subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: squid idea summary

body:
On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 14:43:02 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

Hi Brion,

> The cache file is a complete gzipped
> HTML page; if the browser doesn't advertise understanding gzip, we
> decompress it on the fly. (Note that this may affect benchmarks in
> comparison to actual browsers in use, I don't know.)

i've just re-run the test with Accept-Encoding: gzip- it's 9.2 pages per
second now!

This is over 100 requests, concurrency still 7. Definetely better, but
still not in the hundreds ;-)

Gabriel Wicke


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [Wikitech-l] /ad/ directories considered harmful

body:
Would it be possible to set it so that uploads are never placed in a
path called /ad/ (as they sometimes are at the moment) - I think it's
pretty common for software to assume that any such image is an advert
and not display it. Certainly Norton Personal Firewall's ad blocking
does this...

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache 2 issues

body:
My test box at home is running Apache 2.0.48 on FreeBSD 5.2rc2, with
PHP 4.3.4 installed as an apache filter. For the most part it works
fine, but I've noticed an oddity on this system that I haven't seen on
the production boxes (always running Apache 1.3.x): with file cache and
gzip compression on, the Content-Encoding header is missing on the
first send of a newly cached page, so you see raw binary gibberish.

As a workaround I had dropped an extra header() call into
Article::tryFileCache() but I've disabled this on pliny (which is not
affected by the original bug) due to a secondary bug it causes with
very long page titles (#870290). This could probably be worked around
again, but I'd rather solve the initial issue. There may be other
related problems with missing headers.

Is anyone else testing with Apache 2 who can confirm this problem
(particularly on Linux)? Enable $wgUseGzip and $wgUseFileCache, disable
$wgShowIPinHeader, and set $wgFileCacheDirectory to an apache-writable
directory, and comment out the header() call in
Article::tryFileCache().

We ought to make sure it works, and also see if the dreaded
Ampersand-in-Path-Rewritten-to-Query-String issue can be dealt with
reasonably (ie, without patching Apache as we do for 1.3; over time
I've received several requests for the patch from people who had the
same problem and stumbled on my newsgroup posting about it.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: squid idea summary

body:
On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 18:50:37 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I seem to recall some trouble with Vary headers other than "Vary:
> User-Agent" and Internet Explorer. This can probably be worked around in
> some way, I hope.

I've tried Vary: * before- it created trouble in some IE version (don't
recall which one). Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie is tested by me with
anything between IE 5.0 and 6.0 SP2, Opera, Mozilla.
In Plone, the system i'm working with, the users first browse the site
anonymously and then log in for editing. After editing, only the Cookie
is set, urls stay the same. It's working fine for my users, i'm not
shure if one of them by chance uses IE/Mac, but i haven't got any
complaints. If it wouldn't work for them, they wouldn't get the edit
options at all ;-)

Gabriel Wicke


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clearer policy on self-written and obscure biographies

body:
> From: Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu>

> I don't really understand what is the problem with autobiographies and why are
> they more unverifiable then biographies written by someone else. If we write
> an article about a dead person, for facts on its life we might consult
> person's autobiography, or biography, and biographies are often in large part
> written by biographer talking to person about person's life. I don't see how
> is it different then person writing about itself - it's the same source at
> the end.

An autobiography is a good primary source, but it embodies the very essence
of point of view and must be used with that in mind, as are interviews with
the person or with family members and friends or a diary. Most of the
problem with the alleged autobiographies which end up listed on votes for
deletion is that they are usually submitted by an anonymous user, contain
only information postive about the subject, often exaggerating
accomplishments, and a defining characteristic, cute material, like "he
always wears a monocle over an eyepatch", (an actual example from the
current vfd, see [[Thomas Jackson]]). They are in Jungian terms, portraits
of the persona, the self-image of the person as they project themselves.
This is part of the problem, as folks are sensitive about their persona and
"deleting" it does not go down well, nor does critical editing.

When you google the name you sometimes find nothing [[Thomas Jackson]], or
maybe a nice  personal website (but Wikipedia is not a web directory). If
there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews. Other
times you find a little bit [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]],
occasionaly a lot [[Florentin Smarandache]]. In some cases you can write a
bit of an article or maybe a sustantial one, and perhaps save it from
deletion as I tried with [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]]

As I posted before, I believe the best policy is gently but firmly say no to
all of them. However, in practice, I find it fun to see if I can dig up
enough info to save them. But that will pass. But maybe someone else will
take it up from time to time.

Fred

Fred


body:
On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:08:45 +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

Obviously time to go to bed...

> In Plone, the system i'm working with, the users first browse the site
> anonymously and then log in for editing. After

login,

> only the Cookie
> is set, urls stay the same. It's working fine for my users, i'm not
> shure if one of them by chance uses IE/Mac, but i haven't got any
> complaints. If it wouldn't work for them, they wouldn't get the edit
> options at all ;-)

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why we redirect instead of deleting

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>All of this is why, when we change the title of
pages,
>we should turn them into redirects instead of
deleting
>them. I almost left out the word "should" in the line

>above, and a year ago I would have been able to do
>that.

Normally I would agree with you, but in this case the
talk pages were retitled because people wanted that
phrase to stop appearing so much in Wikipedia, and
renaming the talk pages AKFD was one suggested
solution to this without having to lose the content
itself. Leaving a redirect to the renamed page would
not have solved the problem which was apparently that
there were too many pages with this title. Normally
redirects themselves don't cause any issues, so it is
better to keep them than delete them, but as the
discussions on [[Talk:AKFD/redirect]] and
[[Talk:AKFD/November 2003]] show, it was decided that
the redirects themselves were causing harm which is
why I deleted them.

Deleting redirects is a problem, but sometimes keeping
them is more of a problem. For example where it makes
it unreasonably difficult to find similarly named
articles, where the redirect might cause confusion,
the redirect is offensive or the redirect makes no
sense. There are more details and discussion of the
policy at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion]] and
[[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects]].

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


from_name: zocky

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: WikiTella, of sorts

body:
"Since the central server IS going to move rarely, this can be done manually
by mirror admins."

