body:
John Lee wrote:

> As for clandestine activities, that was another, well, I think you can
> only call it strawmanning. I never mentioned their names - I think
> highly of Jimbo and Angela (I don't know Anthere well enough). It's just
> rather odd and a bit annoying that the majority of editors who could and
> would benefit from this still aren't informed, because they don't
> subscribe to the mailing list.

When I first became involved it was mandatory that a person join the
mailing list before he could become a sysop.  It's unfortunate that that
is no longer the case.

Each of us is limited in the number of lists and pages that he can
monitor.  Once we reach that limit we just stop looking for more things
to monitor.  The mailing lists alone now provide me with close to 100
messages per day.  There are also several in-project pages that I look
at regularly that are more specific to the tasks that I have accepted.
I can't take the time to monitor everything that happens on meta or the
foundation pages or on Wikipedia's Village Pump, or to fully participate
in the endless debates and votes about policy minutiae.  This does not
reflect a lack of interest, but a lack of time.

Perhaps a more serious look needs to be taken at how general
communications are handled to insure that those who should know about
something are properly informed.  At the very least all sysops for all
projects should be required to join a general mailing list.  (Just which
list may still be an open question.)

Ec


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Joel Reed

subject: [Wikitech-l] [patch] blog thru User_talk and enchanced rdf feed

body:
On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 09:39:02PM -0400, Sj wrote:
> This sounds neat.  Why not create a new user page, however?  The user
> talk page already has lots of neat functionality for letting users
> know when they have new messages from *others*, one of many things you
> lose by protecting it and making it a space for a blog.   You could
> then add another sidebar link for adding a blog entry.

i'm not sure i know enough about mediawiki hacking to do this, but
i like your idea. feel free to hack on my code if you like.

jr

>
>
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:18:34 -0400, Joel Reed <jreed at ddiworld.com> wrote:
> > A relatively small set of changes allows users to use all
> > of mediawiki's great formatting and hyperlinking capabilities
> > to blog thru their User talk page.
> >
> > The following patch provides the capability to blog through
> > Mediawiki's user talk page by providing a simple option to
> > post new sections to the top of the user talk page, and
> > providing a SpecialTalkfeed.php page, based on SpecialRecentchanges.php
> > which includes the section content in the RDF feed so that
> > the blog may be nicely aggregrated by tools like PlanetPlanet.
> > (See http://www.planetplanet.org/)
> >
> > Changes in patch
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > 1) Adds a new special page, SpecialTalkfeed.php
> > 2) Adds new preference, "Add all new sections to the top
> > of the page by default"
> > 3) When adding a new section, and only then, adds option
> > to "Add this new section to the top of the page".
> > 4) Adds a "rdf feed" hyperlink when on a user talk page.
> >
> > How do you run a blog out of the User Talk page?
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > 1) Under editing preferences, turn on "Add all new sections
> > to the top of the page by default".
> > 2) If a Sysop, protect the page. (It would be nice if non-sysops
> > could protect their User_talk pages)
> > 3) To make a new blog post, click "+" for "add new section".
> > NOTE: If you didn't change your preferences above, be sure to
> > select "Add this new section to the top of the page" at the
> > bottom of the page before saving.
> > 4) Thats it! The "rdf feed" option at the top of the User talk
> > page gives a link to a feed that should be used for aggregators.
>
> --
> +sj+
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Joel W. Reed                                    412-257-3881
----------   http://home.comcast.net/~joelwreed/  ----------


list: foundation-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Foundation-l] questions about complying with the GFDL

body:
Delirium wrote:

>
> So really to summarize, my questions are:
> --- Do I really have to print the full text of the GFDL?  It's not a
> very short document relative to a small pamphlet.
> --- Do I really have to make available the exact source of my pamphlet?
>
Pragmatic solution would be:
* Don't print the source, and print olny a link to the GFDL
* Wait for wikimedia foundation to sue you, which it won't, because
you're obviuosly acting well within "the spirit"

I know that the copyright for each edit lies with the author of that
edit, so theoretically an individual author *could* complain, but I
don't think that's likely, etiher.

Magnus


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Well, I can remember that I have tried my darndest to get the
> en:wikipedia resource "Three of Life" to consider working towards a
> unified Taxobox that is acceptable to *all* Wikipedia. I was basically
> ignored with the argument, "see our arguments in the archives it was a
> hard slug to get this far we do not want any more of this". I have
> presented arguments about things that were wrong for
> internationalisation eg [[Animal]]ia in stead of [[Animalia]], I
> stated that the mentioning of "Bionominal name" does not add anything
> as it is inherent in "Scientific classification". The only result was
> "we have voted on this, this is our consensus".
>
So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".

That's why we're concerned about forking; the underlying reasons
seem to be interpersonal conflicts in existing wikis, rather than
a clearcut difference in content.

It would be great to have a common store for language-independent
information, but not only is there a commons to serve just that role,
but without higher-powered database and wiki machinery than is
currently available or being worked on, wikispecies is inevitably
going to be another pile of per-language data that partly duplicates
wikipedia content. Then the board will be faced with the really
enjoyable decision of whether to perpetuate the fork or put an end
to it...

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] XML - Status?

body:
How's the wiki-to-XML parser coming along? Do we have a DTD or a list of
used XML tags/attributes yet? How about some demo output?

Even if the parser is not yet complete, work on the XML-to-XHTML part in
PHP could start for tags that are likely to be stable.

Magnus


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
> like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".

I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."

> It would be great to have a common store for language-independent
> information, but not only is there a commons to serve just that role,
> but without higher-powered database and wiki machinery than is
> currently available or being worked on, wikispecies is inevitably
> going to be another pile of per-language data that partly duplicates
> wikipedia content.

It is my intention that we work early and hard on questions of
software development to meet these needs.  I am confident that
Benedict and others who are excited about this will be working hard to
find development help to get the additions they need.

Keep in mind: the initial mission of wikispecies.org is to resolve
these questions first.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] A great, free encyclopedia

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> So I'm concerned that NPOV could be seen as something disposable.  It is
> always under pressure from tendentious contributions, as it is.

Of course, I'm entirely inflexible on any of the issues of greatness,
neutrality, and freedom.  We will be all 3.

--Jimbo


from_name: Wil Mahan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stripping HTML comments

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> * strip things (comments, inter-wiki links and categories) first
> * then merge whitespace using something like:
>     preg_replace ("/\n *\n( *\n)+/g", "\n\n");
>     also remove all \n's at the beginning and end of the source text
> * then do all the remaining parsing

This might be a good thing to do anyway, but we would still need to
consider newlines when stripping comments because if you have this:

	Paragraph 1
	<!-- a comment -->
	Paragraph 2

it should become this:

	Paragraph 1
	Paragraph 2

i.e. there shouldn't be any paragraph break, so only removing empty
paragraphs isn't enough.

The current code tries to do something like "if a comment is preceded
by a newline and followed by a newline (ignoring spaces), then remove
one of those newlines and all surrounding spaces when removing the
comment". But that seems difficult implement correctly and efficiently,
as bug 487 demonstrates.

> Since I don't know much about the confusing structure of the current
> not-really-a-parser, and I prefer working on my lex/yacc solution :),

I agree that a parser rewrite is sorely needed, so thanks.

-- Wil

__________________________________
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Approval marking (was: Why Academics are Useful to
	Wikipedia)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>For more than 90% of articles, there have been no reversion wars. The
>latest version is accurate, uncontroversial and fairly well
>spell-checked & copy-edited.
>
>Of the remaining 10% of articles, there are some subjects which would
>benefit from some sort of approval marking system. Still, I hope for
>these that we will include the 'development version' along with any
>'approved' versions in Wikipedia 1.0 print or DVD publications.
>
>For that fraction of 1% which are highly controversial, approval marking
>is not really an issue. No academic or cleric has sufficient authority
>to settle the hottest disputes of our times.
>
>So let's concentrate on putting into effect a system which will boost
>consumer acceptance of 90% to 99% of our articles. Librarians aren't
>warning students against our global warming or Invasion of Iraq articles
>-- or at least we don't care much if they do. But it would be nice if
>our math and physics articles, as well as our non-controversial history
>and biology articles, could get some respect.
>
This is all very sensible.  The 1% that you speak of attract a lot of
activity which generates far more heat than light.

There is no need to be compulsive about including everything in a first
edition if we are confident that there will be further editions.  The
knowledge that there will be further editions should guide us in
ruthlessly trimming the contents of the first to what will put our best
foot forward, and which gives a promise of more and better things to come.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
Andreas Hoerstemeier wrote:
> The content covered by Wikispecies is a project worth doing, it being
> separate from Wikipedia might turn out to be not a fork, yet the way it
> was created leaves a bad taste.

I agree completely, I have apologized to Mav and made some peace
there, and pledge that we will take much more careful steps in the
future to make sure that this sort of miscommunication and
misunderstanding will not happen.

