from_name: Florian Schnadt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.org (redirecting from www.wikipedia.org)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> 1) Having the webserver automatically redirect the user to a Wikipedia in
> his language, based on the browser settings, is a much more transparent and
> obvious way of handling things. That's what, for example, Google and Debian do,
> both highly successful projects.

Redirecting gives at least two problems:

1) small language wikis

Redirecting to wikis without enough project ("meta") information or very few
articles might be a bad idea. There could be a link to an appropriate page on en
or meta and some explanation in a prominent place (at the top :) ) until this
changes.

2) outside links

Redirecting will break links if my browser doesn't use english language setting. A
somewhat dirty fix might be to check if this is an outside link and only redirect
if the page exists in the language wikipedia. Thus my german language setting will
take me to the english chemistry article if I click a link outside of
wikipedia.org (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry) but take me to the german
page on most (at least some ;) ) names, cities etc.

Sorry if this has all been written before, but I somehow lost track of this
discussion ;)

Flo


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
I might be mistaken, but don't these articles go to
http://sep11.wikipedia.org ?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > This seems better suited to a /Talk page?
>
> I agree. But since Erik Moeller has made misleading claims about me on
> this mailing list, could I please be allowed to correct them? Most people
> here won't bother to look at the Talk page in question, and I don't want
> them thinking that I am responsible for an edit war.
>

Oliver,

it is correct that you did not insert the quote in the actual article,
although it was my understanding that you intended to do so if there were no
objections against your latest proposal (otherwise, why did you make it?). My
problem here is that you and Tom are sending mixed messages to new contributors
that do not at all help them to understand our established policy of adding
only verifiable, relevant facts to articles. In that way, you are also
responsible if Arno now (possibly repeatedly) violates that policy and others have to
fix it.

It would help a lot if you could put a clear and non-ambiguous note on the
Talk page stating that you do not want the quote to be part of the article,
and that Arno should abstain from adding it.  That's all I'm asking for.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
> On ??a??, 2003-01-23 at 01:20, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > there's a problem with the article [[Madeline Amy Sweeney]], about a
> vict
> im
> > of the Sep 11 attacks. This started out as an anonymous contribution:
>
> I thought we were moving all these to the separate wiki at
> http://sep11.wikipedia.org/ ?

That, too, would be fine with me. However, the article as it is complies
with Wikipedia policy, it's just the anonymous quote that bothers me.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> My problem here is that you and Tom are sending mixed messages to new
> contributors that do not at all help them to understand our established
> policy of adding only verifiable, relevant facts to articles. In that
> way, you are also responsible if Arno now (possibly repeatedly) violates
> that policy and others have to fix it.

In general, I think that discussing all sides of a debate on a Talk page,
and attempting to come up with a compromise, is precisely how to *avoid*
edit wars. Just my point of view, of course. :)

Oliver

P.S. - I have now added a note to the [[Talk:Madeline Amy Sweeney]] page
saying that I support your decision to remove the quote from the article.
However, I reserve the right to change my mind on any subject at any
time... :)

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


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe

Dear ZOE: I'm sure your intentions, along with the others, was quite sincere in coming up with a formula for the opening line of an article on someone. However, it is a totally and completely lousy presentation that is hard on the eyes and far too much for researchers to be asked to absdorb. In plain words, it turns people off and therefore Wikipedia's credibity. Please get over the obsession with Google, the heading doesn't gain users, only QUALITY does. I am putting an enormous amount of work into hundreds of articles that, based on this hoffific heading presentation is rendering them useless. For people with or without a brain larger than a flea, this is what they need when using an Encyclopedia for a biography or other such items:
NAME: year dates, occupation.
John Smith (1920-1990), Medical Scientist
SPACE
Born John William George Peabody Smith on July 5, 1920, he was etc.
Make paragraphs short (See HarperCollins/Random House or amy other publisher about readability, interest span in the 21st Century etc.
LAST LINE (always): John Smith died on December 1, 1990 and was interred in ????.
If they were a great whatever, you might add one one to occupation. Then, in a new PARAGRAPH, the full date of birth. AND, I've never met anyone who said they were born in Tupelo, United States. So, do as I do and get the Province/Departement etc. for foreign countries. Too, nobody says they were born in Boston, New England, United States. So, a Region in France should be specified after the Departement or leave the region out. I don't want to see any more of my hard work changed. There is not one person on Wikipedia with any marketing expertise. Buy a few marketing books, use a little marketing common sense, and see how Wikipedia can succeed rather than articles on "getting new users." Build it right, accurate, and sufficiently detailed and interesting and they will come. ALSO, if idiots want to insert stubs or are too lazy to do research, LABEL the artice: ''Work in Progress". That way, a new user/viewer understands and doesn't click away thinking what a half-assed information site Wikipedia is. Because, when they do, they don'y come back (except to play and add the same useless bits of crap) and they don't tell others....DW

---------------------------------
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list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Profiling

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>In rendering land, the winner is OutputPage::replaceInternalLinks(). The
>more links in the page, the longer (and longer) this takes. Through the
>link cache, it makes a database query for every individual linked page
>to check if it exists. More detail should be checked for this to see how
>much of that time is spent in db queries; but I suspect that pre-filling
>the link cache from the links and brokenlinks tables should speed this
>up.
>
>
Just turn on the stub detector and watch it take even longer ;-)

Seriously: On Phase II (RIP), I put all the existing (and broken) links
into some text field. Maybe we should do that again for existing links
*in addition* to the existing link table. We would get that list in the
same query as the article body (no additional SQL query at all!)
Then, we check if all the other links are broken, maybe write the "short
list" back, and be done. Imagine: Not a single additional query for the
Main Page!

The only thing we'd have to do is clear some of these "short lists" on
page deletion. Shouldn't be a problem.

Magnus


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] table suggestion

body:
Pieter Suurmond wrote in part:

>But please let's use symbols that are different from these html-lookalikes.
>I'm quite new here so I don't know which symbols can be used to replace
>"<td>", "<th>", "<tr>", and also "<table>" (and </table> ???).

I don't see any problems with <table>, which is self explanatory
-- quite unlike <td>, <th> and <tr>!
For several possibilities for new symbols
(some of which make <table> unnecessary too,
some of which don't), see:

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

(Not much happening there lately, but you could start it up again.
I for one have it on my watchlist.)

-- Toby


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Zoe Wrote:
>DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe

Well, I guess first that "horrific" has one "f" and not three; and
second, that prose seems a natural choice in writing biographies,
though I wouldn't mind seeing the life of Albert Einstein arranged
into a complex HTML table, perhaps shaped like the [[periodic table]];
and third that profanity and confrontationalism usually don't do much
to advance discussion, but do wonders in stopping it cold (which might
or might not be DW's intention); and finally, that I would really like
to start meeting some of the people I "talk" with on wikipedia,
because I'm sure we're all a lot nicer than we occasionally seem, and
I don't mind going out for a beer.

cheers,

kq

wikikarma: [[Military of Slovenia]] and subsequent disagreement,
resolved in civil discourse with [[user:Zocky]], who served me up a
slice of well-deserved humble pie


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mailing lists moved from nupedia.com to wikipedia.org, check your
 address books!

body:
For those who may not be aware, the Wikipedia mailing list addresses at
nupedia.com *no longer work*. They were maintained as forwarding
addresses for a while after the lists were moved to the wikipedia.org
server, but have been removed recently (see forwarded message below).

If you're having trouble sending e-mail to the Wikipedia mailing lists,
check the send-to address and if necessary replace nupedia.com with
wikipedia.org.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] canceling @nupedia.com forward to the @wikipedia.org lists
Date: 13 Jan 2003 08:11:36 -0800

I have no opposition to removing these forwards now.  People have
had enough time to adjust to the new addresses.

Giskart wrote:

> For several months I recieve on the lists Intliwiki-l and Wikitech-l
> spam almost every day.
>
> see also
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001719.html
>
> Those spams always come by the old posting adress of the lists, wikitech-
> l at nupedia.com and intlwiki-l at nupedia.com
>
> Can the forward be removed?
>
> --

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list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists moved from nupedia.com to wikipedia.org, check your
 address books!

body:
For those who may not be aware, the Wikipedia mailing list addresses at
nupedia.com *no longer work*. They were maintained as forwarding
addresses for a while after the lists were moved to the wikipedia.org
server, but have been removed recently (see forwarded message below).

If you're having trouble sending e-mail to the Wikipedia mailing lists,
check the send-to address and if necessary replace nupedia.com with
wikipedia.org.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] canceling @nupedia.com forward to the @wikipedia.org lists
Date: 13 Jan 2003 08:11:36 -0800

I have no opposition to removing these forwards now.  People have
had enough time to adjust to the new addresses.

