subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimbo is subscribed to the list
>
Yes, but until today, every time I've looked at the list of subscribers,
Jimbo's email was marked as having list delivery disabled. So as far as
I know, he hasn't been reading the messages on this list for most or all
of its existence. That's not necessarily a criticism of Jimbo, who has
many things to attend to, and can't be everywhere at once. But when we
collectively, consciously or unconsciously, only discuss policy issues
"in his presence", our behavior gives the impression of Jimbo as a
MeatBall:GodKing. A number of people have criticized the way these
mailing lists operate, and some object to participating as a result.
When you can observe differences between one mailing list and another
for reasons like this, it unfortunately gives credence to the criticism
that the mailing list is "like a king's court" (quoting someone else's
phrase). I think the mailing lists are useful, but we need to be aware
of appearances and not reinforce the image of a cabal.

>but he started the thread on wikipedia-l, so I replied there.
>
Nothing wrong with that, and possibly Jimbo also started the thread
there because you posted the original idea there (before this list ever
existed). Another possible approach is to shift the discussion to the
appropriate mailing list. Given that some people have equated this list
with the defunct and rarely used wikilegal-l, I think it worthwhile to
put a little extra effort into seeing that this list actually gets used
for its intended purpose.

>Is there any particular reason for this thread to be
>in French?
>
Anthere wrote in French, so I replied in French. Since she preferred to
use her native language, for whatever reasons, I considered it a small
show of courtesy and good will to reply in the same language, since I'm
able to. I would be happy to translate into English for anyone who asks.

>foundation-l and wikipedia-l are multilingual to allow people to communicate who otherwise could not
>
Now that I look closely I see you added something similar to
[[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] a couple months ago, and apparently nobody
objected. That seems like a pretty restrictive formulation to me, as if
we're only allowing multilingual discussion as a sort of concession, and
you _must_ use English unless you cannot.

For an organization as diverse and multilingual as Wikimedia, I think we
should take a more friendly attitude toward the use of other languages.
After all, for many languages there are also various people using the
list who can take a stab at translation. I would just as soon see a
person post in their native language, and rely on someone else with good
English skills to translate, than try and sort out from their broken
English what they really meant. Basically, I think it would be more in
keeping with the spirit of the project, if we allow people to post to
project-wide mailing lists in whatever language they choose. Many will
probably prefer to use English, but they don't need to be told to do so,
and by not telling them we do less to intimidate those who feel less
secure in their English.

Well, I've raised my concerns, and we can discuss it further on the talk
page.

>not to have semi-private exchanges on a public list.
>
>
I see discussions all the time on the mailing lists that are basically
conversations involving a very small handful of people. I don't see
anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with two
people engaging in a conversation on a talk page, which is equally
public. Whoever is interested can always join in, and I'm happy to shift
between my limited selection of languages to accommodate other participants.

--Michael Snow
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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimbo is subscribed to the list
>
Yes, but until today, every time I've looked at the list of subscribers,
Jimbo's email was marked as having list delivery disabled. So as far as
I know, he hasn't been reading the messages on this list for most or all
of its existence. That's not necessarily a criticism of Jimbo, who has
many things to attend to, and can't be everywhere at once. But when we
collectively, consciously or unconsciously, only discuss policy issues
"in his presence", our behavior gives the impression of Jimbo as a
MeatBall:GodKing. A number of people have criticized the way these
mailing lists operate, and some object to participating as a result.
When you can observe differences between one mailing list and another
for reasons like this, it unfortunately gives credence to the criticism
that the mailing list is "like a king's court" (quoting someone else's
phrase). I think the mailing lists are useful, but we need to be aware
of appearances and not reinforce the image of a cabal.

>but he started the thread on wikipedia-l, so I replied there.
>
Nothing wrong with that, and possibly Jimbo also started the thread
there because you posted the original idea there (before this list ever
existed). Another possible approach is to shift the discussion to the
appropriate mailing list. Given that some people have equated this list
with the defunct and rarely used wikilegal-l, I think it worthwhile to
put a little extra effort into seeing that this list actually gets used
for its intended purpose.

>Is there any particular reason for this thread to be
>in French?
>
Anthere wrote in French, so I replied in French. Since she preferred to
use her native language, for whatever reasons, I considered it a small
show of courtesy and good will to reply in the same language, since I'm
able to. I would be happy to translate into English for anyone who asks.

>foundation-l and wikipedia-l are multilingual to allow people to communicate who otherwise could not
>
Now that I look closely I see you added something similar to
[[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] a couple months ago, and apparently nobody
objected. That seems like a pretty restrictive formulation to me, as if
we're only allowing multilingual discussion as a sort of concession, and
you _must_ use English unless you cannot.

For an organization as diverse and multilingual as Wikimedia, I think we
should take a more friendly attitude toward the use of other languages.
After all, for many languages there are also various people using the
list who can take a stab at translation. I would just as soon see a
person post in their native language, and rely on someone else with good
English skills to translate, than try and sort out from their broken
English what they really meant. Basically, I think it would be more in
keeping with the spirit of the project, if we allow people to post to
project-wide mailing lists in whatever language they choose. Many will
probably prefer to use English, but they don't need to be told to do so,
and by not telling them we do less to intimidate those who feel less
secure in their English.

Well, I've raised my concerns, and we can discuss it further on the talk
page.

>not to have semi-private exchanges on a public list.
>
>
I see discussions all the time on the mailing lists that are basically
conversations involving a very small handful of people. I don't see
anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with two
people engaging in a conversation on a talk page, which is equally
public. Whoever is interested can always join in, and I'm happy to shift
between my limited selection of languages to accommodate other participants.

--Michael Snow
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Medéric Boquien

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia-related project: WikiRover

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

> I can imagine an offsite versioning that checks for the latest
> version of all articles and self-updates accordingly. Also, drop the
> histories. They're on the website.

> If I had a 4 gig offline self-update-able (when on network) or via
> new articles cds (using python of course for updating) this might be
> a good way to keep the W for offline browsing.

It is our intention to implement live update when there is internet
connection available. The idea was to keep only cur for offline browsing.
And in fact not all cur, juste namespace=0 to reduce the size.

Cheers,

Med


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] How Wikipedia works

body:
>  If you were to add
>a sentence to the page saying "Jack London was also the author of 'Lassie
>Come-Home,'" I would probably spot it and remove it within a day or two.  You
>could, of course, put it back. Then I would probably remove it again and
>message you saying "No, it's a great book but it was written by Eric Knight,
>not Jack London. We could use an article on Eric Knight, by the way." And
>that would probably be the end of it.

That's often (increasingly, lately) not the end of it, and this is a
major problem with Wikipedia which I seldom see officially addressed
(although it's widely griped about).

Anyone have some sort of solution?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Foundation-l] font and GFDL

body:
On May 25, 2004, at 11:49 PM, Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:

> Our projects are based on web sites, so we do not offer any fonts,
> probably. But when people print out articles, or a wikibook for
> distribution, do they have to use GFDL-compatible fonts?

IANAL, but I would say, since the declaration of GFDL applies only
to the content, it's just like printing anything else out for
distribution.  I'm inclined to say that users have the right to use
fonts on their computers for free.  That's probably covered under a
license though.  I'm fairly sure that Mac OS X users are granted an
explicit license to royalty-free use of the included fonts.  I don't
know any details, though.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [Foundation-l] font and GFDL


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Wikipedia request: Aromanian (and Klingon)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> This scheme gives us a way to specify everything that was rejected from
> ISO 639-2 on the basis of being a dialect not a language. Languages
> which are not in ISO 639-2 due to being too small or too new (like Toki
> Pona) will have to be given longer, descriptive hostnames for the time
> being.