...is what I wanted to say. I miss that wiki wizardry in here.

~~~~ z


subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache 2 issues

body:
On Jan 4, 2004, at 04:03, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Is anyone else testing with Apache 2 who can confirm this problem
> (particularly on Linux)?

I've duplicated the problem on a machine running Fedora Core 1, which
has Apache 2.0.47 installed.

In addition to the content-encoding problem, I've noticed that the
content-type header lists the wrong charset encoding when (otherwise
correctly) showing cached pages, compressed or not. Redhat/Fedora uses
UTF-8 as the default locale charset, and apparently inserts this into
the default content-type header; in at least some browsers this
overrides the meta tag in the HTML which says it's ISO 8859-1. Viewing
non-cached pages (logged in, or diff views etc) the correct encoding
comes through.

This looks like a related problem to the gzip headers; something
involved in the cache system stops headers from getting sent through
after a certain point.

On both the FreeBSD and Linux systems the apache installations were
stock (from ports and from OS-provided rpms), PHP from source
configured so:

./configure --enable-shmop --with-zlib --with-mysql --with-iconv
--with-apxs2filter=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-readline --enable-sockets'

(on FreeBSD /usr/local/sbin/apxs and also --with-tsrm-pth)

Dropped into /usr/local/lib/php.ini:
register_globals = On

Dropped on the end of httpd.conf:
     AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml
     AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
     DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] user rights

body:
Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:

> IMO, "advanced user" is a better name anyway.
> Even better are "trusted user" and "old hand" (maveric149's suggestion).

Agreed.  Please change to one of these versions ASAP.

> In context, an administrator is responsible for their own SQL queries.
> But administrators aren't responsible for anybody else's actions.

Sure, but the question is whether the lawyers will think the same and I
don't want to proof it in court for now.

> But in the meantime, if you become "Administrator" on [[de:]]
> (or whatever y'all say in German), then you will not be responsible
> for any actions other than your own edits and your own SQL queries.

Sure, that's what I did in the past - it's just the name and its
implications I do not like.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Saturday 03 January 2004 12:46, tarquin wrote:
> Toby Bartels wrote:
> >We don't need a special policy for autobiographies
> >which states that unverifiable biographies are unacceptable,
> >if we already have a policy that all articles must be verifiable.
> >That said, it's justifiable, in meta pages on biography conventions,
> >to ''mention'' that all articles, including biographies, should be
> > verifiable. And it would be a good idea to mention this if there have
> > been problems -- which it seems that there have!  But this is not Yet
> > Another Policy ^_^.
>
> Agreed.
> It's making a page to explain this particular aspect of existing policy.
> My motivation is that when I directed MRM Parrott to "what WP is not" he
> said that nothing there prevented him having an article.

I don't really understand what is the problem with autobiographies and why are
they more unverifiable then biographies written by someone else. If we write
an article about a dead person, for facts on its life we might consult
person's autobiography, or biography, and biographies are often in large part
written by biographer talking to person about person's life. I don't see how
is it different then person writing about itself - it's the same source at
the end.


from_name: tarquin

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

>On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 03:28:07AM -0000, Allan Crossman wrote:
>
>
>>Would it be possible to set it so that uploads are never placed in a
>>path called /ad/ (as they sometimes are at the moment) - I think it's
>>pretty common for software to assume that any such image is an advert
>>and not display it. Certainly Norton Personal Firewall's ad blocking
>>does this...
>>
>>
>
>It's not our fault if Norton PF is that stupid.
>
>

It's a pretty stupid filter. Those sites that use a path /ad/ will
figure it out eventually and start using something else.


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

body:
On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 03:28:07AM -0000, Allan Crossman wrote:
> Would it be possible to set it so that uploads are never placed in a
> path called /ad/ (as they sometimes are at the moment) - I think it's
> pretty common for software to assume that any such image is an advert
> and not display it. Certainly Norton Personal Firewall's ad blocking
> does this...

It's not our fault if Norton PF is that stupid.
I'm using Mozilla which only opens requested popups and I can live
with those adds on the webpage.
I'm sure that Norton PF has a whitelist for allowed sites.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


subject: [Wikitech-l] user rights

body:
On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 06:45:05AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Sure, but the question is whether the lawyers will think the same and I
> don't want to proof it in court for now.

Jimbo should announce: "All sysops and de:Administratoren belong to ME and
are nothing but a herd of lemmings"
;-)

--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Nikola Smolenski wrote:

>>I don't really understand what is the problem with
>>autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable
>>then biographies written by someone else.

>Because Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ that person is able
>to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then
>do we use their autobiography as a source.

>We need some sort of filter.

That explains why the autobiographies are a problem
(if you accept mav's premise that we need a filter),
but it doesn't explain why they are more unverifiable.

First of all, sometimes they ''are'' (or might be, I don't have an example)
perfectly verifiable.  And in that case, then they should pose no problem.
And sometimes (non auto-) biographies are equally unverifiable,
in which case those biographies are ''also'' a problem.
But in general -- and in the examples that have come up here --
we run into something that Fred Bauder just mentioned:

:If there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews.

An autobiography (or sympathetic biography based on interviews)
might well be as POV and unverifiable as a Wikipedia autobiography;
but if it's published by a mainstream publishing company,
then it should attract reviews that will help verifiability
(and along with that, help us make the article more POV).
A self-published work -- vanity book, web page, Wikipedia autobiography --
is less likely to attract the attention that will provide such context.
Note that the existence of verifiability is the key here;
there's nothing wrong with using a self-published book as a source
''if'' there is verifiability despite the odds against it.

Potentially, a Wikipedia autobiography that attracted attention
(say, on its talk page) that led to verifiable sources
could be acceptable -- and such articles can be salvaged
by following up the sources mentioned on the talk page.
But one can't ''start'' with a Wikipedia autobiography
and just hope that people will place sources in the talk page;
we need to have something verifiable to begin with.
Thus a Wikipedia autobiography, when there is no other material,
is not verifiable.

I'm focussing here on verifiability, but there's more than that
to mav's point that Wikipedia is not a primary source.
However, an autobiographer can avoid this by publishing a home page
on a free web hosting service such as Yahoo! Geocities
(or whatever the cool kids use these days);
then Wikipedia's mercilessly edited article
could use that homepage only as a source (and an external link).
But if that homepage is the only biographical material on the person,
then we ''still'' run into the problem of verifiability.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] user rights

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>IMO, "advanced user" is a better name anyway.
>>Even better are "trusted user" and "old hand" (maveric149's suggestion).

>Agreed.  Please change to one of these versions ASAP.

You can change it on [[de:]] by editing the pages there.
I suppose that this should be taken up on <wikiDE-L>?
(I don't normally read that, but if you want my support,
then I can take part in the conversation there.
My German is comprehensible, although not always correct. ^_^)

If you think that the issue is larger than just [[de:]],
then we could move this discussion to <wikipedia-L> instead.

But I don't believe that anything in the MediaWiki code forces this term.

-- Toby


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary-access

body:
With all of the server problems lately I couldn't be sure whether
Wiktionary was ignored in the confusion.  I still can't access it, but
don't seem to have that problem with any of the other projects.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Apache 2 issues

body:
On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:03:43 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> My test box at home is running Apache 2.0.48 on FreeBSD 5.2rc2, with
> PHP 4.3.4 installed as an apache filter. For the most part it works
> fine, but I've noticed an oddity on this system that I haven't seen on
> the production boxes (always running Apache 1.3.x): with file cache and