Giskart wrote:

> For several months I recieve on the lists Intliwiki-l and Wikitech-l
> spam almost every day.
>
> see also
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001719.html
>
> Those spams always come by the old posting adress of the lists, wikitech-
> l at nupedia.com and intlwiki-l at nupedia.com
>
> Can the forward be removed?
>
> --

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Mailing lists moved from nupedia.com to wikipedia.org, check your
 address books!

body:
For those who may not be aware, the Wikipedia mailing list addresses at
nupedia.com *no longer work*. They were maintained as forwarding
addresses for a while after the lists were moved to the wikipedia.org
server, but have been removed recently (see forwarded message below).

If you're having trouble sending e-mail to the Wikipedia mailing lists,
check the send-to address and if necessary replace nupedia.com with
wikipedia.org.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] canceling @nupedia.com forward to the @wikipedia.org lists
Date: 13 Jan 2003 08:11:36 -0800

I have no opposition to removing these forwards now.  People have
had enough time to adjust to the new addresses.

Giskart wrote:

> For several months I recieve on the lists Intliwiki-l and Wikitech-l
> spam almost every day.
>
> see also
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001719.html
>
> Those spams always come by the old posting adress of the lists, wikitech-
> l at nupedia.com and intlwiki-l at nupedia.com
>
> Can the forward be removed?
>
> --

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia.org solution

body:
I just had a revelation (or a short circuit;-) about what to do about
the multi-language Main Page.

We set up a new variable (like "{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}"); say,
"{{YOURLANGUAGE}}".

We write that into the first line of the www.wikipedia.org Main Page.

*If* your browser settings have a language other than EN as first
preference, this displays a line, saying "There's also a wikipedia in
XXX" (of course, in that language!).

If your browser default settings are EN, it doesn't show anything.

So, the US/UK users won't notice a difference, the Germans, French,
Spanish, and ... will see a line in their language (maybe with a nice
background), guiding the way to "their" wikipedia.

Magnus


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Very serious bug

body:
PHP scripts seems to be messing with \ characters a lot.
It shouldn't even touch them.

You can see example of completely broken rendering in:

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wywo%C5%82ania_systemowe_Uniksa


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
wikikarma [[Stewardess]]
|From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: 23 Jan 2003 22:21:00 +0100
|
|Oliver wrote:
|
|> In general, I think that discussing all sides of a debate on a Talk page,
|> and attempting to come up with a compromise, is precisely how to *avoid*
|> edit wars. Just my point of view, of course. :)
|
|That's what I tried to do, but since we were arguing back and forth with
|no clear result and Arno did not even participate in the discussion, the
|mailing list seemed to be like the next most reasonable choice. That's
|what wikien-l is for -- resolving conflicts on the English Wikipedia by
|getting other people's opinions.
|
|> P.S. - I have now added a note to the [[Talk:Madeline Amy Sweeney]] page
|> saying that I support your decision to remove the quote from the article.
|
|Thanks.
|
|Regards,
|
|Erik
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


from_name: Pieter Suurmond

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: |            | My column | Other column

body:
Jocelyn Giraud wrote:
>
> Andre Engels a ?crit :
>
> > Although also using HTML in this case, I still use a slightly different
> > syntax. What I do is:
> >
> >

> >
[[image:xyz.jpg]]
> >

> > ''Some longer caption, which is wider
than the image itself''
> >

>
> About banning HTML and using wiki-like syntax, there is an interesting
> feature in [ http://phpwiki.sf.net/ phpwiki ] that allow wiki-like
> tables.
>
> the feature look like :
>
> |            | My column | Other column
> | first line | value     | value
> | other line | value     | ''value''

	YES I LOVE THIS !!!
	Elegant, and much more readable than that dirty html.
	I have no objections. Greetings, Pieter Suurmond.

>
> every line starting with a | is part of a table (I don't thing starting
> a line with a pipe is something very used for anything that is not that
> kind of stuff...)
>
> if you write :
>
> |            | My column  | Other column
> | first line |v big value | value
> | other line              | ''value''
>
> You'll have "big value" in a  with a colspan=2 ( v mean that you
> want to extend the cell to the bottom)
>
> |vv mean  etc.
>
> |>  mean rowspan=2 |>> mean rowspan=3
> etc.
>
> I do really like this idea (I use phpwiki at home and at work, and that
> of tables is very usefull...)
>
> The only thing that phpwiki's table don't have is "align='right'" on the
> whole table (
), but I'm sure it can be done with a
> good idea (like "|[table: align=right]|" before the first line, or any
> other idea...
>
> The probleme is that it can be slow to render and need a lot of RAM (may
> be).
> _________________________________________________________________
> "This e-mail is intended for the exclusive use of the individual or
> entity named above and may constitute information that is priviledged or
> confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure . Dissemination ,
> distribution , forwarding or copying of this e-mail by anyone other than the
> intended recipient is prohibited . If you have received this e-mail in error
> , please notify us and completly delete or destroy any and all electronic or
> other copies of the original message"
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] tag for alphabetical order.

body:
wiki pedista wrote:
>
> I was thinking about a printed wikipedia.
> Enciclopedias usually are printed in alphabetical
> order. As there is no absolute order in wikipedia, we
> have named the articles with the best possible
> article, but not the one that would be correctly files
> if ordered. For example, the biographies are listed
> with the proper name first, while
> in a printed work we would look for it by last name...
> detailed articles about history, economy, etc. of
> countries would be all printed together, and far away
> from the country itself, and so on.
>
> Would it be possible to add a tag for each article
> that says where should it be placed in an
> alphabetically ordered list? For example, in Bill
> Clinton the tag would
> be something like <alpha>Clinton, Bill</alpha> or
> something like that.
>
> What do you think?
>
> AstroNomer
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Hi AstroNomer,

That is possible but not necessary (in my opnion).
Better rename all pages, and let a script repair
all backward links, than introducing an extra tag
to the wiki-language. If agreement can be reached
on how an article SHOULD be named, rename it.
In other words: articles already have a "name"
that can be lexically ordered, please don't
introduce anything new which is not strictly
necessary. Sorry :-)

Kind regards,
Pieter


subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
>We're still afloat so far. :)

It performed admirably; I was amazed the server stayed up at all.
Most can't handle a slashdotting; I'm sure this is testament to LDC's
coding skill and your foresight in turning off some of the more
demanding processes.

I wonder about the server now, though: wikipedia seems to be down; it
won't bring up Recent Changes in a new window and the edit window I
have open is hung on perpetually "loading."  Are we being slashdotted
again (more heavily!) or is there some other cause?

cheers,

kq (circa 6:00 UTC)


subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-23 at 22:06, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >We're still afloat so far. :)
>
> It performed admirably; I was amazed the server stayed up at all.
> Most can't handle a slashdotting; I'm sure this is testament to LDC's
> coding skill and your foresight in turning off some of the more
> demanding processes.
>
> I wonder about the server now, though: wikipedia seems to be down; it
> won't bring up Recent Changes in a new window and the edit window I
> have open is hung on perpetually "loading."  Are we being slashdotted
> again (more heavily!) or is there some other cause?

I tried lifting the ban on updating view counters and the slow special
pages and load ballooned up like a, well, a balloon. I put it back.

So we're still not out of it yet. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
Oliver wrote:

> In general, I think that discussing all sides of a debate on a Talk page,
> and attempting to come up with a compromise, is precisely how to *avoid*
> edit wars. Just my point of view, of course. :)

That's what I tried to do, but since we were arguing back and forth with
no clear result and Arno did not even participate in the discussion, the
mailing list seemed to be like the next most reasonable choice. That's
what wikien-l is for -- resolving conflicts on the English Wikipedia by
getting other people's opinions.

> P.S. - I have now added a note to the [[Talk:Madeline Amy Sweeney]] page
> saying that I support your decision to remove the quote from the article.

Thanks.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Random pages a little more (or less) random

body:
I've tweaked the random page selection to drop pages from the queue as
they are picked, then refill the queue once it's empty.

Compared to the previous behavior, this should:
a) prevent duplicate selections for people who keep sitting there and
clicking the damn button over and over
b) avoid the "random only shows the main page" bug on smaller, newer
wikis that haven't had enough traffic to happen to trip the random queue
refilling.

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

body:
Pieter Suurmond wrote:

>wiki pedista wrote:
>
>
>>Would it be possible to add a tag for each article
>>that says where should it be placed in an
>>alphabetically ordered list? For example, in Bill
>>Clinton the tag would
>>be something like <alpha>Clinton, Bill</alpha> or
>>something like that.
>>
>>What do you think?
>>
>>
>>
>That is possible but not necessary (in my opnion).
>Better rename all pages, and let a script repair
>all backward links, than introducing an extra tag
>to the wiki-language. If agreement can be reached
>on how an article SHOULD be named, rename it.
>In other words: articles already have a "name"
>that can be lexically ordered, please don't
>introduce anything new which is not strictly
>necessary. Sorry :-)
>
>
Um, no, we should definitely NOT move [[Bill Clinton]] to [[Clinton, Bill]]

We are dealing with two very different things. The "wiki name" must be
what people find easy to link to, and what looks good to Google. thus:
"Bill Clinton".

"Clinton, Bill" is a "paper name".
We will at one point want to produce paper output, so I think it's a
good idea to start coding these in now.