FWIW, all otherwise unassigned artificial languages may be grouped under
the ISO 639-2 code 'art' (eg, 'art-tokipona').

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Need a new Cherokee Wiki, ASAP!

body:
jneden at bellsouth.net wrote:
> Do me a favor, somebody, and please create our first Cherokee wiki at
> http://chr.wikipedia.org ASAP, so I can get started!

It's up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Bogdan Stancescu

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Wikipedia request: Aromanian

body:
Aromanian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian) is a Romanian
language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language) dialect.

A new Wikipedia is requested for this language on the Romanian Wikipedia
(http://ro.wikipedia.org) by Aromanians who don't know where else to
turn. Romanian wikipedians have "offered" temporary demo space for the
Aromanian Wikipedia main page at
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prota_padzin%C3%A2

As far as rigid official ethnography language codes are concerned, all I
was able to find regarding Aromanian was ISO 639-2, along with a "SIL"
language code, as described in
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=RUP

On the other hand, UTF-8 should be more than ok for this language as far
as technical concerns go.

Please let me know if there are any other concerns or problems regarding
the creation of this new Wikipedia, and I'll be glad to clarify them.
The ideal URL for the new Wikipedia would be http://ars.wikipedia.org,
but any alternate suggestions are welcome.

Also, if there are any problems with or concerns against creating this
Wikipedia, please do let me know so I can explain the respective issues
to (and clarify them with) the Aromanian users on the Romanian Wikipedia.

Thank you for your time,
[[w:user:Gutza]]


from_name: Gutza


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject: [Foundation-l] font and GFDL

body:
On japanese wikipedia, some had a discussion regarding copyright of fonts. I
thought this is something I should share with people outside of japanese
wikipedia.

Our projects are based on web sites, so we do not offer any fonts, probably.
But when people print out articles, or a wikibook for distribution, do they
have to use GFDL-compatible fonts?

My limited research indicates that fonts are protected by special law,
copyright law, or some other intellectual property law in many countries. In
Japan, it seems that the court have said that a font set is not a copyright
work, but a work of industrial design.

What if we offer some info. via PDF files or pngs? I know there are
WikiReader (print) and timeline (png with text) are coming out. Any tips for
others for others who want to do similar projects?

regards,

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
Learn to simplify your finances and your life in Streamline Your Life from
MSN Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0405streamline.armx


subject: [Foundation-l] font and GFDL


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> C'est bien de voir que tout au moins quelqu'un se
> souvient de la liste
> correcte pour discuter ces sujets. Est-ce que tous
> les autres oublient
> parce que en ce moment Jimbo ne re?oit pas les
> messages de cette liste-ci ?
>
> --Michel Neige

Jimbo est certainement abonn? ? cette liste, mais il y
a des confusions dans les listes ces temps ci :-(

__________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia-related project: WikiRover

body:
delirium-
> This seems like a pretty hackish solution long-term.

HTML is not hackish. It can be printed and viewed on all platforms using
free libraries, it can be easily indexed, and it can be converted to
literally everything else using existing code. Semantic wikimarkup can be
replaced with CSS classes for the appropriate tags. We are already
producing well-formed xhtml pages with virtually every aspect of layout
defined in CSS. This then puts us on the road to producing pure XML when
browsers support it. A CSS wizard like Gabriel might even be able to hack
something like alternative MathML/PNG display for formulas, rendered based
on the user's CSS file.

To use our own syntax, which is indeed hackish (a mix of UseMod and our
own extensions, with ugly constructs like "#REDIRECT", pseudo-HTML tags,
tags with undefined scope etc.), or to define a new "abstract syntax"
would be a waste of valuable developer resources. Any semantic information
that may still be missing from the output should instead be included in
it.

Wikitext is meant to be read by humans, not by computers. The only program
which should read it is our own parser. Keeping a separate parser code in
sync with ours (or, in fact, a completely new "abstract" syntax) would be
a maintenance nightmare. Our syntax may look simple, but it is amazingly
complex - features like transclusion, parametrized templates, image
scaling, wiki table conversion, and various extensions are not to be
scoffed at. And new ones are being added all the time. That is good! The
fact that we support stuff like hieroglyphs makes Wikipedia much more
interesting for academics.

Now, rewriting the parser in another language to create a fast cross-
platform library might make sense, but for completely different reasons.
The only reason I can see to include the wikitext on a CD-ROM would be for
offline editing, but for that you need a fresh copy of the source to avoid
edit conflicts, so you need to fetch it from the site anyway.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Michael-
> > C'est bien de voir que tout au moins quelqu'un se
> souvient de la liste
> > correcte pour discuter ces sujets. Est-ce que tous
> les autres oublient
> > parce que en ce moment Jimbo ne re?oit pas les
> messages de cette liste-ci ?
>
> Jimbo is subscribed to the list, but he started the
> thread on wikipedia-l,
> so I replied there. Is there any particular reason
> for this thread to be
> in French? Andre, Anthere and yourself all speak
> English, which is surely
> the best language to reach the largest number of
> people? foundation-l and
> wikipedia-l are multilingual to allow people to
> communicate who otherwise
> could not, not to have semi-private exchanges on a
> public list.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I would not *exactly* call public mails to a list with
probably over 100 registered users, tracked by Google,
"semi-private exchanges" :-)

Yes, there are reasons
First, unless that recently changed, this *public*
list is *multilingual. We do not need authorisation to
write another language than english here.

Second, it is good to remind users of that list of
this fact. When we use english all the time, people
are lead to believe it is *mandatory* to write in
english here. It is not

I'll add that comments stating it is inappropriate to
write in french on a multilingual list, and requesting
an explanation, do not exactly help asserting the fact
this mailing list *is* multilingual.

__________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Foundation-l] Multilinguality (Was: Wikimedia Communs)

body:
Anthere wrote in part:

>I'll add that comments stating it is inappropriate to
>write in french on a multilingual list, and requesting
>an explanation, do not exactly help asserting the fact
>this mailing list *is* multilingual.

While I'm primarily in sympathy with your position, anth?re,
still it's important to distinguish "stating it is inappropriate"
from "requesting an explanation".  The latter is a good thing!
Since more people here know English than know French (I assume),
it's very helpful to the readers in general to have English explanations
(such as Chris's nice summary to one of your recent posts).

French posts are not /inappropriate/ by any means,
but they may be /ineffective/, relatively to English.
That's something that every poster must keep in mind,
as a practical matter, if they want their posts to be read.

-- Toby


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
The latest news here in Colorado is that our governor, Bill Owens, at some
convention in Illinois told a few anti-French jokes, including one that
went:

"Why does the new French navy have glass-bottomed boats?

So they can see the old French navy!"

I think in light of this recent news, an article is justified which includes
such ridiculous assertions, as it is prominent public officials who are
making them.

Why Colorado elected such a fool is a long story.

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere9 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 12:44:58 +0200
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]
>
> French men are largely homosexual/bisexual. (According to surveys
> American's male homosexual incidence is bigger than in French. This
> allegation may have arisen from the fact there are no laws against
> sodomy in France. Alternatively, it may have arisen because of
> generalizations from the artistic or intellectual lifestyle.)
>
>
> This is serious ???
>
>
>
>
> Fred Bauder a ?crit:
>> I tried. I am no fan of the French, but that article has crap in it that is
>> not only false but almost no Americans believes. I think we will have to ask
>> them to demonstrate some references. Perhaps some language, "A small
>> misinformed minority of Americans believe...."
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
>>> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>> Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 20:20:45 -0700
>>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]
>>>
>>> I was tempted to jump in.  The article is a better criticism of the
>>> Americans than of the French. :-)
>>>
>>> Ec
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] How Wikipedia works

body:
It is officially addressed through the dispute resolution process. While the
arbitration committee does not address content, this sort of "content" is
probably not content that we would fail to address. As matters get more
subtle, the problem becomes more difficult to address as we are not propared
to rule on close questions of opinion or fact. Neutral point is view is
expected to result in both views being fairly presented.