> gzip compression on, the Content-Encoding header is missing on the
> first send of a newly cached page, so you see raw binary gibberish.

I have no experience with Apache2, so i'm just guessing here.
My understanding is that both the file cache and gzip are done in php. Are
the original headers stored along with the cached page so that they are
used on a cache hit? I have a php cache system in use in the CMS Ariadne,
there we use separate dirs for compressed content, uncompressed content,
headers.
If the headers are cached, my only guess is some whitespace (eg trailing
newline) before the cached headers are sent out.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

body:
On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 10:57:54AM +0100, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 03:28:07AM -0000, Allan Crossman wrote:
> > Would it be possible to set it so that uploads are never placed in a
> > path called /ad/ (as they sometimes are at the moment) - I think it's
> > pretty common for software to assume that any such image is an advert
> > and not display it. Certainly Norton Personal Firewall's ad blocking
> > does this...
>
> It's not our fault if Norton PF is that stupid.
Why is it stupid? If there are indeed a lot of sites that serve ads
from a directory called /ad/ it makes perfect sense to block it.

However, its not out fault either, as you say. Norton PF should
either have a whitelist or allow you to change its filtering rules.
> I'm using Mozilla which only opens requested popups and I can live
> with those adds on the webpage.
That's your prerogative. Me, I can't stand ads on the pages
either, so I've set up adblock to nuke anything that matches /ads/,
*.doubleclick.net etc. Haven't come across /ad/ though.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary-access

body:
On Jan 4, 2004, at 14:43, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> With all of the server problems lately I couldn't be sure whether
> Wiktionary was ignored in the confusion.  I still can't access it, but
> don't seem to have that problem with any of the other projects.

Looks fine to me. Could you be more specific?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Apache 2 issues

body:
On Jan 4, 2004, at 05:57, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> I have no experience with Apache2, so i'm just guessing here.
> My understanding is that both the file cache and gzip are done in php.
> Are
> the original headers stored along with the cached page so that they are
> used on a cache hit?

The script sends out both the headers and the content. The content is
taken from a cached file if possible.

I should stress again: the headers are *fine* when the already cached
file is sent out or when an uncached page is rendered and sent out. The
headers are *wrong* *with Apache 2 only* when we first *make* the
cached file and send it out.

Changing the default charset or encoding is irrelevant, since we
override them and that override is what should be visible. Getting
UTF-8 when you expected ISO 8859-1 (or vice versa!) or uncompressed
when you expected gzip is a symptom, not the disease.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>An autobiography is a good primary source, but it embodies the very essence
>of point of view and must be used with that in mind, as are interviews with
>the person or with family members and friends or a diary. Most of the
>problem with the alleged autobiographies which end up listed on votes for
>deletion is that they are usually submitted by an anonymous user, contain
>only information postive about the subject, often exaggerating
>accomplishments, and a defining characteristic, cute material, like "he
>always wears a monocle over an eyepatch", (an actual example from the
>current vfd, see [[Thomas Jackson]]).
>
I'm not impressed by the person, and reading the article doesn't help.
 When something like this has been clearly contributed under a person's
own name, I support moving it to a user page.  Anonymous contributors
put themselves at a disadvantage because there is no one to contact to
ask for information.  This one sat unnoticed since January of last year!
 When I think of Thomas Jackson the image that comes to mind is of the
Canadian singer, actor and native activist

>When you google the name you sometimes find nothing [[Thomas Jackson]], or
>maybe a nice  personal website (but Wikipedia is not a web directory). If
>there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews. Other
>times you find a little bit [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]],
>occasionaly a lot [[Florentin Smarandache]]. In some cases you can write a
>bit of an article or maybe a sustantial one, and perhaps save it from
>deletion as I tried with [[Joseph Buford Cox]] and [[R. Joe Brandon]]
>
I support the approach of making reasonable efforts to save these from
deletion.  A little help from the subject helps!

>As I posted before, I believe the best policy is gently but firmly say no to
>all of them. However, in practice, I find it fun to see if I can dig up
>enough info to save them. But that will pass. But maybe someone else will
>take it up from time to time.
>
I still prefer finding some way to save them in an appropriate
controlled context.  I've never been a fan of VfD.  That process is just
too confrontational, and seems based on a presumption of guilt.

Ec


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>That explains why the autobiographies are a problem
>(if you accept mav's premise that we need a filter),
>but it doesn't explain why they are more unverifiable.
>
Filters inherently require a subjective decision.  They work better when
opinions on something fall into a narrow range.  I think that the range
of attitudes about what should be kept is too wide to make filters workable.

>Potentially, a Wikipedia autobiography that attracted attention
>(say, on its talk page) that led to verifiable sources
>could be acceptable -- and such articles can be salvaged
>by following up the sources mentioned on the talk page.
>But one can't ''start'' with a Wikipedia autobiography
>and just hope that people will place sources in the talk page;
>we need to have something verifiable to begin with.
>Thus a Wikipedia autobiography, when there is no other material,
>is not verifiable.
>
The first line of approach on any of these biographic articles should be
based on attempts to contact the writer.  Deletion should not be
considered until a serious effort has been made in that direction.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Apache 2 issues

body:
Another idea: something about these settings in php.ini:

default_mimetype = "text/html"
;default_charset = "iso-8859-1"

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Karissa S.

subject: [WikiEN-l] questions

body:
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache 2 issues

in_reply_to:
<FCD69A1C-3EBA-11D8-97A6-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>;
	from brion@pobox.com on Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 05:36:23AM -0800

body:
On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 05:36:23AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Jan 4, 2004, at 04:03, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Is anyone else testing with Apache 2 who can confirm this problem
> > (particularly on Linux)?
>
> I've duplicated the problem on a machine running Fedora Core 1, which
> has Apache 2.0.47 installed.
>
> In addition to the content-encoding problem, I've noticed that the
> content-type header lists the wrong charset encoding when (otherwise
> correctly) showing cached pages, compressed or not. Redhat/Fedora uses
> UTF-8 as the default locale charset, and apparently inserts this into
> the default content-type header; in at least some browsers this
> overrides the meta tag in the HTML which says it's ISO 8859-1. Viewing

Apache 2 has some uber-paranoid security "features"; this is one
of them. For example, you have to manually enable public_html
for user home pages because the alternative would allow an
attacker to find if a given user account exists or not, which is
considered a security vulnerability. Apparently, pages without
charsets have some Cross Site Scripting issues, so rather than
trusting authors to use meta tags, apache decided that all pages
should be ISO-8859-1, knowing perfectly well that in both MSIE
and Gecko it overrides the meta tag. So if you want the encoding
to be UTF-8 apache expects you to give all your pages a ".utf8"
extension! No really.

More info at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Sep/0176.html

Fedora made it worse by changing ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8, because
"all pages will eventually be Unicode encoded", so if yours
aren't yet you have to be thankful for being forced to fix
them I guess.

Commenting out the line "AddDefaultCharset UTF-8" in httpd.conf
should fix this.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


body:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
> The first line of approach on any of these biographic articles should be
> based on attempts to contact the writer.  Deletion should not be
> considered until a serious effort has been made in that direction.

This will go a long way towards avoiding trouble.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] user rights

body:
Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> writes:

> You can change it on [[de:]] by editing the pages there.
> I suppose that this should be taken up on <wikiDE-L>?

They are still voting (since November 2003)...  And most of them do not
seem to get the idea.  Don't waste any more time on this issue.  All in
all, it isn't that important to me.

> If you think that the issue is larger than just [[de:]],