Of course, human relations being what they are, troubles will always
happen somehow.  But we can try our best, and that's what I hope to
do.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

body:
Fredrik Adev?g wrote:
> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
>
> Full name: gothic
>
> Language code: got
>
> Number of speakers: 0
>
> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> much more.

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

I offer this only as background for those who may wish to research and
think about this.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
John Lee wrote:

> The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
> hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
> clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
> if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
> So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
> not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
> even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
> just what's going on.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]] on En)
>
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> <snip></snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Daniel Mayer (who is now seriously re-evaluating his participation
>>> in Wikipedia
>>> and Wikimedia)
>>
>>
>>
>> When mav says things like this, I don't have to go read 25+ posts to
>> know that something has gone horribly wrong.
>>
>> I suggest that we:
>> --Just build a free encyclopedia
>> --Work with each other respectfully
>> --Leave the rest of the ideas for another project, another year.
>>
>> PS: If we all even get close to becoming another ICANN, I'll be out
>> the door with mav.
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Not hearing things on en:wikipedia is akin to not hearing it on
nl:wikipedia. En:wikipedia may be the biggest wikipedia, it is not the
platform for discussions regarding Mediawiki. It is Meta's purpose to
discuss these things. The suggestion that something "clandestine"
occured does speak of little respect for the integrity of people like
Jimbo, Angela, Anthere ..

Thanks,
  GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> I'm looking to interview various wikipedians for bopnews.com, if anyone
> is interested drop me an email.

Of course, I am always available for interview, 727-644-1636, I am on
US east coast time, but don't let that worry you too much, I'm
basically working on wikipedia stuff 12-16 hours a day these days.

--Jimbo (wikipedia founder)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:
> One last question though: did I get it right, that during the board
> meeting about wikispecies, only members of the board took part in
> the discussion and nobody else?

Angela, Anthere and I are (along with many other people) on irc for
the bulk of each day.  In the case in question, we just ran into each
other and started talking about it, because I felt (incorrectly, as it
turns out) that consensus had been reached and it was all only waiting
on us to do something.  It was pretty informal.

I can't really think of anything more impossible than for Angela,
Anthere, and I to only speak to each other publicly.  We currently get
quite a bit of work done by just chatting off and on throughout the
day, informally, like "What do you think of this?" and "I will ask
Anthere when she comes in" and "Did you send me that information yet?"

Also, good decision making involves being able to ask for opinions
freely and confidentally, without a concern that random thoughts will
be quoted all over the web as facts.

However, of course, we have had public meetings too, and will of
course have many more.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account for
	each MetaWiki site I found

body:
It is of course technically possible, just query the database of each
project, get all the login names into a big file and run uniq -c on it
( or something like that ).

Anyway this is a very big annoyance, especially if one is going to
maintain preferences across multiple wikipedias and projects.

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:49:27 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
<puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Sj wrote:
>
> >The socially easy solution here is to globally merge the 99.9% of
> >accounts for which there is no conflict, and provide for some unmerged
> >accounts which can then be merged by hand / via mediation.  This would
> >at least prevent any *new* users from having to worry about this.
>
> Are there any hard numbers on the conflicting usernames? Is it even
> technically possible to know in advance which login names are in conflict?
>
> Alfio
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account
	for each MetaWiki site I found

body:
So as I understand it every unique username would be put into a global
database, and those who have multiple accounts (I have one on en, it,
meta and commons) would need some way to "prove" that they are just one
person and merge them all?

Alfio

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>It is of course technically possible, just query the database of each
>project, get all the login names into a big file and run uniq -c on it
>( or something like that ).
>
>Anyway this is a very big annoyance, especially if one is going to
>maintain preferences across multiple wikipedias and projects.
>
>
>On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:49:27 +0200 (MEST), Alfio Puglisi
><puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Sj wrote:
>>
>> >The socially easy solution here is to globally merge the 99.9% of
>> >accounts for which there is no conflict, and provide for some unmerged
>> >accounts which can then be merged by hand / via mediation.  This would
>> >at least prevent any *new* users from having to worry about this.
>>
>> Are there any hard numbers on the conflicting usernames? Is it even
>> technically possible to know in advance which login names are in conflict?
>>
>> Alfio
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Charts, spreadsheets, and other plugins

body:
Nick Triantos wrote:
> I've been searching without luck to see if there's also a roadmap of
> plug-ins being developed.  Within my company, another group is using the
> Twiki wiki (http://www.twiki.org), and one of the key cool features they
> like are all the plug-ins that have been developed so far.
>
> I'm trying to see if any comparable plug-ins are planned or have been
> discussed for mediawiki.
>
> (and yes, I do know about EasyTimeline, but that's pretty different than
> some of the twiki plugins)

MediaWiki does not have a stable API, and has precious few hooks for
plugins to use. In 1.3, you can't even add skins without changing the
main codebase in (although that may change in 1.4).

The only types of plugin available in 1.3 are extra special pages or a
special type of parser extension. I made a sample special page plugin,
it's at extensions/UnicodeConverter.php . WikiHiero and EasyTimeline are
parser extensions.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:57:20 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
><gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
>>>hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
>>>clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
>>>if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
>>>So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
>>>not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
>>>even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
>>>just what's going on.
>>>
>>>
>
>I've no reason to doubt the good intentions of the board. However, the
>place where it should have been announced or discussed before a vote
>(m:Goings-on) didn't have it, nor was there a any significant call on
>EN. So there has been a breakdown somewhere along the line in terms of
>due process, and it does seem a dark cloud hangs over the new project.
>
>One of the benefits of wikis, and why we love them so, is exactly the
>elimination of process. Clay Shirky talks about this specifically
>(http://www.corante.com/many/20030801.shtml)
>
>However, when it comes to major extra-wiki decisions, such as creation
>of new projects, or board level decisions, process should be defined
>and followed. We're all breaking new ground here with the board and
>its role, so let's learn from this and "reboot" in an appropriate
>manner, even if it means suspending Wikispecies and going back to
>obtain some kind of quorum (if not consensus).
>
>
>
Two things
*This mail suggests that I said things that I did not. See the mailing
list history.
*You suggest that it is up to the en:wikipedia to decide things. It is
not, neither is it up to de:wikipedia or nl:wikipedia (or nl:wiktionary
to be absurd).

Meta exists already for a long time this is where the discussions about
mediawiki occur. Procedures have been defined, responsibilities have
been defined, the board has been chosen. And apparently when something
is decided that you do not like it is "undemocratic". The United States
chose a president that was not elected by a majority of the voters, his
majority had to be decided by a court and he has acted with little
regard for the bigger half of the American electorate. He can, because
he is the president of the United States. Equally, the board was elected
everybody was invited to vote, these people are really eager to do the
"right" thing, they have within Wikimedia a great reputation, they spend
most of their time listening to what people have to say and they do it
voluntarily! Give them slack, give them credit !

I think it appalling that when they make a decision people start talking
about "clandestine" when they do not like the result. Do you understand
why Wikispecies is a good idea? Have you actually given it a thought?
What are the arguments against it short of mav feeling annoyed?

Thanks.
    GerardM


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and	free
	rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:22:29 +0100
>  Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>> The reason homosexuality was considered an "illness" is because
>> psychologists believed they could cure it.
>>
>> Today there is conclusive evidence to show that it is not something
>> you can "cure". You can only force these people to fit into society
>> by denying their own identity.
>
> I disagree. None of the proposed "cures" for homosexuality seems to
> have been very effective, but that does not mean that there might not
> be other means that do work. Not to mention that there are some
> researchers who claimed at least some success. Also, very similar
> "illnesses" such as sado-masochism and pedophilia are still considered
> so by the psychiatric community, even though there's just as little
> proof that they can be "cured".
>
> Rather than whether we can cure it, I think the main question is: If
> we _could_ cure it, would we _want_ to do so. 30 years ago the answer
> was yes, now it is no. That's what has differed.

There's always the historical perspective.  Considering homosexuality an
illness was a step forward from considering it a criminal act.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
>>like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".
>>
>
>I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
>general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
>reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
>meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."
>
Which is potentially a good reason, but it's not the one that
Gerard gave; and I say "potentially" because although there is
some very obscure and detailed scientific info in WP already,
I have yet to see anybody seek to remove it because it's
"too detailed for a general audience". So why is it imperative
to have a new wiki to solve a hypothetical problem?

Whether a fork is good or bad depends on the real motivation,
not what it looks like when it's dressed up. I've been through
this a hundred times with various GNU projects, and you can't
understand what will happen unless you look squarely at what's
really driving people.

Stan


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mail WikiSpecies

body:
On Tuesday 14 September 2004 20:28, Angela wrote:

> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004

Angela, thanks for the pointer. From
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings I see that you
offered the "full log" of your last meeting. Could please do the same for the
last board meeting, the one that lead to the disputed result concerning
wikispecies. Thanks.

best regards,
  Marco


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:31:11 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There would be two separate subdomains, http://zh-tw.wikipedia.org/
> and http://zh-cn.wikipedia.org/. If you visit the first, you will see
> the UI in Traditional, and if you visit the latter the UI will be in
> Simplified.

