
it was spun off a long time ago into its own separate
article. (And I myself wrote most of this article!)
Additionally, an ever harsher view of Orthodox Jewish
perceptions versus historical reality has been written in
the section on Torah study, Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and the
documentary hypothesis.

And even more, the same critical historical analysis of
Christianity exists in many Wikipedia articles.

I would ask you to stop claiming that people are, in
effect, out to hurt the Jehovah's Witnesses. In point of
fact, all of us are working together to describe ALL
religions, and we strive to do so in an NPOV fashion, using
critical historical and logical analysis.

I myself have been the target of harsh criticism from many
religious Jews, because they think that the Wikipedia
articles are unfair to Judaism, as they contradict the
positions they learned in Hebrew school or Yeshiva. (Most
of the criticism I have received has come in direct e-mail,
and some of it was nearly flammable. The word "heretic"
comes to mind.)

Frankly, the criticism you have given me about the
consensus edits to the Jehovah's Witness articles is mild
to what I have received in regards to the articles on
Judaism and the controversy about the origin of the Torah
(five books of Moses)!

If you would look at the big picture, you will see that
over a wide array of articles, no religion is favored. They
are merely being discussed from the point of view from
someone observing and describing that religion, rather than
being an adherent of that religion.

Shalom,

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
John Grygo wrote:

>Is this what I get for signing-up the other day?
>A good old 'Nigerian Scam' E-Mail?
>How secure is your site?
>
It is not a matter "the site" is not secure, only that this list in not
good configuard. Wikitech-l and Intlwiki-l also recieve 2-5 spams a day
but the do not get posted.

Giskart


subject: [WikiEN-l] Remarks about Danny's odd comments

body:
This is in regards to the article on "Israelites".

Danny writes "I don't frequently post on this list, but I
do read it and have been following the discussions taking
place here. I am on the verge of getting into a major flame
war with RK. Rather than do that, I have decided to follow
Ed's example and leave Wikipedia for a while."

I am puzzled and astonished to read this. The flame war is
coming from Danny alone.

I have been trying to talk to him and work with him, but
Danny refuses to talkm literally. I have tried to make
peace with him, and have repeatedly requested that he
contribute to the article, instead of making personal
attacks. I have added new material, and explicitly asked
Danny to comment on this material, and offer any
constructive criticism he would like to. But Danny refuses
to contribute to any articles, and simply writes ad homenin
attacks.

For whatever reason, Danny simply fills the Talk pages with
implications that I am ignorant, he attacks the beliefs of
mainstream scholars, he refuses to clarify his statements,
and he makes unilateral deletions without explaining what
the problem is.

Worse, he also now claims that he, and apparently he alone,
has the right to decite what is NPOV, and has repeatedly
implied that the views of any scholar other than him are
not worth describing in the article And all this is despite
my repeated requests for conversation and discussion. These
remarks are still on the Talk page in the Israelite
article.

Frankly, I am terribly confused. These recent actions by
Danny are not like him at all, and until two days ago we
had a good relationship! But after he saw just one sentence
he disapproved of (I said that Jews are descendents of the
Israelite tribe of Judah, and refugees from some of the
other tribes.) he begain fixated on some imaginary claims
that have to with "racial purity" or something, and never
let go of this idea.

Danny then refused to speak to anyone about the issue, and
simply implied that Jews were lying about their heritage.
Since this particular Biblical minimalist position is used
on the Internet by anti-Semitic groups on a daly basis, I
was extremely concerned, and I told him so. NO ONE ACCUSED
HIM of being an anti-Semited. Rather, I asked him to
clarify precisely what he meant. Yet instead of writing
clarifications, he made personal attacks.  (In later days
he did make some clarifications, but he still refuses to
bring forth any sources at all to back up his position.)

Ironically, the ONLY person on Wikipedia in recent days to
offer any support for Danny's claims has been ME. I went
out of my way to add material, in the article on the
"History of ancient Israel and Judah", on both Biblical
minimalism and Biblical maximalism, with sources,
bibliography and weblinks. Danny, mysteriously, refuses to
give any support for his own position.

Danny's most recent remarks about me are, to put it
charitably, incomprehensible. He attacked me by claiming
that I was writing nonsense, that literally every proposed
addition I had offered was wrong...and then  he admits that
almost every proposed change I made was, in fact, correct!
He then concludes that I am totally wrong. In a word,
"Huh?".

