body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>I simply provide filtering mechanisms they can use to filter the
>>dumps. That's up to the users, not me. I personally don't care
>>what's in it.
>>
>>
>
>I find this deeply problematic.  Are you providing your audience
>with a product that says "this is Wikipedia" and where the edit
>history for an article says "this part was written by user:LA2"
>but where the stuff I wrote might be filtered out?
>
>
That's what the GFDL is all about **ANYONE** may edit. This also means
**ANYONE** can edit or filter out materials.

>
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wolf Mountain MediaWiki Appliances Released


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page function

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Magnus Manske writes:
> http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
>
> That method only requires the primary key being an integer (which is
> true for the page table), nothing else. The guy who wrote the page
> tested it on a table with 1.000.000 rows, 1.000 "random" queries took
> ~0.6 seconds. Sounds like it would be fast enough for us, and we could
> get rid of that page_random field altogether.

Um, no, it is faster than a pure ORDER BY RANDOM (almost anything is!),
but not as fast as our current system, which is an excellent one. His
method also only works well if you have no holes: his method of finding
a value if the table has holes is not truly random.

Jens Frank asked:
> Is this MySQL-specific? Is it possible to do this with PostgreSQL, too?

It's certainly possible in Postgres, but I'd not recommend it, for
the reasons mentioned above. I also wrote a blog post on this exact
topic about two months ago:

http://people.planetpostgresql.org/greg/index.php?/archives/40-Getting-random-rows-from-a-database-table.html
or
http://makeashorterlink.com/?K5D25287D

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200607261611
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFEx80nvJuQZxSWSsgRAlI+AJ4jgKZHPobK/rfiXJOmZ0AgxX+glQCeIVeu
b2uKnN5zNCM/mbnh5/hqtg4=
=MKEi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jeremy Tobacman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pageview counters

body:
Erik,
Thanks for re-starting this thread!

It seems there are two main questions:

What would be the uses of readership data in the various forms that are
potentially available?
 -and-
How could privacy concerns best be balanced and addressed in the context of
those potential uses?

I have access, for starters, to .2TB of disk that could be devoted to readership
data; it seems storage and other technical hurdles could be overcome if there is
consensus about what data the community wants stored, with what privacy
guarantees, to what end.

There's some discussion of these questions at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia/Quant/ReadershipStats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia/Quant/Security,
and further contributions to these pages would be more than welcome;
the Thursday afternoon session at Hacking Days (ie, a week from tomorrow) will
hopefully press forward to some (at least interim) solution.

Jeremy


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/26/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But I do think WikiWSY is impressive. Getting something client-side
> that matches the server-side Parser for core functionality is very
> hard. Getting something that's "quirk-compatible" for the less common
> stuff is very very hard (and would probably require literally porting
> Parser.php from PHP to JavaScript; and then keeping it updated as
> Parser.php changed - lots & lots & lots of work; it could even be
> easier to write a custom PHP-to-JavaScript "compiler" to do it
> automatically).

Google Web Toolkit has a Java->JavaScript compiler in it. Too bad MediaWiki
isn't Java-based! But (if I was doing it) I'd rather write a clone in
something like Java that could be easily understood & reported than in a
language like JavaScript that's maybe not so intuitive to outsiders.

I wonder how difficult it would be to reduce the parser to a ruleset that
could be "executed" on a more minimal VM/core. Sounds like a good topic for
a PhD to be honest. :P

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


from_name: mboverload

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/26/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
>
> Too bad MediaWiki isn't Java-based!
>

*mboverload stabs Ben repeatedly in the chest*


list: wikien-l

from_name: Silas Snider

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project
	boring to death

body:
Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
right to even host the image.

Sincerely,
Silas Snider
(en:User:Simonfairfax)

On 7/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/26/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/26/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 7/26/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Is it not, theoretically speaking, possible for someone just to assert
> > > > ownership of it, and upload it under public domain? They can take full
> > > > responsibility for any (highly unlikely) challenge to their ownership
> > > > of it coming from the family or estate or whatever?
> > > >
> > > > (but in any case, yes, this is a sad situation)
> > > >
> > > > Steve
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I'd sooner make the (somewhat suspect) claim of fair use - after all, it's
> > > an article about the subject, etc.
> >
> > In thoery you could ask his estate but they might be difficult to get hold of.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> important.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silas Snider is a proud member of the Association of Wikipedians Who
Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category
of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad
Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist
(AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD) , and the Harmonious
Editing Club of Wikipedia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/26/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > With all revision pages its around 3 TB total.
>
> That really requires advanced tech. At Wikipedia revision pages are
> compressed, and a proper compression run contracts whole dataset into
> 0.5T or so (or less).

A minor nit.. with braindead stupid compression (toasted columns in
PGsql which use a modified LZ algo which gets less compression than
gzip -3 but is much faster and compresses a single row at a time) you
can get the whole of english wikipedia into 0.4TB including the needed
indexes and the (not insubstantial) DB overhead.

With state of the art compression (lzma) you can get all the revisions
into 6gb, but you lose random access.  At wikimania tech days I'll be
presenting a system which achieves similar compression perform ace but
preserves random access... Which is at least a mildly interesting
subject, although perhaps without practical implications for wikimedia
until the disk/cpu performance gap widens a bit further. :)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page function

body:
While working on another tool, I noticed that we still have that
page_random value in the page table. There seems to be a better way to
do this:

http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/

That method only requires the primary key being an integer (which is
true for the page table), nothing else. The guy who wrote the page
tested it on a table with 1.000.000 rows, 1.000 "random" queries took
~0.6 seconds. Sounds like it would be fast enough for us, and we could
get rid of that page_random field altogether.

Which reminds me: Someone familiar with query.php, please add a function
to get a random page title.

Thanks,
Magnus


body:
On 7/26/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> I find this deeply problematic.  Are you providing your audience
> with a product that says "this is Wikipedia" and where the edit
> history for an article says "this part was written by user:LA2"
> but where the stuff I wrote might be filtered out?

Do you also find it problematic that someone can remove what you wrote
with a later edit and yet your username still remains in the history?


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page function

body:
On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 09:25:56PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> While working on another tool, I noticed that we still have that
> page_random value in the page table. There seems to be a better way to
> do this:
>
> http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/

Is this MySQL-specific? Is it possible to do this with PostgreSQL, too?

Regards,

	jens


subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page function

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 09:25:56PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> While working on another tool, I noticed that we still have that
>> page_random value in the page table. There seems to be a better way to
>> do this:
>>
>> http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
>>
>
> Is this MySQL-specific? Is it possible to do this with PostgreSQL, too?
>
PostgreSQL has JOINs and max(), so why not?

Magnus


from_name: geni

references:
<44C71BE9.7090600@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<2B28031F-E1B6-473A-B15A-AB412A79971F@gmail.com>
	<44C79504.2080402@wolfmountaingroup.com> <ea84gl$3l7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44C7A962.40203@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
On 7/26/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> They use an algorithm developed at U of U that detects pixel ratios of human
> skin tone (the ratios are the same no matter what complexion) and tags them
> for removal.

I doubt that would work too well on say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiff

--
geni


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/25/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My initial complaint was that "trivia" sections were ugly and stupid.
>> The insight of dpbsmith was that they are *harmful*. Sadly, everyone
>> forgot about it.
>
> The sort of people that add trivia to non-trivial articles are not the
> sort of people that can easily be stopped. Hence my harm minimisation
> strategy: Regularly prune these sections without guilt.
>
> Steve

   What about putting a notice on the talk page about things in trivia
sections still needing references.  Then after some short time move a
copy of the section to the talk page and remove any unreferenced bits
from the article.  Leave a comment in the article at the top of the
section suggesting that trivia that someone wants to add, should first
be added to the talk page where people if they re so inclined can find
references for it.

   As I said before in cases where I have seen these sections come into
being where they had not previously been, it was to get the information
OUT of the rest of the article.  Editors who felt that the information
was *ahem* trivial, did not want it in the article but could not win an
edit war for its removal so as a sort of compromise the trivia section
is born.  I am only pointing this out since I think it should be
remembered by anyone trying to do the section in.  The editors who want
to add this information will not go away, and can usually make a good
enough argument for some of the info being useful to keep it in the
article somewhere.

SKL


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right

body:
On 7/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
> licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
> the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
> CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
> viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
> worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
> Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
> that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to Commons.