I think you'll have widespread agreement this would be a good idea.
Not sure if the localization support in MediaWiki supports this
configuration right now, but perhaps the developers could make it
happen. (In fact, it could support the complete matrix of browsing
Wikipedia of language X using the interface of language Y.)

> I propose to store all text in Traditional but convert it to
> Simplified (perhaps with some sort of caching so articles do not have
> to be re-generated each time) because TC>SC conversion is less
> ambiguous than SC>TC conversion.

This is a tougher proposition, since most of the content and
contributors use the Simplified form. However, I'd encourge you to
broach these subjects at the wikizh-l at wikimedia.org mailing list as
well, or at least Cc: them on this.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Meta exists already for a long time this is where the discussions about
> mediawiki occur. Procedures have been defined, responsibilities have
So I wonder why [[meta:Wikispecies]] did not exist until yesterday? So
there was absolutely no discussion of Wikispecies outside this mailing
list - considering the controversy experienced here it feels strange
that the creation of Wikispecies wasn't delayed until at least
non-mailinglist Wikipedians had *a chance* to add their comment. Meta
would also be the correct place to do the definition phase, after which
a full proposal which addressed the worries of it being a fork would be
there.

After the immidiate uproar on the mailing list about the proposal went
silent *without consensus* I would have expected to see a summary of
that discussion on Meta, addressing the concerns by the proponents, and
inviting more discussion by posting a note on Goings On, Village Pump,
ToL talk page (and similar pages for the non-english WPs), instead of
setting facts by creating the Wiki directly - so I can fully understand
Mav's surprise and anger.

> been defined, the board has been chosen. And apparently when something
> is decided that you do not like it is "undemocratic". The United States
The Wikimedia board of course had the power to decide to start that
project already, and I have no doubts they did it in good faith, however
it just leaves a bad feeling to do so with the first discussion IMHO
leaving many questions unanswered.

The content covered by Wikispecies is a project worth doing, it being
separate from Wikipedia might turn out to be not a fork, yet the way it
was created leaves a bad taste.

[[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose from
	miscommunication (was [Wikispecies] Not a fork!)

body:
--- Mirko Thiessen <wikipedia at mirko-thiessen.de> wrote:
> My interest in such a project is setting up a species directory linking to
> all the language editions of the Wikipedia. Jimbo formulated a non-forking
> policy guideline and I have a great interest as well that the project
> won't have any overlapping with Wikipedia. I am active in the German
> Wikipedia and worked on several hundred animal articles there, and that
> will remain my main activity.

It was the formulation of the non-forking policy that I completely missed - all
I saw was an announcement that the board had decided the issue in a meeting
that I didn't even know took place (and I check Wikipedia-l, Foundation-l,
WikiEN-l, Meta Goings on and Wikimedia News every day). So while I'm still not
happy that Wikispecies has its own database separate from the Wikimedia
Commons, I can at least live with the decision. *If* I had known beforehand
about the conditions the board placed on Wikispecies, then none of the ugliness
of the past day or so would have happened.

I have already accepted Jimbo's apology for not keeping me in the loop and he
has accepted my apology for making the public accusation that the board was
doing something underhanded (based on the limited information I had, it did
seem that way). In the future I will first seek private clarification on
similar matters so as not to create a scene. In short, I should have assumed
good faith.

Sorry for the fuss people.

> If I would suspect the project of becoming a
> Bio-Wikipedia or something like that I would immediately vote to suspend
> the project. But now it is intended to work within Wikispecies on a
> concept for the project in order to not become a fork. Until then, I
> wouldn't take articles by single individuals (like the "Classification"
> article) seriously.

One question:

Is the level of detail in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area

appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article in a
Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed [[Biology
of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the same
content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus half
the contributor base working on each of them.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav - who has decided to stay)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] It looks like we weren't jumping the gun with
	tlh.wikipedia ...

body:
Just noted this article:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1304952,00.html?gusrc=tick
er-103704

"German 'World Service' boldly goes for Klingon news"

Deutsche Welle is starting to broadcast in Klingon....

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


from_name: Eckhart Wörner

subject: [Wikitech-l] XML - Status?

body:
Hello Magnus,

Magnus Manske schrieb:
> How's the wiki-to-XML parser coming along? Do we have a DTD or a list of
> used XML tags/attributes yet? How about some demo output?
>
> Even if the parser is not yet complete, work on the XML-to-XHTML part in
> PHP could start for tags that are likely to be stable.

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401

Eckhart


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:14:35 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> If this is accepted, then zh.wikipedia.org should also continue to
> exist but simply present a choice of the two upon first access. Repeat
> access could automatically lead to the chosen version, through use of a
> cookie (this latter bit might be very controversial, some people hate
> cookies).

Just a quick note that the current test implementation uses the
language settings of the user's browser to make the initial choice -
browsers send a list of languages they are prepared to accept, so a
correctly configured Taiwanese browser (for instance) would request
'zh-tw', with a fall back of 'zh' (meaning 'any kind of Chinese'). I
don't know what proportion of browsers would be 'correctly' configured
to match their users preferences, but this is theoretically the
'right' way to do this.

For logged in users, this option could further be overridden by their
preferences - be those processed on the server, via cookies, in
javascript, or whatever.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Lorenzarius

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
I am no opinion on zh-min-nan but I have a few things to say about your message.

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:09:43 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> First and foremost this problem could be looked at in terms of Cantonese.
>
> Modern Cantonese actually has two different versions, one that is just
> reading text written for Mandarin speakers but with Cantonese
> readings, the other being using Cantonese grammar and vocabulary words
> that Cantonese has but Mandarin doesn't.
>
> Until very recently the latter had the higher status in Hong Kong and
> Macau, however upon reunification the former gained the higher status.
>
> Most Cantonese speakers, even if they don't know Mandarin, can read
> texts written by a Mandarin speaker with little difficulty, but much
> of the sentences are not how they would say them in everyday speech.

I am a Hongkonger and I speak Cantonese. And I think what you're
talking is really messed up. We write "written Chinese" (???) not what
you called "reading text written for Mandarin speakers". And this
"written Chinese" is the same "written Chinese" in Beijing or in
Shanghai or in any part of China. Chinese people write Chinese in its
common form: before the New Written Language Movement (AD 192x - 193x)
this common form is "wenyian" (or Classical Chinese), and after the
movement this common form is "baihua" (Modern Chinese).

It is true that what we speak is not what we write. But no one
actually write "Cantonese" except in very vulgar or very casual
occasions, like when I'm IM-ing with my friends. We don't teach how to
write Cantonese in school, and I think that not much people really
know how to write correct Cantonese.

> Then there is also an issue with Classical Chinese which is very
> different from modern Mandarin. Until very recently any sort of
> reference work like an encyclopedia would've been written in Classical
> Chinese which was the literary language.

Perhaps you're right if "until very recently" means several decades ago.

<snip>


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
On 15 Sep 2004, at 04:59, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> Message: 11
> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 05:00:09 +0200
> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>

<snip>

I have NO opinion on the matter, but PURELY as a ''suggestion'': If
Wikispecies was implemented as a portal, after the example of the
German Wikipedia (eg. cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_Medizin)
-- with all the individual articles inside the WP, maybe named
[[Species:Whatever]] -- would that be a compromise that people might be
more happy to accept?

The problem of already having announced species.wikipedia.org could be
solved with a redirect, or maybe the entire Wikispecies thing could be
left standing, but with automatic import of all the content into the
aforedescribed [[WikiSpecies Portal]] and [[Species:blahblah]]
-articles?

Just a thought.

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:31:11 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> I propose to store all text in Traditional but convert it to
> Simplified (perhaps with some sort of caching so articles do not have
> to be re-generated each time) because TC>SC conversion is less
> ambiguous than SC>TC conversion. If somebody adds text to an article
> but they are typing in SC, it will be converted to TC when it adds it
> to the database. In the edit window even though, text will appear as
> whichever domain you are at. Titles of articles should be converted
> too. If a mistake is made in conversion when a Simplified text is
> added to the database, eventually somebody browsing at
> http://zh-tw.wikipedia.org/ will notice this error and hopefully fix
> it. In the mean time this error won't cause any problems on zh-cn
> because it will convert back the same way.

This is more or less the concept I was mulling over as a very general
solution, but I realised that it does have a big disadvantage: naive
users 'correcting' the translation may simply shift the error into the
opposite version. Or, more specifically, there is no way of
distinguishing a translational correction from a factual one. For
example:

Say you have a database in English, but with automated conversion to a
dialect, we'll call it Blinglish. The English database contains the
text "...while eating an apple...", and this is viewed by a Blinglish
user. They replace the word 'apple' (in the Blinglish version) with
'orange'. The software now has no way of knowing whether the use is
saying that 'orange' is the Blinglish word for 'apple', or whether the
Blinglish user is correcting a fact, and the English version should be
updated to say 'orange'.