Fred

> From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 00:22:10 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How Wikipedia works
>
>> If you were to add
>> a sentence to the page saying "Jack London was also the author of 'Lassie
>> Come-Home,'" I would probably spot it and remove it within a day or two.  You
>> could, of course, put it back. Then I would probably remove it again and
>> message you saying "No, it's a great book but it was written by Eric Knight,
>> not Jack London. We could use an article on Eric Knight, by the way." And
>> that would probably be the end of it.
>
> That's often (increasingly, lately) not the end of it, and this is a
> major problem with Wikipedia which I seldom see officially addressed
> (although it's widely griped about).
>
> Anyone have some sort of solution?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
[large snip]
> I see discussions all the time on the mailing lists that are
> basically
> conversations involving a very small handful of people. I don't see
>
> anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with
> two
> people engaging in a conversation on a talk page, which is equally
> public. Whoever is interested can always join in, and I'm happy to
> shift
> between my limited selection of languages to accommodate other
> participants.

I agree with you Michael. Sometimes it is easiest for someone to
express themselves in their mother tongue.
The mailing lists are archived so they can be translated later on.
Semi-private convesations should be on mailing lists too, because
they are archived. This allows for better understancing of issues in
the long run because more of the thoughts that went into them are
available publiclcy.

Furthermore, we're all grownups (or some pretend to be) so let's not
bicker.

Peace and WikiLove, man.

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: TeunSpaans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki 1.3]

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:

>
> Tim forgot to actually announce this.
>

The african wiki seems to have been upgraded first, and there still seem to be
a number of unresolved issues. I listed them at sourceforge, and would
recommend to halt further rolling out untill these issues have been solved or
clarified.

(apparent loss of history, constant error messages in ie6, some msgs no longer
working)


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Anthere wrote in part:
>
> >I'll add that comments stating it is inappropriate
> to
> >write in french on a multilingual list, and
> requesting
> >an explanation, do not exactly help asserting the
> fact
> >this mailing list *is* multilingual.
>
> While I'm primarily in sympathy with your position,
> anth?re,
> still it's important to distinguish "stating it is
> inappropriate"
> from "requesting an explanation".  The latter is a
> good thing!
> Since more people here know English than know French
> (I assume),
> it's very helpful to the readers in general to have
> English explanations
> (such as Chris's nice summary to one of your recent
> posts).
>
> French posts are not /inappropriate/ by any means,
> but they may be /ineffective/, relatively to
> English.
> That's something that every poster must keep in
> mind,
> as a practical matter, if they want their posts to
> be read.
>
>
> -- Toby

I understand well Toby
There is the "law" (Wikimedia thrive on being diverse)
and the "application of the law" (however, you shall
learn to speak english if you want to participate to
project-wide discussions).

Sic :
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADeveloper_access#%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F

Forgive me to feel disgusted though.

Only moderate-level in english, and loosing huge time
to say most things two times, I think I will more and
more send google translations though.

__________________________________
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Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
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from_name: Tobin Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small change to category pages.

body:
Hello all,

At the moment category pages show subcategories with their "Category:"
prefix (take a look at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki for an example). I
think this can be fixed by changing the line 333 of Parser.php to
"array_push ( $children, $sk->makeKnownLink ( $t, $x->cur_title) ) ;"
(this works for my local install but it is possible I've completely
misunderstood what should be happening).

I've also written some code to make the subcategories and articles list
on category pages more readable (but I don't know how safe my code is),
what is the best thing for me to do with the code now?

Tobin.


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

in_reply_to:
<1085533229.40b3ec2d0d632@secure.hackish.org>;
	from delirium@hackish.org on Tue, May 25, 2004 at 09:00:29PM -0400

body:
On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 09:00:29PM -0400, delirium at hackish.org wrote:

> This seems like a pretty hackish solution long-term.  The HTML dump has some
> semantic information, but it also has a lot of HTML-ish cruft in it.  The
> wikitext doesn't have all the semantic information anyone might want, but it's
> much better than the HTML version.  If you're going to do anything reasonably
> intelligent with the output (other than just display the rendered HTML), or
> output it to some different format (TeX is the one I've been working on), and
> want it automated, a lot of that information will be useful.

But that's not the purpose. The CD is just meant for reading the articles and
perhaps printing them. If someone wanted to do data mining or convert to a
different format or whatever else they want to do with the semantic markup,
they should get the database dump.

>
> So, basically:
>   Wikitext --> abstract syntax --> a presentation format (HTML, TeX, etc.)
>
> instead of:
>   Wikitext --> one presentation format (HTML) --> another presentation format
>
> ...seems better to me.
>
> The latter version is sort of like compiling a C++ program into x86 assembly and
> then transforming it into PowerPC assembly from that, rather than doing wha gcc
> does--compiling C++ into an abstract intermediate representation, which can
> then be output to x86 assembly or PowerPC assembly or whatever you might like.
>
> It does bring up another point though: even in the wikitext there isn't as much
> semantic information as might be nice.  Some is hard to come up with good
> markup for, but some is fairly easy--for example, encouraging people to use
> <math> tags for everying that's logically math, even short things like "the
> variable <math>g</math> is..." instead of using manual non-logical formatting
> commands like "italicize".  Or even worse, using HTML-specific stuff like fancy
> divs.
>
That'd be nice, but unfortunately its not enforceable. The web was originally
intended to have semantic tags. But guess what happened? There are two reasons
why it won't work on wikipedia. People generally think in terms of presentational
rather than structural markup. Might be a result of WYSIWYG word processors, I
don't know. Second, even those feel semantic markup is important (and I offer
myself as an example) aren't going to be bothered to write <math>x</math>
instead of ''x''. The primary goal of wikipedia is parsability by humans rather
than computers, and the former application is currently so predominant over the
latter that I'm not willing to inconvenience myself for the sake of semantic
markup.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

body:
Kaixo!

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 02:52:54AM +0300, Bogdan Stancescu wrote:
> Aromanian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian) is a Romanian
> language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language) dialect.
>
> A new Wikipedia is requested for this language on the Romanian Wikipedia
> (http://ro.wikipedia.org) by Aromanians who don't know where else to
> turn.

Can't the "moldavian" wikipedia ( http://mo.wikipedia.org/ ) be used
temporarly? (of course the domain name should be changed, but as
it is currently unused it may be a good idea to use it temporarly
instead of the romanian one, particularly in the case where some article
names may overlap, and for all the technical (Wikipedia:) namespace,
by using temporarly an unused (and probably one that will never be used
anyway) wikipedia the only constraint will be to keep a warning text
on the main page; all the other pages could freely be modified and
adapted at will without fear of any conflict.

And then, switching to a "real" Aromanian wikipedia would involve
only a change in the DNS, no need to move/copy articles around.

> On the other hand, UTF-8 should be more than ok for this language as far
> as technical concerns go.

UTF-8 should be the default for any new wikipedia; not using UTF-8 would
be a mistake, which will lead to problems (like it is the case in the
English wikipedia)

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> How many of our readers speak French? How about Chinese, or Croatian? The
> smaller the number, the more private the conversation. With French, I'd
> say it is at least semi-private.

If people don't want to speak in English I don't see why that is a problem.
Others who are interested will use a free online translator and those who are
not can just ignore the thread.

It is their choice to limit their audience and thus the power of their
messages. So what if they do?

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL
	source?

body:
--- Peter Jaros <rjaros at ShaysNet.com> wrote:
> How stuck are we to the license?  If you're saying it could be
> possible to change it, could it be possible to make our own license?
> Or is there another license out there that's just what we want?