Even more unfortunately, enough people upload stuff with the wrong
license that we can't just assume the stated license was actually
correct at upload time, either.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Ultimately, it will hurt the rest of Wikipedia; instead of doing
> *useful* editing, people will be adding /every single detail/ about
> /every single episode/ of /every single TV show that ever was/, instead
> of focussing on areas where we have no information, very little
> information, or information that is inaccurate or doesn't make sense.

   Somewhere in this thread above it was pointed out that arguing that
every editor who is adding info on pop culture could be writing
brilliant Roman History articles instead (or any other topic) is not
necessarily correct.  Some people are going to edit on one topic or
nothing.

Dalf


from_name: Frederik Eaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] tpl files

body:
Hi,

I'm trying to add a link to the sidebar in a modified version of
MediaWiki. I changed 'sidebar' in Messages.php but the change is not
reflected in the browser. Do I need to compile skins/MonoBook.php into
skins/MonoBook.tpl or something? (and if so, how?)

Thanks,

Frederik

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is 30 times more popular than
 sex	(actually: 34 times)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think that table is actually about the top search terms that
>> Wikipedia receives traffic from. So "Wikipedia" is used in just over
>> 3% of searches which end up in a hit to Wikipedia, and "sex" is used
>> in 0.1% of searches which end up in a hit to Wikipedia.
>
> It's bizarre. I did a search for "sex" (with trepidation - I'm at
> work) and didn't see any links to Wikipedia. It's also strange that so
> many companies go to such a lot of work to get in the top few results
> for "sex", while we apparently get in quite easily, with no effort?
>
> Steve

   As I understand it this includes any search that has the word sex in
it.  Including such things as "same-sex marriage", "sexual development",
"how to tell the sex of your hamster" whatever.

Dalf


body:
On 7/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why so much storage?
>
> Uncompressed enwiki text is 680GB. All images in total are about
> 300GB. Loaded into postgresql with a normal set of indexes enwiki
> takes about 400GB, I can imagine that a mysql load would be any larger
> (in mysql mediawiki uses zlib batch compression).
>
> I guess the 3TB makes sense to have some growth room.. but 18TB?
>
> :)

If you are doing mass computerised translations you could burn through
it pretty fast.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories for deletion/discussion issues

body:
Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> The only think we will agree on is "Road"
>

   I was just thinking the same thing.  I wonder if there is an article
dedicated to terms that are used for various types of roads and how they
are used.  I think we could just paste this thread on the talk page if
there was.

Dalf


body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>> On 7/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>>> (Personally, I don't object to [[Category:Freeways]] any more than I
>>> would [[Category:Elevators]])
>> [[Category:Diet sodas]] is an interesting one. Not even all Americans
>> use it. Someone must have gotten confused.
>>
>
> You can get non-low-calorie sodium compounds?

   I have for a very long time loved this page: http://www.popvssoda.com/

It has a map showing the geographic distribution of pop vs soda vs coke
vs. other (usually soft drink).

SKL


subject: [Wikitech-l] Random page function

body:
> http://people.planetpostgresql.org/greg/index.php?/archives/40-Getting-random-rows-from-a-database-table.html

This is being pedantic, but your example

SELECT * FROM mydata WHERE myrand >= (SELECT RANDOM() OFFSET 0) ORDER BY myrand ASC LIMIT 1;

of course doesn't draw the rows uniformly at random, because the
spacing between consecutive 'myrand' values is not uniform.

I suppose that if you periodically change the value of the myrand
column, it should make up for that lack of randomness, for most
applications - certainly Wikipedia.

If you pick a random value using the method above, and then walk
forward or backward by a random number of rows, it could help even
things out. Probably not worth it though.

Frederik

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:16:21PM -0000, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> Magnus Manske writes:
> > http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
> >
> > That method only requires the primary key being an integer (which is
> > true for the page table), nothing else. The guy who wrote the page
> > tested it on a table with 1.000.000 rows, 1.000 "random" queries took
> > ~0.6 seconds. Sounds like it would be fast enough for us, and we could
> > get rid of that page_random field altogether.
>
> Um, no, it is faster than a pure ORDER BY RANDOM (almost anything is!),
> but not as fast as our current system, which is an excellent one. His
> method also only works well if you have no holes: his method of finding
> a value if the table has holes is not truly random.
>
> Jens Frank asked:
> > Is this MySQL-specific? Is it possible to do this with PostgreSQL, too?
>
> It's certainly possible in Postgres, but I'd not recommend it, for
> the reasons mentioned above. I also wrote a blog post on this exact
> topic about two months ago:
>
> http://people.planetpostgresql.org/greg/index.php?/archives/40-Getting-random-rows-from-a-database-table.html
> or
> http://makeashorterlink.com/?K5D25287D
>
> - --
> Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
> PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200607261611
> http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> iD8DBQFEx80nvJuQZxSWSsgRAlI+AJ4jgKZHPobK/rfiXJOmZ0AgxX+glQCeIVeu
> b2uKnN5zNCM/mbnh5/hqtg4=
> =MKEi
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


subject: [WikiEN-l] ref generator update

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> It would be neat if this was directly integrated into the
> editing-page, so like when you press an "add reference" button it
> would produce a popup with the page and when you press Generate (or
> whatever it is called) it would automatically add it to the position
> the cursor is at.
>
> Maybe some of our very talented script-writers could give this a think?
>
Or, we could start with a simple link below the edit box...

Magnus


body:
On 7/26/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Yes of course, but then the article history shows that someone
> else had edited the text after I was there, and the diff (included
> in the distribution or available by link to the Wikipedia website)
> shows exactly what my contribution was.  Does your filter program
> show its own modifications in the article history?

The GFDL doesn't require that a distributor make every previous
version available.


body:
On 7/26/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> And one more thing. If we are truly going to challenge google and yahoo
> at some point for internet search engine supremecy, this is the path to go.

No real reseason to do that. In any case the Open Directory Project
has been going since 1998 (about the same length as google) and has
never really challanged for the lead position in search technology.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/26/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:53:23PM -0700, mboverload wrote:
> > On 7/26/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Too bad MediaWiki isn't Java-based!
> > >
> >
> > *mboverload stabs Ben repeatedly in the chest*
>
> /me hands mboverload more scissors, knives, and sharpened chopsticks to
> continue the good work.

Love you guys, too. :)

I'm not saying MW should switch languages or that Java is a good choice of
language for this context. I'm simply noting that if MW used Java, then we
could slap the parser classes in GWT and get a nice portabe JavaScript
version of it.

Please don't construe this statement as a veiled snipe at PHP (or Java, or
any other language). It's just an observation of fact.

Ok - I did state one opinion... I'd rather write a big app in Java then
JavaScript. If you take issue w/ that you're welcome to take it offlist and
mail me privately, but let's do try to keep things professional and on-topic
on _this_ list. :)

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Dirk Riehle

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Onion on Wikipedia

body:
Just saw this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902

Enjoy!

Dirk

PS: In case you wonder what kind of magazine The Onion is, try our
favorite reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:53:23PM -0700, mboverload wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> >
> > Too bad MediaWiki isn't Java-based!
> >
>
> *mboverload stabs Ben repeatedly in the chest*

 /me hands mboverload more scissors, knives, and sharpened chopsticks to
continue the good work.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Brian K. Reid: "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006
> :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy

...

> OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge,
> please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be
> done ?

 Yes, I'll get in touch with the two other members shortly, and then we'll return with a wishlist.

--
// Wegge


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Jan-Paul Köster

subject: [Wikitech-l] tpl files

body:
Edit the [[Mediawiki:Sidebar]] page on your wiki.

Cheers,
JP

Frederik Eaton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to add a link to the sidebar in a modified version of
> MediaWiki. I changed 'sidebar' in Messages.php but the change is not
> reflected in the browser. Do I need to compile skins/MonoBook.php into
> skins/MonoBook.tpl or something? (and if so, how?)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Frederik
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] tpl files

body:
Ah, thanks.