He has continually attacked me for beliefs that I don't
have, and keeps imagining that someone is trying to prove
that Jewish people are some sort of "racially pure" group,
whatever that means. Yet no one is making such a claim. And
its not just my point of view; other people have joined in
on the Talk pages, trying to explain this to Danny, but he
insists that his mis-reading of the material is correct.
I went through his comments one at a time, and explained to
him that he was attributing many beliefs to me that I don't
have, and that he was attacking claims that I was not
making. Further, I explained that some of his beliefs I
actually agreed with! Yet all he gave in return was
silence.

All of this disturbs me greatly, as this is not like Danny
at all. I just can't explain why he refuses to talk, why he
refuses to explain his position, why he refuses to back up
his own position, or why he is making up all sorts of
attacks on non-existent beliefs, and attacking me
personally.

This is not right, folks. This is justplain wrong.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
You characterise Danny as being "obsessed with racial purity" on a
public mailing list, and say "the flame war is coming from Danny alone"
and then you wonder why he doesn't see any point in talking to you?

Perhaps you could benefit from reading a few books, and they would make
your time here go much smoother.  "Games People Play", by Eric Berne
and "Rules for Radicals", by Saul Alinsky are good for starters.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
Toby wrote:
>Please, list administrators, why are we still accepting posts
>from addresses that aren't subscribed to the list?
>It's been long enough now to change that!

When you send a message to a yahoo group you're not subscribed to, you
get a message back saying the group doesn't exist, though it does.  I
know this because a friend was subscribed by the moderator, but with a
typo in the address.  Anyway, that might be a handy function, unless
it reeks of Cabal.

kq

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=John_Poindexter&diff=509574&oldid=509571


subject: [Wikitech-l] help; getting wiki url rewriting right

body:
I followed the instructions in the INSTALL file, and got Wikipedia up
and running.

However, the URL rewriting, cut and pasted from the INSTALL file,
doesn't seem to work at all.  This seems to work:

   http://reactor-core.org/t/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

But this does NOT:

   http://reactor-core.org/t/wiki/Main_Page

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Here is the relevant section of my httpd.conf:

=== SNIP ===
<Directory /usr/home/djw/src/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase>
      php_admin_flag engine on
</Directory>
<VirtualHost ...>
...
Alias /t    /usr/home/djw/src/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/t/wiki/wiki.phtml(.*) /t/wiki.phtml$1
RewriteRule ^/t/wiki/(.*)$ /t/wiki.phtml?title=$1
RewriteRule ^/movie/(.*) http://us.imdb.com/Title?$1 [R]
RewriteRule ^/isbn/(.*)  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/$1 [R]
...
</VirtualHost>
=== SNIP ===

Also, I would like to make the direct wiki.phtml URL unaccessable; I
want to force people to use the /t/wiki/* style URL, and not give out
any access at all to the /t/wiki.phtml?* URL's.  Ideas?

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Timeout!

in_reply_to: <20021217160440.GA7132@reactor-core.org>; from krooger@debian.org on Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 08:04:40AM -0800

body:
I'm calling a timeout here.

RK wrote:
>But after he saw just one sentence he disapproved of (I said that
>Jews are descendents of the Israelite tribe of Judah, and refugees
>from some of the other tribes.) he begain fixated on some imaginary
>claims that have to with "racial purity" or something, and never let
>go of this idea.

Jonathan Walther wrote:
> You characterise Danny as being "obsessed with racial purity" on a
> public mailing list, and say "the flame war is coming from Danny alone"
> and then you wonder why he doesn't see any point in talking to you?

Jonathan, you've mischaracterized what RK said.  He did not say that
Danny was "obsessed with racial purity" but that he was "fixated on
some imaginary claims that have to [do] with 'racial purity' or
something".

I encourage anyone who wants to get involved in this dispute to first,
try not to do so.  And barring that, please be exquisitely careful not
to loosely characterize what people are saying based on your emotion
when you read it.

So here's the timeout -- everyone try to relax about anything relating
to Israel, Jews, Moslems, anti-Semitism, and Jehovah's Witnesses and
any other related topics until _Friday_.  Then hit me with your best
shot.

I think that a timeout to let tempers cool would be helpful.  If you
REALLY think, based on a full understanding of the history, goals,
etc., of bans, if you REALLY think someone should be banned, then
raise the issue with me privately, including actual page references,
and I promise to read everything over carefully and make comments or
take actions accordingly.