Another idea I had along these lines was to create some synonyms for
#REDIRECT:

#ALTERNATIVE <-- future paper edition will want this entry as a "see foo".

>
>


from_name: M Carling

subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
On 23 Jan 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On ?a?, 2003-01-23 at 22:06, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >
> > I wonder about the server now, though: wikipedia seems to be down; it
> > won't bring up Recent Changes in a new window and the edit window I
> > have open is hung on perpetually "loading."  Are we being slashdotted
> > again (more heavily!) or is there some other cause?
>
> I tried lifting the ban on updating view counters and the slow special
> pages and load ballooned up like a, well, a balloon. I put it back.

Part of the problem might be MySQL.  It is very fast for applications that
are entirely static, however, when the data are being changed, it is quite
slow.  In particular, MySQL scales very poorly to multiple users trying to
simultaneously update the database.  I see from the statistics that the
typical Wikipedia page is read only 4 or 5 times for each time it is
updated.  For such a use profile, PostgreSQL is likely to offer better
performance.  Of course, the only benchmark that counts is the application
at hand.  Has anyone tried Wikipedia on PostgreSQL?

Apologies if I've strayed off topic,
M Carling


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Zoe wrote:
>
> DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe
>
1. What does "marketing expertise" have to do with writing biography?

2. Quite frankly, unless it's somehow relevant to the entry, occupation
would not add much useful information to many entries. For example,
Wallace Stevens is better known as a poet, NOT as a corporate insurance
executive. Many writers and poets would end up being catagorized as
"college professor" (e.g. Richard Hugo), "government clerk" (Baudelaire),
"landowner" (practically anyone whose name has survived from before
AD 1000), etc.

3. I'm probably beating a dead horse by stating my opinion about this
buffoon. (And I sometimes worry that no one notices my work in the
Imperial Roman entries: I should be enjoying this benevolent neglect!)

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
On ?a?, 2003-01-23 at 23:18, M Carling wrote:
> On 23 Jan 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > I tried lifting the ban on updating view counters and the slow special
> > pages and load ballooned up like a, well, a balloon. I put it back.
>
> Part of the problem might be MySQL.

We've heard this song before, and it's never yet been followed by "and
here's my patch which makes Wikipedia run on PostgreSQL, which I am an
expert with and that's how I know it's so damn fast, and here are some
precise and useful tips on optimising the setup and converting the
database."

Apologies if I sound a little rude, but it does get a little frustrating
after a few times. :)

If you would like to try adapting the software to PostgreSQL, I'd *love*
to see the results. Please sign up for the wikitech-l developers' list,
and check our source out of CVS:

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

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Whatever the value of DW's suggestion for tabular formats for
biographical entries, DW (Arthur's little sister?) did not respond to
my invitation to discuss it on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style]].  He
had suggested it on some random biographical talk page.  With all due
respect for Zoe, her talk page is not the place to rewrite the Manual
of Style either.

I think, by the way, that the idea is a poor one, and spending a lot
of time altering biographical entries to remove significant
biographical information from the first paragraph is a poor use of
time and energy.  But I am willing to discuss it, and I imagine others
would be to, in the right place.

Tom Parmenter


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 12:36:58AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>On ??a??, 2003-01-23 at 23:18, M Carling wrote:
>> On 23 Jan 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> > I tried lifting the ban on updating view counters and the slow special
>> > pages and load ballooned up like a, well, a balloon. I put it back.
>>
>> Part of the problem might be MySQL.
>
>We've heard this song before, and it's never yet been followed by "and
>here's my patch which makes Wikipedia run on PostgreSQL, which I am an
>expert with and that's how I know it's so damn fast, and here are some
>precise and useful tips on optimising the setup and converting the
>database."

Don't get pissy, Brion.  mod_wiki is en route.  You won't see most of
the advantages of Postgres without redesigning the database schema to
take advantage of it.

>Apologies if I sound a little rude, but it does get a little frustrating
>after a few times. :)

Yes, but not as frustrating as trying to actually dive in and make such
a patch; the MySQLisms and the fact the SQL statements are created on
the fly instead of isolated into one easily modifiable file, the way the
Scoop codebase does, makes it very difficult.

>If you would like to try adapting the software to PostgreSQL, I'd *love*
>to see the results. Please sign up for the wikitech-l developers' list,
>and check our source out of CVS:

I agree; if you have the stamina for it, please provide a patch so we
can see how Postgres supports Wikipedia as it stands right now.
mod_wiki is a fourth generation thing, while the current codebase is
third generation.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

body:
> We will at one point want to produce paper output, so I think it's a
> good idea to start coding these in now.

No, please make a different project for this. I already hate the
interlanguage links, we don't need more of this meta stuff in the
article source text.

I don't want to know how many people hit on "Edit", see the
interlanguage links ([[ru:%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82]] ...)
and think that it's too complicated to edit articles.

What about the idea to keep these in a separate database (and not in the
article)? I think this was discussed before, but nobody seems to be
motivated enough to code it.

Kurt


subject: [WikiEN-l] we're slashdotted

body:
On 24 Jan 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On ?a?, 2003-01-23 at 23:18, M Carling wrote:
> >
> > Part of the problem might be MySQL.
>
> Apologies if I sound a little rude, but it does get a little frustrating
> after a few times. :)

You didn't come across as rude.  I was just asking if anyone had tried.
Seems not.

> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker

Thanks for the link.  I checked it out.

M Carling


body:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 02:35:32AM +0100, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> I don't want to know how many people hit on "Edit", see the
> interlanguage links ([[ru:%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82]] ...)
> and think that it's too complicated to edit articles.

That's because there's no Unicode on English Wikipedia.
No such problem on Polish.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
wiki pedista wrote:
> I was thinking about a printed wikipedia.

I would bet $5 that this will never happen.

Plus you would have to print it in pencil, so the reader can erase and
rewrite.  :-)

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


body:
> > I don't want to know how many people hit on "Edit", see the
> > interlanguage links ([[ru:%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82]]
...)
> > and think that it's too complicated to edit articles.
>
> That's because there's no Unicode on English Wikipedia.
> No such problem on Polish.

I got this from the Polish MainPage:

[[af:HomePage]][[en:Main Page]][[ar:HomePage]][[eu:HomePage]][[cs:Main
Page]][[zh:Main
Page]][[da:Forside]][[eo:%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do]][[et:HomePage]][[fi:HomePage
]][[fr:Accueil]][[fy:HomePage]][[es:Portada]][[nl:Hoofdpagina]][[ja:Main
Page]][[ca:HomePage]][[ko:대문]][[la:HomePage]][[ms:Main
Page]][[de:Hauptseite]][[no:HomePage]][[pt:HomePage]][[ru:Main
Page]][[sh:HomePage]][[sl:HomePage]][[sv:HomePage]][[simple:HomePage]][[
it:HomePage]]

It's not the entities or whatever they're called, it's the sheer amount
of "code" that many people won't understand the first time they hit
"Edit". And it's getting more and more. I guess we'll see some new
Wikipedias this year :-)

Kurt


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Actually, DW is really getting to annoy me, and not just on account of this.
He's been ''gutting'' articles he doesn't like, often leaving snide comments
about the persons who wrote the original version on the talk pages. Yes,
some of them needed changes, but his arrogant dismissive tone about other
people's work is rude, snide and outrageous. I came across some pages where
three or four people people obviously had put in a long of work and had a
long debate, only to find their work 'dumped' with some snide remark about
it all being rubbish, with personal insults thrown in, suggesting that if
that was the best they could do, they shouldn't be on Wiki. Yes, in a lot of
cases things needed changing or re-writing or tidying up, but his whole
approach, tone and attitude is well beyonds the bounds of acceptable
behaviour.

As to his claim here, I disagree. We are not drawing up a list of filing
cards here. I'm quite happy with Zoe's work. To call it a 'totally and
completely lousy presentation' is not merely wrong but typical of the way he
treats anyone who gets in his way, or writes something he doesn't like, in a
way he doesn't like. To claim boldly that ''there is not one person on
Wikipedia with any marketing expertise'' is monumental arrogance, as well as
factually wrong. Maybe instead of calling himself DW he should have used
TEHL (The Ego Has landed) when he joined Wiki.

OK, now that I have had my gripe for the day, I'm off to do some articles on
Wiki, and if DW so much as touches anything I'm working on and leaves a
snide remark, I'll set Two16 loose on him.

No. Maybe that's too cruel, though I'm not sure to whom; Two16 or DW!

JT.