> then we could move this discussion to <wikipedia-L> instead.

Since I work more or less on the German version only, it is just a 'de'
issue to me.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


body:
>> It's not our fault if Norton PF is that stupid.
>
> It's a pretty stupid filter. Those sites that use a path /ad/ will
> figure it out eventually and start using something else.

Although both these observations are correct, it might still be wise
to make sure Wikipedia doesn't look to ad blockers like a na?ve user
of adverts.

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Apache 2 issues

body:
Okay, I've created a minimal test case for the problem:

<?php
function showCompressed( $phantom = "" ) {
	$compressed =
		"\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x03\xf3\xc8\x54\x54\xf0\x54" .
		"\xcf\x55\x48\x54\x48\xce\xcf\x2d\x28\x4a\x2d\x2e\x4e\x4d\x51\x28" .
		"\x2e\x29\xca\xcc\x4b\x07\x00\x46\xa1\x81\x5a\x1b\x00\x00\x00";
	header( "Content-encoding: gzip" );
	return $compressed;
}
ob_start( "showCompressed" );
print "This is throwaway text.";
flush();
?>

On the Apache 1.3.x setups I've tested this on, it works fine: a
browser recognizes the encoding and prints out "Hi! I'm a compressed
string". On my Apache 2.0.x setups, the content-encoding header is not
sent and the browser prints out binary gibberish.

If I remove the flush() call or change it to ob_flush(), then the
headers are sent out correctly and the browser decodes the string.

The purpose of the flush() (which is at the end of
OutputPage::output()) is to ensure that actual page output is completed
before the 'deferred updates' run, so the user doesn't have to wait for
them to complete before they can start reading. This isn't really vital
and could probably be accomplished by using ob_start()/ob_flush()
anyway.

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

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Donation History

body:
Jimbo wrote on Wikitech-l:
>I'll try to put together a graph showing daily donations
>during the pledge drive.  That'll be later this week, though.

I already have the data (minus the name, account number, and email columns)
sorted and in OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet (one sheet per month with total
amounts donated in each currency). It would be easy to have a daily breakdown
for the fund drive period (although an hourly breakdown might be more
informative for the two biggest days).

However, some people have given either their name and/or user name in the one
of the two comment fields ('Subject' and 'Note' columns). I think we should
contact those people to ask permission for us to publish their comments.  For
example, the person who donated money for European domains gave his user name
in the 'Note' field.

Some thoughts:
In the future we can deal with this by stating up front that whatever people
write in comment fields will be made public by default but their name and
email address will not be made public unless they put that information in one
or the other comment fields. This will give donors the option of making their
identity public knowledge just by including their name/user name in one or
the other comment fields.

But I think most of the time people want their donation comments published -
It gives a nice personal touch to otherwise dry data. It would also make it
easier for people to see that their donation has been recorded.

Any thoughts?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Apache 2 issues

body:
On Jan 4, 2004, at 23:44, Brion Vibber wrote:
> If I remove the flush() call or change it to ob_flush(), then the
> headers are sent out correctly and the browser decodes the string.

Ah ho:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=25701

After some further testing: if PHP is configured --with-apxs2 instead
of --with-apxs2filter, it is slightly better at reporting the condition
of being unable to send more headers, but that doesn't really help any.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: News from fr:

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> tarquin-
>
>>2. setting up a server in France for the fr: pedia
>
>
> A redundant infrastructure in one place is fully sufficient and easier to
> maintain. Please let's not have this discussion a million times and just
> agree on expanding our current network.
>
> A French Wikimedia daughter organization makes sense, but keep in mind
> that when in doubt, the US mother organization has the higher authority,
> at least until it is explicitly relinquished.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Unfortunately Erik, just saying "keep in mind" is not enough to convince :-)
Tarquin is very well and quietly describing a situation, *reporting*
neutrally the information, for us all to discuss it together. Please let
us not answer to an ambassador reporting an discussion occuring on
another wikipedia, that this has already been discussed a million time.
Please


from_name: A

from_email: A

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]]

body:
I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have
attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic
acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an
anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a
vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since,
discussion is impossible).

I request that the arbitration committee determine
whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
http://search.yahoo.com/top2003


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Donation History

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk a ?crit:

>
> It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth
> can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should.
> The readers should pay for it, either directly or by
> having to lookat/ignore advertisements.

Copy from the main page

Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate
free content encyclopedia. We started in January 2001 and are currently
working on 190094 articles in the English version. Visit the help page
and experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can edit any article
right now.

Free content is an important word. I think it precisely define the
project. With its two meanings :-)


body:
A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

>I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have
>attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic
>acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an
>anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a
>vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since,
>discussion is impossible).
>
>I request that the arbitration committee determine
>whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.
>
This is a question of content.  Although my non-bio-scientific
background would prima facie see your position as stated above to be
correct, I think that it would set a dangerous precedent for the
arbitration process to be used to determine the truth in a statement of
scientific fact.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Images and UseMod; SCSI

body:
I've got an hourly batch rsync job running to make a local (to me)
backup of the uploaded images and all the UseMod-based wikis so in case
pliny explodes or something we only lose an hour of stuff.

Uploads are enabled again for all wikis.

Pliny has logged a couple of SCSI oddities lately; 0/0/0 is the primary
hard drive:

scsi0: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: 0x28 00 00 3e e3 d8 00 00
08 00
Info fld=0x3ee3d8, Current sd08:02: sns = f0  3
ASC=11 ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0xf0 0x00 0x03 0x00 0x3e 0xe3 0xd8 0x18 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x00 0x11 0x00 0x00 0x80 0x00 0x35 0x00 0x00 0x10 0x66 0x00 0x00 0x02
0xbe 0x04 0xff 0x01 0x23 0x00 0x00
  I/O error: dev 08:02, sector 4019160

scsi0: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: 0x28 00 00 3e e3 d8 00 00
08 00
Info fld=0x3ee3d8, Current sd08:02: sns = f0  3
ASC=11 ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0xf0 0x00 0x03 0x00 0x3e 0xe3 0xd8 0x18 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x00 0x11 0x00 0x00 0x80 0x00 0x35 0x00 0x00 0x10 0x66 0x00 0x00 0x02
0xbe 0x04 0xff 0x01 0x23 0x00 0x00
  I/O error: dev 08:02, sector 4019160

Not the quantity of stuff we got before but it's worrying.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Links in Other Languages

body:
On Jan 5, 2004, at 03:38, Fred Bauder wrote:
> On the dev site for Internet-Encyclopedia which has mediawiki-1.1.0
> installed articles imported from Wikipedia which have foreign language
> links
> do not display at the top of the page as links, but just as inert
> material
> within the article.

Available interwiki links are defined by what's in the interwiki table.

A fairly wide set (which probably should be checked for up-to-dateness)
is in maintenance/interwiki.sql and should be installed by default;
this'll provide you with for instance the MeatBall: and Wikipedia:
prefixes.

The language prefixes for Wikipedia are provided in
maintenance/wikipedia-interwiki.sql, however I would recommend against
importing them directly into wikis that aren't Wikipedia or Wikipedia
mirrors.

The set of interwikis that will be put in the 'other languages' bar and
their labels is defined by $wgLanguageNamesEn in Language.php, but if
they're not active interwiki prefixes to begin with they won't get that
far.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Links in Other Languages

body:
On the dev site for Internet-Encyclopedia which has mediawiki-1.1.0
installed articles imported from Wikipedia which have foreign language links
do not display at the top of the page as links, but just as inert material