But, that's Friday.  Today is Tuesday.  Wednesday and Thursday we're
all going to take a vacation from bickering and have a virtual beer.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] suggested patch for buildusers.sql

body:
I suggest that you add a line to create the wikidb database to the top
of buildusers.sql, like so:

    CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS wikidb;

Just a convenience thing.

Also, could the INSTALL file explicitly say that buildusers.sql should
be run as a mysql user who has the power to create databases and grant
privileges, so typically you would run the script as the mysql (not
necessarily the system user) "root"?

Also, please insert the following in INSTALL file:

    mysql -p --user=root < buildusers.sql

Cheers!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] warning user fauxpas

body:
On 12/17/02 10:31 AM, "tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> did we work out a way of getting a message to an IP user without blocking?
>
> 195.93.33.13
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=195.
> 93.33.13>
> is adding stubs of British actors with only the name and the DoB in an
> ambiguous format. Should I just ban for 30 minutes with a polite
> explanation?
>
Banning would be entirely innapropriate, especially now that we have the
stub threshhold which makes stubs much less of a problem.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Timeout!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>But, that's Friday.  Today is Tuesday.  Wednesday and Thursday we're
>all going to take a vacation from bickering and have a virtual beer.
>
Then you'll  need to watch out for the virtual drunks. :-)
Ec


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>This was with Netscape 6 for Unix with JavaScript turned on,
>but it looks just the same with Javascript turned off
>(which is how I normally surf).
>
>
Obviously, the contents invades the top and sidebar. Does it do that all
the time, or just on that new Recent Changes version?

Anyway, it does *not* appear do be a fault of the script, rather one of
the browser. Of course, as the script uses some "advanced" features,
many old browsers will not display it correctly. I cannot help that. We
will, of course, have the "old" RC mode as well, if we ever use this on
wikipedia.

So far, I know about these browsers:
* IE 6 (probably 4 and above) work
* Mozilla (and thus Netscape 7) work
* Opera does *not* work
* Netscape 6 and below won't work

Anyone try Konqueror yet? What about Mac browsers?

Magnus


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On Die, 2002-12-17 at 11:23, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Anyone try Konqueror yet?

Konqi is a bit buggy -- sometimes the top link is put below the expanded
links for some reason. But it expands the links as it should.
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] warning user fauxpas

body:
On 12/17/02 11:13 AM, "tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Banning would be entirely innapropriate, especially now that we have the
>> stub threshhold which makes stubs much less of a problem.
>>
>>
>>
> I only suggested that as a means to guarantee a message reached this
> person -- not as any kind of punishment.
> s/he doesn't seem to be reading Recent Changes, or reloading his pages:
> I've left messages there with no result.

I still wouldn't ban. The harm of the stubs is minimal. But I won't cry if
you do it.


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes hack, part 2

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:

> It is degined for decent browsers only ;-)

Then undesign it.  Well written HTML degrades well.
--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 08:50, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> However, the URL rewriting, cut and pasted from the INSTALL file,
> doesn't seem to work at all.  This seems to work:
...
> Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Hmm, do 'Alias' and mod_rewrite interact well?

> Alias /t    /usr/home/djw/src/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/
> RewriteEngine On
> RewriteRule ^/t/wiki/wiki.phtml(.*) /t/wiki.phtml$1
> RewriteRule ^/t/wiki/(.*)$ /t/wiki.phtml?title=$1
> RewriteRule ^/movie/(.*) http://us.imdb.com/Title?$1 [R]
> RewriteRule ^/isbn/(.*)  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/$1 [R]

For reference, here's the entry for test.wikipedia.org:

<VirtualHost 130.94.122.197>
    DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache/htdocs-test"
    ServerName test.wikipedia.org
    ErrorLog logs/test.wikipedia.org-error_log
    CustomLog logs/test.wikipedia.org-log combined

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape
    RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=${ampescape:$1} [L]
    RewriteRule ^/w/wiki.phtml(.*) /w/wiki.phtml$1
    RewriteRule ^/wiki$ /w/wiki.phtml
    RewriteRule ^/$ /w/wiki.phtml
</VirtualHost>

('ampescape' is a custom conversion function to turn an ampersand & to
%26 so that titles with ampersands don't get screwed over, since the
built-in 'urlescape' doesn't fix them. Patch for Apache 1.3.26+:
http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/ampersand.diff )

> Also, I would like to make the direct wiki.phtml URL unaccessable; I
> want to force people to use the /t/wiki/* style URL, and not give out
> any access at all to the /t/wiki.phtml?* URL's.  Ideas?