We are stuck with it until/if the FSF writes an out clause in the
yet-to-be-written (or even planned) 2.0 version. Since we state that we use the
GNU FDL 1.2 or "any later version", it is very possible to change *if* the FSF
allows it.

Drafting our own license would not be ideal, but we should have a hand in
drafting a GNU FCL.

RMS threatened to start GNUpedia if Nupedia didn't change to the GNU FDL (and
Wikipedia inherited Nupedia's license decision). The least he and the FSF can
do is help us migrate to a better license since the FDL has proved to be
controversial, overly complicated, and require too much of downstream users
(what we require of downstream users - a direct linkback and mention of and
link to the GNU FDL is a *very* loose interpretation of what the license really
requires).

The FDL was created to serve the needs of free software documentation, and, by
admission of the FSF, is not free in the same sense free software is free (esp
when invariant texts are used).

-- mav

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from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Tue, 25 May 2004, Christopher Mahan wrote:

>What is the size of the W in html uncompressed?

Last full en: uncompressed dump I have is from february 12 (so it's quite
old..). Approximate figures:

- 250,000 html files, total 1.7 GB on a Linux ext3 disk
- 44,000 image and media files, total 1.5 GB

Some of the size is due to filesystem overhead, but I don't remember the
block structure of ext3 so I cannot quantify it. Also, being a separate
html file, each article has its own header/footer.

I'll see if I can make a new html version with more recent data.

Alfio


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
> Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi
> de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une
> Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le
> jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause
> ...

Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou
japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.

I hope nothing was lost in http://translate.google.com/translate_t

--mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>The GNU FDL is a complicated mess. The sooner we can be free of it, the better.
>IMO.
>
It's basically impossible to change the license at this point; since
all writers still own the copyrights to their material, every single
one of them would have to be contacted and agree to the change of
license.

The FSF gave itself the freedom to update the GPL on GNU software by
requiring all contributors to assign ownership to the FSF, so that GCC,
GDB, etc have a single owner. (Note that the Linux kernel is not one
of those projects.) Copyright assignment is a huge pain; there's a
cabinet stuffed full of pieces of paper with signatures at the FSF
offices, and clerks that manage it, but it pays off in this kind of
situation.

Stan


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]

body:
Anthere wrote

> This is serious ???

I wish British men got off so lightly.  Apparently we're almost all gay.
That must exclude Sean Connery, I guess.  (Still, James Bond served in the
Navy, so you can never tell.)

Charles


body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >The GNU FDL is a complicated mess. The sooner we can be free of it, the
> better.
> >IMO.
> >
> It's basically impossible to change the license at this point; since
> all writers still own the copyrights to their material, every single
> one of them would have to be contacted and agree to the change of
> license.

Each of them agreed to license their work either under the GNU FDL 1.1 "or any
later version" or the GNU FDL 1.2 "or any later version." If the GNU FDL 2.0
allows transfer to another free content license (such as the FCL I proposed),
then that is fine.

Free content is supposed to be freely used - it is absurd that it cannot be
transfered from one free content license to another. Those licenses that are
very similar, such as the CC by-sa and the GNU FDL (when no invariant sections
are used) should be made compatible with each other. The Free Content License
would act as a simplified FDL and compatibility layer (the FSF has already
stated that invariant sections are going to stay part of the FDL, so that is a
non-starter).

Our only out is a change in the license and the only people who can do that are
in the Free Software Foundation.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Jean-Christophe Chazalette
> <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
> > Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here.
> J'ai bien le droit aussi
> > de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une
> liste qui se d?die ? une
> > Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser
> Google ou BabelFish le
> > jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois
> sur
> > <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je
> voudrais savoir de quoi il cause
> > ...
>
> Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un
> wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou
> japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette
> liste.
>
> I hope nothing was lost in
> http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
> --mav

That was perfect Mav :-)

By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
translation at least 2 years ago ?

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


body:
I look with interest at Sam Spade serious attempts to NPOV this b*** :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States&curid=195361&diff=0&oldid=0

Soon, we will be able to enlist it for "most brillant articles"

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> I tried. I am no fan of the French, but that article has crap in it that is
> not only false but almost no Americans believes. I think we will have to ask
> them to demonstrate some references. Perhaps some language, "A small
> misinformed minority of Americans believe...."
>
> Fred
>
>
>>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 20:20:45 -0700
>>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]
>>
>>I was tempted to jump in.  The article is a better criticism of the
>>Americans than of the French. :-)
>>
>>Ec
>


body:
French men are largely homosexual/bisexual. (According to surveys
American's male homosexual incidence is bigger than in French. This
allegation may have arisen from the fact there are no laws against
sodomy in France. Alternatively, it may have arisen because of
generalizations from the artistic or intellectual lifestyle.)

This is serious ???

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> I tried. I am no fan of the French, but that article has crap in it that is
> not only false but almost no Americans believes. I think we will have to ask
> them to demonstrate some references. Perhaps some language, "A small
> misinformed minority of Americans believe...."
>
> Fred
>
>
>>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 20:20:45 -0700
>>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]
>>
>>I was tempted to jump in.  The article is a better criticism of the
>>Americans than of the French. :-)
>>
>>Ec
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un
> > wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou
> > japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette
> > liste.
> >
> > I hope nothing was lost in
> > http://translate.google.com/translate_t
> >
> > --mav
>
> That was perfect Mav :-)

Thanks - but all the credit should go to Google translator (which does a great
job). Perhaps including a link to Google translator or BableFish on non-English
posts will solve this problem. Then people can feel more comfortable posting in
their native language and others will still be able to understand them.

> By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> translation at least 2 years ago ?

Yep
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project

Although the wiki is not available right now...

Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).

If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Only moderate-level in english, and loosing huge time
> to say most things two times, I think I will more and
> more send google translations though.

You're doing just fine in english.

Don't worry about translation. just put a one sentence summary so
that those that don' speak french can at least see what it is, and so
they can request a translation.

like this:

Dlfkjashdlkj lkjah sdlfk jgkjgksj ds dfaks ghdfkjwe ofgweyobo werb
rfu ouygvef iuydv fioyvs dfkuvs dfkv. Asdfkv aweflasldf
qowuefvoausyvdf. Lasvdf kvasvdf vlasdflyavd Wikipedia
fitwevf9qw7evfow edfkasvdf, iuasvdf 100F itasdf ovqwef ovsdfkjvasd u
su  kfvgaoisdftv aisdgvf  asdfo asdfuyg syf qw6egfoausdvfo f Jimbo,
oasdf oasudygf osdf o fv.

[summary: The weather is lovely today.]

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > That was perfect Mav :-)
>
> Thanks - but all the credit should go to Google
> translator (which does a great
> job). Perhaps including a link to Google translator
> or BableFish on non-English
> posts will solve this problem. Then people can feel
> more comfortable posting in
> their native language and others will still be able
> to understand them.

Or could put directly a google translation in the post
?

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that
> idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea
> again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way
> humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting
> any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse
> than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of
> which are pretty good).
>
> -- mav

Hmmm, you know what would be great ?

Imagine...

You go to a polish article (for a change), one not
covered by your pedia. You click on a little link
"EditTranslate". Enter a new title for your new (own
language) article. A window open in your own
wikipedia, with the new title, containing
automatically the machine-translated text. Plus, you
have a handy tool bar, where you may enter some of the
words in original or new language and where you get
information from Wiktionary...translations if
possible, and definitions of this word. Upon time, I
am sure the capacity of wiktionary to define and
translate words will be quite good, and might be a
useful add-on to google translation (which are not
always satisfying).

I am not sure I am clear here, but imho, there should
be at any time, on wikipedia, a sort of search box
where we could quickly enter a word of any wikipedia
article, a word we do not understand well, and get
immediately definition and translation in other
languages.