within the article. See:

http://dev.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=2003

On the live site it displays normally at the top of the page, see:

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=2003

This is not absolutely necessary to the operation of Internet-Encyclopedia
but it is nice to have as it aids both users and Wikipedia.

I'm thinking that the correct line in LocalSettings.php would fix this.

Fred


from_name: Jason Smithson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia on-site documentation

body:
On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 11:23:47AM -0500, Dan Carlson wrote:
> On Dec 27, 2003, at 10:08 AM, Agon S. Buchholz wrote:
>
> True, another namespace will add some more complication.  But take a
> look at the following list:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
> List_of_articles_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace
>
> Not only is that a daunting amount of information for people like me
> who are trying to set up separate wiki sites with a new name, but it's
> also a job that is complicated by the fact that we have to go through
> and change all the internal links in the documentation to match our new
> namespace.  If the documentation used a "Help:" namespace, then none of
> the links would have to be updated, and all an administrator of a new
> site would need to do would be to download the documentation database
> dump and upload it.  And it would also help separate the site-specific
> pages (like Wikipedia:) from those "meta" type pages that are about how
> a user (that is, a site visitor) can operate the MediaWiki interface.

I for one support the creation of a Help: namespace. I can see how it would help other users of the MediaWiki software, how
would it complicate things?

Documentation: might be a bit better than Help: as it might make more sense for Policy pages and such. Or possibly not.

> Possibly, it would be a good idea to make it easy to change the name of
> the website in the documentation, or else make the distribution copy of
> the documentation vague so that it can apply to all sites.  This would
> require some rewriting, but it probably wouldn't be as big a deal
> (either way).
>
> I had this idea to go along with it -- I don't know how feasible it is
> or whether the MW developers would want to use it, but... what if there
> were another variable added that can be included inline with the wiki
> text?  I'm thinking of those items like "number of articles" or
> "current date" and so forth.  If another one of those were the website
> name (already a variable for the web browser title bar), then the
> variable could be used in place of referring to the website in any
> documentation text, and thus would *automatically* be updated.

I imagine this variable would be almost trivial to add and would make the documentation massively more portable. Who do I
have to buy a beer/bribe?

> I suppose this all assumes that the people who are using the software
> want to start out with the same established policies that Wikipedia
> currently uses, but from my perspective, that's exactly what I'm trying
> to do, at least in the initial stages of the site's growth.

I think most of the policies are good places to start out for anyone considering running a Wiki much less one using the
MediaWiki software.

- Jason


body:
The inserting of the material in wikipedia-interwiki.sql worked fine, in the
case of mediawiki-1.1.0 (It would not work on the earlier phase 3 which is
not live). I removed the links to wikipedia and meta as
Internet-Encyclopedia is not actually a part of Wikipedia.

That link on the German Wikipedia is supposed to work, perhaps the software
has not been updated, probably the other languages work, eh?.

Fred

> From: Arwel Parry <arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 13:15:17 +0000
> To: wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Links in Other Languages
>
> In message <F8A09CBD-3F74-11D8-97A6-000A95DAA284 at pobox.com>, Brion
> Vibber <brion-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>> Available interwiki links are defined by what's in the interwiki table.
>>
>> A fairly wide set (which probably should be checked for up-to-dateness)
>> is in maintenance/interwiki.sql and should be installed by default;
>> this'll provide you with for instance the MeatBall: and Wikipedia:
>> prefixes.
>>
>> The language prefixes for Wikipedia are provided in
>> maintenance/wikipedia-interwiki.sql, however I would recommend against
>> importing them directly into wikis that aren't Wikipedia or Wikipedia
>> mirrors.
>>
>> The set of interwikis that will be put in the 'other languages' bar and
>> their labels is defined by $wgLanguageNamesEn in Language.php, but if
>> they're not active interwiki prefixes to begin with they won't get that
>> far.
>>
>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> I was wondering how that worked -- I noticed yesterday that on the
> German version of [[Gregorian Calendar]] there's a link to the Bulgarian
> version which doesn't form a link, but just appears at the bottom of the
> article text.
>
> --
> Arwel Parry
> http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] squid idea summary

body:
I'm studying these ideas in depth today, particularly all the stuff
associated with Linux Virtual Server.

I've been talking a bit with the people at LiveJournal, who have a lot
more traffic than we do, and some of the same ideas that Gabriel is
advocating come up in that discussion, too.

In particular, I think that Gabriel's "artist's impression" of load
balancer in front of squid in front of apache in front of mysql is the
right thing to do.

That's even before we talk about what he calls "our own Akamai", which
I think is very interesting and possibly very useful.  But it's also
something that we don't need to do right this second -- maybe in the
summer, after we get migrated to our new setup.  But the nice thing
about the architecture that he's proposing is that we will be well-poised
to go global.

Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> Hi,
>
> i've written a summary of my system ideas based on squid & SuperSparrow:
> http://www.aulinx.de/oss/code/wikipedia/
>
> Cheers
>
> Gabriel Wicke
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Lir,

Mediation is possible when at least ONE party to a conflict expresses a
desire for mediation. The appointed Mediator can then invite the other
parties. I have seen this work, in the past.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] [mailto:wikilir at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:57 AM
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]]

I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have
attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic
acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an
anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a
vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since,
discussion is impossible).

I request that the arbitration committee determine
whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written and
	obscure biographies)

body:
Daniel Mayer declared that:

> ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/
> that person is able to get a real publisher to publish
> their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use
> their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of
> filter.

How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?

I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors
who actually know something about what they're writing. People are
always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors'
work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more
time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the
Unification Church and software development.

Last year and the year before that, a lot of the talk on this mailing
list was about how to attract experts in their fields; how to avoid
driving them away once we hooked them. Have we given up on that goal?

Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of
web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue
to lose interest in the project.

I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on
	self-written and obscure biographies)

body:
At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>Daniel Mayer declared that:
>
> > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/
> > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish
> > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use
> > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of
> > filter.
>
>How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
>
>I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors
>who actually know something about what they're writing. People are
>always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors'
>work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more
>time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the
>Unification Church and software development.

When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that
information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs,
and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You
as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is
good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia
to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new
and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place
to proclaim it.


subject: [Wikitech-l] new motherboard for geoffrin

body:
Jason just got off the phone with Penguin, and they are sending a new
motherboard for Geoffrin.  Jason's testing revealed that the ram was
o.k., but that one of the ram *slots* on the motherboard was bad.