Stick a [QSA] on the rewrite rule to append instead of replace the query
string, see if that goes in the right direction.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
On Tuesday 17 December 2002 12:00 pm,Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Who did you register it with?  It might be easiest if you just hang on
> to it for the moment, and then transfer it to the nonprofit once I get
> 501(c)(3) approval.  That way, you can get a tax deduction, and we transfer
> it once to the right entity.
>
> I trust you to hold on to it until then.

Verio Tabnet, sure thing, and thanks.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc

body:
On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 13:16, Giskart wrote:
> I would like to know of there objections against adding this list to Gmane.org

Well I for one don't care either way (list archives are already public,
another format doesn't hurt), though science.linguistics seems an odd
hierarchy to put Wikipedia under.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] LETTER FROM DR AHMED

body:
On Tuesday 17 December 2002 12:00 pm, John Grygo wrote:
> Is this what I get for signing-up the other day?
> A good old 'Nigerian Scam' E-Mail?
> How secure is your site?
>
> Chagur

Your email address and personal info hasn't been compromised and neither has
the website so security /is not/ an issue at all. The available evidence
shows that the spam in question was sent to the mailing list, not you
directly. Spam is an eventual fact of life for anybody with an email address.
So since this is an open and unmoderated list that has been around for a
while we get spam too.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma payment. Have you had your Wiki today?
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Disulfide_bond&diff=507442&oldid=507415
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Beryllium_copper&diff=510428&oldid=506940


body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>>It is degined for decent browsers only ;-)
>>
>>
>
>Then undesign it.  Well written HTML degrades well.
>
>
The HTML is well-written. The dynamic functions are just not supported
by some (old) browsers. Without the dynamic functions, there's no sense
in having this "pop-in" at all. So, old and incompatible browsers get
the old RC page, decent browsers can have the new one.

But I bet you have another pseudo-smart reply to this as well.

Magnus


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] warning user fauxpas

body:
did we work out a way of getting a message to an IP user without blocking?

195.93.33.13
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=195.93.33.13>
is adding stubs of British actors with only the name and the DoB in an
ambiguous format. Should I just ban for 30 minutes with a polite
explanation?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] warning user fauxpas

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 12/17/02 10:31 AM, "tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>did we work out a way of getting a message to an IP user without blocking?
>>
>>195.93.33.13
>><http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=195.
>>93.33.13>
>>is adding stubs of British actors with only the name and the DoB in an
>>ambiguous format. Should I just ban for 30 minutes with a polite
>>explanation?
>>
>>
>>
>Banning would be entirely innapropriate, especially now that we have the
>stub threshhold which makes stubs much less of a problem.
>
>
>
I only suggested that as a means to guarantee a message reached this
person -- not as any kind of punishment.
s/he doesn't seem to be reading Recent Changes, or reloading his pages:
I've left messages there with no result.

>
>
>


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>So far, I know about these browsers:
>>* IE 6 (probably 4 and above) work
>>* Mozilla (and thus Netscape 7) work
>>* Opera does *not* work
>>* Netscape 6 and below won't work
>>
>>
>
>The phrasing of this list implies that Netscape 6 is not Mozilla.
>Unlike Netscape 4 and below, it is.
>
>
AFAIK, Mozilla (1.0 and above) is the basis for Netscape 7. Am I
mistaken? If Netscape 6 would be Mozilla-based, the RC would work there,
would it not?

Magnus


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 04:53:57PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> >>So far, I know about these browsers:
> >>* IE 6 (probably 4 and above) work
> >>* Mozilla (and thus Netscape 7) work
> >>* Opera does *not* work
> >>* Netscape 6 and below won't work
> >>
> >>
> >
> >The phrasing of this list implies that Netscape 6 is not Mozilla.
> >Unlike Netscape 4 and below, it is.
> >
> >
> AFAIK, Mozilla (1.0 and above) is the basis for Netscape 7. Am I
> mistaken? If Netscape 6 would be Mozilla-based, the RC would work there,
> would it not?