Frederik

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:50:55PM +0200, Jan-Paul K?ster wrote:
> Edit the [[Mediawiki:Sidebar]] page on your wiki.
>
> Cheers,
> JP
>
>
> Frederik Eaton wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I'm trying to add a link to the sidebar in a modified version of
> >MediaWiki. I changed 'sidebar' in Messages.php but the change is not
> >reflected in the browser. Do I need to compile skins/MonoBook.php into
> >skins/MonoBook.tpl or something? (and if so, how?)
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Frederik
> >
> >
>

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:09:20 -0700, Ray Saintonge
><saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>You can't trust the fan sites.  And there's so much being produced that
>>it's difficult for even a site that limits itself to one genre to keep
>>up.  We have chosen to comprehensively attempt a documentation of all
>>genres to the point where many would see us as leading the pack in such
>>things.
>>
>>
>Hmmm.  Not what we're supposed to be for, though, is it?  Leading the
>pack in documenting things?  I thought we were supposed to collect
>information from reliable secondary sources?  Without novel syntheses?
>
I prefer to avoid preconceived ideas about what we're supposed to be
for.  Very recent material and ideas are the history of the future, but
it's difficult to know which will last.

>>Other, more "serious" subjects are still doing respectably
>>well, but our greatest success is in what many people see as trivial.
>>We still demand NPOV on these articles, but can be more relaxed about
>>original research.
>>
>>
>But we shouldn't be.  Unless we want to change our mission to being
>the *first* secondary source to document things neutrally from
>*primary* sources?
>
Whether we draw from primary or secondary sources shouldn't matter.

>>The good secondary material is just not there, and
>>you don't maintain a lead by waiting for other sites or books to put
>>something decent together.
>>
>>
>Who needs to maintain a lead in doing what is, after all, primarily a
>job of documenting a heavily commercialised fad largely aimed at
>extracting money from gullible kids?
>
I agree that much of these materials were designed to extract money, and
not just from kids.  It would also be nice to have articles on the
economics and marketting of entertainment products.  What would you
think of a warning to kids on each of these pop articles telling kids
how badly they are being ripped off. ;-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:00:30PM -0700, Ben Garney wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:53:23PM -0700, mboverload wrote:
> > > On 7/26/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Too bad MediaWiki isn't Java-based!
> > > >
> > >
> > > *mboverload stabs Ben repeatedly in the chest*
> >
> > /me hands mboverload more scissors, knives, and sharpened chopsticks to
> > continue the good work.
>
>
> Love you guys, too. :)

Good, it's mutual!

>
> Please don't construe this statement as a veiled snipe at PHP (or Java, or
> any other language). It's just an observation of fact.

I should help stab someone for choosing PHP, too, for that matter -- but
we work with what we've got.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The ability to quote is a serviceable
substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
I just replaced the content of my user page with the following.  I
thought I would mention this on the list, also, as the resulting
discussion might be useful.

I find the arguments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hillman to be
disturbing, sensible, and very worrying. I encourage everyone who reads
this to go read them, and think about them. As I understand them, the
central point is that Wikipedia, along with many other cultural forces,
are encouraging convenience over correctness, i.e. it's more important
to find an answer than the best answer. The specifics, which are as
important as the general issues, are that, even as the absolute number
of excellent article revisions stored on Wikipedia increases, the
percentage of non-misleading article revisions is decreasing; i.e.
people who want to use Wikipedia to mislead others are having more and
more sucess. This also is very disturbing to me, and causes me to
strongly reconsider my participation in Wikipedia - it is not good work
to do your part in polishing a building which is being increasingly
taken over by filth. I would be better off submitting corrections to
resources which are not suffering from this maledy. This is saddening.
I would love to hear any rebuttals, or even mere comments of sympathy,
on my talk page. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Jesse Weinstein


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
Just to be clear in the future:  In 2006, when you stabbed someone over the
internet for promoting Java...that was a joke.

Yeah.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-27

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is 30 times more popular than sex
	(actually: 34 times)

body:
On 7/26/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/07/the_mystery_of_the_golden_spru.html
>
> I love talking about mysterious tables. But from what I can see,
> wikipedia has surpassed our former most famous internet topic by far.
>
> I am not sure how people were counted who were looking for sex related
> articles in wikipedia :)

I think that table is actually about the top search terms that
Wikipedia receives traffic from. So "Wikipedia" is used in just over
3% of searches which end up in a hit to Wikipedia, and "sex" is used
in 0.1% of searches which end up in a hit to Wikipedia.

For a measure of how many people are searching for sex as opposed to
Wikipedia, try:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+sex
We're catching up! And while we're huge in Poland, sex is still huger.

What's still interesting though is that "sex" is still the third most
popular search term resulting in traffic to WP, after "Wikipedia" and
"wiki".

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
mboverload wrote:
[fixed top posting]
> On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
>>> episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
>>> Friends).
>> An article about an episode that cites nothing but the episode itself
>> is a poor article. It amounts to an article about the Mona Lisa simply
>> putting a high resolution copy of the image and saying "you can see
>> for yourself". In order not to violate NOR, we could say very little
>> about the episode. We couldn't say if it was good or bad. We couldn't
>> say what fans thought about it. We couldn't say if the jokes were
>> funny. We couldn't say it was the first time Rachael kissed Ross.
>>
>> We could say "The episode lasted 23 minutes". We could offer a plot
>> summary. We could describe some of the gags. How boring.
>>
>
> I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for episodes.
> Who's it going to hurt?
>

Ultimately, it will hurt the rest of Wikipedia; instead of doing
*useful* editing, people will be adding /every single detail/ about
/every single episode/ of /every single TV show that ever was/, instead
of focussing on areas where we have no information, very little
information, or information that is inaccurate or doesn't make sense.

There's the entirely seperate issue of approaching copyright
infringement (Wikipedia, your source of TV and movie scripts on teh
intarwebs!), but I suspect that the point will be lost on you.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] So you think you can be a Wikipedia article

body:
Three easy things:
1. Keep it verifiable.
2. Keep the included info encyclopedic (no hobbies or pets)
3. Apply rules as in WP:FICT for fictional characters. If they're not
important enough on their own, gather them in one article and use redirects.

Mgm


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait, does this mean Mediawiki is going to get some AJAX elements?  Has that
> been tried outside of Google in a large scale?

I'm disappointed to report that our Wikipedia article doesn't actually
contain a list of sites that use AJAX. But, I believe it's pretty
common these days.

Steve


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date formats

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I've removed almost all of the time and date functions from the
> Language*.php files of my working copy (now checked in as the
> localisation-work branch), replacing them by format strings in the style of
> PHP's date() function. They're much easier to understand than PHP code, so
> hopefully this will encourage people to review and edit them.
>
> There is a chance that I made a transcription error during this process, and
> there is also the chance that the original language files had an incorrect
> or non-ideal date format to start with. So I invite everyone to have a look
> at them. I formatted the date "15 January 2001, 12:34" in every defined date
> format in every language, and put all the resulting strings at:
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Date_formats
>
> One deliberate difference since the previous version of MediaWiki is to make
> our ISO 8601 formats technically correct. This format had been labelled "ISO
> 8601" since I introduced it to the wikitext date formatter, but somehow when
> it was copied to the language files, and a time format added, someone forgot
> to include the "T" separator between time and date. The ISO 8601 format was
> originally requested by Ray Saintonge in the interests of standardisation,
> and I would like to see MediaWiki remain true to that goal.
>
> You can find the format strings themselves in the Messages*.php files at:
>
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/localisation-work/phase3/languages/
>
> In other news, I think the localisation-work branch is now ready for beta
> testing.
>
> -- Tim Starling

The Vietnamese (vi) entry is incorrectly formatted. Instead of:

vi date: 15 1 n?m 2001 | 15 1 n?m 2001 | 15 1 n?m 2001 | 15 1 n?m 2001 |
2001-01-15
vi time: 12:34 | 12:34 | 12:34 | 12:34 | 12:34
vi both: 12:34, 15 th?ng 1 2001 | 12:34, th?ng 1 15, 2001 | 12:34, 15
th?ng 1 2001 | 12:34, 2001 th?ng 1 15 | 2001-01-15T12:34

It should read:

vi date: 15 th?ng 1 n?m 2001 | 15 th?ng XX n?m 2001 | 15/1/2001 |
15/1/2001 | 2001-01-15
vi time: 12:34 | 12:34 | 12:34 | 12h34 | 12:34
vi both: 12:34, ng?y 15 th?ng 1 n?m 2001 | 12:34, ng?y 15 th?ng XX n?m
2001 | 12:34, 15/1/2001 | 12:34, 15/1/2001 | 2001-01-15T12:34

Where XX maps to the following:

January		M?t
Feburary	Hai
March		Ba
April		T?
May		N?m
June		S?u
July		B?y
August		T?m
September	Ch?n
October		M??i
November	M??i m?t
December	M??i hai

Note that the Vietnamese localization doesn't use [[MediaWiki:January]]
etc. because the option for spelled-out month names isn't chosen by
default. See also Bug 5802.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


list: textbook-l

from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks in the press

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

snip

>One other thing is that the political uphevals on Wikibooks need to end
>now.  [[User:Jguk]] has suggested that all of the content removal and
>changes on Wikibooks havn't made that big of an impact on actual content
>development.  If you look carefully at the usage graph, there has
>actually been a plateu or even a slight drop in Wikibooks usage over the
>past six months, and I do think that has a direct correlation to the
>political turmoil that occured within the Wikibooks community.  Of
>course other plateus can be seen in the usage statistics, but it is
>something to think about.  I do think the large-scale content removal is
>now a thing of the past as many of the buried issues have now been
>brought forward and largely dealt with.
>
>About the only remaining "issue" left is to see what is going to happen
>with Wikiversity and if Wikiversity content is removed from Wikibooks,
>what kind of an impact that will have on remaining content on Wikibooks.
> Deciding what content is going to remain on Wikibooks is going to be a
>fun task to deal with.
>
>
I do not think the issue of what goes on Wikiversity vs. Wikibooks is
going to be much of a problem.

Somebody has decided that Wikibooks should not have links to other
online resources and has been busy deleting them so Wikibooks look like
self constained hardcopy books.    Personally I find this reduces the
utility of the reduced Wikibook substantially.    If others feel this
way then we may end up with annotated and linked internet ebooks or
study materials at Wikiversity while paper books in electronic form stay
at Wikibooks.   If this happens it should naturally segregate two
different audiences with difference preferences for the style of online
ebooks or study materials they find useful.

Your previous suggestion of forking the databases and letting the two
different communities make their own decisions regarding what to delete
and what to modify or integrate into the permanent databases seems
rather efficient to me.   I think it should minimize much of the
confusion and debate unless we have crossover participants attempting to
dictate policy percieved as beneficial to their native/preferred project
but hostile or detrimental to the visited project.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Onion article on Wikipedia

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Saw this on the administrators' noticeboard.
>>
>> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902
>
> Good example of why I can't stand the Onion. Fact and fiction (or
> satire, if you prefer) totally mixed together, with no way of knowing
> which is which.  Some of the satire is well targeted, like the crack
> about LCD's influence on the drafting of the US constitution (we do
> have that kind of problem), but some is nonsense, like the Chuck
> Norris mention or the misspelling in "American Inderpendance". The
> article could make some telling points about vandalism, and other
> points about inaccuracies or hoaxes, but instead mixes them together
> as if they were the same thing.
>
> Why isn't there any good satire?
>

You're not looking in the right place.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/25/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>James Hare wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
>>>
>>>
>>We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
>>
>>The last purchase was done in february :
>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
>>
>>ant
>>
>>
>Someone needs to suggest Resolution Stop Acquiring So Many Assets,
>considering all the legal issues that still aren't resolved.
>
You've just suggested it!   :-)   Great!

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

body:
Folks,

Jeff is actually trying to build a business based on reusing Wikipedia
content, and yet a good half of these posts attack him for making use of the
content.  Nowhere in our charter does it say that we're building an
immutable work.  Let people who want to tweak it, rename it, change my
username to a foul word, rename all mentions of Jimmy Wales to "Evil
Dictator" or whatever do so.  The source material is Wikipedia.  The end
users can't call theirs Wikipedia, since that's the WMF's trademark.  Beyond
that, we should be encouraging all uses --

On 7/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/26/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > Yes of course, but then the article history shows that someone
> > else had edited the text after I was there, and the diff (included
> > in the distribution or available by link to the Wikipedia website)
> > shows exactly what my contribution was.  Does your filter program
> > show its own modifications in the article history?
>
> The GFDL doesn't require that a distributor make every previous
> version available.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!!!

> And one more thing. If we are truly going to challenge google and
> yahoo
> at some point for internet search engine
> supremecy, this is the path to go. Google got there by seeding the
> internet with appliances which skulk and harvest
> content from the web with massive storage.

I never thought the appliances they sold (and that was their
revenue..) did ever participate in their global search. Is this
another myth used, or do you really believe they used spiders they
_sold_ to harvest information for them? Why did they build their
datacenters at all?
They did market their appliances as company-wide search boxen. Stuff
we do with lucenes.

> I am currently adding search engine capabilities combined with
> automated translation and wiki formatting so we can construct a search
> engine over time.

Search engine of what? "Distributed" in search engine context doesn't
mean John in Alaska is having a cluster with Jeb in Texas. It means
that people run datacenters with lots of servers stacked there, and
sub-millisecond medium connecting all that.
Unless, of course, you are following bittorrent lead.

> It will take us about two years to get where google is, but I have
> more powerful technology than
> they use, so over time, I think we can eventually get there and
> wikify the internet.

Um. You could share your technology, for common good, sure!

> With all revision pages its around 3 TB total.

That really requires advanced tech. At Wikipedia revision pages are
compressed, and a proper compression run contracts whole dataset into
0.5T or so (or less).

>> You forgot China and their needs!
> Good point. I don;t know where to start on that one, so some
> suggestions
> would be welcome. Perhaps I should post the filtering code somwhere
> and let folks who know
> better than I on the china issue create a categories template for
> filtering China content.

irony 1 |??r?n?; ?i?rn?| |?a?r?ni| |???r?ni|
noun ( pl. -nies)
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally
signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect :
?Don't go overboard with the gratitude,? he rejoined with heavy
irony. See note at wit .
? a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to
what one expects and is often amusing as a result : [with clause ]
the irony is that I thought he could help me.
? (also dramatic or tragic irony) a literary technique, originally
used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a
character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader
although unknown to the character.

> Well, that's also my view as well, I hate censorship, but like it or
> not, the conservative element of the US comprises 98% of the folks
> who run these organizations
> and have real $$$ to support Wikimedia

hypocrisy |hi?p?kris?| |h??p?kr?si| |h??p?kr?si|
noun ( pl. -sies)
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which
one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

> Greg got it ....

I did not :(

I just opened Five Pillars article, and I know that I may fail at
'code of conduct' sometimes, sorry, but, Wikipedia has neutral point
of view.
No 'please donate' buttons will make filtered forks (a.k.a. mirrors)
worth mentioning as "helping Wikipedia".
Filtered resource/mirror does not give full power to edit the free
content.
Sure, $$$ attracts business people, and we have few business people
here, but we have the pride of not taking that with strings attached.

We have pride to make free information resource ;-)

It would be an easy task to make a list of countries worth visiting
to provide wikifilter (I'm quite amused to find wikifilter.org is
still free ;-) - there're lots of things people should not know
(because it is all very very depressing (c) Colbert ;-)
But I hope foundation has more noble causes to exist.

Cheers,
Domas


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The status quo, as I understand it, is that for seriously popular
>> series/books etc, each major character can have its own article,
>> otherwise they should be grouped. Each instalment/book/episode can
>> have its own article. However, except for rare examples, *places* in
>> fictional universes do not get articles, nor do events, types of
>> vehicles (Star Wars is exceptional here) However, even still, minor
>
> Incidentally, how not to write a Wikipedia article on a fictional spacecraft:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-wing
>
> How to write a Wikipedia article on fictional spacecraft:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf_ships
>
> (note the massive difference in tone and focus)
>

I can't agree strongly enough. Another comparison (which you've picked
up on before):

Mark Gallagher wrote:
> I think a lot of our fiction articles could be dramatically improved
> by taking a real-world approach: "here is what this fictional entity
> should look like to people who aren't wrapped up in the fictional
> universe".  Our /Doctor Who/ articles largely get this right; our
> /Star Wars/ and particularly /Gundam/ articles often don't.  As a
> Trekkie, I haven't bothered looking at our /Star Trek/ collection,
> for fear it would only depress me.
>
> Compare [[Light saber]] with [[Dalek]].  Then choose any Gundam
> article at random, and marvel at the statistics presented therein,
> instantly forgetting any criticisms you may have had for [[Light
> saber]].