>From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW
>Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 18:39:32 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe
>
>
>
>Dear ZOE: I'm sure your intentions, along with the others, was quite
>sincere in coming up with a formula for the opening line of an article on
>someone. However, it is a totally and completely lousy presentation that is
>hard on the eyes and far too much for researchers to be asked to absdorb.
>In plain words, it turns people off and therefore Wikipedia's credibity.
>Please get over the obsession with Google, the heading doesn't gain users,
>only QUALITY does. I am putting an enormous amount of work into hundreds of
>articles that, based on this hoffific heading presentation is rendering
>them useless. For people with or without a brain larger than a flea, this
>is what they need when using an Encyclopedia for a biography or other such
>items:
>NAME: year dates, occupation.
>John Smith (1920-1990), Medical Scientist
>SPACE
>Born John William George Peabody Smith on July 5, 1920, he was etc.
>Make paragraphs short (See HarperCollins/Random House or amy other
>publisher about readability, interest span in the 21st Century etc.
>LAST LINE (always): John Smith died on December 1, 1990 and was interred in
>????.
>If they were a great whatever, you might add one one to occupation. Then,
>in a new PARAGRAPH, the full date of birth. AND, I've never met anyone who
>said they were born in Tupelo, United States. So, do as I do and get the
>Province/Departement etc. for foreign countries. Too, nobody says they were
>born in Boston, New England, United States. So, a Region in France should
>be specified after the Departement or leave the region out. I don't want to
>see any more of my hard work changed. There is not one person on Wikipedia
>with any marketing expertise. Buy a few marketing books, use a little
>marketing common sense, and see how Wikipedia can succeed rather than
>articles on "getting new users." Build it right, accurate, and sufficiently
>detailed and interesting and they will come. ALSO, if idiots want to insert
>stubs or are too lazy to do research, LABEL the artice: ''Work in
>Progress". That way, a new user/viewer understands and doesn't click away
>thinking what a half-assed informa!
>tion site Wikipedia is. Because, when they do, they don'y come back (except
>to play and add the same useless bits of crap) and they don't tell
>others....DW
>
>
>
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

in_reply_to: <8eOKATWSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 10:21:00PM +0100

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> That's what I tried to do, but since we were arguing back and forth with
> no clear result and Arno did not even participate in the discussion, the
> mailing list seemed to be like the next most reasonable choice. That's
> what wikien-l is for -- resolving conflicts on the English Wikipedia by
> getting other people's opinions.

I'm not going to enforce this, obviously, but my preference is that
we don't bring conflicts to the mailing list as quickly as this one
was brought.  The majority of discussions about what should be in an
article should take place on the Talk: page for the article.

Things should only be 'elevated' to the mailing list when there's
either an unresolved policy mystery that needs meta-analysis, or if
someone is being a royal pain in the neck, or similar.

And in both the talk pages and on the mailing list, we should always
operate under the most charitable reasonable assumption about the
motives of others.

--Jimbo


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> wiki pedista wrote:
> > I was thinking about a printed wikipedia.
>
> I would bet $5 that this will never happen.

You're on.  :-)

I think wikipedista's suggestion has some merit, and most of the
discussion about it has centered on technical questions (i.e. separate
database table versus in-the-article versus...)

On the other hand, I think that when someone gets ready to make a
print version, the amount of labor required to list all the articles
and go through reversing the titles for some is pretty small,
especially as compared to the total labor required to 'filter/edit'
the entries to eliminate useless stubs and so on.

So I conclude, tenatively, that this aspect of what we are doing
doesn't pose much of a barrier to a paper encyclopedia, and that the
added complexity is *probably* not worth it *right at the moment*.

Now, if there arises a community desire and effort for us (the
wikipedia community) to produce a paper version (rather than leaving
it up to some future 'RedHat'-style redistributor), then we'll want
to add a simple means for lots of people to jump in and lend a hand
with whatever is needed.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

in_reply_to: <200301240252.h0O2qO207555@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 06:52:24PM -0800

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> and third that profanity and confrontationalism usually don't do much
> to advance discussion, but do wonders in stopping it cold (which might
> or might not be DW's intention);

Probably not DW's intention.  It seems like DW just got a little
excited there.  His intentions and concerns seemed valid, although I
have no opinion on the particular issue in question.

> and finally, that I would really like
> to start meeting some of the people I "talk" with on wikipedia,
> because I'm sure we're all a lot nicer than we occasionally seem, and
> I don't mind going out for a beer.

See, now here's an idea we can likely all support, without voting or
consensus-finding or anything else.

I am fond of the idea of an annual or semi-annual conference, held at
different places around the world (for convenience for different
people) to promote wikipedia _community_.

Because I really think it's pretty hard to see someone as a jerk while
drinking beer with them.  Well, *a* beer, anyway.  I suppose after 10
beers, wiki-based animosities might break out again.  I wouldn't want
to read the headline "Internet Encyclopedist Brawl Injures 6"

How about:

Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia

Or something like that.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Zoe wrote:
> >
> > DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe
> >
> 1. What does "marketing expertise" have to do with writing biography?

Well, I don't want to defend DW's rudeness.  But what he means, I
think, is that thought should be given to creating a nice visual
appearance and comfortable start to each articles.  When a new visitor
arrives, we want them to get the information they are looking for,
without feeling overwhelmed by an excessively complex (or simple,
or...)  start.

That's not an unreasonable thought.

> 2. Quite frankly, unless it's somehow relevant to the entry, occupation
> would not add much useful information to many entries. For example,
> Wallace Stevens is better known as a poet, NOT as a corporate insurance
> executive. Many writers and poets would end up being catagorized as
> "college professor" (e.g. Richard Hugo), "government clerk" (Baudelaire),
> "landowner" (practically anyone whose name has survived from before
> AD 1000), etc.

Right.  I think he meant to say, instead of 'occupation', something
like 'very basic tidbit of why we should care about this person'.

Sometimes, it's due to occupation (Einstein, physicist), but not always
(Todd Beamer, software salesman).

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

in_reply_to: <3E3129CF.2020603@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 12:55:59PM +0100

body:
Wow, that's even worse.

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Zoe wrote:
>
> > DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe
> >
> That's what DW left on my talk page (after he insisted on 2,5'' images,
> whatever that means on the screen):
>
> Tried nice--that didn't work. Have had to replace more of your oversized
> photos that in addition are ALL far too dark. A good width is certainly
> not 350 pixels, I have no idea where you get that. Please LOOK at your
> handiwork after you load it. And, what in the name of hell, beyond
> moronic stupidity, does any Wikipedia contributor's length of time have
> to do with anything? Are you awarded a Medal of Valor or something after
> X number of days service? Quality, not quantity, counts. So far, 99% of
> your photos would be better left undone. Instead of trying to be a hero
> and getting people like Zoe to stroke your ego, slow down and do things
> properly. Looking at a page with your kind of minimal input and poor
> quality, overwhelming photos, is what turns people away from Wikipedia....DW
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 4) Lastly, I fail to see how this case is any less proper than, say,
> the recent discussion of DW's rudeness. In fact, because of 1), 2)
> and 3), it seems to me that it is more proper and relevant to the
> purpose of this list.  Thus, unless there are objections to the
> reasoning above, I will continue to use wikien-l in cases where it
> applies.

OK.  Well, different people may have a different idea of how quickly
specific things need to be brought to the mailing list.  That's one
reason why I won't even attempt to enforce my preferences.  There
are lots of judgment calls.

But I certainly think that there was no need for a mailing list
discussion of whether or not it's o.k. to include an unverifiable
quote in an article for "sentimental reasons".  Obviously, it's not.
We don't have to discuss things like that on the mailing list unless
there's some sort of huge dustup about it.

I'm just suggesting that maybe the mailing list has a bit too much
discussion of things that should be discussed on Talk: pages.  Each
of us may have our own ideas about what the line may be, but let's
all please consider this.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

in_reply_to: <3E31403E.2060705@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 01:31:42PM +0000

body:
tarquin wrote:
> >Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
> >
> That's a long time to wait for us europeans.
> some of us are thirsty!

That's true.  I made the suggestion thinking primarily of my own
time/budget/etc.  My little girl will be a little older then, and thus
better able to travel a long distance.  Otherwise, I'd likely have to
come by myself.

> more seriously, a European wiki conference would *also* promote exchange
> between the different language wikipedias.

That's right.

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org

body:
On Friday 24 January 2003 04:00 am, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> 3) If we use a portal, it should at least offer some additional features,
> such as a multi-language search and multi-language Recent Changes. This is
> not possible with the current software because all Wikipedias are separate.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Ditto. I'm all for waiting for a multilanguage phase IV or at least a
multilanguage enhanced phase III before going live with the multilanguage
portal.

A portal would be just symbolic windowdressing if we don't at least have a
unified user database and the ability to easily search all languages at once
(sorry Brion your nifty meta search thingy is still just a nifty little
thingy) . Other features such a unified Recent Changes linked from the
portal, better handling of interlanguage links and the ability to select the
language your interface is in are also important but not vital to the success
of a portal.

A multilanguage portal is a big change that explicitly states our website is
multilanguage enabled -- except for some clumsy multilanguage links, it
isn't. We should do this right and actually have the software catch-up with
our expectations about what our project is.

Until a portal and the multilanguage-enabled software behind it are ready, we
could implement the 'browser language sniffing' idea so that people are
automatically brought to the language which corresponds to their browser
settings (if that wiki has say, more than 100 articles and has been upgraded
- otherwise they go to the English Wikipedia as they do now).