Netscape is Mozilla-based, and it's very likely that RC wouldn't work in
older Mozillas (N6 was based on Moz0.9 iirc).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] warning user fauxpas

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>I still wouldn't ban. The harm of the stubs is minimal.
>
But in this case it was dumb legwork we could avoid. This person was
adding dates as "4-5-1945", which means someone later on has to go look
it up again.

>But I won't cry if you do it.
>
>
I wasn't comfortable either about using the ban feature for this, which
is why I brought it up here. :-)
I'd rather we had a "soft" way of doing this.
For example, make the contents of the page [[user:{IP address}]] appear
above every edit box this IP sees.

That way:
* they see it (hopefully ... I've seen people overlook what's right in
front of them when it comes to computer interfaces)
* we're not banning them, and they can still edit
* they can reply to confirm they've read the message on the same page.


from_name: Giskart

body:
I would like to know of there objections against adding this list to Gmane.org

If you have not seen the postings about this at wikitech-l, please read
these;
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001621.html

I propose the group name;
*gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc*

If you would like to see how it works, use the news server; news.gmane.org and subscribe to the lists whit "wikipedia" in there name.

no responds = no objections

Greetings,
Giskart


subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlist restructuring

body:
Ahh, the ever-changing watchlist. :)

I've just checked in changes to switch the watchlist table to use
namespace/title pairs instead of the cur_id numeric key. This may sound
like a dumb idea, but it's actually good:

* Restores ability to watch nonexistent pages that may come into being
(or pages that are deleted and recreated -- with a different cur_id, but
the same title)
* Makes it easier to deal with article/talk pairs; just and/or out the
ones bit of the namespace. Now articles and their talks are considered
identical; if you're watching one, you're watching the other. If you
unwatch one, you unwatch the other.

I also would like it to deal better with renames; it's been suggested
(bug report 654899) that both the old and new titles be included in the
watchlist. The old old behavior was to show only the old title, which
would show up at the time of move as 'moved to XX' (good if you notice
it, but won't show any more edits to the article unless you explicitly
follow the redirect and add it); the current behavior is to show only
the new title, which remains buried at its last edit (but if it's edited
again, you see the current edits).

At the moment the cvs code will dupe the watchlist entry for the new
title too, but only for the user doing the rename. It should do that for
all users, which sounds annoying since you can't do an INSERT INTO ...
SELECT FROM the same table in MySQL. So probably a loop, urgh.

Code is running on test.wikipedia.org; try it out and let me know if
it's horribly broken before I install it around in the morning.

I've added a 'patch-list.txt' in the maintenance directory; the
watchlist fixerupper code is in path-watchlist.sql.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Timeout!

in_reply_to: <3DFF7473.2050402@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 11:01:07AM -0800

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >But, that's Friday.  Today is Tuesday.  Wednesday and Thursday we're
> >all going to take a vacation from bickering and have a virtual beer.
> >
> Then you'll  need to watch out for the virtual drunks. :-)

I seriously think we should start thinking about organizing some road
trips and get-togethers.  This could be done informally or formally.

We could do a few of these -- one on the east coast, one on the west
coast, and one in a central location in Europe.  Or they could be
smaller, regional things with only a few people.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <r5i1y4g4z8r.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>; from wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk on Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 12:16:20PM +0000

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
> Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:
> > It is degined for decent browsers only ;-)
>
> Then undesign it.  Well written HTML degrades well.

I agree.  We could do statistics from the site to see how many of each
older browser, blah blah blah, but it's really better to just make
sure we degrade gracefully for all browsers.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <3DFF28F2.6080606@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 02:38:58PM +0100

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> >Then undesign it.  Well written HTML degrades well.
> >
> >
> The HTML is well-written. The dynamic functions are just not supported
> by some (old) browsers. Without the dynamic functions, there's no sense
> in having this "pop-in" at all. So, old and incompatible browsers get
> the old RC page, decent browsers can have the new one.
>
> But I bet you have another pseudo-smart reply to this as well.

Now now, let's not get testy.  :-)  As long as we can accurately
give people a page that works, everything is joyful.

--Jimbo


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Wednesday 18 December 2002 06:52, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I agree.  We could do statistics from the site to see how many of each
> older browser, blah blah blah, but it's really better to just make
> sure we degrade gracefully for all browsers.