Anyway...

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Only moderate-level in english, and loosing huge
> time
> > to say most things two times, I think I will more
> and
> > more send google translations though.
>
> You're doing just fine in english.
>
> Don't worry about translation. just put a one
> sentence summary so
> that those that don' speak french can at least see
> what it is, and so
> they can request a translation.

Oki; good idea...

> like this:
>
> Dlfkjashdlkj lkjah sdlfk jgkjgksj ds dfaks ghdfkjwe
> ofgweyobo werb
> rfu ouygvef iuydv fioyvs dfkuvs dfkv. Asdfkv
> aweflasldf
> qowuefvoausyvdf. Lasvdf kvasvdf vlasdflyavd
> Wikipedia
> fitwevf9qw7evfow edfkasvdf, iuasvdf 100F itasdf
> ovqwef ovsdfkjvasd u
> su  kfvgaoisdftv aisdgvf  asdfo asdfuyg syf
> qw6egfoausdvfo f Jimbo,
> oasdf oasudygf osdf o fv.
>
> [summary: The weather is lovely today.]

Hummmm, and how did Jimbo came in a discussion about
weather ??? ;-)

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body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The GNU FDL is a complicated mess. The sooner we can be free of it, the
>>>
>>better.
>>
>>>IMO.
>>>
>>>
>>It's basically impossible to change the license at this point; since
>>all writers still own the copyrights to their material, every single
>>one of them would have to be contacted and agree to the change of
>>license.
>>
>
>Each of them agreed to license their work either under the GNU FDL 1.1 "or any
>later version" or the GNU FDL 1.2 "or any later version." If the GNU FDL 2.0
>allows transfer to another free content license (such as the FCL I proposed),
>then that is fine.
>
>
Oh right, there is a later versions provision. Seems dicey to allow
a change to a different license, potentially opens up major
loopholes; dunno if any FSF folks would go for that.

>Free content is supposed to be freely used - it is absurd that it cannot be
>transfered from one free content license to another. Those licenses that are
>very similar, such as the CC by-sa and the GNU FDL (when no invariant sections
>are used) should be made compatible with each other. The Free Content License
>would act as a simplified FDL and compatibility layer (the FSF has already
>stated that invariant sections are going to stay part of the FDL, so that is a
>non-starter).
>
>Our only out is a change in the license and the only people who can do that are
>in the Free Software Foundation.
>
If you remember, the original motivation was manuals that were
available on the net but whose license was phrased so that they
were not fixable; the thing to think about is whether a proposed
change can be exploited by the unscrupulous. At about the point
that GNU became commercially valuable, shady characters came out
of the woodwork with all kinds of schemes, and you can see that
people are starting to probe the limits of WP licensing. It will
get worse when cheaters with money start paying lawyers to look
for weaknesses in the license.

Stan


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Michael-

> Yes, but until today, every time I've looked at the list of subscribers,
> Jimbo's email was marked as having list delivery disabled.

I didn't know that and I didn't change the settings, maybe Jimbo did.

> our behavior gives the impression of Jimbo as a
> MeatBall:GodKing.

.. which he effectively is. He has, however, gradually relinquished power
to open decision making processes. Until all the necessary processes exist
and are sanctioned by the Board, we should continue to bring important
developments to the attention of Jimbo/the Board to assure at least some
basic legitimacy.

>> foundation-l and wikipedia-l are multilingual to allow people to
>> communicate who otherwise could not

> Now that I look closely I see you added something similar to
> [[Wikipedia:Mailing lists]] a couple months ago, and apparently nobody
> objected. That seems like a pretty restrictive formulation to me, as if
> we're only allowing multilingual discussion as a sort of concession, and
> you _must_ use English unless you cannot.

The point of language is to communicate. When we use language, we should
use the one which allows us to communicate best. If a plausible argument
can be made that in this instance, and in others, French was a better way
to communicate than English, then I'm open to hearing it. It seems to me
that the much more realistic explanation is that some people prefer to
switch  to a language which they think other people won't understand when
they want to make comments which they don't want other people to read. And
that, it also seems to me, is clearly against the spirit of open
communication.

It's like when you're in a cafe with a bunch of friends, and suddenly two
of them start having a conversation in Russian. Notably, only one of the
people involved in the conversation is actually Russian. You don't speak
Russian, nor do most of your friends, and the couple provides no
explanation for switching languages; you only hear a few words you know
and can deduce that the conversation is a direct continuation of the
earlier English one.

Is such an unexplained switch courteous? Is it useful as a "demonstration
of the multilingual nature of the meeting"? Or is it irritating, perhaps
even hostile, to others? Using English as our language of choice is not
some imperialist dictate. It is a choice that is made purely for pragmatic
reasons. I am not a native English speaker, but I support this choice
because I want *open* *communication*. I would appreciate it if we could
all agree to make our conversations as open as possible. When that is not
desired, there is always e-mail.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Anthere-
> I would not *exactly* call public mails to a list with
> probably over 100 registered users, tracked by Google,
> "semi-private exchanges" :-)

How many of our readers speak French? How about Chinese, or Croatian? The
smaller the number, the more private the conversation. With French, I'd
say it is at least semi-private.

> First, unless that recently changed, this *public*
> list is *multilingual. We do not need authorisation to
> write another language than english here.

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

"Posting in languages other than English is allowed, but English is
preferred as it will reach the most diverse audience." This has always
been my understanding of the way we want things to be.

The purpose of making the list multilingual is not to give people a
loophole to have semi-private conversations, nor is it to somehow prove to
ourselves how multilingual we are, and we certainly don't need a "French/
Russian/Esperanto post of the week" to remind us. The purpose of making
the project-wide lists multilingual is to allow people to have discussions
who otherwise could not. Such discussions can remain semi-private, if
there is good reason for them to be so (e.g. people have difficulties
speaking English and the matter is primary of interest to a handful of
people), but in general, we should strive to either translate posts in
both directions and thereby allow *open* communication, or to move
discussions to e-mail or talk pages.

English is the most diversely spoken language in the world. It is the most
widely learned second language and the second most widely spoken first
language. Last but not least, it is the most widely spoken language on the
Internet. Schools, the diminishing role of nation-states (EU etc.) and
globalization further accelerate this development.

Using English is therefore the most friendly and internationalist approach
possible. Of course many people dislike English for one reason or another,
mainly because they associate it with a certain culture. But the best way
to dissociate English from one particular culture is to use it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Daniel-
>
> > If people don't want to speak in English I don't see why that is
> a problem.
>
> I have nothing against the use of other languages for the purpose
> of
> better understanding. I have something against it if the purpose
> is, or
> appears to be, the deliberate exclusion of others.

Humm, since this list is public and archived, it's doubtful that this
is the case.

Even if it is, you do like you do in a bar and go off to the redhead
who's been looking at you and ask: "Do you speak Russian?"

Oh, hummm. anyways ;)

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


body:
Viajero wrote:

>My motto: "Wikipedia is not a dumpster".

Maybe better in Brit English: 'you must have us confused with Skipepedia'?

But then, if just about anything in the USA is relevant to American
politics, and American politics is relevant to just about everything, where
does one draw a line at all?

Sounds like one of those paradox of the heap/slippery slope arguments.
Can't _prove_ the irrelevance of any columnist/comedian/culture warrior.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Imagine...
>
> You go to a polish article (for a change), one not
> covered by your pedia. You click on a little link
> "EditTranslate". Enter a new title for your new (own
> language) article. A window open in your own
> wikipedia, with the new title, containing
> automatically the machine-translated text. Plus, you
> have a handy tool bar, where you may enter some of the
> words in original or new language and where you get
> information from Wiktionary...translations if
> possible, and definitions of this word. Upon time, I
> am sure the capacity of wiktionary to define and
> translate words will be quite good, and might be a
> useful add-on to google translation (which are not
> always satisfying).
>
> I am not sure I am clear here, but imho, there should
> be at any time, on wikipedia, a sort of search box
> where we could quickly enter a word of any wikipedia
> article, a word we do not understand well, and get
> immediately definition and translation in other
> languages.