We should also think about moving the English Wikipedia from
http://www.wikipeida.org to http://wikipedia.org/en/ as Brion and others have
suggested. But we could just as easily wait for the multilanguage phase IV
and then move all the wikis to http://wikipedia.org/{language code}/ as they
are upgraded and converted to the new common database. Aside: IMO having what
look like separate URLs only tends to enforce the feeling that we are not one
multilanguage project.

A portal right now would be pure symbolism. I and several others have spent
many hours reworking the English Main Page. A big part of the reworking was
to give links to and about the other languages more prominence. Additional
suggestions are still welcome of course.

--mav

WikiKarma:
I updated all the year pages and many of the other articles linked from
[[January 21]] and [[January 22]].


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
I like beer.

Sounds like a great idea!

Danny
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Zoe,

I'm sorry that DW spoke so condescendingly to you. Nonetheless, they make some good points. I'm going to set up a [[Wikipedia:Biography standards]] page (and a Talk page!) where we can all discuss this.

I invite KQ and Mav to join the Talk there, and hope that all contributors will rise to our usual high standards of civility, courtesy and common sense. ^_^

Uncle Ed
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
Jimbo wrote:

<< I am fond of the idea of an annual or semi-annual conference, held at
different places around the world (for convenience for different
people) to promote wikipedia _community_.

[snip]

Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia >>

Sign me up for "East coast of US" -- either New York City or Washington, DC.

I can arrange free meeting space in New York, for the non-alcoholic part of the conference, one block away from Grand Central Station.

Ed Poor


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: Access

body:
I apparently got this email from the advertisement on
[[en:Wikipedia:Administrators]].
I don't have time to look into it right now.

>Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 14:54:16 +0000
>From: George Richard Russell <George.Russell at cis.strath.ac.uk>
>To: toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu
>Subject: Access

>It seems there is a ban over the University of Strathclydes web proxy,
>so no user can edit a page. This is about ~15000 web users.

>George


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>>We will at one point want to produce paper output, so I think it's a
>>good idea to start coding these in now.
>>
>>
>
>No, please make a different project for this. I already hate the
>interlanguage links, we don't need more of this meta stuff in the
>article source text.
>
>I don't want to know how many people hit on "Edit", see the
>interlanguage links ([[ru:%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82]] ...)
>and think that it's too complicated to edit articles.
>
>What about the idea to keep these in a separate database (and not in the
>article)? I think this was discussed before, but nobody seems to be
>motivated enough to code it.
>
>
>
A separate field for meta-information could be good. AT the very least,
we could agree to put them at the *foot * of the text.

What happened to the suggestion to somehow centralise language links? At
the moment, if one article is interlinked between 3 languages, adding a
4th is a pain in the .....

>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>Whatever the value of DW's suggestion for tabular formats for
>biographical entries, DW (Arthur's little sister?) did not respond to
>my invitation to discuss it on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style]].  He
>had suggested it on some random biographical talk page.  With all due
>respect for Zoe, her talk page is not the place to rewrite the Manual
>of Style either.
>
>I think, by the way, that the idea is a poor one, and spending a lot
>of time altering biographical entries to remove significant
>biographical information from the first paragraph is a poor use of
>time and energy.  But I am willing to discuss it, and I imagine others
>would be to, in the right place.
>
>
>
Not the first time DW has been rude to people.

However, he may have a point about the opening of bio articles. I tend
to prefer the "minor sentence" format, something like

NAME (dates), occupation(s)

but "occupation(s)" could feasibly be more than 1 word, eg  "best known
for his love poems to camels".

>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Important request on behalf of Wiki weeders

body:
Recent changes is getting swamped. I often find "junk" entries which
haven't been cleaned up some 12 hours after creation -- this did not
happen, say, 6 months ago.

The problem is that to catch up with the site, I (and other I presume)
need to load some 2,500 edits from Recent changes
That's over 1MB of HTML, it takes forever to load, and there's no
knowing how far back it goes.
This morning I had to load 1,500, then 2,000, then finally 2500 to find
my last edit.

We need something that lists from a particular date *forwards* for a
certain number of entires, as well as current behavious *back* from the
present.

What I sugest is this:
something that behaves in the opposite way to the "from date D, limit L"
syntax in the RC URL. This currently does:
"list up to L entries newer than date D, starting from the present and
going back toward older entries"
This always includes the most recent edit, but  not necessarily the date
D edit if L is small.

I would like to be able to request:
"list up to L entries newer than date D, starting from *date D itself*
and going forward"
This would always include the date D edit, and not necessarily the most
recent edit if L is small.
Hope that makes sense. I don't mean that the list order should be
reversed -- date D would still be at the foot of the page, newer edits
at the top.

With this feature, I could go through these in 500-item chunks, starting
from when I logged off and working my way through.

A link on the Recent Changes page would be nice -- something that lists:
{number of edits as set in preferences} forwards from date marked at top

We'd be able to copy this link to bookmarks on logging off, and resume
from the same place next time


subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
No solution that adds tables to every article on a person can possibly
be a good solution.  Tables, in this universe, are inherently un-wiki
as they are hard to code, hard to edit, hard to read as code.  Words,
sentences, paragraphs are the superior technology here.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

in_reply_to: <20030124190309.GG30956@mrtall.compsoc.man.ac.uk>; from jason@jasonandali.org.uk on Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 07:03:09PM +0000

body:
Jason Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 05:07:42AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
> > Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
> > Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
> > Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia
>
> Why do you need to separate them in time? I somehow can't imagine
> many people travelling the world to go to all the wikipedia
> conferences :-)

I would.  I don't imagine anyone else would.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
|From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
|X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
|X-Authenticated-Sender: #0003262782 at gmx.net
|X-Authenticated-IP: [193.175.135.118]
|X-Flags: 0001
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 14:57:48 +0100 (MET)
|
|> But I certainly think that there was no need for a mailing list
|> discussion of whether or not it's o.k. to include an unverifiable
|> quote in an article for "sentimental reasons".  Obviously, it's not.
|
|Unfortunately, it was not obvious to three other people in the discussion on
|the article's Talk: page.

Excuse me, but that is *exactly* what the talk pages are for.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|
|Regards,
|
|Erik
|


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for sysop status (to save page histories)

body:
On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I am in the process of moving the [[programming language]] pages ("Forth
> programming language", "LISP programming language" etc.) to standard names
> ("Forth", "LISP") where there's no need for disambiguation. If I do so by hand, I
> can only cut & paste the contents, because there's usually a redirect in
> place. Cut and paste, unlike "move page", does not preserve the page history,
> however. So the proper course of action is to first delete the redirect pages
> and then use "move page".

If there is actual content in the histories of the redirects, don't forget
to undelete them afterwards to recombine the split pages' histories.

(When there is nothing at all in their histories but the single redirect,
then you don't need to delete at all; move will take care of it.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Sure. Just remind me of your Wikipedia username, please?

Ed Poor
Wikipedia Developer

-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Moeller [mailto:erik_moeller at gmx.de]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 11:09 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for sysop status (to save page histories)

...So, unless someone else volunteers to move the pages, I'd like to request
temporary sysop status for this purpose only.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Eloquence is now a sysop

body:
Attention, all and sundry. Come nigh and hear the tidings!

"Eloquence is now a sysop."

We welcome Erik into the ranks of trusted contributors who carry the awesome powers and duties of sysop-hood.

Uncle Ed, Wikipedia Developer


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OMPI

body:
Jul claims we can use information given by the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), from his
website.

He says this information can be used freely and is
compatible with our license but only requires than the
source be indicated.

Yann answers he doubts very much the validity of this
assomption.

I tried to read the license, but I am no lawyer, and
don't wish to be :-)
Did anybody come across that situation before ? Is the
license compatible ? Does it give us only the right to
reproduce their article, or also to change it ?

a link
http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/index.html?wipo_content_frame=/about-wipo/fr/disclaim.htm

Here's one of the page Jul created from their web site
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_d%27auteur

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


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
Jimbo re: Jason re: Jimbo:
>> > Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
>> > Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
>> > Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
>> > Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia
>>
>> Why do you need to separate them in time? I somehow can't imagine
>> many people travelling the world to go to all the wikipedia
>> conferences :-)
>
>I would.  I don't imagine anyone else would.

haha, I'm trying to plan ahead for this one trip--$300 for me being an
investment.  ^_^

the starving student cliche, kq

p.s. i'm on the east coast, and there's a page started at meta re:
meetups.

wikikarma: [[An American Family]] fixup yesterday.  more due, I'm
sure; I'll get on it after returning from the library.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
At 09:15 AM 1/24/03 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>Jimbo wrote:
>
><< I am fond of the idea of an annual or semi-annual conference, held at
>different places around the world (for convenience for different
>people) to promote wikipedia _community_.
>
>[snip]
>
>Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
>Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
>Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
>Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia >>
>
>Sign me up for "East coast of US" -- either New York City or Washington, DC.
>
>I can arrange free meeting space in New York, for the non-alcoholic part
>of the conference, one block away from Grand Central Station.