It is possible in PHP to emit code that confuses a particular browser only if
the browser is not that browser.

phma


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> That's interesting. The campaign for a voting procedure, repeatedly
> rejected by the mailing list, is now continued via private email
> directly to you? Could we have more details?

Erik has been emailing me with his reasons for thinking that
implementing a voting procedure for major decisions would be a good
idea.  We've had a good discussion about it, barring some side
discussions of real-world politics where I ended up going bonkers and
yelling at him.  :-)

One of the strongest arguments that he's made, in my opinion, is that
a voting procedure gives a clearcut _result_, whereas consensus is
necessarily vague.

One of the strongest arguments that I've made against voting is that
voting is usually game theoretically bad.  I can explain what I mean
by that if anyone is interested, but basically I think that we can
find better solutions under a consensus-seeking incentive system than
a power-bloc-seeking incentive system.

Erik counters this by suggesting a more sophisticated voting mechanism
like approval voting or Condorcet's Method or the like.  (Actually, he
didn't mention Condorcet, but it would be a good choice for us, I
think.)

Simple majority rule would almost certainly be a bad idea, as it would
tend to result in decisions that are clearly suboptimal.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <3E00DE71.3050809@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 09:45:37PM +0100

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> achieved to work for all browsers. Gareth, if you know how to do that
> for a non-DHTML, non-JavaScript browser, without any plug-ins, you're
> very welcome to write it, and I'll implement it at once. Otherwise, I
> suggest you restrain yourself from wise-guy remarks.

I didn't take him that way, but yeah, he was a little bit wise-guy
in the way he put it.

> I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. Maybe I'm overreacting. Then,
> maybe not.

Well, maybe, maybe not.  But you're still the man in my book.


from_name: Wojtek Pobratyn

subject: [Wikitech-l] pl wikipedia lag

body:
hi all.

the Polish wikipedia is lagging quite a bit today. Is there a reason for
this???

regards,
WojPob


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikitech-l] lag in es.wiki

body:
I have been experiencing horrible lags and stalling
on the spanish wikipedia. I have checked the english
and german at the same time to see if there are
problems there too, but they worked fine.
es.wikipedia is a very low traffic wiki, so i don't
understand this.

Are there any server or sql parameters that were
modified on the german and english wikipedias, but not
on the spanish one?

AstroNomer

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subject: [Wikitech-l] lag in es.wiki

body:
On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 15:54, wiki pedista wrote:
> I have been experiencing horrible lags and stalling
> on the spanish wikipedia. I have checked the english
> and german at the same time to see if there are
> problems there too, but they worked fine.
> es.wikipedia is a very low traffic wiki, so i don't
> understand this.

There are basically two types of situations that can cause lag:
1) A really slow query runs on one of the main tables; other things try
to write to the table, but the entire table is locked by the slow query
and anything else trying to access that table has to wait for it. This
directly affects only one language under our current setup.

2) There are so many backed up waiting connections from 1) that we hit
the connection limit and *the entire site* has to wait for the first
query to finish. At the moment this mainly means the English site
blocking the others.

So, if slow queries were hitting the Spanish site _specifically_, that
wouldn't stop the other wikis from running.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Watchlist / Atentaro / Liste de suivi

body:
[en]
The watchlist function has been updated a bit; pages and their talk
pages are now consistently treated as a unit (fixing the double-entry
bug), and now both old and new titles will appear in watchlists when a
watched page is renamed to better keep track of the change.

Please let me know if there are any problems.

[eo]
La funkciadon de la Atentaro mi iomete antauxenigis. Priatentita pagxo
kune kun sia diskutopagxo estas traktata kvazaux unuopajxo (la cimo de
duoblaj montrigxoj riparigxas); kaj movita pagxo montrigxos kaj per la
malnova kaj nova pagxo por pli bone sekvi la sxangxon.

Bonvolu atentigi min, se ia problemo okazas.

[fr]
La liste de suivi est un peu am?lior?e. Page suivie avec sa page de
discussion, elles sont trait?es comme seule unit? (le bougue de lignes
doubles est r?par?). Page renomm?e maintenent se montre le nom ancien et
aussi le nouveau pour meilleur tracking.