Yes - all that would be great.

--mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optionalizing Real Names

body:
So, there were some questions about using the real names functionality
added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been rolled out for
Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of problem.

I know this sounds lazy, but do I need to take the time to set up a
boolean variable to hide this field on the login and preferences
pages? Or will we roll out with the field default-on, and not able to
be disabled by admins? (Users can always leave the field blank if they
wish, of course.)

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Viajero

body:
On 05/26/04  at 12:44 PM, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> said:

> French men are largely homosexual/bisexual. (According to surveys
> American's male homosexual incidence is bigger than in French. This
> allegation may have arisen from the fact there are no laws against
> sodomy in France. Alternatively, it may have arisen because of
> generalizations from the artistic or intellectual lifestyle.)

> This is serious ???

I guess this doesn't raise eyebrows because the French aren't a separate racial or ethnic group which has been the subject of systematic bigotry in recent history. Just imagine the uproar if someone where to create, for example, [[Anti-African-American sentiment in the United States]] and include a whole bunch of  unattributed opinions about "lazy, shiftless, oversexed" black people and other mindless clich?s. I am NOT saying racism in the US is not a suitable encyclopedia topic; of course it is, but it would (obviously) have to be handled in a more intelligently manner than the French article.

Somtimes I get the feeling that people on Wikipedia are so terrified of appearing to "censor" anything (cf political correctness) and so obssessed with the idea that "Wikipedia is not paper" that they forget that good judgement is also called for in deciding what to include and what to leave out.

My motto: "Wikipedia is not a dumpster".

V.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik's vandalism and threats

body:
Why is that nobody has even bothered to note that Wik has consistanly violated his 7-day block and not only that, but is going wild in vandalizing other people's User and Talk pages?  What is it about Wik that you people let him get away with so much?  Does he have blackmail information on you people?  Why is everybody bending over backwards to help him get away with so much?  If it were me, especially, or any other user who behaved as Wik does, we would have been banned and not allowed to post again, let alone violate the requirements of his ban and violate the requirement that nobody be allowed to vandalize other people's User and Talk pages?  Why is that I am the only person who seems to be interested in protecting Quagga, who, for some unknown reason, has become the target of Wik's wrath (well, I am too, and I was at first.  Then when I decided the hell with it and let him have his way, Dori protected Wik's Talk page and Wik didn't go after HIM.)  There is no reason for Wik's
 attacks on Quagga.

And now that Quagga has, justifiably, returned the affection, Wik has posted this on Jimmy Wales's Talk page:

"All right, after my last comment Quagga has done it again. I'm seriously throwing down the gauntlet now: either you effectively protect my userspace (which clearly now necessarily entails banning Quagga) or this site will not come to rest. I have an endless supply of proxies (and ISPs if necessary). You know that I have never used such things in article disputes. But this now is a matter of personal honour, and I will never relent on this in the slightest. It is one thing that, after spending ten months doing more useful edits than anyone else, I was effectively banned in a grotesque arbitration ruling, but that I should now, adding insult to injury, have to accept my own user space being vandalized with impunity, is a monstrous injustice that I simply WILL NOT ACCEPT. Wik "

So, is anybody going to do anything about it, or are you just going to let him have his way?  Or are you going to block Quagga because Wik says so?

More useful edits than anyone else?  My, Wik has a high opinion of himself, doesn't he?  But then, it's the way all of you make him feel, isn't it?

RickK

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from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>The latest news here in Colorado is that our governor, Bill Owens, at some convention in Illinois told a few anti-French jokes, including one that went:
>
>"Why does the new French navy have glass-bottomed boats?
>
>So they can see the old French navy!"
>
You would think that the anti-French crowd could at least come up with
something more original than to recycle old sawhorses and scarecrows
that have been applied, at some point or another, to just about every
national/religious/ethnic group that some other
national/religious/ethnic group dislikes. I've seen that joke far more
often involving a different country, which I will not name here out of
respect. I guess it just goes to show the poverty of thought that
accompanies prejudice.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Meir Mendelovich

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SQL queries - a suggestion for limited access

body:
> Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 19:11:06 +0100
> From: "sannse" <sannse at tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] SQL queries - a suggestion for limited access
>
> I'd very much like to update [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]]
> on a regular basis.
>
> I'm sure this has been suggested before (maybe by Angela somewhere?) but
is
> there a possibility of allowing specified users to run specified SQL
> queries?   This wouldn't have to be coded for perhaps, just a trust system
> where a number of people are given access, but only on the condition that
> they *only* run queries that have been checked and agreed.

I second sannse suggestion. We in Hebrew Wikipedia used the SQL query to
create lists for maintenance. E.g. articles that does not contain links. It
is really needed specially since the special pages cache was not updated
since April.

    Meir :->


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Gutza wrote:
> Aromanian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian) is a Romanian
> language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language) dialect.
>
> A new Wikipedia is requested for this language on the Romanian Wikipedia
> (http://ro.wikipedia.org) by Aromanians who don't know where else to
> turn. Romanian wikipedians have "offered" temporary demo space for the
> Aromanian Wikipedia main page at
> http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prota_padzin%C3%A2
>
> As far as rigid official ethnography language codes are concerned, all I
> was able to find regarding Aromanian was ISO 639-2, along with a "SIL"
> language code, as described in
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=RUP

After a discussion between Brion and I over standard compliance (he's
such a stickler) and appropriate names, we eventually decided on:

http://roa-rup.wikipedia.org

The rationale is that roa is the ISO 639-2 code for "other romance"
languages, which apparently this is one of. RUP is the SIL code for
Aromanian. We couldn't just use rup.wikipedia.org (or any other three
letter code), because that could conflict with future ISO 639-2 allocations.

This scheme gives us a way to specify everything that was rejected from
ISO 639-2 on the basis of being a dialect not a language. Languages
which are not in ISO 639-2 due to being too small or too new (like Toki
Pona) will have to be given longer, descriptive hostnames for the time
being.

While I was at it, I also set up the Klingon Wikipedia. It's at
tlh.wikipedia.org. I also created wiktionaries for tokipona, roa-rup,
chr and tlh, however they won't start working properly until the
wiktionary script files are converted to 1.3.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.3 parser performance

body:
I've disabled the tokenizer in the 1.3 parser for now. The old doQuotes
function seems to perform better.

Simplified benchmark results (ab -n100 -c2):
1.2: 0.84/s
1.3 with tokenizer: 0.43/s
1.3 with doQuotes: 0.74/s

There are mainly two issues that aren't done yet:
* timelines -> strip()?
* french space/ number space formatting

The {{foo{{bar}}}} issue is still outstanding, there are ideas on how to
tackle this but it's not yet done.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi
de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une
Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le
jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur
<foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause
...

Jean-Christophe Chazalette aka villy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > How many of our readers speak French? How about Chinese, or Croatian?
The
> > smaller the number, the more private the conversation. With French, I'd
> > say it is at least semi-private.
>
> If people don't want to speak in English I don't see why that is a
problem.
> Others who are interested will use a free online translator and those who
are
> not can just ignore the thread.
>
> It is their choice to limit their audience and thus the power of their
> messages. So what if they do?
>
> -- mav
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik's vandalism and threats

body:
What good would that do?  He's obviously protected, and besides, the arbitration process is nonsense.