This sounds good, especially if you can arrange for coffee/tea/juice/etc. (not
necessarily free), and we can always adjourn to a restaurant or bar later.

Thanks

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OMPI

body:
Here is a link to the English version:
http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/index.html?wipo_content_frame=/about-wipo/en/disclaim.htm

It says, vaguely, that we can "use or reproduce" "any information
presented".  It's hard to see how that amounts to permission to
alter and redistribute anything from their website.

To 'use' means to read and learn from and things like that.

To 'reproduce' means to reproduce exactly.

And 'information' is not normally the subject of copyright
restrictions.  We don't need permission to use _information_ from
their site, only to use _text_ from their site.  So in that sense,
they are only giving bogus permission to do something we can do
already.

I would say that this is NOT compatible and should not be used.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Timshell and Tim Shell (2 usernames for 1 person?)

body:
Tim,

You seem to have 2 usernames (both with sysop rights).

In the interests of ensuring that the "count of users with sysop rights" is accurate, would you mind if I limited you to one sysop account? I intend to leave Tim Shell alone, and demote Timshell.

Ed Poor, Wikipedia Developer


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
I put a message on his Talk page that he should discuss it here or at the Village Pump.  I also reverted the reversions he made to the biographical pages he has created recently.
Zoe
 Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> wrote:
Whatever the value of DW's suggestion for tabular formats for
biographical entries, DW (Arthur's little sister?) did not respond to
my invitation to discuss it on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style]]. He
had suggested it on some random biographical talk page. With all due
respect for Zoe, her talk page is not the place to rewrite the Manual
of Style either.

I think, by the way, that the idea is a poor one, and spending a lot
of time altering biographical entries to remove significant
biographical information from the first paragraph is a poor use of
time and energy. But I am willing to discuss it, and I imagine others
would be to, in the right place.

Tom Parmenter

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Ouch.  Now somehow I've acquired somebody else who hates me.
Zoe
 Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> wrote:Zoe wrote:

> DW put this on my Talk page. Any comments? - Zoe
>
That's what DW left on my talk page (after he insisted on 2,5'' images,
whatever that means on the screen):

Tried nice--that didn't work. Have had to replace more of your oversized
photos that in addition are ALL far too dark. A good width is certainly
not 350 pixels, I have no idea where you get that. Please LOOK at your
handiwork after you load it. And, what in the name of hell, beyond
moronic stupidity, does any Wikipedia contributor's length of time have
to do with anything? Are you awarded a Medal of Valor or something after
X number of days service? Quality, not quantity, counts. So far, 99% of
your photos would be better left undone. Instead of trying to be a hero
and getting people like Zoe to stroke your ego, slow down and do things
properly. Looking at a page with your kind of minimal input and poor
quality, overwhelming photos, is what turns people away from Wikipedia....DW

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Let's get to work on language integration

body:
As was suggested many times before, we should create a database to
manage data concerning the integration of different language. As far as
I can tell, these are
* Language links
* Translations of the software (generating new LanguageXX.php file "on
click")
* Central user management

I imagine a site (intl.wikipedia.org or something), several special
pages to manage the data sets above (with appropriate login, of course).

Also, it could serve as the international frontend, with intl Recent
Changes, cross-language search and other nice functions.

I discovered that though I have shh access to the server, I seem to be
lacking several rights (like creating a new database).

Someone (Brion! ;-) please create a site (like intl.wikipedia.org), and
a matching database (wiki_intl?), so I can hack a demo version.

Thanks,
Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Zoe wrote:

> DW put this on my Talk page.  Any comments? - Zoe
>
That's what DW left on my talk page (after he insisted on 2,5'' images,
whatever that means on the screen):

Tried nice--that didn't work. Have had to replace more of your oversized
photos that in addition are ALL far too dark. A good width is certainly
not 350 pixels, I have no idea where you get that. Please LOOK at your
handiwork after you load it. And, what in the name of hell, beyond
moronic stupidity, does any Wikipedia contributor's length of time have
to do with anything? Are you awarded a Medal of Valor or something after
X number of days service? Quality, not quantity, counts. So far, 99% of
your photos would be better left undone. Instead of trying to be a hero
and getting people like Zoe to stroke your ego, slow down and do things
properly. Looking at a page with your kind of minimal input and poor
quality, overwhelming photos, is what turns people away from Wikipedia....DW


from_name: Derek Moore

subject: [Wikitech-l] Goodbye to HTML

body:
>

>

>
>[[image:xyz.jpg]]

>Some longer caption, which is wider than the image itself
>
>

>

>
>Someone explain to me how to do that in wiki syntax, with the *same*
>result, without the code looking more ugly?
>(you are free to invent a wiki table syntax for that puropse!)

In Wikitax (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitax), the above would be
acheived with something similar to:

[[:media: xyz.jpg align="right" caption="Some longer caption, which is wider
than the image itself."]]

Wikitax is by no means finished, and completely open to revision and
refinement.  I'm getting to the point where I'm startin' to wrap my brain
around grammar specification (LR, LALR, BNF, lex/yacc, etc.).  So I'm just
starting to play around with parsing various bits of Wikitax in various
ways.  I'll submit what I've got of a BNF specification soon...  Someone
with a more solid understand of linguistics could help out with a thing or
two, I'm sure.

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
>
>
That's a long time to wait for us europeans.
some of us are thirsty!

more seriously, a European wiki conference would *also* promote exchange
between the different language wikipedias.

>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frequent logins

body:
"Are you logging in more, and enjoying it less?" I have begun to ask myself this of late. I seem to be logging in a dozen times a day this week.

Is it just because I use Opera 6.05, or is Wikipedia trying to tell me I'm no longer needed here? ;-)

"Uncle" Ed Poor


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
> I'm not going to enforce this, obviously, but my preference is that
> we don't bring conflicts to the mailing list as quickly as this one
> was brought.

1) Arno has, in spite of the newly noted consensus on the Talk page,
re-added the quote. This proves that I was justified in my concerns, and that it was
good to get quick opinions on the matter, for which the mailing list is
optimal.

2) There is a policy question pertinent to this case, namely, whether
anonymous, unverifiable quotes are OK in articles if they are attached for
"sentimental" reasons. I think we have now concluded that they are not, which is
good. It would help if the criterion of verifiability was adopted as a Litmus
test for the inclusion of particular statements in Wikipedia.

3) Wikipedia's primary purpose is to be a "complete and accurate"
encyclopedia. Regarding accuracy, it seems of utmost importance to me that any
unverifiable or ideosyncratic information is treated with some amount of urgency,
lest its presence be forgotten in the course of the page's history, especially
when dealing with articles like this one which are not likely to be edited
much.

4) Lastly, I fail to see how this case is any less proper than, say, the
recent discussion of DW's rudeness. In fact, because of 1), 2) and 3), it seems
to me that it is more proper and relevant to the purpose of this list.  Thus,
unless there are objections to the reasoning above, I will continue to use
wikien-l in cases where it applies.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 04:52:33AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > wiki pedista wrote:
> > > I was thinking about a printed wikipedia.
> >
> > I would bet $5 that this will never happen.
>
> You're on.  :-)
>
> I think wikipedista's suggestion has some merit, and most of the
> discussion about it has centered on technical questions (i.e. separate
> database table versus in-the-article versus...)
>
> On the other hand, I think that when someone gets ready to make a
> print version, the amount of labor required to list all the articles
> and go through reversing the titles for some is pretty small,
> especially as compared to the total labor required to 'filter/edit'
> the entries to eliminate useless stubs and so on.
>
> So I conclude, tenatively, that this aspect of what we are doing
> doesn't pose much of a barrier to a paper encyclopedia, and that the
> added complexity is *probably* not worth it *right at the moment*.
>
> Now, if there arises a community desire and effort for us (the
> wikipedia community) to produce a paper version (rather than leaving
> it up to some future 'RedHat'-style redistributor), then we'll want
> to add a simple means for lots of people to jump in and lend a hand
> with whatever is needed.

My opinion is that it's very unlikely someone will ever produce
paper version of full Wikipedia, but it's likely that someone
will put major part of Wikipedia (for example, everything related
to chemistry or discrete math) to paper quite soon (this year that is).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
>
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
> >
> >
> That's a long time to wait for us europeans.
> some of us are thirsty!
>

I agree, a European meeting should take place sooner. Also, hopefully the
consumption of non-alcoholic beverage will not be prohibited :-)

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous quote in article

body:
> But I certainly think that there was no need for a mailing list
> discussion of whether or not it's o.k. to include an unverifiable
> quote in an article for "sentimental reasons".  Obviously, it's not.

Unfortunately, it was not obvious to three other people in the discussion on
the article's Talk: page.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia downtime tonight

body:
Just a warning folks: later tonight I'll be taking Wikipedia offline for
a bit for regular backups, and conversion to a different database table
format which should better withstand the heavy peer pressure that a
young wiki encounters as it discovers the wonder that is "a whole
frigging lot of users".

test.wikipedia.org has been running with InnoDB tables for some while
and no one seems to have had any problems with that aspect of it, so
it's time to take the plunge before anybody else picks up that press
release. ;)

This may take a couple of hours on the English Wikipedia; the other
languages and meta will be done one at a time in sequence and will go
much more quickly.