Informez-moi si se montrent des probl?mes, svp.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Gareth Owen wrote:
>
>
>>Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:
>>
>>
>>>It is degined for decent browsers only ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>Then undesign it.  Well written HTML degrades well.
>>
>>
>
>I agree.  We could do statistics from the site to see how many of each
>older browser, blah blah blah, but it's really better to just make
>sure we degrade gracefully for all browsers.
>
I think there's been a misunderstanding (actually not on my part, this
one time;-)

I have no intention of *replacing* the Recent Changes page completely
with my version. It uses JavaScript and dynamic HTML, which are not
supported by many browsers, at least not to the extend that is required
for that drop-down feature I am (and was) fully aware of that. That's
why I plan to make it a user option, or a browser detection (as Pierre
suggested), or a combination of both.

What got me a little enraged was the "work smarter, not harder"-type
reply above (Dilbert readers will know what I mean;-). It implies that
the same effect (drop-down, and maybe others to follow) could be
achieved to work for all browsers. Gareth, if you know how to do that
for a non-DHTML, non-JavaScript browser, without any plug-ins, you're
very welcome to write it, and I'll implement it at once. Otherwise, I
suggest you restrain yourself from wise-guy remarks.

I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. Maybe I'm overreacting. Then,
maybe not.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

in_reply_to: <8c4FagOxpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 11:27:00PM +0100

body:
On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 11:27:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> The Debian project uses Concordet voting, BTW.

But it has not yet done so to decide a particular controversial issue,
I think. Only leadership elections and the choice of a logo. So we
don't have a guide there to see how well it might work.

-M-


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
> One of the strongest arguments that I've made against voting is that
> voting is usually game theoretically bad.  I can explain what I mean
> by that if anyone is interested, but basically I think that we can
> find better solutions under a consensus-seeking incentive system than
> a power-bloc-seeking incentive system.

My main argument against consensus is that we do not really use what I
would consider a consensus process. A consensus process, in my opinion, is
a process where you argue for some time, and eventually find a solution
that everyone at least is willing to tolerate. In reality, in most past
cases our process has been one where people come from very different
positions and never really arrive at what could be considered a compromise
pleasing to all (or even "nearly" all) parties -- we're just too large and
too different for that to work, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

So what happens -- as in the case of what we should do with Clutch, with
Lir, with TMC, as in recent NPOV discussions etc. -- is that usually Jimbo
weighs in after a while and the matter is settled, for a variety of
reasons which center around Jimbo's role in the project and the respect
people have for him. This is not really a consensus process -- it's a
discussion process with a benevolent dictator as the ultimate arbitrator
and decision maker. Jimbo says he only tries to quantify the "intensity"
of disagreement and whether a "nearly unanimous" consensus has been
reached, but it's not that mechanical, especially as there are no fixed
criteria for this. Once these are more and more precisely defined, the
system gets closer and closer to an actual voting system.

I think we all know that, too, but we like to uphold the "consensus"
picture because it pleases us more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying
this is necessarily bad (Linux is, after all, a benevolent dictator
project as well), just that it has its flaws, especially in the unlikely
case that Jimbo is wrong. It also has scalability problems.

The Debian project uses Concordet voting, BTW.

What I think we should do, and could do, is implement a basic voting
system in the Wikipedia engine that would allow people to create polls
(ideally offering different voting methods -- if you just have yes/no as
choices, first past the post seems fine). These could be used to collect
data informally in various situations, like the recent moderation debate.
They would NOT be accepted, by policy, as a way to assert that X or Y
should be done, just a method to tabulate/quantify opinions. People are
already doing this manually (votes for NPOV , votes for deletion, votes
for ..), and it seems difficult to argue that we shouldn't simplify
things.

I would be willing to work on that (could take a while, but I won't forget
it). Magnus has also expressed interest in this area.

We could then also have a formal process to use such polls as the basis of
actual decisions in cases where consensus seems unattainable (what Jimbo
chatacterized as the very few cases where voting might be necessary to
make a decision). The decision whether to use a poll for this purpose in
an individual case would rest with Jimbo.

That way we can explore the different options available carefully, without
imposing anything. There are certainly arguments that can be made for or
against either the consensus/BD or the voting process. What I think we
should resist is the temptation to avoid changing our process because of
fear of change itself. Wikis themselves are the result of an evolutionary
process, and this evolution shouldn't stop.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] My proposal

body:
> But it has not yet done so to decide a particular controversial issue,
> I think. Only leadership elections and the choice of a logo. So we
> don't have a guide there to see how well it might work.

But, but, the Debian logo rules! ;-)

Regards,

Erik

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