Obviously, the translation corrections *should* be labelled using
special markup, but the majority of users find special markup very
hard to learn, and huge numbers of users pass through who have no idea
how to use such things. In order to encourage them to return and
contribute more, we need to not only make the system work *despite*
them, but to actively fit them into it.

If, to continue my example, we translate 'orange' back to English,
when it is in fact supposed to be an idiomatic translation, another
user may come along on the English site and correct it back to
'apple'. The Blinglish version will then be in its original state, and
the cycle will continue until a more experienced user spots the
ambiguity and marks it up appropriately. A waste of everyone's time,
and a definite turn-off for the casual users whose changes keep
disappearing.

If we can rely on a majority of the users understanding more than one
of the languages involved, we could more-or-less avoid this by
providing some obvious mechanism for saying "this change is because of
a translation issue", that even technophobes can use. But anyone that
only understands one version will not know themselves whether it is a
translation issue - only that it is, within the version they are
looking at, a mistake...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: domain name administrator--> Trust level

body:
On 15 Sep 2004, at 03:42, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> Ok too. By the way, have moved to godaddy exclusively, and things
> have become much easier.

I hate GoDaddy, because of their advertising and
cheapo-upselly-flashy-glitzyness.
Not that it's of any relevance, I just had to vent.

-J


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:03:24 +0800
> From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com>
>
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:31:11 -0700, Mark Williamson
> <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> There would be two separate subdomains, http://zh-tw.wikipedia.org/
>> and http://zh-cn.wikipedia.org/. If you visit the first, you will see
>> the UI in Traditional, and if you visit the latter the UI will be in
>> Simplified.

Obvious suggestion:

If this is accepted, then zh.wikipedia.org should also continue to
exist but simply present a choice of the two upon first access. Repeat
access could automatically lead to the chosen version, through use of a
cookie (this latter bit might be very controversial, some people hate
cookies).

-- Jens


from_name: Rich Points

subject: [Foundation-l] I can't seem to unsubscribe from this list

body:
Can someone please help?
Thanks
--
Rich Points
Rich at RichPoints.com
http://RichPoints.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Stripping HTML comments

body:
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:49:04 -0700 (PDT), Wil Mahan <wmahan_04 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> MediaWiki uses the following line (in Parser.php) to strip comments
> when outputting HTML:
<snip>

Forgive me if I'm being thick, but why do you need to remove HTML
comments from an HTML output *anyway*? Is it to allow magic behaviour
of wikimarkup on either side of the comment, which could otherwise be
broken by the content of the comment?

If so, it looks like we could *really* do with this new parser that's
been under discussion, because that's a pretty daft thing to have to
do...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Fredrik,

Your proposal for a Gothic wikipedia is very exciting!

I have a question though, will you be using Unicode gothic, or will
you be writing it in the Latin alphabet? Also, will you be using
spaces between words or not?

Also I think that the number of people who can "speak" gothic is
actually higher than most would estimate, there are people who learn
Gothic because they are obsessed with it, there are people who learn
it because it is useful for Germanic or even general Indo-European
linguistics, and there are people who learn it for various other
reasons; however I seem to recall having heard about a group of
university professors who are raising their kids in Gothic, together
their organization has 400 individuals worldwide I think, which only
includes academics whose primary interest is in Gothic (as opposed to
people whose primary interest is in, say, Old Icelandic, but speak
Gothic as well).

I have seen estimates as high as 2000 (well, one crackpot had a theory
about there being isolated communities in the Alps and the Balkans and
such that still spoke Gothic and his estimate was 1 million, but
that's very crazy and there's no evidence to back it up), but nothing
lower than 400.

Especially since it has a movement to pass it on to children I think
it's a good idea to have a Wikipedia in Gothic.

Also I feel that as long as it isn't a conlang, it doesn't matter how
many speakers there are as long as there are people interested in
writing an encyclopedia.

Best, Mark/Jin Junshu

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000, Fredrik Adev?g
<gadrauhts at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
>
> Full name: gothic
>
> Language code: got
>
> Number of speakers: 0
>
> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> much more.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Auktioner: Tj?na en hacka p? gamla prylar http://tradera.msn.se
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
On 14 Sep 2004, at 19:58, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jens-
>> Some sysops and developers ARE getting more power
>
> Aside from the fact that new people always advance within the existing
> hierarchies - a good thing, I'm sure you will agree -, I see no
> evidence
> that privileges have actually been extended in any significant manner.
> Not
> on the projects I've worked on. What are you talking about?

You've just answered that question yourself. (Hint: some, POV reference
in my prev email.)

>> However, for you to categorically state that "the trend is the exact
>> opposite of what you claim it is"
>
> I only "categorically state" things when they are obvious, or when I've
> provided a line of reasoning to do so, as I have here. You have
> provided
> no evidence for your above assertion and nor has the original poster.

You have remarkable faith in your own POV and are remarkably dismissive
of other's.

> But
> criticism should be constructive ("actionable") and have a clear,
> empirically demonstrated basis in reality.

This -- the implicit accusation that John's and my POV are "not in
Kansas anymore" -- is what I regard as detrimental to otherwise
possible attempts at a constructive discussion.

> Erik
>
-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


subject:
[Wikitech-l] I am really tired of registering an account for
	each	MetaWiki site I found

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

>> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:29:05 +0200
>> From: David <julian37 at ifrance.com>
>>
>> Le 14 sept. 04, ? 18:13, Angela a ?crit :
>>
>>> See bug 57 at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57. The
>>> code is available for this, but there are social issues involved in
>>> deciding who gets to keep their name when more than one person is
>>> using that name on different wikis.
>>
>>
>> A solution might be
>> Starting from now, every long-time users may register for a new
>> "meta-login", available everywhere. Since metalogin list is empty,
>> first in, first served.
>>
>> Newcomers will automatically have "meta-login", so there is no issues
>> for them. Of course, they should be mass-mail to all long-time users to
>> warn them
>>
>> Possible variations include:
>> - In order to favour long-time users, meta-login for newcomers will be
>> delayed so that long-time have time to register their name.
>
>
> Why, simply disallow registration of a metalogin if any login of such
> name exists in any wikipedia/wikimedia namespace.
> Otherwise, yes, what you said.

An extension of that could require existing users to establish their new
login by first going to any of his existing accounts and logging in from
there on the first occasion.

Ec


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> I have NO opinion on the matter, but PURELY as a ''suggestion'': If
> Wikispecies was implemented as a portal, after the example of the German
> Wikipedia (eg. cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_Medizin) -- with
> all the individual articles inside the WP, maybe named
> [[Species:Whatever]] -- would that be a compromise that people might be
> more happy to accept?

This project is about indexing 1 or 2 million species - in addition
Wikispecies was intended to be a language-independent project, so in which
Wikipedia would you want to have it? And who would want to have 2 Million
database entries scattered over Wikipedia?

However, I start to think that this Wikispecies project is not worth the
trouble. If people feel that they must leave Wikipedia just because this
project is started then I tend to say forget it.

Mirko


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New line to break

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Shantanu Oak wrote:
>
>> I have installed the mediawiki software that I  downloaded from...
>> http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
>> There is one drawback that prevents me from using it  extensively.
>> When I copy and paste text from Microsoft Word to
>> wiki, it ignores the paragraph brakes.
>
>
> The solution is easy: Don't use Microsoft Word...
>
> Seriously, though: Before copy & pasting, you can use Search & Replace
> in Word to replace each paragraph break with two paragraph breaks. It
> should work then.

The Search & Replace function is one of the most useful things about MS
Word.  You just have to avoid things with quotation marks which it
insists on screwing up by changing to curly quotes.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [customer.support@orbimage.com: Illegal Use of SeaWiFS /
	OrbView-2 imagery]

body:
We will need to do a search to determine if we have other images from
this site as well.  The error was due to the assumption that if it is
on the Nasa site, and is a picture from space, it is in the public
domain.

In my opinion, NASA ought not to enter into roundabout deals like this,
but nevertheless...

----- Forwarded message from "Customer.Support" <customer.support at orbimage.com> -----

From: "Customer.Support" <customer.support at orbimage.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:51:27 -0400
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Illegal Use of SeaWiFS / OrbView-2 imagery

Dear Mr. Wales:

It has come to our attention that our SeaWiFS (OrbView-2) imagery is
being used on your website located at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Black-sea-nasa.jpg
<http://www.greeklandscapes.com/maps/satellite.html>   and that you
claim that "This image has been released into the public domain by the
copy right holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for
copyright.  This applies worldwide."

Please note that ORBIMAGE is the copyright holder of the image, it has
not been released into the copyright domain, and the copyright has not
expired. The SeaWiFS program is a partnership between ORBIMAGE and NASA
by which all operational and commercial use is coordinated and purchased
through ORBIMAGE. NASA has the right to use OrbView-2 imagery for
research and educational purposes.

A license or permission from ORBIMAGE is required to use our imagery
outside of NASA's researchers' use. Additionally, a statement crediting
ORBIMAGE and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is required with all
SeaWiFS imagery.  To this end, it is our belief that the imagery is
being illegally used on your website.