RickK

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
Several people have noticed and he has had his ban extended (not by the arbitrators but by a sysop who banned him anew). His case is still in arbitration. You are welcome to this information to the evidence page and to request relief on [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik2]].

Fred

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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.3 parser performance

body:
On Wed, 2004-05-26 at 19:23 +0200, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

Done:

> * timelines -> strip()?

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
This is not exactly good French but fully understandable ;-)

JC aka Aurevilly (villy)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

> --- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net>
wrote:
> > Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit
aussi
> > de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une
> > Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish
le
> > jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur
> > <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il
cause
> > ...
>
> Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois,
russe, ou
> japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>
> I hope nothing was lost in http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
> --mav
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik's vandalism and threats

body:
Several people have noticed and he has had his ban extended (not by the
arbitrators but by a sysop who banned him anew). His case is still in
arbitration. You are welcome to this information to the evidence page and to
request relief on [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wik2]].

Fred

From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 17:23:45 -0700 (PDT)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wik's vandalism and threats

Why is that nobody has even bothered to note that Wik has consistanly
violated his 7-day block and not only that, but is going wild in vandalizing
other people's User and Talk pages?  What is it about Wik that you people
let him get away with so much?  Does he have blackmail information on you
people?  Why is everybody bending over backwards to help him get away with
so much?  If it were me, especially, or any other user who behaved as Wik
does, we would have been banned and not allowed to post again, let alone
violate the requirements of his ban and violate the requirement that nobody
be allowed to vandalize other people's User and Talk pages?  Why is that I
am the only person who seems to be interested in protecting Quagga, who, for
some unknown reason, has become the target of Wik's wrath (well, I am too,
and I was at first.  Then when I decided the hell with it and let him have
his way, Dori protected Wik's Talk page and Wik didn't go afte r HIM.)
There is no reason for Wik's attacks on Quagga.

And now that Quagga has, justifiably, returned the affection, Wik has posted
this on Jimmy Wales's Talk page:

"All right, after my last comment Quagga has done it again. I'm seriously
throwing down the gauntlet now: either you effectively protect my userspace
(which clearly now necessarily entails banning Quagga) or this site will not
come to rest. I have an endless supply of proxies (and ISPs if necessary).
You know that I have never used such things in article disputes. But this
now is a matter of personal honour, and I will never relent on this in the
slightest. It is one thing that, after spending ten months doing more useful
edits than anyone else, I was effectively banned in a grotesque arbitration
ruling, but that I should now, adding insult to injury, have to accept my
own user space being vandalized with impunity, is a monstrous injustice that
I simply WILL NOT ACCEPT. Wik "

So, is anybody going to do anything about it, or are you just going to let
him have his way?  Or are you going to block Quagga because Wik says so?

More useful edits than anyone else?  My, Wik has a high opinion of himself,
doesn't he?  But then, it's the way all of you make him feel, isn't it?

RickK

Do you Yahoo!?
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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.3 parser performance update

body:
Done:
> * french spaces

Probably not desirable:
> / number space formatting

Still to be done:
{{foo{{bar}}}}

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
On May 26, 2004, at 10:22 AM, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> --- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> [large snip]
>> I see discussions all the time on the mailing lists that are
>> basically
>> conversations involving a very small handful of people. I don't see
>>
>> anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with
>> two
>> people engaging in a conversation on a talk page, which is equally
>> public. Whoever is interested can always join in, and I'm happy to
>> shift
>> between my limited selection of languages to accommodate other
>> participants.
>
> I agree with you Michael. Sometimes it is easiest for someone to
> express themselves in their mother tongue.

Since (I assume) all of us speak English, let's say that anyone who
feels comfortable in English would be best served to write in
English.  If they wold prefer their mother tongue, it would be nice
to include a (human) translation, or at least a summary.  If the
user doesn't (possibly unable to), another user might step up and
do the translation, in the WikiSpirit.  No use posting Google
translations, I think, since we can all get them ourselves.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel-

> If people don't want to speak in English I don't see why that is a problem.

I have nothing against the use of other languages for the purpose of
better understanding. I have something against it if the purpose is, or
appears to be, the deliberate exclusion of others. See my response to
Michael for a detailed argument.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optionalizing Real Names

body:
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> So, there were some questions about using the real
> names functionality
> added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been
> rolled out for
> Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of
> problem.

The problems with this aren't likely to be seen in the
first few days of it going live, and particularly not
on wikis that suffer far less vandalism that the
larger Wikipedias. The issue of irreversible vandalism
has still not been addressed. This feature allows any
user to claim the name of someone else and to insert
that into the meta data of any article they edit, or
have edited in the past. See
http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Angela&action=dublincore
for example, which claims

<dc:creator>Evan Prodromou</dc:creator>

It claims this because I set my real name to be "Evan
Prodromou".

No one but a developer can revert this. You are listed
as the most recent editor of that page and you can't
do anything about it.

I could have done this even if I had been blocked from
editing, meaning that not only is the vandalism
unrevertable, but also the vandal doing this is
unblockable.

Until this is made reversible in the same way normal
edits are, I think this feature has a high chance of
being misused, particularly on the larger wikis where
retaliatory vandalism against sysops is common.

Angela.

____________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.3 parser performance

body:
> The {{foo{{bar}}}} issue is still outstanding, there are ideas on how to
> tackle this but it's not yet done.

Sort of done (not very clean though).

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>The point of language is to communicate. When we use language, we should
>use the one which allows us to communicate best.
>
Yes, but which one is that, the language in which the writer (or
speaker) can best express themselves, or the language that can best be
understood by the audience? It's a judgment call in each instance,
depending on the writer, the audience, and the subject matter. I'm
content to trust participants on the mailing list to make those
judgments for themselves.

>If a plausible argument can be made that in this instance, and in others, French was a better way to communicate than English, then I'm open to hearing it.
>
Readily. In this instance, since posts in French are unusual, I think a
reasonable case can be made that writing in French actually drew more
attention than writing in English. That helped accomplish the two things
my post addressed - promoting the use of foundation-l as the mailing
list for Wikimedia-wide projects, and highlighting the fact that Jimbo
wasn't receiving messages from this mailing list. I think both
situations have significantly improved.

>It seems to me that the much more realistic explanation is that some people prefer to switch to a language which they think other people won't understand when they want to make comments which they don't want other people to read.
>
Since, as has been pointed out several times, this is a public list, and
various participants are able to provide translations or use machine
translators, it seems foolish to me for anyone to think that you can
make any comments here that some other person won't be able to read or
understand.

>I would appreciate it if we could all agree to make our conversations as open as possible.
>
Of course. That's why I'm willing to translate my statement (if anybody
is still wondering what I said), and why I'm also willing to communicate
in other languages.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

You seem to have a more positive view of machine translation than I have.
Machine translations can be helpful in translating, but no good translation
will be got by taking a machine translation and 'correcting the errors'.
Rather, one will have to write at least half and probably everything by
hand, and have the machine translation only as a reference.

Just change the following into correct English (from es:Etimolog?a del top?nimo Per?)

It is known that, at least from 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the Peru name already is fixed, as they testify referring documents to the payment of tributes by gold obtained in the Paschal expedition of of Andagoya "que went to the province of Peru, and Juan Garci'a de Montenegro, who was by Veedor (...) certain gold which they said had been it the this trip of the Per?". Before paying attention the form definitive of the name it had had variant like Bir?, Ber? or Pir?, with which one is in diverse documents of the time.

Andre Engels
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

You seem to have a more positive view of machine translation than I have.
Machine translations can be helpful in translating, but no good translation
will be got by taking a machine translation and 'correcting the errors'.
Rather, one will have to write at least half and probably everything by
hand, and have the machine translation only as a reference.

Just change the following into correct English (from es:Etimolog?a del top?nimo Per?)