Mailing lists will remain online.

I'll be starting this around midnight PST (8am UTC, 9am CET).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [WikiEN-l] A few choice words from DW

body:
Why not discuss it at [[Talk:Manual of Style]]? That's where it will
go once anything happens.  Tom P.

|From: Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 12:13:29 -0800 (PST)
|
|--0-361745473-1043439209=:34726
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
|
|
|I put a message on his Talk page that he should discuss it here or at the Village Pump.  I also reverted the reversions he made to the biographical pages he has created recently.
|Zoe
| Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com> wrote:
|Whatever the value of DW's suggestion for tabular formats for
|biographical entries, DW (Arthur's little sister?) did not respond to
|my invitation to discuss it on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style]]. He
|had suggested it on some random biographical talk page. With all due
|respect for Zoe, her talk page is not the place to rewrite the Manual
|of Style either.
|
|I think, by the way, that the idea is a poor one, and spending a lot
|of time altering biographical entries to remove significant
|biographical information from the first paragraph is a poor use of
|time and energy. But I am willing to discuss it, and I imagine others
|would be to, in the right place.
|
|Tom Parmenter
|
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


subject: [Wikitech-l] In CVS: Talk pages for anonymous users

body:
Hi,

it has been frequently requested that there should be a way to contact
anonymous users. In the past few days, I've hacked together a solution
for this. It requires that you run patch-usernewtalk.sql and there's
also a couple of new texts to translate.

It works as follows:

1) In the recent changes list (both normal and extended), there's now a
"Talk" link, both for logged in and anonymous users. (This was necessary
because the link for anons goes to their contribution list, which is
useful, but from there you can't get to the talk page.)

2) Anonymous users also get the "Talk" link in the upper right corner.
They don't get a user page link (let's not give them too much).

3) When a Talk page of a user is changed, a row is inserted into the
newly created user_newtalk table. If it's a signed in user, the user_id
column is filled with is ID, if it's an anon, the user_ip column is
filled with his IP address.

4) When the Talk page is changed, instead of the "*", there's now a "You
have new messages" link next to the "Printable version" link. (Our top
bar is cluttered on low res, I agree, but I'd rather put "Printable" on
the bottom and omit the top "Older versions" link.)

5) When the user visits the Talk page, the row is removed from
user_newtalk.

6) A text is automatically appended to talk pages for anonymous users
(which are identified using the \d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3} regex
pattern) explaining that the IP address may refer to several users, not
just one, and encouraging users to create an account to avoid confusion.

- - -

Numerous changes had to be made in particular to User.php;
patch-usernewtalk.sql creates the new table and removes the user_newtalk
column from the user table.

I tested as much as I could, but I would appreciate if this could be put
on test.wikipedia.org for some testing, preferably before the next
accidental update.

All best,

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


body:
On Fre, 2003-01-24 at 12:49, Magnus Manske wrote:
> As was suggested many times before, we should create a database to
> manage data concerning the integration of different language. As far as
> I can tell, these are
> * Language links
> * Translations of the software (generating new LanguageXX.php file "on
> click")
> * Central user management
>
> I imagine a site (intl.wikipedia.org or something), several special
> pages to manage the data sets above (with appropriate login, of course).

Wouldn't this, in fact, be the future www.wikipedia.org? But it makes
sense to set up a *temporary* test server for this purpose. I suggest a
more technical name like "i18n" to avoid confusion.

Regards,

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


body:
I am in the process of moving the [[programming language]] pages ("Forth
programming language", "LISP programming language" etc.) to standard names
("Forth", "LISP") where there's no need for disambiguation. If I do so by hand, I
can only cut & paste the contents, because there's usually a redirect in
place. Cut and paste, unlike "move page", does not preserve the page history,
however. So the proper course of action is to first delete the redirect pages
and then use "move page". I can only do this with sysop status. (I've thought
about making this possible for non-sysops by changing the code accordingly,
but the security risk is too high.)

So, unless someone else volunteers to move the pages, I'd like to request
temporary sysop status for this purpose only.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


body:
> Sure. Just remind me of your Wikipedia username, please?
>

Eloquence.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Profiling

body:
On Don, 2003-01-23 at 18:51, Brion Vibber wrote:
> In rendering land, the winner is OutputPage::replaceInternalLinks().

Told ya so:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-November/001166.html

;-)

Can't we load the titles of all pages into memory persistently, perhaps
using a ramdisk?

Regards,

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


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Beer

body:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 05:07:42AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Summer/Fall, 2003, East coast of US
> Winter/Spring, 2004, West coast of US (Vegas, baby!)
> Summer/Fall, 2004, Europe
> Winter/Spring, 2004, Asia/Australia

Why do you need to separate them in time? I somehow can't imagine
many people travelling the world to go to all the wikipedia
conferences :-)

--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Pieter Suurmond

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Um, no, we should definitely NOT move [[Bill Clinton]] to [[Clinton, Bill]]
>
> We are dealing with two very different things. The "wiki name" must be
> what people find easy to link to, and what looks good to Google. thus:
> "Bill Clinton".
>
> "Clinton, Bill" is a "paper name".
> We will at one point want to produce paper output, so I think it's a
> good idea to start coding these in now.
>
> Another idea I had along these lines was to create some synonyms for
> #REDIRECT:
>
> #ALTERNATIVE <-- future paper edition will want this entry as a "see foo".

Ah, all right.
I thought you had a relational database for FINDING things.
Besides that, you already invented the "#REDIRECT:"-thing for
this purpose. But now you're even inventing a third new thing?!

Why is Wiki so successful?
Because the whole concept is so neat and simple. I really love it!
Please let's keep it that way. I personally like to think more about
reducing things (like banning html-input) than about extending things.

Let's first straighten out the Wiki-syntax, before complicating things
even further.

Sorry if I'm bothering you guys.
I am not against a paper-version, please don't get me wrong. I'm
just warning you software-developers: make things simple instead
of complicated.

Best wishes to you all!!!,
Pieter Suurmond


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Best of" lists

body:
I do feel that the modest [[One-hit wonder]] article that I started
was pretty well rendered meaningless by fights about "well they had
two hits in England" followed by going through a reference book and
adding every single record by anyone who never had another hit to the
list and splitting it up between England and US so you couldn't see
any relationships.  Perfectly normal, now that I look back on it, but
the phenomenon of one-jit wonders was not well served by it.  I had
thought of making a [[One-hit wonder hall of fame]] so that genuine,
standout singular singles would have a chance of their proper notice.
I'm thinking of "Radar Love" by Golden Earring in particular. but
there could be a densely packed little list of truly memorable, even
influential, one-hit wonders.

Likewise, in the music articles, to have sax players off of someone's
favorite album in between [[John Coltrane]] and [[Charlie Parker]]
makes it hard to understand the development of style on the
instrument.  Again, I considered shoveling a ton of them off into
something called [[Beloved favorites]], but couldn't face the
talk-page wars that would surely follow.  [[List of novelists]] grows
more "complete" and less useful with each passing day.

Anything that anyone might try to do bogs down in "that's just your
opinion" and "Kenny G has sold 22 billion albums, how can you say he's
not important".  Seems hopeless.  The best chance might be to make
lists of members of rock and roll hall of fame, Pulitzer Prize winners
(Duke Ellington was turned down for one), Booker Prize winners,
whatever can be made to look objective.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: 25 Jan 2003 01:07:00 +0100
|
|Do we have a policy on "best of" lists?
|
|A page "List of best physicists" was quickly deleted. It consisted of
|several such lists, some of them with a reference, others without it.
|Similarly, our anonymous "year in music" user added several "<year> in
|KROQ" pages (KROQ being a radio station); those were also deleted. In case
|2 I agree without reservation, in case 1 I think it might have been
|rewritten to be useful (perhaps under the title "Lists of best .." rather
|than "List of best ..").
|
|In both cases, we have authorities who are being cited as selecting
|information from a larger sample. There could also be "Lists of best
|science fiction stories", "Lists of best novels" etc. Some of these lists
|would be written by authorities, others based on collaborative filtering
|such as the IMDB top movie lists. In the latter case, when the list is
|dynamically changing, an external link might be most appropriate.
|
|But if we allow such lists, do we open the door to all kinds of spam-type,
|largely useless lists like the "year in KROQ" pages? Will people enter
|never ending NPOV disputes over whether their particular list should be
|included? I'm uncertain here and would appreciate some feedback. In any
|case, we need a clear policy if it doesn't already exist.
|
|Regards,
|
|Erik
|
|
|_______________________________________________
|WikiEN-l mailing list
|WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
|


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Wouldn't this, in fact, be the future www.wikipedia.org? But it makes
>sense to set up a *temporary* test server for this purpose. I suggest a
>more technical name like "i18n" to avoid confusion.
>
>
Fine by me. But, an international portal would only be a side effect of
this. Its main function is of technical nature.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wookee syntax (Re Jocelyn Giraud)

body:
About wiki-tables,

I was reading http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_tables and it
seems that what Jocelyn Giraud was mentioning is called "Wookee"-syntax.