Since our records do not indicate that a license was issued to
Wikipedia, you must remove the imagery from your website immediately or
contact our Support Department for a licensing quote.

Your immediate response to customer.support at orbimage.com is required.

Sincerely,

Sabrina
ORBIMAGE Support Services
E-mail: customer.support at orbimage.com
Phone: (703) 480-7539
Fax: (703) 450-9570
Open Hours: 8:00am - 5:30pm EST
Website: www.orbimage.com

----- End forwarded message -----

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> some answers

body:
Hmmm, okay. I think you guys have concerns, and we need to adress them.
So I will try to answer the best I can.

First point.
Since I was part of the discussion on wikispecies on wikipedia-l, and
had an opinion on the matter, I wish to insist that I was not the
promoter of the decision making.
However, I thought it was a good idea to make that decision, hence I
voted. I will come back on the reason why it was imho a good idea later.

Second point.
For those who followed carefully the discussion, I, as an individual, am
in favor of the project be separated from Wikipedia, though strongly
integrated. I will not come back on my arguments, I already gave them 2
weeks ago.
However, if I had had the feeling there was a strong consensus for NOT
having a separated project, I would probably not have supported it on
the board. I *can* vote in a way that I do not think is the best, but is
  more acceptable to the community, while still acceptable for me.
In this case, it appeared to me there was no obvious consensus, but I
felt the case was more supported on the "separated project" side, hence
I voted along my heart.

John Lee a ?crit:
> The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this hoo-ha
> is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
> clandestine occurred.

Point 3:
The fact you do not know of the topic should not suggest that things are
done in a clandestine way. The whole project got huge, and it has become
impossible for anyone to know any time what is going on everywhere.
Just as no human being may know everything, but each of us know a bit.

Point 4:
I do not think it is reasonable to say that the topic was clandestine. A
huge wikispecies occured on this very list just a few weeks ago, and it
was unlikely to go on unnoticed. Since you are registered to that list,
you should not have missed that discussion.
Aside from this, many discussions occured on the irc channel, both on
the #wikipedia (which I may suggest, should become #en.wikipedia, while
#wikipedia become a more general channel) and on #wikimedia. Perhaps
also on #mediawiki.
The irc channels are public discussion place, and everyone is welcome to
join anytime. Many of the discussions between Angela, Jimbo and I take
place over there. If you are interested, you are most welcome :-)
Finally, there were some report on meta, which you may find here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
Unless I am wrong, this link was also given on this ml.

 From what I understand, this is something that, if
> worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias. So
> why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's not
> even on the Community Portal.

Point 5 : Things that could be beneficial to all wikipedias do not
belong to the english wikipedia. They belong to meta, or to wikipedia-l
or on foundation-l.
There are currently more than 50 active languages. We try to unite those
interested by meta topics or by new projects in places where everyone
can share. En.wikipedia is not one of these places.
I also do not think it is fair to expect from the board to go and visit
all 50 projects in turns, to put each and another information on the
local portal page. Everyone should feel concerned by the need there is
for information to be conveyed.
Either some people for each project feel concerned and translate
information, or interested people of each local project come hear to
participate.

One attempt at centralizing information has been done on the meta
goings-on : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on
I regularly go there to update this page and a couple of people think of
doing this as well.
I had hoped that on projects where there are hundreds of contributors
(such as en), someone will take the time to just COPY the information
which is already in ENGLISH from meta to the english goings-on.
I invite you to look at the current english goings-on, this is self
explanatory : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AGoings-on

I understand your concerns, but I do not think there is a lack of
information provided. I do not think either that there are not enough
places to find the information. I just think that people need to be
explained over and over and over where to find the information.

And the fact that someone as even-headed
> as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder just what's going on.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]] on En)
>
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> <snip></snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Daniel Mayer (who is now seriously re-evaluating his participation
>>> in Wikipedia
>>> and Wikimedia)
>>
>>
>>
>> When mav says things like this, I don't have to go read 25+ posts to
>> know that something has gone horribly wrong.

>> I suggest that we:
>> --Just build a free encyclopedia
>> --Work with each other respectfully
>> --Leave the rest of the ideas for another project, another year.

Point 7 : Some people here, like Benedikt, or Gerard, have other ideas
and other dreams. Perhaps it is not treating them respectfully to tell
them "just integrate this in Wikipedia" or to tell them "leave that
aside for a year".

I have much respect for Mav opinions, but I also recognise there other
ideas. That does not mean one side is wrong. But if people have the
energy to have new ideas, that deserve attention.

>> PS: If we all even get close to becoming another ICANN, I'll be out
>> the door with mav.
>>
>>


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 37

body:
Hello Yann

> From: Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Portal namespace
>
> Hi,
>
> I am interested by this.
> Yes please, can you put a translation to meta?

It's up there now:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_namespaces_for_portals_and_lists>

> I think that portals belong the encyclopaedia's namespace. They exist to
> present the whole of a subject with a nice design. That would attract many
> contributors who feel lost in a general encyclopedia. Wikispecies ? ;o)

I basically agree with you, but I don't see why this implies that the
portals have to be in the main namespace. This is IMHO not so - it would
only be required to include the Portal-Namespace in the search by default.

Regards,
Daniel


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Huge misunderstanding which arose
	from	miscommunication (was [Wikispecies] Not a fork!)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Is the level of detail in this article:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area
>
>appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article in a
>Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed [[Biology
>of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the same
>content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus half
>the contributor base working on each of them.
>
>
Wouldn't the number of articles of this type be a factor?  As long as
it's the only one it might as well stay where it is.  A Wikigeology
project is theoretically conceivable, but nothing can happen until
someone has actually conceived it and is willing to play a leading role
in its development.  More people think they know about the world's
animals than about its geological structure.  It may be necessary to
develop a Wikiatlas before a Wikigeology project.

Ec


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview

body:
On Sep 15, 2004, at 3:02 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>> I'm looking to interview various wikipedians for bopnews.com, if
>> anyone
>> is interested drop me an email.
>
> Of course, I am always available for interview, 727-644-1636, I am on
> US east coast time, but don't let that worry you too much, I'm
> basically working on wikipedia stuff 12-16 hours a day these days.
>
> --Jimbo (wikipedia founder)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
I was hoping you would be interested - is there a time on Thursday or
Friday that would be good to call?


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account for
 each MetaWiki site I found

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> So as I understand it every unique username would be put into a global
> database, and those who have multiple accounts (I have one on en, it,
> meta and commons) would need some way to "prove" that they are just one
> person and merge them all?

We can be pretty sure that accounts with the same nickname and the same
password will belong to the same person.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
Andrew Lih a ?crit:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:57:20 +0200, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>>The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
>>>hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
>>>clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
>>>if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
>>>So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
>>>not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
>>>even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
>>>just what's going on.
>>
>
> I've no reason to doubt the good intentions of the board. However, the
> place where it should have been announced or discussed before a vote
> (m:Goings-on) didn't have it, nor was there a any significant call on
> EN.

Point 8 :
I think the intention of the founders of this project is not that it
stays english entirely. Obviously, it should be a multilingual database.
Consequently, I see not why there should be a significant call on en and
not on other projects.
Again, we have grown too big to spend our time to go to each of the 50
projects in turn to ask people their opinion. This is just impossible.
Some time ago, I suggested that we have a system to publish an message
on all wikipedia at the same time, precisely for these types of general
message; it basically met no answer but one.
How do you suggest that we warn each project in turn ?
What is the reason of being of this list if not precisely to be a place
where all those interested by meta issues to gather ?
What should we be doing differently to warn perhaps 10 000 people at the
same time ?

So there has been a breakdown somewhere along the line in terms of
> due process, and it does seem a dark cloud hangs over the new project.
>
> One of the benefits of wikis, and why we love them so, is exactly the
> elimination of process. Clay Shirky talks about this specifically
> (http://www.corante.com/many/20030801.shtml)
>
> However, when it comes to major extra-wiki decisions, such as creation
> of new projects, or board level decisions, process should be defined
> and followed. We're all breaking new ground here with the board and
> its role, so let's learn from this and "reboot" in an appropriate
> manner, even if it means suspending Wikispecies and going back to
> obtain some kind of quorum (if not consensus).

Point 9 : I do not wish to contradict any of what you say here, but
wishes to add a thought.
Mav indicated that in deciding whether to start the project or not, the
board has overstepped its mandate. I really think the 3 of us thought
that there was consensus enough to make that possible.
Ultimately, when a new project is created, there are a couple of legal
issues behind. Such as expansion of the Foundation role (in adding a new
project), expansion of costs (more bandwidth and storing place on
servers) or new domain names to purchase and manage. It seems to me that
in spite what is said, declaring the starting of a new project is
totally within the bounds of the board, because this is a LEGAL creation.