I'm doing a lot of shopping today for commodity webservers for our new
architecture, and exploring all the options that are open to us.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written
	and obscure biographies)

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary
> source?
>...

Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new
fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we
are not such a place.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
Nick Hill wrote:
> A single ip address will always be a single point of failure as the
> routers leading up to the physical ip destination will take some time to
> propogate a new physical destination for the ip address.
>
> It therefore makes sense to have redundancy switching at the DNS level
> and having systems located at different network locations offering
> equivalent service.

At some point, yes, I agree completely.  But it's important that we
focus our energy on solving problems that we actually have, rather
than problems which are small and unlikely.  We have no plans to host
anywhere other than professional facilities with full redundancy of
everything important, and so the chances of a failure of the type you
are imagining impacting us are very small.

To improve reliability, it makes sense to focus our efforts on the
sorts of things that are most likely to go wrong, first.  And then,
later, if we can afford it and if it makes economic sense, we can
focus on the more esoteric risks.

> Dual 64 bit Opteron mainboards are available with 8 DIMM sockets capable
> of taing 16Gb. eg:
> http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8w_spec.html

Right, we have one of those (though broken at the moment).  Right now,
our entire db should fit comfortably in 4 gig of Ram, which we have.

But I totally agree with you about the importance of avoiding the
hard drive as much as possible.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> > What about sticking the entire cluster on private IP's and having a load
> > balancing firewall appliance handle traffic flow which would randomly hit
> > the update box?
>
> I think Nick is trying to have a global cluster, and you can not achieve
> this with a simple load balancer. If one data center goes down, the load
> balancer would go down, too.

That's right.  Nick's proposal, though, solves a problem that we don't
actually have.  It is of course possible for an entire data center to
go down, but it's extremely rare and should be close to the bottom of
our list of problems to solve.

The much more likely scenario -- one that we live with every day -- is
that a single webserver will fall over.  After we get that problem
solved, with a load balancing firewall appliance basically,
linuxvirturalserver.org stuff, then we can also consider such things
as global clustering and locating servers all over the planet or
whatever.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Donation History

body:
I'll try to put together a graph showing daily donations during
the pledge drive.  That'll be later this week, though.

Everything is open to the public, but there isn't much to see.  I
don't spend any money privately, everything is publicly stated.  When
there are actual accounting documents (balance sheet, income
statement) at year end, those will be publicly posted as well.

Generally, the expenses are hardware only, and bank fees, which are
minimal.  There's no spending for salaries, expense accounts, none of
that sort of thing.  And I pay for the bandwidth, and will continue to
do so for the foreseeable future.

Adam Hunt wrote:

> I don't suppose that there is a history graph of the donations to Wikimedia.
>  I was currious
> how much of the US$31k was raised as a result of Jimmy Wales' December 28
> letter and the
> associated Slashdot coverage.  I was also wondering if Wikimedia's
> accounting ledegers are
> open to the public.  If not, why (this isn't a flame, I'm sure that there is
> a good enough
> reason)?
>
> Thanks for the great site.  In my opinion Wikimedia deserves at least
> another US$30k in 2004.
>
> --adam
>
> --
> "Any society that would give up a little liberty to
> gain a little security deserved neither and
> will lose both." --Benjamin Franklin
>
>
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of
> human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it
> is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> +++ GMX - die erste Adresse f?r Mail, Message, More +++
> Neu: Preissenkung f?r MMS und FreeMMS! http://www.gmx.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>
>> Daniel Mayer declared that:
>>
>> > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/
>> > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish
>> > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use
>> > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of
>> > filter.
>>
>> How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
>>
>> I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors
>> who actually know something about what they're writing. People are
>> always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors'
>> work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more
>> time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the
>> Unification Church and software development.
>
>
> When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that
> information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs,
> and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You
> as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is
> good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia
> to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new
> and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place
> to proclaim it.

I think in addition, this must be verifiable in other sources, which is
why we say Wikipedia is a secondary source.  If Ed is writing stuff
about the Unification Church that is not available elsewhere, then I
don't think that'd be appropriate.  If the stuff he's writing is
verifiable (perhaps in Church literature, or in books about the Church,
etc.), then it's perfectly fine.

-Mark


body:
Lir (A [name omitted for privacy reasons]) wrote:

>I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have
>attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic
>acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an
>anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a
>vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since,
>discussion is impossible).

Mediation is appropriate whether Peak thinks so or not.
If Peak refuses to enter negotiations, then that's a point
in your favour -- but the mediation committee can still try.

>I request that the arbitration committee determine
>whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.

The arbitration committee does not decide the content of articles.

Also, I notice that there is no discussion of this on [[Talk:DNA]].
If there was discussion elsewhere (on user talk pages),
then you might want to copy it to [[Talk:DNA]].
(But the mediation committee can decide what they really want.)

-- Toby


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
> > Dual 64 bit Opteron mainboards are available with
> 8 DIMM sockets capable
> > of taing 16Gb. eg:
> >
>
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8w_spec.html
>
> Right, we have one of those (though broken at the
> moment).  Right now,
> our entire db should fit comfortably in 4 gig of
> Ram, which we have.

> --Jimbo

thre broken mobby is a Tyan??

__________________________________
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from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Links in Other Languages

references:
<BC1E9AB1.E55%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<BC1E9AB1.E55%fredbaud-TAYJRwJN/HisTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org>
	<F8A09CBD-3F74-11D8-97A6-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>

body:
In message <F8A09CBD-3F74-11D8-97A6-000A95DAA284 at pobox.com>, Brion
Vibber <brion-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Available interwiki links are defined by what's in the interwiki table.
>
>A fairly wide set (which probably should be checked for up-to-dateness)
>is in maintenance/interwiki.sql and should be installed by default;
>this'll provide you with for instance the MeatBall: and Wikipedia:
>prefixes.
>
>The language prefixes for Wikipedia are provided in
>maintenance/wikipedia-interwiki.sql, however I would recommend against
>importing them directly into wikis that aren't Wikipedia or Wikipedia
>mirrors.
>
>The set of interwikis that will be put in the 'other languages' bar and
>their labels is defined by $wgLanguageNamesEn in Language.php, but if
>they're not active interwiki prefixes to begin with they won't get that
>far.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I was wondering how that worked -- I noticed yesterday that on the
German version of [[Gregorian Calendar]] there's a link to the Bulgarian
version which doesn't form a link, but just appears at the bottom of the
article text.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Jan 2004, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> >thre broken mobby is a Tyan??
>
> Where UPS is involved, nothing is safe.  These things happen. (I'll assume
> someone checked Tyan's approved memory list to make sure it's not just
> something lame with the memory making it usable on that MB.)

Actually, I'm not 100% sure what the mobo is, and Jason's not around
right now for me to ask.  My point was, we have a motherboard that
can accept up to 16 gig of ram.  We have 4 gig, and plenty of slots
available for further expansion.

And yes, the Ram is perfectly fine, and Jason has tested it.  What he
discovered is that one slot on the mobo is bad.  So Penguin is sending