But, better than just saying "oh yes, it's such a shame that some of our
articles are complete crap" and doing nothing, we need to look at /why/
this happens. Here is a short true/false quiz which you should fill out
and submit (and pass!) before you will be allowed to continue this thread:

1. Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are cooler than Star Wars and Gundam

2. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are cooler than people who
watch Star Wars and Gundam

3. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are smarter than people who
watch Star Wars and Gundam

4. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are older than people who
watch Star Wars and Gundam

5. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are more mature than people
who watch Star Wars and Gundam

6. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who have a greater sense of
perspective than people who watch Star Wars and Gundam

7. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are more likely to live in
the real worlds than people who watch Star Wars and Gundam

8. People who watch Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are more attractive, make
better friends, and smell nicer than people who watch Star Wars and Gundam

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:

> > Whatever AJAX enhancements are made, let's try to stay clear of stuff
> > that changes the appearance of the page with every single keystroke.
> > Please.

> Well, about the edit preview, don't worry about. Our Parser is
> complicated enough that anything like that isn't happening soon.

It already has:
http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:
> On 7/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So what do you define as excessive fancruft? Surely  a [[Bulbasaur]] article
>> isn't considered fancruft? I'm afraid that personal hate of the subject and
>> reputation paranoia are in fact the number 1 reasons for calling something
>> fancruft. Any valid reason to exclude or delete such items could be
>> explained with the regular policies without dumping the fancruft label on
>> it.
>
> Any article on a fictional subject written largely as if the author
> were living in the fictional universe in question is fancruft.
>

Precisely. My preferred writing style for the lede of an article on a
"special subject" is:

"In (context) (subject) is..."

with the article going on to explain the subject not just in it's
specialised context, but with relation to the broader context it resides
in. This should be *strongly* enforced with respect to articles on
fictional subjects; otherwise, we're going to end up with ledes along
the lines of:

"In 'real life' (subject) is..."

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

body:
Lord Voldemort wrote:

>On 7/26/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I wouldn't object to some kind of fictional material graphic that could
>>be at the head of each relevant article.  It doesn't have to be really big.
>>
>>
>Encyclopedia. We don't need any such graphic, as it should be obvious
>that the subject matter is fiction.  --LV
>
Never assume that something which should be obvious actually is.
Cluebats should be big enough to do the job.  A few years someone on the
editorial staff at "Scientific American" was amazed to realize that many
readers of that magazine thought that most of the covers of the magazine
were photographs rather than artists' interpretations.

Ec


body:
Guettarda wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/26/06, Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Saw this on the administrators' noticeboard.
>>>
>>> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902
>> Good example of why I can't stand the Onion. Fact and fiction (or
>> satire, if you prefer) totally mixed together, with no way of knowing
>> which is which.  Some of the satire is well targeted, like the crack
>> about LCD's influence on the drafting of the US constitution (we do
>> have that kind of problem), but some is nonsense, like the Chuck
>> Norris mention or the misspelling in "American Inderpendance". The
>> article could make some telling points about vandalism, and other
>> points about inaccuracies or hoaxes, but instead mixes them together
>> as if they were the same thing.
>>
>> Why isn't there any good satire?
>>
>> Steve
>
>
> Interesting - the reason I like the Onion is that they mix fact and fiction
> together so well that you can't tell for sure.  But "American Inderpendence"
> makes me wonder if the person who wrote the article doesn't read AN/I and
> WikiEn-L - that spelling makes me think of Geni's unspellchecked
> contributions.  As for the Chuck Norris comment and the ERIC IS A FAG -
> suggests some familiarity with basic WP vandalism.  But didn't the Onion
> have a truly brilliam article about WP about a year or so ago?
>

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but to quote:

People will hate you for one of two reasons; either because they are
stupid, or because they are envious.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Brian Salter-Duke wrote:

>On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 05:10:20PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>On 7/25/06, Adam Lorenz <kungfuadam at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I suppose "limited access" would be the same as motorways. They have on and
>>>off ramps instead of at grade crossings.
>>>
>>>
>>In Australia, that's a freeway (or a tollway!). And highways have a
>>bit of both. Don't think we use the term "motorway" much, but we do
>>use "motorist". I'm also not sure which of "dual carriageway" and
>>"divided highway" we use more. See the confusion of Australia? We
>>recognise nearly all the terms, and have trouble arbitrarily deciding
>>which one to use.
>>
>>Steve
>>
>>
>
>And to even confuse it further we have the Calder freeway in Melbourne
>that has a stratch that is not limited access. There are cars coming in
>from all angles and cars crossing, and lots of people killing
>themselves. They have reduced the spped limit but it is stll called a
>freeway.
>
What seems to be a factor in "freeway" is whether it's free as in beer
when compared to a tollway, or free as in the liberty to move without
needing to worry about red lights or cross traffic.

Ec


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

> Disagree. I've talked to a lot of organizatons and groups who
> love WMF content but want to filter it for in-house use similiar
> to CleanFlix. Most educational facilities and religious groups
> who really love wikipedia want a "clean" version of the content,
> with most of the sexual revolution/pro-alternate lifestyle
> propoganda materials removed from the dumps.

You're confusing the issue.  Those groups *don't* love Wikipedia.
We're not here to accomodate and please.

Just consider the "conservative group" in Germany only 70 years
ago that didn't want all this "propaganda" for interracial
marriage, etc.  How would you adopt Wikipedia to suit them?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Mark Wagner wrote:
>
>> On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Wait a second, are we talking about copyright infringement,
>>> plagiarism, or legal use of non-free content?  These are three
>>> separate problems.  I thought the original post was talking about
>>> copyright infringement, but this new post talks about "taking somebody
>>> else's writing and passing it off as their own".
>>>
>>>
>> Most people don't distinguish between "plagiarism" and "copyright
>> infringement" when it comes to writing: the school system is very
>> effective at training people that simply copying the contents of the
>> Encyclopedia Britannica isn't an acceptable way of writing a report,
>> which is why we don't get very many instances of copyright violations
>> with text.
>>
> Using the work of a PD author without credit would still be plagiarism,
> but not copyvio.
>

As I understand it, under French (and possibly also German) law a
content creator has "moral rights" (ie. right to attribution) even after
copyright expires, which are (somehow) part of the copyright law.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV fork anyone? (coca cola)

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> ScottL wrote:
>> I was about to do this but one look at this query:
>>
>> http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%22Criticism+of%22&num=100&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org&as_rights=&safe=images
>>
>> and I realized it would take a very long time.  Looks like there may be
>> hundreds of these.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of
>
> Not that many; I count 33 excluding redirects.
>

I think there are 51 listed on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_POV_forks

Dalf


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] ref generator update

body:
On 7/26/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> > It would be neat if this was directly integrated into the
> > editing-page, so like when you press an "add reference" button it
> > would produce a popup with the page and when you press Generate (or
> > whatever it is called) it would automatically add it to the position
> > the cursor is at.
> >
> > Maybe some of our very talented script-writers could give this a think?
> >
> Or, we could start with a simple link below the edit box...
>
> Magnus

Very true, but you forget one thing. I, like many of my fellow
wikipedia editors (present mailinglist excluded), are lazy, petulent
and demands that things should be delivered on a platter to us. We're
really pretty decent, once you get to know us :P

My point is that even with your very neat reference generator and
Cite.php, citing is still not the easiest thing to do, especially for
people that are either new to wikipedia or simply not that skilled in
the technical aspects of modern computers. However, it is also
something we need to have, lots and lots of it. A little "add
reference" button would be a great help.

Then again, I realise that developers are busy and this is fairly low
priority. A small change in [[Mediawiki:<<whatever the hell the page
is called that controls what's between the edit box and the edit
summary box>>]] might be enough.

--Oskar


body:
Hi!

> What does this mean exactly?  Whose good?    Commerce is not evil,
> Wikipedia was born from it .... and is supported by it.

Um again.

> Wikipedia usage as a credible resource is the standard for measurement
> of its success.  If folks don't think its credible,
> or view it as a novelty, then it has failed.   Personal soapboxs
> aside.

I don't see direct link between [automated] censorship and credibility.

> I can think of nothing more powerful than every person on the
> planet one
> day owning their own personal wikipedia mirror.  Now that's freedom
> to edit.

I somehow stay at the idea that there's more freedom, when you can
edit wikipedia without owning a mirror. Unless you want to fork ;-)

> Food costs money, rent costs money, computers cost money, hosting
> costs
> money, internet connectivity costs money -- the strings are that
> Danny and
> Jimbo have to pay everyones bills to keep it going.