As for the rest of your comment, I recognise its validity and wiseness.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stripping HTML comments

body:
Wil Mahan wrote:

> MediaWiki uses the following line (in Parser.php) to strip comments
> when outputting HTML:
>
> $text = preg_replace( '/(\\n *<!--.*--> *(?=\\n)|<!--.*-->)/sU', '$2',
> $text );
>
> The first alternative in the regexp, '\\n *<!--.*--> *(?=\\n)', is
> wrong when one comment comes at the beginning of the line and is
> immediately followed by some text, and another comment later in the
> page is followed by a newline; everything between the comments is
> incorrectly removed. I put an example at
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/487 .

Indeed an interesting bug.

> I have an idea of how to fix the bug, but I was wondering if someone
> could explain exactly what this regexp is supposed to do.

The purpose was probably the following. Consider this source text:

	Paragraph 1

	<!-- a comment -->

	Paragraph 2

Without the first part of the regexp, this would create three
paragraphs, the middle of which is empty. The result would be annoying
vertical whitespace in the rendered output.

My suggested fix would be the following, and I believe it would also fix
the annoying vertical whitespace that we're currently getting due to the
inter-wiki links and category links at the bottom of articles:

* strip things (comments, inter-wiki links and categories) first
* then merge whitespace using something like:
    preg_replace ("/\n *\n( *\n)+/g", "\n\n");
    also remove all \n's at the beginning and end of the source text
* then do all the remaining parsing

Since I don't know much about the confusing structure of the current
not-really-a-parser, and I prefer working on my lex/yacc solution :),
I'm afraid I can't code this just now.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Marco Krohn

body:
On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:17, Anthere wrote:

> Finally, there were some report on meta, which you may find here :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
> Unless I am wrong, this link was also given on this ml.

I searched my mailing list archive (last 6 months) and could _not_ find any
reference to this board meeting.

Please publish the IRC log of this meeting.

best regards,
  Marco


body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

> Forgive me if I'm being thick, but why do you need to remove HTML
> comments from an HTML output *anyway*?

Because otherwise you would get very muddled output if you were to
comment out, say, a table cell or row. Or, for that matter, anything
else that has incomplete mark-up in it.

Of course, my lex/yacc parser would solve this problem trivially ;-) but
it's going to take me some more time before it's completed.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
review it before it is possibly made public.

I think that in any cases, the log will tell you nothing more than you
know, since the 4 of us agreed on the decision. What is currently
disputed is whether we had the right or not to take that decision, not I
hope that we had personally an opinion on the matter.

The meeting you are pointing out to, was  not a board meeting, it was a
general public meeting which hosted all those interested by setting up
wikimedia website. We asked all participants before hand whether they
agreed to have the log published, and they indeed did accept its
publication.

greetings

Marco Krohn a ?crit:
> On Tuesday 14 September 2004 20:28, Angela wrote:
>
> >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
>
>
> Angela, thanks for the pointer. From
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings I see that you
> offered the "full log" of your last meeting. Could please do the same for the
> last board meeting, the one that lead to the disputed result concerning
> wikispecies. Thanks.
>
> best regards,
>   Marco


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: How does MediaWiki decide where to store an
 uploaded file within the images directory?

body:
Kiss All wrote:

>   I guess I have to know the rule about where to put them

I'm not sure what exactly you're asking, but here's how to find out what
directory a file will be saved to when uploaded. I'll use the example of
[[Image:Daniel_Butterfield.jpg]]:

$ echo -n "Daniel_Butterfield.jpg" | md5sum
20a53701ddbce09dacb120b6a100ff37  -

You take the first two characters of this checksum. The path is
/upload/2/20/Daniel_Butterfield.jpg where the "2" is the first character
and the "20" is the first two.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: XML - Status?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> How's the wiki-to-XML parser coming along? Do we have a DTD or a list of
> used XML tags/attributes yet? How about some demo output?

I've thought about creating a PHP page on my local installation that
would allow you to play around with the parser, but I haven't gotten
around to it yet.

> Even if the parser is not yet complete, work on the XML-to-XHTML part in
> PHP could start for tags that are likely to be stable.

That's a good point.

Have "we" (i.e. you guys) agreed on what to use to read in the XML yet?
I seem to recall there have been several suggestions on this list.

Alternatively, I was wondering if it's possible with SWIG to create an
interface that would allow me to pass the parse tree to PHP without
having to output it as XML. Does anyone know about this?

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:42, John Lee wrote:
> See Angela's "mail Wikispecies" mailing.

o.k. I misunderstood Anthere - I thought she meant that there was some
reference several weeks ago. Thanks for clarification.

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:40, Anthere wrote:
> I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
> publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
> required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
> one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
> review it before it is possibly made public.

O.k I understand that and it makes sense. From the link you provided I had the
impression that the meetings were public. Thanks for the information.

One last question though: did I get it right, that during the board meeting
about wikispecies, only members of the board took part in the discussion and
nobody else?

best regrads,
  Marco


body:
John Lee a ?crit:
> It was just an example. I was citing the English Wikipedia as an example
> because I frequent it the most, but my point was, why was such a useful
> change not mentioned anywhere on any Wikipedia? (I didn't even ask for
> the discussions to occur on any particular language's Wikipedia - that
> was putting words in my mouth.) Wouldn't announcing it make changes go
> more smoothly? I never implied this should be discussed on any
> Wikipedia. Note that the English Community Portal often links to meta
> discussions. If the change is as useful (or not) as it is, it should
> have at least been linked to on every Wikipedia so that people could
> have a chance to weigh in at meta, or at least be informed.

There are 50 active wikipedias. Between Jimbo, Angela and I, we only
manage 2 languages. We could go up to 15 languages by using google
translations probably.
I do not think it would be very efficient that Angela and I go in turn
on 25 wikipedias each of us to add a paragraph poorly translated to
explain what is currently going on.
Perhaps a more efficient way would be that people interested register to
the appropriate mailing list, or that simply, some people take the time
to make the information travel.

> As for clandestine activities, that was another, well, I think you can
> only call it strawmanning. I never mentioned their names - I think
> highly of Jimbo and Angela (I don't know Anthere well enough). It's just
> rather odd and a bit annoying that the majority of editors who could and
> would benefit from this still aren't informed, because they don't
> subscribe to the mailing list.

Strawmanning... hummm.
Clandestine activities...hummm.
Let's see.
You can follow our activities everyday on meta :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special%3ARecentchanges
on wikimediafoundation : http://wikimedia.org/wiki/Special%3ARecentchanges
on the mailing list
on the foundation mailing list (please, register :-))

And on irc.freenode.net, #wikimedia.
I must be actively connected 6 to 8 hours a day
Angela even more because she has an online job, while I cant connect
from my job
Jimbo is there everyday as well
And these past weeks, Tim is there everyday

Also, we are currently working very hard to keep you all informed of
what we do, through a newsletter. It should be published in a few day :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/NL-1/En%3A#2

I do think the accusation of clandestine activities is very unpleasant.
Even if people here think we did the wrong thing, even if you do not
know me, I would hope that you assume we acted in good faith.

As far as I am concerned, I am all opened on any suggestion on what to
do to improve public awareness on what we do. I am also opened to any
suggestion on how information may circulate among all of us. I am also
opened to any offer to help us for any topic.

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> John Lee wrote:
>>
>>> The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this
>>> hoo-ha is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
>>> clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that,
>>> if worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias.
>>> So why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's
>>> not even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as
>>> even-headed as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder
>>> just what's going on.
>>>
>>> John Lee
>>> ([[User:Johnleemk]] on En)
>>>
>>> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Not hearing things on en:wikipedia is akin to not hearing it on
>> nl:wikipedia. En:wikipedia may be the biggest wikipedia, it is not the
>> platform for discussions regarding Mediawiki. It is Meta's purpose to
>> discuss these things. The suggestion that something "clandestine"
>> occured does speak of little respect for the integrity of people like
>> Jimbo, Angela, Anthere ..
>>
>> Thanks,
>>  GerardM
>


body:
Marco Krohn a ?crit:
> On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:17, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Finally, there were some report on meta, which you may find here :
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
>>Unless I am wrong, this link was also given on this ml.
>
>
> I searched my mailing list archive (last 6 months) and could _not_ find any
> reference to this board meeting.
>
> Please publish the IRC log of this meeting.
>
> best regards,
>   Marco

The board meeting of the 4th of september (not the 5th) was a human
meeting in Paris. It is no use looking for any irc log for this one, as
we were sitting next to each other.

I do not think a journalist inadvertently recorded us, since they were
busy recording Souffron.

Plus, I had found a hidden room in another building so that no one
bugged us. Since it was not planned in advance, I guess no secret
recorder was hidden in the trash can.

But who knows ?