It is known that, at least from 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the Peru name already is fixed, as they testify referring documents to the payment of tributes by gold obtained in the Paschal expedition of of Andagoya "que went to the province of Peru, and Juan Garci'a de Montenegro, who was by Veedor (...) certain gold which they said had been it the this trip of the Per?". Before paying attention the form definitive of the name it had had variant like Bir?, Ber? or Pir?, with which one is in diverse documents of the time.

Andre Engels
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

You seem to have a more positive view of machine translation than I have.
Machine translations can be helpful in translating, but no good translation
will be got by taking a machine translation and 'correcting the errors'.
Rather, one will have to write at least half and probably everything by
hand, and have the machine translation only as a reference.

Just change the following into correct English (from es:Etimolog?a del top?nimo Per?)

It is known that, at least from 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the Peru name already is fixed, as they testify referring documents to the payment of tributes by gold obtained in the Paschal expedition of of Andagoya "que went to the province of Peru, and Juan Garci'a de Montenegro, who was by Veedor (...) certain gold which they said had been it the this trip of the Per?". Before paying attention the form definitive of the name it had had variant like Bir?, Ber? or Pir?, with which one is in diverse documents of the time.

Andre Engels
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

You seem to have a more positive view of machine translation than I have.
Machine translations can be helpful in translating, but no good translation
will be got by taking a machine translation and 'correcting the errors'.
Rather, one will have to write at least half and probably everything by
hand, and have the machine translation only as a reference.

Just change the following into correct English (from es:Etimolog?a del top?nimo Per?)

It is known that, at least from 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the Peru name already is fixed, as they testify referring documents to the payment of tributes by gold obtained in the Paschal expedition of of Andagoya "que went to the province of Peru, and Juan Garci'a de Montenegro, who was by Veedor (...) certain gold which they said had been it the this trip of the Per?". Before paying attention the form definitive of the name it had had variant like Bir?, Ber? or Pir?, with which one is in diverse documents of the time.

Andre Engels
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > By the way, was not there an old project aiming at
> > translation at least 2 years ago ?
>
> Yep
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Machine_Translation_Project
>
> Although the wiki is not available right now...
>
> Machine translation has come a long way since that idea was first put forward
> for Wikipedia. We may want to look at the idea again. A special:translate
> function might be a nice tool to have - that way humans would control the
> process on an article by article basis (correcting any errors that result).
>
> If done correctly, the result should be no worse than copyedited and
> error-checked EB 1911-derived articles (many of which are pretty good).

You seem to have a more positive view of machine translation than I have.
Machine translations can be helpful in translating, but no good translation
will be got by taking a machine translation and 'correcting the errors'.
Rather, one will have to write at least half and probably everything by
hand, and have the machine translation only as a reference.

Just change the following into correct English (from es:Etimolog?a del top?nimo Per?)

It is known that, at least from 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the Peru name already is fixed, as they testify referring documents to the payment of tributes by gold obtained in the Paschal expedition of of Andagoya "que went to the province of Peru, and Juan Garci'a de Montenegro, who was by Veedor (...) certain gold which they said had been it the this trip of the Per?". Before paying attention the form definitive of the name it had had variant like Bir?, Ber? or Pir?, with which one is in diverse documents of the time.

Andre Engels
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from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: [[Anti-French sentiment in the United States]]

body:
On Wed, 26 May 2004 11:58:38 +0100, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>Anthere wrote
>
>> This is serious ???
>
>I wish British men got off so lightly.  Apparently we're almost all gay.
>That must exclude Sean Connery, I guess.  (Still, James Bond served in the
>Navy, so you can never tell.)

"Rum, sodomy, and the lash", as Churchill put it.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ...
>>>
>>>
>>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>>
Moi je pr?f?re les interpr?tes humains. Mais si c'est n?cessaire ...

I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian,
or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so
long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".)

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ...
>>>
>>>
>>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>>
Moi je pr?f?re les interpr?tes humains. Mais si c'est n?cessaire ...

I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian,
or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so
long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".)

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ...
>>>
>>>
>>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>>
Moi je pr?f?re les interpr?tes humains. Mais si c'est n?cessaire ...

I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian,
or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so
long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".)

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ...
>>>
>>>
>>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>>
Moi je pr?f?re les interpr?tes humains. Mais si c'est n?cessaire ...

I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian,
or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so
long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".)

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>--- Jean-Christophe Chazalette <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sustained. There's no point og getting silly here. J'ai bien le droit aussi de parler ? ceux qui parlent fran?ais sur une liste qui se d?die ? une Fondation ? objet plan?taire et je jure d'utiliser Google ou BabelFish le jour o? un wikip?dien chinois ?crira en chinois sur <foundation-l at wikimedia.org> ... et que je voudrais savoir de quoi il cause ...
>>>
>>>
>>Et j'emploierai Google ou BabelFish trop quand un wikip?dien chinois, russe, ou japonais ?crit en leur propre langue sur cette liste.
>>
Moi je pr?f?re les interpr?tes humains. Mais si c'est n?cessaire ...

I look forward to seeing someone post on the mailing lists in Russian,
or Swahili, or Greek, or Vietnamese, or any other language. (Just so
long as they post something more than the Turkish for "first post".)

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.3 beta is slow!

body:
Jens Frank wrote
> You should perhaps have a look at 1.3 first. Parts of the Parser are
> already a real parser, reading the wikitext in one pass, character by
> character. See Tokenizer.php and its use in Parser.php. This work is
> not yet completed, so the regexes still exist for some parts of the
markup.

I hadn't seen this bit of the parser. Last time I looked at it, it was still
splitting the string using regexes. When I saw the way you do it currently,
I have to admit I went into a bit of a panic. In my experience reading a
large string character by character in a high level language is a very bad
idea. Indeed, our "parser" to date has gone to some lengths to avoid this,
using regexes in all sorts of contrived ways to avoid executing a number of
PHP lines proportional to the number of characters.

After I calmed down, I fixed up the profiler and did a couple of runs.
Gabriel Wicke did some too, using ab. They're at:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling

They show that the page view time for the current CVS HEAD is double what it
was in 1.2.5. The parser itself was rougly 2.4 times slower.

This is completely unacceptable considering the current state of our web
serving hardware. The latest batch of 1U servers won't cover the penalty
from upgrading to 1.3. Our web servers are not keeping up with demand in
peak times as it is, during peak times their queues all overflow, giving
users random error messages.

The current plan is to revert the tokenizer sections of the parser back to
something similar to 1.2. Hopefully we'll get it working soon, since the
Board vote feature I've written is a 1.3 extension and voting is meant to
start in 4 days.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Meeting and Re: mediawiki 1,3

body:
Not really entirely technical, but... I just wanted to say the meeting
in Lyon went well. I am exhausted :-)

Actually, the live demo did not went well. I was able to show about 3 or
4 pages, main page, one or two articles, user page... and when I came
back to show more of our great features... slooooooowwwwwwww.

Fortunately, someone had showed the assistance the basics of wiki
edition to the audience, so I guess everyone got the idea anyway :-)

But thanks a lot anyway for those who helped make it run better
(or...just run at all, for those who remember last fall).

Anyway, the meeting went well. There were a bunch of very interesting
presentations (I guess that I should cook something about meta data one
day), and very interesting people. Several journalists in particular
(some from newspapers who did not answer to our last press release...I
guess I know who to contact next time) and the vice president of les
amis du monde diplomatique (http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/) and I
guess we really must contact better these people...

This was also the opportunity to have the first 3 french wikipedians
meat-space meeting (I think), since Alain and Yann Forget were here as well.

So, all in all, I had fun, and I recommand to anyone to try one day to
present Wikipedia to public audience, either to journalists or to
teachers, or information systems specialists, politicians ... I think we
must not hesitate to approach all sort of people.