I mentiod your name Jocelyn, on that meta.wikipedia-page, please
remove it (or let me know) if you don't like that.

 1: List-style syntax
 2: Extended PikiePikie syntax
 3: MoinMoin syntax
 4: Wookee syntax         <---
 5: PikiePikie syntax

Seems like Tarquin and Jan Hidders already did a lot of work on this.
I personally feel attracted to Wookee (just loved it at first sight, not
because of any reasoning or real thinking). Any other opninions?

 > Jocelyn Giraud wrote:
 > > The probleme is that it can be slow to render and need a lot of RAM
 > > (may be).

Can someone explain this last remark? I don't see why it (what) needs
a lot of CPU and/or memory.

Thanks / Kind regards,
Pieter Suurmond


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BNF specification

body:
Derek Moore wrote:
> Wikitax is by no means finished, and completely open to revision and
> refinement.  I'm getting to the point where I'm startin' to wrap my brain
> around grammar specification (LR, LALR, BNF, lex/yacc, etc.).  So I'm just

	Great! (I love formal metasyntaxes)
	Pieter

> starting to play around with parsing various bits of Wikitax in various
> ways.  I'll submit what I've got of a BNF specification soon...  Someone
> with a more solid understand of linguistics could help out with a thing or
> two, I'm sure.


body:
Pieter Suurmond wrote:

>About wiki-tables,
>
>I was reading http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_tables and it
>seems that what Jocelyn Giraud was mentioning is called "Wookee"-syntax.
>
>

The "wookee syntax" is part of Wookee, a Wiki markup parser module
written in Perl by Mych, over at Unreal Wiki.
It's uses OOP, and it's very easily extendable.

someone mentioned recently that our markup parser needs an overhaul --
would our developers be interested in taking a look at this?

>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] \n at the end of article

body:
On ven, 2003-01-24 at 20:15, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Could we append \n to article markup when we send it to client
> in edit box ?
>
> All correct text files end with \n and it would make selecting
> by mouse much easier.

I've no objection; we trim the whitespace from the end on save, so
there's no worry of infinitely growing series of blank lines.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
I couldn't resist and added a new proposal to
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_tables

Called it "Half-HTML proposal" (working title;-)

Syntax is quite simple for simple tables, but allows full HTML
attributes if needed, as well as nested tables.

Have a look!

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright problem

body:
I just deleted two files uploaded by [[User:Strakes]]. They were full
songs (1.4 MB each!) in WMA format, and not used anywhere.

Watch out for him...

Magnus


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica

body:
For those who don't keep up with Project Gutenberg, the Distributed
Proofreaders project is currently in the process of proofreading an OCRed
version of the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Anyone interested in helping to proofread for OCR errors can do so at,

http://texts01.archive.org/dp/

(DP allows users to proofread as much or little as they want in increments
of single pages).

Incidently if anyone had any Public Domain books (pre-1923
generally) which they wouldn't mind giving up (and aren't already
available in Gutenberg) they can post them to the admins of the DP website
to process for Gutenberg. (They have a high-speed destructive scanner, but
are running low on material as they get through about 4000 pages/day)

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] my suggestions

body:
> Perhaps the solution to this little detail is that
> the Esperanto
> homepage needs to be internationalized in some way?

I think we should change the language names to their
names in their own language.  This might help.

> Can you give us more detail of exactly what you are
> proposing?

I propose the page that has a paragraph in English and
then the list of languages in a table.

> Do you propose removing the "tree" and "Selected
> articles" from
> www.wikipedia.org?  Where should we put them?

I don't really understand what you mean here.  Could
you clarify?

> Do you propose having the intro text, 2 sentences,
> in a whole bunch of
> languages?

Just the intro text in English and then links to each
language underneath.  I saw this in one of the
proposals.

> Do you propose browser-detection?  (Problematic for
> a number of
> reasons that many people have mentioned, but
> certainly a live
> possibility.)

No, no, no.  For one thing, that will have almost no
effect for Esperanto speakers.  I don't even know how
to change my own browser to eo, even if I wanted to,
and anyway I'd rather keep it in English even though
I'm more involved with the Esperanto project.  The
least that auto-detect could do is highlight my
language on the main page.

I'm sorry I can't give a more detailed description,
but this weekend is composed of day long committee
meetings, so I really don't have time... but there's
always a little time for Wikipedia.  :)  (Hey, new
slogan anyone?)  ;-)

Thanks,
Chuck

=====
You just can't not learn Esperanto!  :-)
----------------------------------------
Just Learn It! - http://www.lernu.net/
My Webpage: http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.com/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

__________________________________________________________________

Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
Bis zu 100 MB Speicher bei http://premiummail.yahoo.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] No email on user preferences

body:
On sab, 2003-01-25 at 00:05, Magnus Manske wrote:
> If you entered your email to be contacted via the wikipedia interface,
> that email won't show on your user preferences page. Is that a security
> feature, or Alzheimer's on our part? ;-)

I believe this is a browser bug. Are you using Mozilla or close kin, and
did you tell it to save your username and password for the login form?

It seems to recognize the change password fields and e-mail fields in
the preferences box as 'the same' as the login form, and helpfully fills
in the e-mail field with the same value you did before -- probably
empty.

Workaround: tell it not to save your info. (But that's annoying!)

Haven't tried yet, but might also work: clear the saved form, then when
you login again fill the e-mail field. It ought to keep the value around
on the preferences.

We may want to tweak the form to make it look different to browsers that
pull tricks like this. Blech.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] "Best of" lists

body:
Do we have a policy on "best of" lists?

A page "List of best physicists" was quickly deleted. It consisted of
several such lists, some of them with a reference, others without it.
Similarly, our anonymous "year in music" user added several "<year> in
KROQ" pages (KROQ being a radio station); those were also deleted. In case
2 I agree without reservation, in case 1 I think it might have been
rewritten to be useful (perhaps under the title "Lists of best .." rather
than "List of best ..").

In both cases, we have authorities who are being cited as selecting
information from a larger sample. There could also be "Lists of best
science fiction stories", "Lists of best novels" etc. Some of these lists
would be written by authorities, others based on collaborative filtering
such as the IMDB top movie lists. In the latter case, when the list is
dynamically changing, an external link might be most appropriate.

But if we allow such lists, do we open the door to all kinds of spam-type,
largely useless lists like the "year in KROQ" pages? Will people enter
never ending NPOV disputes over whether their particular list should be
included? I'm uncertain here and would appreciate some feedback. In any
case, we need a clear policy if it doesn't already exist.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: reason why midi is not a recommended file type

body:
On sab, 2003-01-25 at 02:39, Giskart wrote:
> Giskart <giskart=Qm5IaAUhVgjh8EpZiFPGsQ at public.gmane.org> wrote in
> news:b0ccdn$g3o$1 at main.gmane.org:
> > Upload warning
> > ".MID" is not a recommended image file format.
> >
> > Why is this not a recommended file type?
> >
> > It looks like a very good format for some types of music.

> Because there is no reaction i can only assume that midi should not be a
> "not recommended file type". Please change it on the wikipedia's.

"png", "jpg", "jpeg", and "ogg" are currently the only "recommended"
file types. This list appears to have been fairly arbitrarily chosen for
images, with ogg tacked on for digitized sound.

MIDI could of course be useful for articles on music, demonstrating
straightforward patterns of notes without need for any particular sound
quality. (And, we could automatically generate them from inline source
used to create images of the music notation -- please take a look at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_markup and comment!)

What other types might be appropriate to add, and under what
circumstances? (SVG images is another -- please see and comment at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG_image_support )

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On ven, 2003-01-24 at 15:28, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just a warning folks: later tonight I'll be taking Wikipedia offline for
> a bit for regular backups, and conversion to a different database table
> format which should better withstand the heavy peer pressure that a
> young wiki encounters as it discovers the wonder that is "a whole
> frigging lot of users".

Okay, www.wikipedia.org has been back online for about an hour and
hasn't exploded yet, so I'm declaring it a success for now.

Page view counters have been re-enabled on the English wiki, and the
special page blackout has returned to its previous half-day schedule. If
it holds up well enough, we should be able to remove the blackout
entirely, which I know will please certain Wikipedians. (Additionally,
caching of results is planned so that access to Most Wanted and Orphans
and whatnot will be lightning fast. But, that's not done yet. D'oh!)

If anyone encounters any exciting new database errors, or any oddness
related to searching (particularly with pages that have been recently
created, renamed, etc), please report it with as much detail as
possible.

Users of the other wikis, you might want to take a look too, as you'll
be converted next and will get the same bugs. ;)

Fresh backup dumps of all languages on phase III are available from:
http://http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

(Incidentally, this latest change should make future backup dumps
smaller, as the generated search index fields are moved to a separate
table.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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