Now strings are defined by community, as community supports Wikipedia.
I'm not CFO, so I'm quite happy about that ;-)

And I'm happy if there's anyone else who would like to support
without strings attached (especially on content), let it be some nice
big foundation.

On the other hand, currently computers and hosting are enjoying
economy of scale - we run quite efficient system, and cost to run
personal mirror (cost per view) may be somewhat higher than the cost
wmf is facing. This is where community joins and assists with keeping
the site up.

> And I can back up what I promise with action and solid delivery  --
> not hot
> air :-).

Well, it is really nice that wikipedia activities attract people who
maintain the solid delivery!

> You have missed the point and I don't think understand my intentions.

Wikify the world? Intentions are clear, now the methods are not.
I guess concepts of distributed wikis might be better discussed at
wikitech-l rather than foundation-l. There it would be really more on
topic!

BR,
--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 7/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Limited access highway would probably be understood generically in most
>>of the US, but the term  would not normally be used in the context,
>>
>>
>For what it's worth (nothing), I (outside the US) have never heard the
>term "limited access" with respect to a road, ever. Or at least I
>intentionally forgot it for the purpose of making this statement.
>
>Actually that's not true - I've seen some country roads marked
>"limited access", meaning that only park rangers are allowed on them.
>And maybe the term is occasionally used in cities to indicate roads
>that large trucks, or unauthorised people aren't allowed to use.
>
I think these are more correctly "restricted access" instead of "limited
access", and that usage more frequently applies to roads that are not
highways.

Ec


body:
Adam Lorenz wrote:

>I suppose "limited access" would be the same as motorways. They have on and
>off ramps instead of at grade crossings.
>
To what extent would rounabouts still be used on these in the UK?

Ec


body:
Richard Holton wrote:

>On 7/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Richard Holton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'd say that definition is unusual, even in the US. In common usage, a
>>>limited-access highway is a divided highway, with no cross roads--instead
>>>using on & off ramps.
>>>
>>>
>>Limited access highway would probably be understood generically in most
>>of the US, but the term  would not normally be used in the context,
>>"Take the limited access highway to get there."  Instead people would
>>say, "Take the freeway (or expressway, or Interstate, or turnpike
>>according to local custom)."
>>
>>
><chuckle> I talk that way all the time, don't you? You're correct, or
>course, (virtually) no one talks that way, but as you say, most would
>understand the term.
>
Having nobody talk that way is one of the strongest arguments for using
the term.  :-)   I suspect that it's mostly used among those who work at
planning, designing, and engineering road systems.

>>>In fact, "expressway" seems like a good synonym (to my very US-centric ears).
>>>
>>>
>>I don't think that its usage is uniform throughout the USA.
>>
>>
>Given the other responses, you seem to be correct.
>
>Perhaps we need to stay away from any of the regional/national/continental
>terms for the category name. We don't need to create a neologism--we could
>use a short descriptive phrase that gives a hint as to the meaning, and rely
>on text on the category page to clarify.
>
>Something like "Ramped roads", though I'm sure others will have better
>ideas.
>
"Ramped roads" give me visions of Evel Knievel.

Ec


body:
SPUI wrote:

>Richard Holton wrote:
>
>
>>I'd say that definition is unusual, even in the US. In common usage, a
>>limited-access highway is a divided highway, with no cross roads--instead
>>using on & off ramps.
>>
>>The USGS offers this common-sense definition:
>>Limited Access Highway: A route that is part of the United States Interstate
>>Highway System or other similar expressway.
>>(http://www-atlas.usgs.gov/metadata/roadtrl020.faq.html)
>>
>>In fact, "expressway" seems like a good synonym (to my very US-centric
>>ears).
>>
>>
>Would you call this an expressway?
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:San_Tomas_Expressway.jpg
>A number of states do, both in official and common usage.
>
I wouldn't.  My earliest recollections of "expressways" were
commemoratively named limited access highways in the Detroit area.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
I've given Daniel Kinzler (Duesentrieb) subversion write access, for work
relating to an AJAX category tree extension which he has written. Daniel has
been a known and respected member of the community for some time.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

> I simply provide filtering mechanisms they can use to filter the
> dumps. That's up to the users, not me. I personally don't care
> what's in it.

I find this deeply problematic.  Are you providing your audience
with a product that says "this is Wikipedia" and where the edit
history for an article says "this part was written by user:LA2"
but where the stuff I wrote might be filtered out?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
On 7/26/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/26/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is it not, theoretically speaking, possible for someone just to assert
> > > ownership of it, and upload it under public domain? They can take full
> > > responsibility for any (highly unlikely) challenge to their ownership
> > > of it coming from the family or estate or whatever?
> > >
> > > (but in any case, yes, this is a sad situation)
> > >
> > > Steve
> >
> >
> >
> > I'd sooner make the (somewhat suspect) claim of fair use - after all, it's
> > an article about the subject, etc.
>
> In thoery you could ask his estate but they might be difficult to get hold of.
>
>
> --
> geni

I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
important.

--Oskar


body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> >I find this deeply problematic.  Are you providing your audience
> >with a product that says "this is Wikipedia" and where the edit
> >history for an article says "this part was written by user:LA2"
> >but where the stuff I wrote might be filtered out?
> >
> That's what the GFDL is all about **ANYONE** may edit. This also means
> **ANYONE** can edit or filter out materials.

Yes of course, but then the article history shows that someone
else had edited the text after I was there, and the diff (included
in the distribution or available by link to the Wikipedia website)
shows exactly what my contribution was.  Does your filter program
show its own modifications in the article history?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: James Hare

body:
Jeff is making his own business with these? I thought he was just trying to
help Wikipedia with his assistance.

Either way, I am pleased with his efforts.

On 7/27/06, Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> Jeff is actually trying to build a business based on reusing Wikipedia
> content, and yet a good half of these posts attack him for making use of
> the
> content.  Nowhere in our charter does it say that we're building an
> immutable work.  Let people who want to tweak it, rename it, change my
> username to a foul word, rename all mentions of Jimmy Wales to "Evil
> Dictator" or whatever do so.  The source material is Wikipedia.  The end
> users can't call theirs Wikipedia, since that's the WMF's
> trademark.  Beyond
> that, we should be encouraging all uses --
>
> On 7/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/26/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > > Yes of course, but then the article history shows that someone
> > > else had edited the text after I was there, and the diff (included
> > > in the distribution or available by link to the Wikipedia website)
> > > shows exactly what my contribution was.  Does your filter program
> > > show its own modifications in the article history?
> >
> > The GFDL doesn't require that a distributor make every previous
> > version available.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
Erik Moeller-3 wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
>> > Whatever AJAX enhancements are made, let's try to stay clear of stuff
>> > that changes the appearance of the page with every single keystroke.
>> > Please.
>> Well, about the edit preview, don't worry about. Our Parser is
>> complicated enough that anything like that isn't happening soon.
> It already has:
> http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/
>
For some reason that link is not working for me: I get what looks like HTML
or XML source code.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/New-SVN-user-tf2004976.html#a5520699
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
On Jul 27, 2006, at 1:08 AM, Jesse W wrote:

> I just replaced the content of my user page with the following.  I
> thought I would mention this on the list, also, as the resulting
> discussion might be useful.
>
> I find the arguments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hillman
> to be
> disturbing, sensible, and very worrying. I encourage everyone who
> reads
> this to go read them, and think about them. As I understand them, the
> central point is that Wikipedia, along with many other cultural
> forces,
> are encouraging convenience over correctness, i.e. it's more important
> to find an answer than the best answer. The specifics, which are as
> important as the general issues, are that, even as the absolute number
> of excellent article revisions stored on Wikipedia increases, the
> percentage of non-misleading article revisions is decreasing; i.e.
> people who want to use Wikipedia to mislead others are having more and
> more success. This also is very disturbing to me, and causes me to
> strongly reconsider my participation in Wikipedia - it is not good
> work
> to do your part in polishing a building which is being increasingly
> taken over by filth. I would be better off submitting corrections to
> resources which are not suffering from this malady. This is saddening.
> I would love to hear any rebuttals, or even mere comments of sympathy,
> on my talk page. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:03, 27 July 2006
> (UTC)
>
> Jesse Weinstein

There is a profound contradiction between knowledge and the social
construction of knowledge. Wikipedia is about knowledge in all its
flavors, Fox News, Democracy Now, or the People's Daily are about
social construction of knowledge, advancing one point of view for the
good of society.