a new one for us.

--Jimbo


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> However, some people have given either their name and/or user name
> in the one of the two comment fields ('Subject' and 'Note'
> columns). I think we should contact those people to ask permission
> for us to publish their comments.  For example, the person who
> donated money for European domains gave his user name in the 'Note'
> field.

Why not just delete those fields entirely?  I don't see much purpose
to publishing them, even where they are anonymous.

I'd say just a daily breakdown of donations received would be more
than adequate to answer people's legitimate curiosity about how the
fundraising went.  Even breaking it down to individual donation
amounts seems a bit much to me, although I don't really see any harm
in it either.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on self-written
	and obscure biographies)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?

[...]

> I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less.

The best way for Wikipedia to become more authoritative is to
steadfastly refuse to be a primary source.  A primary source isn't
primary because it's authoritative, it's primary because it is the
first or original source for something.  Primary sources can be
unreliable, reliable, biased, whatever.

There's no shame in being a secondary source, and secondary sources is
where the authority business gets really strong and interesting.  :-)

For us, as a social culture, avoiding the idea of being a primary
source helps us to resolve some otherwise impossible dilemmas.  Do we
publish quack physics theories?  No, because we are not a place for
original research.

--Jimbo


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > However, some people have given either their name and/or user
> name
> > in the one of the two comment fields ('Subject' and 'Note'
> > columns). I think we should contact those people to ask
> permission
> > for us to publish their comments.  For example, the person who
> > donated money for European domains gave his user name in the
> 'Note'
> > field.
>
> Why not just delete those fields entirely?  I don't see much
> purpose
> to publishing them, even where they are anonymous.
>
> I'd say just a daily breakdown of donations received would be more
> than adequate to answer people's legitimate curiosity about how the
> fundraising went.  Even breaking it down to individual donation
> amounts seems a bit much to me, although I don't really see any
> harm
> in it either.

I personally see an advantage to showing each individual transaction
by day, so that if someone wanted to make sure that their $21.00
transaction on then 17th was counted and didn't "fall through the
cracks", they could verify it.

Also, it will also show the donation amounts, so that people who
would normally not consider donating because their donation might
seem to little might be encouraged to see donations of $1 or $2
(it only taked a few thousand of those to add up to some big money)

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
http://search.yahoo.com/top2003


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of
>web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue
>to lose interest in the project.

Oh, Ed, don't tempt me.... ;)

More seriously, I think Wikipedia is at a point where increasing the
_number_ of articles is less important than improving their
_quality_. I'm not sure what the best strategy is for doing this. One
possibility might be to seek funding for the purpose of hiring some
information specialists (such as librarians and/or or experts in
various fields) to help with cataloging, organizing and editing. The
model I'm thinking of here is OhMyNews, an online newspaper in South
Korea. About 20% of its content is written by its staff, while the
majority of articles are written by more than 10,000 other
contributors who are paid small amounts of money for their work.

Has anyone considered the possibility of some kind of creative
partnership with commercial encyclopedia companies? If IBM is getting
into Linux these days, it's not inconceivable that World Book or
Encyclopedia Britannica might develop an interest in getting involved
with Wikipedia before things advance to the point where their own
rationale for existence disappears.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
On Mon, 5 Jan 2004, Nikos-Optim wrote:
>thre broken mobby is a Tyan??

Where UPS is involved, nothing is safe.  These things happen. (I'll assume
someone checked Tyan's approved memory list to make sure it's not just
something lame with the memory making it usable on that MB.)

--Ricky


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>However, some people have given either their name
>>and/or user name in the one of the two comment
>>fields ('Subject' and 'Note' columns). I think we
>>should contact those people to ask permission
>>for us to publish their comments.  For example,
>>the person who donated money for European domains
>>gave his user name in the 'Note' field.
>
>Why not just delete those fields entirely?  I don't
>see much purpose to publishing them, even where
>they are anonymous.

Because it gives our donors the opportunity to say
nice things about us or otherwise give some direction
on how they would like us to spend their donation. It
also gives them the opportunity to optionally let
everyone else know they donated by signing whatever
message they leave in a comment field (not to mention
it makes it easier to find their donation and confirm
that it was in fact received). Best to have that info
in the public, IMO.

> I'd say just a daily breakdown of donations received
> would be more than adequate to answer people's
> legitimate curiosity about how the fundraising
> went.  Even breaking it down to individual donation
> amounts seems a bit much to me, although I don't
> really see any harm in it either.

It would in fact be easier for me if the detail is
retained in some form. Then I can keep just one set of
books - the public one.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] questions

body:
On Jan 4, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Karissa S. wrote:

> hey- I just used Wikipedia to help write?me write my?paper, but I am
> having trouble putting this sight into my bibliogrpahy. Is there
> acompany,city andstateincluded in this project? Those are the things I
> must include in my bibliogrpahy.

Hey, Karissa.  I'm sending this to the list and you, in case you're off
the list.  Here's what you need to know:

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

That's the word from Wikipedia.  It uses the APA guidelines.  You won't
be able to use the book format you have because [[m:wiki is not
paper]], so use this (electronic) format instead.  For a more official
source, see:

http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/online.shtml

That has the format for MLA-style citations for online and electronic
media.  I think it's pretty much the same thing.  Best idea is to
confirm with your teacher first, if you can.  But the upshot is that
you can't use the book citation format for a website.

To the list: Perhaps we should have a [[Cite Wikipedia|Wikipedia:Citing
Wikipedia]] link on the sidebar.  Also, please correct me if I got
anything wrong.

> You're sight is very helpful

I rather think so.  Without it I'd walk into twice the walls I do now.
;)

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


from_name: Mark Jeays

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS of wikimedia news

body:
Hi,

I've been doing something like that for a while now:

http://jeays.net/wikipedia/announcements.xml

Here's my original post to the list:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/006203.html

There's a menu page with a couple of notes at

http://jeays.net/rss.htm

Feed preview from bloglines.com

http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=49622

I can provide the perl script if anyone's interested or wants to host it on
the server. Obviously, glitches occur from time to time (in practice, quite
infrequently, maybe once a month, and I try to fix it as soon as I can)

Mark Jeays

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of Wouter Vanden Hove
Sent: January 5, 2004 10:45 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS of wikimedia news

Could it be possible to have an RSS-feed of the news at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/ ?

W.

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

body:
Nucleic acid is what the NA stands for. I've checked multiple credible sources, and they agree hole heartedly with me.

Original message:
I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, discussion is impossible).

I request that the arbitration committee determine whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on
	self-written	and obscure biographies)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>>How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary
>>source?
>>
>Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new
>fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we
>are not such a place.
>
That's not the usual meaning of primary source.  It generally refers to
documents directly related to an event, original manuscripts, archival
material, etc.  Any written book or article based on these materials by
a person who was not directly involved is a secondary source.

Ec


from_name: K Forstner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources (was: Clearer policy on
self-writtenand obscure biographies)

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
>
> [...]
>
> > I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less.
>
> The best way for Wikipedia to become more authoritative is to