PS : but seriously, I do think there is no legal requirement to publish
private discussions between us.


from_name: David Latapie

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account for
	each MetaWiki site I found

body:
Le 14 sept. 04, ? 20:39, Anthere a ?crit :

> Kiss All a ?crit:
>> I found it is very tedious or even annoying for users and developers
>> to register an account for each MetaWiki site they encountered.
>> Take myself for example:
>> 1. First, I got an account from wikipedia, that was my first visit to
>> wiki in fact.
>> 2.Then, I found metawiki, was asked to register. Ok, I was still happy
>> to do it to be a more involved volunteer.
>> 3.After that, I found the chinese version of eikipeida. I always
>> wanted to contribute to my own people. I registered an account there
>> without reluctance.
>> 4. Today, I want to add my new feature request and bug report. You
>> know what? A MediaZilla poped out  requesting me to register again!
>> 5. I suspect if I happen to access wikidictionary, wikibook, and so
>> on, I have to register again and again...
>> I don't know how many people have the same problem as me. But wouldn't
>> it be better to have a single account to access all sites within
>> MetaWiki? I know there is a passport project from Microsoft dealing
>> with the similar problem. It would be much easier for us to do the
>> same thing within MetaWiki because we don't need to worry about the
>> identify,money issue in the real world.
>
> I think I may have an account on basically 30 projects. Maybe more.
> I suspect Angela must have even more accounts.
> Well, it would be nice if there is single login, but there are worse
> things than that :-)

I agree with kiss all. It especially frustrating for non-english
travelling developers like me.

Several wikipedias
Seweral wiki-everything_else
Meta and Mediazilla too

Right Anthere this is not the worst thing but more than once it
discouraged me.

--
</david_latapie>
blog.empyree.org


body:
oh jeee, sorry, I am confusing dates. There is the 4th of july and the
5th of september.

Confused.

... anyway, as far as I know, no irc log.
Why do you need this log ?

Anthere a ?crit:
>
>
> Marco Krohn a ?crit:
>
>> On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:17, Anthere wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Finally, there were some report on meta, which you may find here :
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
>>> Unless I am wrong, this link was also given on this ml.
>>
>>
>>
>> I searched my mailing list archive (last 6 months) and could _not_
>> find any reference to this board meeting.
>> Please publish the IRC log of this meeting.
>>
>> best regards,
>>   Marco
>
>
> The board meeting of the 4th of september (not the 5th) was a human
> meeting in Paris. It is no use looking for any irc log for this one, as
> we were sitting next to each other.
>
> I do not think a journalist inadvertently recorded us, since they were
> busy recording Souffron.
>
> Plus, I had found a hidden room in another building so that no one
> bugged us. Since it was not planned in advance, I guess no secret
> recorder was hidden in the trash can.
>
> But who knows ?
>
> PS : but seriously, I do think there is no legal requirement to publish
> private discussions between us
> .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Angela, Jimbo and I from the beginning.
Tim Shell joined us a bit later.

No one else. Why ?

Marco Krohn a ?crit:
> On Wednesday 15 September 2004 15:40, Anthere wrote:
>
>>I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
>>publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
>>required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
>>one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
>>review it before it is possibly made public.
>
>
>
> O.k I understand that and it makes sense. From the link you provided I had the
> impression that the meetings were public. Thanks for the information.
>
> One last question though: did I get it right, that during the board meeting
> about wikispecies, only members of the board took part in the discussion and
> nobody else?
>
> best regrads,
>   Marco


from_name: David

subject:
[Wikitech-l] I am really tired of registering an account for each
	MetaWiki site I found

body:
Le 14 sept. 04, ? 18:13, Angela a ?crit :

> See bug 57 at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57. The
> code is available for this, but there are social issues involved in
> deciding who gets to keep their name when more than one person is
> using that name on different wikis.

A solution might be
Starting from now, every long-time users may register for a new
"meta-login", available everywhere. Since metalogin list is empty,
first in, first served.

Newcomers will automatically have "meta-login", so there is no issues
for them. Of course, they should be mass-mail to all long-time users to
warn them

Possible variations include:
- In order to favour long-time users, meta-login for newcomers will be
delayed so that long-time have time to register their name.

- When there is no conflict, automatic conversion to meta-login for all
long-time users

--
</david_latapie>
blog.empyree.org


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

Le Wednesday 15 September 2004 16:21, Anthere a ?crit :
>
> The board meeting of the 4th of september (not the 5th) was a human
> meeting in Paris. It is no use looking for any irc log for this one, as
> we were sitting next to each other.

Anthere, the meeting in Paris was the 4th of July. ;o)

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account
	for each MetaWiki site I found

body:
Silly me, forgot about the password :-)

Alfio

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Timwi wrote:

>Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>> So as I understand it every unique username would be put into a global
>> database, and those who have multiple accounts (I have one on en, it,
>> meta and commons) would need some way to "prove" that they are just one
>> person and merge them all?
>
>We can be pretty sure that accounts with the same nickname and the same
>password will belong to the same person.
>
>Timwi
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:40:25 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
>>publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
>>required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
>>one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
>>review it before it is possibly made public.
>>
>>
>
>I was under the impression the board would be responsible for macro
>issues that were incapable of being done by the "community", such as
>the legal, monetary and logistical needs of the Foundation.  And that
>anything that could still be initiated and decided on by the community
>would be done in wiki space by Wikipedians. If this is an incorrect
>interpretation, then an explanation would be appreciated.
>
>So my response to your point would be either:
>1) The decision should not be done by the board, but by Wikipedians
>with the usual due process of proposal, discussion, yet more
>discussion, too much discussion, then voting.
>or
>2) The decision be made by the board but be open and solicit opinions
>from the community, with the proceedings made public.
>
>Clearly, the way you suggest (by the board, but closed) is very much
>against the open spirit the Wikipedia community is used to. To be
>clear, I'm largely in favor of the Wikispecies proposal, and don't
>think the board acted in bad faith. But we should also take this
>opportunity to make sure that we set the right precedent for future
>decisions.
>
>
>
If there is one thing I really hate is talking, endless, fruitless
talking. At some stage a decision is to be made. On en:wiktionary a
decision was made with a slim majority carried by some IP numbers that
voted. The consequence of this is that an important feature requested by
the de: and nl: wiktionary cannot be given because of this en:majority.
The result is that the nl:wiktionary that is currently at 4060 articles,
will be increasingly hard to fix. What can I do? Rail against these
stupid people that are in the way, continue harping the same old tune ?
What would it achieve ?

This is the status quo and I will have to live with it for now.

I would really hate it when there is not a final arbiter who decides one
way or the other and can go against what a vocal group *demands*.

Another thing, we are not only wikiPedians, see your self as a
wikiMedian then you may have the right attitued to contribute to the
organisation of this organisation. Being a wikiMedian means that you
follow things on Meta and contribute THERE to the discussion. It means
that you inform in your project about goings on. I for one have posted
on nl:wikipedia about the existence of Commons and Wikispecies, I
informed about the latest releases of the mediawiki software. The cool
thing is, so can you.

Isn't it funny that the people who DO something get all the flack ??
Dutch proverb: "The best boatswains are ashore" !!

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mail WikiSpecies

body:
Andrew Lih a ?crit:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:40:25 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I do not think it is a legal requirement that board meetings are help
>>publicly. And I do not think it would be a good idea that we are
>>required to discuss publicly only. As for the meeting in question, I for
>>one, did not keep a copy of the log, and if some one did, I request to
>>review it before it is possibly made public.
>
>
> I was under the impression the board would be responsible for macro
> issues that were incapable of being done by the "community", such as
> the legal, monetary and logistical needs of the Foundation.

It is possible that we do not have the same definition of macro and micro...

For me, micro is "local" issues, not "may be done by the community" and
macro is "wikimedia wide issues" rather than "may not be done by the
community".

Actually, a new project has legal, monetary and logistical issues attached.

And that
> anything that could still be initiated and decided on by the community
> would be done in wiki space by Wikipedians. If this is an incorrect
> interpretation, then an explanation would be appreciated.

This project was initiated by a non wikipedian and rejoined by
wikipedians as far as I understood.
Wiki space... I think little discussion occured on wikispace
It was mostly on this mailing list, on meta and on irc.

> So my response to your point would be either:
> 1) The decision should not be done by the board, but by Wikipedians
> with the usual due process of proposal, discussion, yet more
> discussion, too much discussion, then voting.
> or
> 2) The decision be made by the board but be open and solicit opinions
> from the community, with the proceedings made public.

Voting... in this case... seems to be a bad idea.
 From my memories, the discussions on the topic were fully open.

I am not sure what you mean by proceedings made public. What do you call
proceedings ?

In this case, I'd say case 2 is best. For a simple and unique reason. A
new project, to welcome as a wikimedia project, should fit a collection
of requirements. If not, it should not be part of the wikimedia project.
Recently, a french project asked to be hosted by us, and it was
supported by a few french people. But this project did not follow what
we considered essential, which is a free content. Hence we refused it. I
think in cases a project does not fit the legal requirements mentionned
in the bylaws, even if the community supports it, it should not be
accepted. Or we should change the bylaws. Which would probably not be okay.

> Clearly, the way you suggest (by the board, but closed) is very much
> against the open spirit the Wikipedia community is used to. To be
> clear, I'm largely in favor of the Wikispecies proposal, and don't
> think the board acted in bad faith. But we should also take this
> opportunity to make sure that we set the right precedent for future
> decisions.