I do agree that in medical articles it might be best to emphasis the
mainstream view. Sometimes it is wise to not confuse folks.

But I note you discuss filth. What in your opinion constitutes
"filth"? Could you also give a few examples of misleading information?

Fred


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 7/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> important.
>
> --Oskar

I don't see why it's such a special unique case.  Wikipedia's
copyright policies are flawed, and this is one example of it.

By the way, isn't there a rule that fair use only applies in articles?

Anthony


references:
<44C71BE9.7090600@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<2B28031F-E1B6-473A-B15A-AB412A79971F@gmail.com>
	<44C79504.2080402@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<ea84gl$3l7$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!!!!
>
>> revolution/pro-alternate lifestyle propoganda materials
>> removed from the dumps.
>
> You forgot China and their needs!
>
> Anyway, I'm somewhat confused. You disagree with idea that foundation is
> more worthy cause to support Wikipedia, than buying filtering hardware.
>
>> from much of the topics, or perceived erotic imagery in many of the
>> articles. My tools let you filter import XML dumps
>
> Do your filters try to count how much pink is in picture? :)
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure censoring Wikipedia is helping Wikipedia.
> And I'm not sure anyone limiting access to proper wikipedia content is
> helping Wikipedia either.
>
> I guess there're more books which contain violence (say... smiting in
> Bible), which should be definitely filtered.
>

Yes, the Bible is full of violence, sex, and lots of other "nasty
stuff"; and so is Wikipedia. Sure, you can filter them, but you're going
to end up with a lot of holes.

A better use of time/effort would be not to filter articles on their
subject area, but on their quality; if you have the time, going through
an article to find which is the "best" revision and then letting
everyone else know, and/or making a list of what the "best" articles
are, will ultimately be more productive than filtering out a (hopefully
NPOV) decent article because you don't think that your readers should
have access to this kind of information.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!!!!
>
>> revolution/pro-alternate lifestyle propoganda materials
>> removed from the dumps.
>
> You forgot China and their needs!
>
> Anyway, I'm somewhat confused. You disagree with idea that foundation is
> more worthy cause to support Wikipedia, than buying filtering hardware.
>
>> from much of the topics, or perceived erotic imagery in many of the
>> articles. My tools let you filter import XML dumps
>
> Do your filters try to count how much pink is in picture? :)
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure censoring Wikipedia is helping Wikipedia.
> And I'm not sure anyone limiting access to proper wikipedia content is
> helping Wikipedia either.
>
> I guess there're more books which contain violence (say... smiting in
> Bible), which should be definitely filtered.
>

Yes, the Bible is full of violence, sex, and lots of other "nasty
stuff"; and so is Wikipedia. Sure, you can filter them, but you're going
to end up with a lot of holes.

A better use of time/effort would be not to filter articles on their
subject area, but on their quality; if you have the time, going through
an article to find which is the "best" revision and then letting
everyone else know, and/or making a list of what the "best" articles
are, will ultimately be more productive than filtering out a (hopefully
NPOV) decent article because you don't think that your readers should
have access to this kind of information.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!!!!
>
>> revolution/pro-alternate lifestyle propoganda materials
>> removed from the dumps.
>
> You forgot China and their needs!
>
> Anyway, I'm somewhat confused. You disagree with idea that foundation is
> more worthy cause to support Wikipedia, than buying filtering hardware.
>
>> from much of the topics, or perceived erotic imagery in many of the
>> articles. My tools let you filter import XML dumps
>
> Do your filters try to count how much pink is in picture? :)
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure censoring Wikipedia is helping Wikipedia.
> And I'm not sure anyone limiting access to proper wikipedia content is
> helping Wikipedia either.
>
> I guess there're more books which contain violence (say... smiting in
> Bible), which should be definitely filtered.
>

Yes, the Bible is full of violence, sex, and lots of other "nasty
stuff"; and so is Wikipedia. Sure, you can filter them, but you're going
to end up with a lot of holes.

A better use of time/effort would be not to filter articles on their
subject area, but on their quality; if you have the time, going through
an article to find which is the "best" revision and then letting
everyone else know, and/or making a list of what the "best" articles
are, will ultimately be more productive than filtering out a (hopefully
NPOV) decent article because you don't think that your readers should
have access to this kind of information.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!!!!
>
>> revolution/pro-alternate lifestyle propoganda materials
>> removed from the dumps.
>
> You forgot China and their needs!
>
> Anyway, I'm somewhat confused. You disagree with idea that foundation is
> more worthy cause to support Wikipedia, than buying filtering hardware.
>
>> from much of the topics, or perceived erotic imagery in many of the
>> articles. My tools let you filter import XML dumps
>
> Do your filters try to count how much pink is in picture? :)
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure censoring Wikipedia is helping Wikipedia.
> And I'm not sure anyone limiting access to proper wikipedia content is
> helping Wikipedia either.
>
> I guess there're more books which contain violence (say... smiting in
> Bible), which should be definitely filtered.
>

Yes, the Bible is full of violence, sex, and lots of other "nasty
stuff"; and so is Wikipedia. Sure, you can filter them, but you're going
to end up with a lot of holes.

A better use of time/effort would be not to filter articles on their
subject area, but on their quality; if you have the time, going through
an article to find which is the "best" revision and then letting
everyone else know, and/or making a list of what the "best" articles
are, will ultimately be more productive than filtering out a (hopefully
NPOV) decent article because you don't think that your readers should
have access to this kind of information.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 7/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 7/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> > fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> > we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> > copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> > christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> > important.
> >
> > --Oskar
>
> I don't see why it's such a special unique case.  Wikipedia's
> copyright policies are flawed, and this is one example of it.
>
> By the way, isn't there a rule that fair use only applies in articles?
>

Am I missing something here? The image in the fr-wikipedia is under
CreativeCommons, and this was made by the owner of the copyright, Treanna
himself [
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Norbert3.jpg&diff=2396051&oldid=701771].
Doesn't mean that the image on en-wikipedia also counts as CreativeCommons?

(that's diving right back into the process part of this whole thing, though)

--DP


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Today, we grab free images from sites like Flikr and don't even
>> contact the photographer... What a tremendous opportunity to bring in
>> more photographers. But it seems that, as a whole, Wikipedia is not
>> that interested in attracting photographers.
>
> Whenever I use a photographer's work from Flickr or anywhere else
> (CC-licensed, etc) I try and leave a comment on their photo.
> Generally it's much appreciated.
>
> I think a big mistake in our Flickr-sifting efforts is that we provide
> no feedback to those whose photos we use.  Perhaps just because it's
> easier not to or something, but comments are encouragement, and people
> who free-license stuff generally like to hear that stuff is
> appreciated.
>

What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to Commons.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>> (Personally, I don't object to [[Category:Freeways]] any more than I
>> would [[Category:Elevators]])
>
> [[Category:Diet sodas]] is an interesting one. Not even all Americans
> use it. Someone must have gotten confused.
>

You can get non-low-calorie sodium compounds?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikizilla error

body:
Software error:

DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Got error 28 from storage engine [for
Statement "SELECT versions.value, products.name FROM versions,
products WHERE products.id = versions.product_id ORDER BY
versions.value"] at Bugzilla/DB.pm line 62
	Bugzilla::DB::SendSQL('SELECT versions.value, products.name FROM
versions, products ...') called at globals.pl line 155
	main::GenerateVersionTable() called at globals.pl line 356
	main::GetVersionTable() called at
/srv/org/wikimedia/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi line 59

For help, please send mail to the webmaster (noc at wikimedia.org),
giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

Got this when clicking on the link at the top of the new message when
editing a too-long page on en.