> steadfastly refuse to be a primary source.  A primary source isn't
> primary because it's authoritative, it's primary because it is the
> first or original source for something.  Primary sources can be
> unreliable, reliable, biased, whatever.
>
> There's no shame in being a secondary source, and secondary sources is
> where the authority business gets really strong and interesting.  :-)
>
> For us, as a social culture, avoiding the idea of being a primary
> source helps us to resolve some otherwise impossible dilemmas.  Do we
> publish quack physics theories?  No, because we are not a place for
> original research.
>
> --Jimbo

One point of view (Ed's) could be seen as thesis, the other (Jimbo's et.al.)
as antithesis.

We might be ready for the synthesis: Wikipedia (just like any printed
encyclopaedia) is not the place to publish one's original research. But it
certainly does not do any harm (rather the opposite I'd guess) if people who
in real life carry out research themselves also contribute to Wikipedia
about topics related to their own field: They are usually educated,
principled, intellectual, and trying not to appear biased, and I think
Wikipedia should try to attract them.

Kurt (aka KF)


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] New system ideas

body:
The MB is an Arima HDAMA...http://www.rioworks.com/Download/HDAMA.htm

Jason

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Ricky Beam wrote:
> > On Mon, 5 Jan 2004, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> > >thre broken mobby is a Tyan??
> >
> > Where UPS is involved, nothing is safe.  These things happen. (I'll assume
> > someone checked Tyan's approved memory list to make sure it's not just
> > something lame with the memory making it usable on that MB.)
>
> Actually, I'm not 100% sure what the mobo is, and Jason's not around
> right now for me to ask.  My point was, we have a motherboard that
> can accept up to 16 gig of ram.  We have 4 gig, and plenty of slots
> available for further expansion.
>
> And yes, the Ram is perfectly fine, and Jason has tested it.  What he
> discovered is that one slot on the mobo is bad.  So Penguin is sending
> a new one for us.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Single-sign-on

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I also think that there should be an association segment to each user
>> file.  Each user will by default have an association with the wiki
>> where he first registered,
>
> You're thinking too much in terms of several wikis. The point in the
> whole thing is that there should not *be* separate wikis. It should be
> one wiki called Wikipedia.
>
> I.e. "the wiki where you first registered" is Wikipedia.

This argument is a bit on the semantic side.  There is, of course,
Wikibooks, and Wiktionary etc., not to mention the different language
projects.  Having associations will make it easier for those in smaller
projects to know just who is interested in what project.

Ray


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is a great work

body:
Docpetersn at aol.com wrote:

> Ladies and Gentlemen,
>                    I write to applaud your public-spiritedness.
> Wikipedia is a great idea. How are you funded?  How can I help?

Two ways:

(1) Contribute. Write articles. :-)
(2) Donate. :-) http://www.wikimedia.org/letter

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about MediaWiki namespace

body:
Hi.

I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can
insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either
{{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference).

Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly?

For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to
all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of
the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify
all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all
*again* because I forgot one of them.

All of this would have been easier if this short list of links were a
page in the MediaWiki namespace and were included in the Greek letter
articles using {{msg:}}.

So, my question basically is: Should I do this?

One shortcoming I see with this is that each of the Greek-letter
articles would then have a link to itself. I guess one could resolve
that with coding; perhaps {{msg:}} should automatically change [[XYZ]]
and [[XYZ|.*]] to '''XYZ''' if it's used in [[XYZ]]. Or something.

Boxes like those on the right of articles like
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Franks could also benefit
from this.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Single-sign-on

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> I also think that there should be an association segment to each user
> file.  Each user will by default have an association with the wiki where
> he first registered,

You're thinking too much in terms of several wikis. The point in the
whole thing is that there should not *be* separate wikis. It should be
one wiki called Wikipedia.

I.e. "the wiki where you first registered" is Wikipedia.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary

body:
Although everything else seems to be working in the wake of the big
crash, I still can't get onto Wiktionary.  Is there some reason for this?

Ec


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] From the talk page

body:
 From [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage]]:

...could we please make some headroads into changing [[Benjamin
Disraeli]] to an article rather than a redirect, and [[Duke of
Wellington]] into an article instead of a disambiguation page, in
keeping with the caveat of "[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use
English)|best known in English]]"? I don't think a WikiProject should
attempt to trump something that fundamental. -
[[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]] 01:50, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: /ad/ directories considered harmful

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 06:20:26AM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>... but if it isn't too difficult to change this, then I
> >>would welcome it.
> >
> > It wouldn't be difficult to change it, but it would be an ugly hack.
> > The directory name is the first 2 chars of the md5sum of the name of
> > the image. So it would mean either using a different hashing method,
> > affecting *all* images, or putting special case checks in the code.
>
> Ah. I was wondering what the two characters were.
>
> Well, I guess you're right that it's an ugly hack, but I think with a
> verbose enough comment in the source code, that should really not matter
> too much. It really is a problem for users of WebWasher or Proxomitron,
> and apparently that Norton Firewall thing too.
>
> I propose just special-casing 'ad' and changing it to '__' or 'gg' or
> something else that doesn't use hex digits.

Better would be to prefix everything with something. u_* for uploads? so
it'd be u_ad/. Not great, but better than special-casing, IMHO.

-- Jake


from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS of wikimedia news

body:
Could it be possible to have an RSS-feed of the news at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/ ?

W.


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] help

body:
John McElravy wrote:
>And it left my computer number. Could you delete it
and put in my user name.

Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_attribution_for_an_edit
for details on how to do this.

> Also I put in the info before I read your copyright
material. I don't know if it is OK.

It seems you've copied it almost word for word from
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~tourism/sydney/attracts/national/maritime/submarine.html.
The site's copyright page was not available when I
tried to access it, but the version in the archives
states that the material can not be used except for
personal use.
(http://web.archive.org/web/20021015155042/http://members.ozemail.com.au/~tourism/sydney/copyrght.html).

I have sent a [[Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for
permission]], but as the site seems semi-offline, it
is possible I won't get a reply, in which case the
page will be deleted. There is a temp page linked to
from the current [[Foxtrot class submarine]] page at
[[talk:Foxtrot class submarine/temp]] where the page
can be rewritten if you want to create a non-violating
version. The temp one will replace the original when
it is deleted.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
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your friends today! Download Messenger Now
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Primary sources

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>> Er, a primary source would be the /first/ place a new
>> fact is published (such as a journal). Sorry, but we
>> are not such a place.
>>
> That's not the usual meaning of primary source.  It generally refers
> to documents directly related to an event, original manuscripts,
> archival material, etc.  Any written book or article based on these
> materials by a person who was not directly involved is a secondary
> source.

This seems to vary by field.  In a field such as classics, journals are
indeed secondary sources, containing discussion of primary sources
(which would include things like Aristophanes's plays).  In scientific
fields, journals are generally primary sources: a documentation of novel
research written by those who performed the research.  In this context,
a textbook or encyclopedia article on neural networks is a secondary
source, but the classic journal article by Kohonen documenting
self-organizing maps is a primary source.  And I think that's the sort
of stuff we're trying to avoid.

-Mark