I see not why you say that "I" suggest "by the board but closed".
I certainly did not suggest that.
As I already said, I was not the one who started the decision making
discussion. Also, it is not because I take the time to answer people
concerns that I am the one responsible of the current situation.

I am doubly unhappy at your suggestion I favour a closed board, that I
took great care precisely NOT to do that in the past 3 months. I spend
hours on a daily basis discussing and listening to people, to avoid
taking decisions which may not be agreeable.

It seems clear to me, that this decision did not please some people; and
we will consider this fact for the next decisions. I am quite surprised
that you consider this a total precedent. There are more than one
decision which was taken by Jimbo in the past, with none of you all
complaining. You trusted that this was a good decision and that there
some arguments for taking it. Usually, Jimbo listened to the community,
till a consensus arise. Well, sorry, but we did nothing different. We
read all the mails and all the arguments, there were some discussions
going on with who proposed the project, and we just tried to summarize
all this information to take the decision which seemed best to us. And
this is the point 2 you suggest. Where we very likely failed is to talk
with Maverick enough, so as to adress better his concerns. As for me, I
recognise we did that mistake of not hearing one side better. I do not
think the current issue is one of despotisme as so many of you seem to
imply, but one of rather very busy and very tired people, who try to do
many things at the same time to please the hightest number of people,
and who fail because they did not pay attention enough to one side. I
think that makes a huge difference. And failing to hear someone enough
should not be ground imho to accuse us of overstepping our mandate.

We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and
mostly, do not expect us to start polls or votes all the time. Neither
of us three are very happy with votes and I doubt we'll start organising
votes one by one. In short, those who want to help us take some final
decisions will have to wet their shirt, hang around and call people to
participate to discussion, create summaries, emulate discussions and co.

I hope that clarifies the issue a bit.


body:
Yann Forget a ?crit:
> Hi,
>
> Le Wednesday 15 September 2004 16:21, Anthere a ?crit :
>
>>The board meeting of the 4th of september (not the 5th) was a human
>>meeting in Paris. It is no use looking for any irc log for this one, as
>>we were sitting next to each other.
>
>
> Anthere, the meeting in Paris was the 4th of July. ;o)
>
> Yann

yeah, sorry. I slept only 3 hours on sunday and monday. And 1 hour and a
half yesterday. I guess my mind is all grey :-) Will go to bed early
today ;-)


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Approval marking (was: Why Academics are Useful to
	Wikipedia)

body:
I have to say that the oppertunity to get wikipedia on a CD-Rom is
very tempting! I am a student and to have at hand plently of articles
about Computing, Physics, Music Technology etc will be a great asset!
The internet is too crap to find info now, I think this would appeal
to a lot of people. Make it Open Source too! :-)

I think for the 1% of articles there are regular disputes over, they
should just not be included. If they cant behave then the article wont
get on a CD-Rom. Shame, but a stop has to come somewhere.

If a CD were released, I can see it being taken by libraries and
public institutions - many pay outrageous prices for encycolpedic
CD's, so this would be a great oppertunity (I know my college is
strapped for cash and cant afford to get 1000+ licenses of Encarta
every year)

This has got me all worked up now :-)

Regards,

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 05:43:35 -0700, Poor, Edmund W
<edmund.w.poor at abc.com> wrote:
> For more than 90% of articles, there have been no reversion wars. The
> latest version is accurate, uncontroversial and fairly well
> spell-checked & copy-edited.
>
> Of the remaining 10% of articles, there are some subjects which would
> benefit from some sort of approval marking system. Still, I hope for
> these that we will include the 'development version' along with any
> 'approved' versions in Wikipedia 1.0 print or DVD publications.
>
> For that fraction of 1% which are highly controversial, approval marking
> is not really an issue. No academic or cleric has sufficient authority
> to settle the hottest disputes of our times.
>
> So let's concentrate on putting into effect a system which will boost
> consumer acceptance of 90% to 99% of our articles. Librarians aren't
> warning students against our global warming or Invasion of Iraq articles
> -- or at least we don't care much if they do. But it would be nice if
> our math and physics articles, as well as our non-controversial history
> and biology articles, could get some respect.
>
> Ed Poor
> Who has thought about this a lot, while reading Snow, Mayer, et al.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Snow [mailto:wikipedia at earthlink.net]
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 1:29 AM
> > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia
> >
> >
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >
> > >--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print
> > Wikipedia, the
> > >>response I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for
> > >>forking Wikipedia even in the slightest to make the content more
> > >>acceptible -- which is what any approval board would end up doing.
> > >>Then the project seemed to go into hibernation. Then it
> > seemed that a
> > >>group was working on it. Now it appears we are back to
> > discussing what
> > >>should be done.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >What? How do you come to that conclusion? There *will* be no fork at
> > >*all* - the only thing that will be done is selecting one
> > version of an
> > >article that is approved in some way. Any future approved
> > version would
> > >be based on the development version (that is, a regular Wikipedia
> > >article which would be in perpetual development), not the
> > last stable
> > >version.
> > >
> > If we adopt a formal approval system, the idea that all
> > future approved
> > versions will be based on development versions, rather than the last
> > approved "stable" version, sounds naively idealistic to me.
> > Even without
> > an approval system, this is already not the case on some of our more
> > contentious articles. When changes are not agreed on quickly,
> > one side
> > or the other, and sometimes both, may adopt the tactic of
> > reverting back
> > to an earlier version of which it "approves". However, since
> > the sides
> > generally do not approve of the same version, the dispute
> > continues and
> > often results in a revert war.
> >
> > Any system that marks a particular revision as "approved" or "stable"
> > will inherently increase the temptation to blindly revert
> > changes back
> > to the "stable" revision, instead of trying to work with
> > those changes
> > and improve the article. This is already a problem in some places and
> > among some editors (no names, this is not an invitation for
> > finger-pointing). If we want to implement a system that lets
> > people flag
> > specific article revisions, let's at least be aware of the possible
> > downsides to this as well.
> >
> > --Michael Snow
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject: Rép : [Wikitech-l] Re: I am really tired of registering an account for each MetaWiki site I found

body:
Le 14 sept. 04, ? 20:39, Anthere a ?crit :

> Kiss All a ?crit:
>> I found it is very tedious or even annoying for users and developers
>> to register an account for each MetaWiki site they encountered.
>> [...]
> I think I may have an account on basically 30 projects. Maybe more.
> I suspect Angela must have even more accounts.
> Well, it would be nice if there is single login, but there are worse
> things than that :-)

I agree with kiss all. It especially frustrating for non-english
travelling developers like me.

Several wikipedias
Seweral wiki-everything_else
Meta and Mediazilla too

Right Anthere this is not the worst thing but more than once it
discouraged me.
--
</david_latapie>
blog.empyree.org


from_name: John Lee

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Board -> Mav's disgust

body:
The sentiment is dittoed here. I don't have a clue what all this hoo-ha
is about, but that fact alone seems to suggest that something
clandestine occurred. From what I understand, this is something that, if
worked out correctly, *could* be beneficial to all the Wikipedias. So
why haven't I heard anything about this on en.wikipedia.org? It's not
even on the Community Portal. And the fact that someone as even-headed
as mav is even thinking about quitting makes me wonder just what's going on.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]] on En)

Christopher Mahan wrote:

>--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
><snip></snip>
>
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer (who is now seriously re-evaluating his participation
>>in Wikipedia
>>and Wikimedia)
>>
>>
>
>
>When mav says things like this, I don't have to go read 25+ posts to
>know that something has gone horribly wrong.
>
>I suggest that we:
>--Just build a free encyclopedia
>--Work with each other respectfully
>--Leave the rest of the ideas for another project, another year.
>
>PS: If we all even get close to becoming another ICANN, I'll be out
>the door with mav.
>
>


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

body:
On 15 Sep 2004, at 15:36, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:49:20 +0200
> From: Mirko Thiessen <wikipedia at mirko-thiessen.de>
>
> Jens Ropers wrote:
>
>> I have NO opinion on the matter, but PURELY as a ''suggestion'': If
>> Wikispecies was implemented as a portal, after the example of the
>> German
>> Wikipedia (eg. cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_Medizin) --
>> with
>> all the individual articles inside the WP, maybe named
>> [[Species:Whatever]] -- would that be a compromise that people might
>> be
>> more happy to accept?
>
>
> This project is about indexing 1 or 2 million species - in addition
> Wikispecies was intended to be a language-independent project, so in
> which
> Wikipedia would you want to have it? And who would want to have 2
> Million
> database entries scattered over Wikipedia?

Good points.
I was on the fence but your points have just convinced me that
Wikispecies as currently implemented is the way to go.
I would still encourage making cross-linking between Wikispecies and
the various Wikipedias as widespread and as easy as possible, but
frankly I think you're right.

> However, I start to think that this Wikispecies project is not worth
> the
> trouble. If people feel that they must leave Wikipedia just because
> this
> project is started then I tend to say forget it.
>
>
> Mirko

Please stay and bear with us.
Noise and discontent is all part of the democratic process.

-- Jens