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
On 7/27/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
> I just replaced the content of my user page with the following.  I
> thought I would mention this on the list, also, as the resulting
> discussion might be useful.
>
> I find the arguments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hillman to be
> disturbing, sensible, and very worrying. I encourage everyone who reads
> this to go read them, and think about them. As I understand them, the
> central point is that Wikipedia, along with many other cultural forces,
> are encouraging convenience over correctness, i.e. it's more important
> to find an answer than the best answer. The specifics, which are as
> important as the general issues, are that, even as the absolute number
> of excellent article revisions stored on Wikipedia increases, the
> percentage of non-misleading article revisions is decreasing; i.e.
> people who want to use Wikipedia to mislead others are having more and
> more sucess. This also is very disturbing to me, and causes me to
> strongly reconsider my participation in Wikipedia - it is not good work
> to do your part in polishing a building which is being increasingly
> taken over by filth. I would be better off submitting corrections to
> resources which are not suffering from this maledy. This is saddening.
> I would love to hear any rebuttals, or even mere comments of sympathy,
> on my talk page. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The flaw of this argument is that it projects the ails of a small
number of articles -- primarily topics of current political and social
interest -- onto an overwhelming majority of articles that don't
suffer from them.  Our coverage of the Cassowary is not given
(purposeful) misinformation, our article on the Siege of Florence
doesn't really resemble a blog, and so forth.

In other words: alarm is not called for at this point.  Despite the
failings of a (relatively) miniscule number of articles, the vast
underbelly of historical, scientific, and literary topics that
includes most of our coverage is steadily moving forward with "proper"
encyclopedic work.

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
>> ...the central point is that Wikipedia, along with many other cultural
>> forces, are encouraging convenience over correctness,

This is indeed a widespread and discouraging trend.

>> people who want to use Wikipedia to mislead others are having more and
>> more sucess.
>
> ...alarm is not called for at this point.  Despite the
> failings of a (relatively) miniscule number of articles, the vast
> underbelly of historical, scientific, and literary topics that
> includes most of our coverage is steadily moving forward with "proper"
> encyclopedic work.

Agreed.  However: it's worth noting that Wikipedia is now *BIG*.
Whereas once we had only to worry about high school kids
inserting misinformation for fun, and later about individual POV
warriors and fanatics who couldn't change their mind and wouldn't
change the subject, now we're subject to organized propaganda
campaigns of arbitrary sophistication.  The antivandalism efforts
that have worked for us in the past may not always be up to the
task of defending against powerful interests who've realized that
Wikipedia is becoming a one-stop shopping center for information
and is therefore a "must have" venue for their particular
misinformation.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
Jesse W wrote:

>I just replaced the content of my user page with the following.  I
>thought I would mention this on the list, also, as the resulting
>discussion might be useful.
>
Hmm, didn't you just a couple days ago dismiss my
observations in the same vein with a "go make your own fork"?

To some extent, Hillman is overreacting; out of curiosity I
spot-checked some of his articles, and other people's edits I saw
since he stopped working on them a year ago were to fix typos,
update template usage, and the like, the text itself being
carefully preserved. It seems that even the vandals are
intimidated by his contributions. :-)

Even so, many of his observations are spot on, and we always need
to be thinking about whether our social structure is actually
serving the overall goal, or just keeping us busy.

Stan


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/27/06, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 10:15:00AM -0600, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> > Making WP more pervasive also means
> > accomodating folks who have differing views and values.
>
> That's what NPOV was supposed to do. Ut oh!

NPOV, used properly, makes life bearable for a broad spectrum of *editors*.

NPOV does nothing to help someone who has decided that an image of a
penis will scar their children for life.


from_name: Kim Bruning

in_reply_to:
<44C79504.2080402@wolfmountaingroup.com>;
	from jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com on Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at
	10:15:00AM -0600

body:
On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 10:15:00AM -0600, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> Making WP more pervasive also means
> accomodating folks who have differing views and values.

That's what NPOV was supposed to do. Ut oh!

read you soon,
	Kim Bruning

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks in the press

body:
Another story: http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-07-27/news/message.html

I am curious why did these people decide not to continue to use Wikibooks for developing their textbooks but created new wiki page instead. Was the reason our license, technical limits of the MediaWiki software or something else?

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
> > Well, about the edit preview, don't worry about. Our Parser is
> > complicated enough that anything like that isn't happening soon.
>
> It already has:
> http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/

Yes, but for corner case stuff its output differs from MediaWiki. In
other words, what you see is not always what you're going to get. For
example:

* "JavaS&#x0000063;r&#x0000069;&#00000112;&#x0000000074;"
renders as that on WikiWSY, but renders as "JavaScript" on MediaWiki.

* "&60;" renders on the Parser as "&60;", but on WikiWSY it doesn't show up.

* Don't get the ISBN / RFC / PubMed autolinking (e.g. "ISBN 1903")

* Nested links render differently - e.g. "[[a link[[b]]]]" renders
like "[[a link<href>b</href>]]" on MediaWiki, but like "<href>a
link</href>" on WikiWSY (drops the "b").

* a line with just "'''a" renders as <bold>a</bold> on MediaWiki, but
as "a" (no bold) on WikiWSY.

* "{|{|\nx" renders as blank on WikiWSY, but shows an "x" on MediaWiki.

* "
aaa
<nowiki>xxxx</nowiki>" renders as that string on
WikiWSY, but shows as "aaa\nxxxxx" on MediaWiki.

But I do think WikiWSY is impressive. Getting something client-side
that matches the server-side Parser for core functionality is very
hard. Getting something that's "quirk-compatible" for the less common
stuff is very very hard (and would probably require literally porting
Parser.php from PHP to JavaScript; and then keeping it updated as
Parser.php changed - lots & lots & lots of work; it could even be
easier to write a custom PHP-to-JavaScript "compiler" to do it
automatically).

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project
 boring to death

body:
Silas Snider wrote:

>Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
>legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
>right to even host the image.
>
It would be nice if people who put up these claims about protecting us
had half a clue about what they are saying.  Such legal proceedings are
always possible no matter what we do.  So too is winning the big prize
in a national lottery.  If you sign a binding agreement to donate 50% of
that prize to WMF when you win it, I would suggest that the Board not
make that eventuality a prominent part of its future plans.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> It already has:
> http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/

OMFGWTFBBQ that is awesome! I love:
 - it immediately highlights in the output where you are in your
input. That's one of the slowest parts of non-wysiwyg editing - trying
to match up the output and input. (it could be even more awesome if
you could click on the output and be taken to the corresponding part
of the input)
 - you only see a small part of the output, but it scrolls up and down
as you scroll up and down the input.

I drool.

Steve


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:BLP issue at Fred Phelps

body:
I had my attention drawn to the following passage in the Fred Phelps
article:

"Phelps also wrote a book in the 1980s with his son-in-law, [[Brent D.
Roper]], called ''The Conspiracy''. In the book, Roper and Phelps claim
to possess evidence that [[AIDS]] was spontaneously generated in
[[Africa]]; [[Truman Capote]] contracted the disease during an orgy with
African tribesmen; Capote then gave the disease to [[John F. Kennedy]]
and [[Marilyn Monroe]] by playing [[American football|football]] with
them; and that the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] [[assassin]]ated
all three to prevent the spread of the disease. Phelps published and
distributed the book himself; it was also sold in the back of [[Peter J.
Peters]] catalogue of [[extremist]] literature, and thus became a widely
circulated text among such groups as the [[Ku Klux Klan]], [[Aryan
Brotherhood]], and [[Christian Identity]]."

A similar passage appeared at [[Brent D. Roper]].  I appreciate the
internet isn't the best place to try and source things, but the anon
user 69.154.189.180
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=69.154.189.180
who added the above passages provided one link, which I don't consider a
reliable source, and I haven't turned any good ones up that aren't WP
mirrors on google.

The link in question is http://blank.org/addict/chapter9.html and
purports to be a transcript of a lawsuit, although it appears, according
to this site, that the lawsuit files have been sealed by the judge.
This info was added to the Phelps article on the 12th July 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fred_Phelps&diff=prev&oldid=18655419
and was the basis of the creation of the Roper article on the 12th July
2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brent_D._Roper&oldid=18655128
and has remained pretty much in place ever since, over one year.

I've removed the passages per [[WP:BLP]].  I have no axe to grind here,
as a UK citizen I have no idea who Phelps is, but I feel strongly that
information should be verifiable.  That the article on Fred Phelps is
featured, and was featured with the information in, despite there being
no reliable sources provided, suggests flaws in the Wikipedia process.

I'm attempting a wikibreak, details outlined on my talk page, but I want
to bring this to people's attentions.  I figure that a large number of
eyeballs from participants on this list directed to the passage I
removed from the Fred Phelps article will ascertain whether it was the
right thing to do, in case I have the wrong end of the stick.
Appreciate people's time here,

Steve block

--
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