from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
Hello,

I know that the pros and cons of pronunciation guides have been discussed
before, but that was (AFAIR) before the Wiktionary project. I just had a
new discussion with Arpingstone (if you can call this a discussion) about
this topic:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Arpingstone

It appears to me, that a guide how to pronounce a word would rather belong
to the Wiktionary project than to Wikipedia. In Wiktionary the
pronunciation appears to be a regular paragraph, while it is in Wikipedia
in one per thousand articles. What are your opinions about this?

In the above example Arpingstone added a sentence to the Bremen article:
"The 'Bre' of Bremen rhymes with 'clay'." I removed that sentence, mainly
because it is at most a rough approximation of the correct pronunciation.

Mirko (Cordyph)

--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: an open letter

body:
Jimmy writes:
> Everyone who was named as an "example" of rude
> behavior by "Joe Canuck" should examine their own
> actions.  Are we consistent, if we insist on good
> behavior from others, but don't insist upon it for
> ourselves?  We almost all fail in this regard from
> time to time -- such is the human condition, I
> guess -- but we should strive for the best within
us.

I doubt Jimmy's thinking of me specifically here--or
maybe he is--but in any case, I was quite rude awhile
back and should apologize publicly.  It is and should
be something to avoid.  I was out of line, and
obviously need to work on extending people the
courtesy they deserve.

best,

kq

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Major new thread: Looking for consensus on
 content metadata

body:
Urk, my brain's off today... I read the subject line as "Major new THREAT:
looking for consensus". :)

-- brion "ruthless despot" vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: an open letter

in_reply_to: <20030627172753.13241.qmail@web14701.mail.yahoo.com>; from obchodnakorze@yahoo.com on Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 10:27:53AM -0700

body:
koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> I doubt Jimmy's thinking of me specifically here--or
> maybe he is--but in any case, I was quite rude awhile
> back and should apologize publicly.  It is and should
> be something to avoid.  I was out of line, and
> obviously need to work on extending people the
> courtesy they deserve.

Actually, I was thinking of *me* specifically.  :-)

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> OK, preliminary version running at
> test.wikipedia.org.
>
> I suggest starting at
>      http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy
> which already has the categories Biology and
> Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link,
> you'll go to "Category:Biology" /
> "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles,
> except they have an automatically generated list of
> articles in that category at the end.

"Biology is the science of wet things."

LOL !

ok; that works. technically :-)

> I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did
> with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go
> anyway.

btw, what is that link about interlanguage links at
the top ?
I hope it is not planned that interlanguage links will
only be displayed in another page than the article
page ? If so, this is very very bad imho.

> Magnus

cheers

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from_name: John Knouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Really spiffy link?

body:
Why is anyone citing this link?
http://www.hugkiss.com/platinum/hugs.shtml
It's just a standard greeting card link with some rather
nauseatingly cute things, but comes with multiple annoying
popup sleazeball advertising windows.  Why would any
wikipedian want to direct others there?

--
John Knouse
jaknouse at frognet.net


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> I very strongly disagree with LittleDan's claim that
> the U.S.  is
> "backwards".  But we shouldn't spend too much time
> on this, as we're
> getting pretty far afield from discussing textbooks.
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Seriously, I haven't heard of anyone other than
> radical US
> > protestant sects supporting creationism.
>
> I read in Wikipedia that a poll conducted by the UN
> revealed that "18%
> of Europeans polled believed that man was created
> divinely by God
> (although this does not necessarily exclude
> evolution of the rest of
> nature)."  On a talk page, someone claimed that the
> same survey found
> that 33% of people in Poland believe the same thing.
>  (I've been
> unable to find the survey online, so I can't
> confirm.)

wahooo, in which page is that ???
well, polish, italian and irish people could fit in
that numbers perhaps. I am not even sure of that.

I have no poll at hand (because we just don't even
think to talk about the matter :-)), but I doubt
France is more than a couple %. Even in the definitly
catholic school my kids go to, children are taught
evolution in biology classes (with perhaps the hint a
higher spirit might have helped) :-)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] ChuckM (ban)

body:
--- a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
> For those who are concerned, one way or another,
> [[User:ChuckM/ban]]
> now exists. I added this page after ChuckM created a
> ban page for
> Hephaestos, who had only been cleaning up his junk.
>
> Evercat

one hit for each hit, right ?

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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why I don't believe (any more) in NPOV

body:
At 05:12 PM 6/27/03 +0200, Tomasz wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 07:41:32AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> > Richard Grevers wrote in part:
> >
> > >You are comparing apples and oranges here... The holocaust is knowable
> > >because people actually experienced if first hand. The existence of God is
> > >not provable and is based upon belief ('faith'). Anyone who "knows" rather
> > >than "believes" that God exists is probably violating the tenets of their
> > >professed religion.
> >
> > I'd wager that there are more people alive today
> > that have directly experienced God first hand
> > than have /ever/ directly experienced the Shoah.
> > I don't pretend to have data to back up that hunch;
> > however, I do know some of the former people personally,
> > and if you like, then I'll ask if it violates their beliefs
> > to claim to /know/ that God exists.  I doubt it.
> > Not all faiths are as wishy-washy as (say) liberal Protestantism.
>
>There is exactly 0 people who have experienced any god,
>while there are still quite a few that survived Shoah, so
>I don't know how you got your results.

I know at least two people who have experienced gods, and
more than two who survived the Shoah. In both cases, I'm basing
this on direct personal report.

(One of the two mentioned above is now a serious follower of the
gods in question; the other had an idle conversation, enjoyed the
garden as the god invited him to, and hasn't changed his life in
any way.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Stevertigo

body:
|VR wrote: *HUH?* I report that a friend had an encounter with a god, and is
now
| worshipping that god, and you think that this means I think that god is
| dead?

Umm... I may have gotten carried away there.

| That is *one* idea of God, an idea within the monotheist tradition. That
| isn't the god either of my friends spoke to. Their experiences are as
| real as any.

Well, theyre wrong, dammit.

-S-


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: letter to HMSO

body:
In message <200306270429.h5R4TrWp010211 at orwen.epoptic.com>, Sean Barrett
<sean=ZihJYU8p6MZAfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org> writes
  [...]
>
>I can be contacted by e-mail at
>sean=ZihJYU8p6MZBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org, by telephone at

Ouch! That's a really unfriendly email address, haven't you something
easier to type? :)

>01-310-739-xxxx (I am in time zone UTC-7 -- please call in your late

 From the UK that would be 00-1-310-739... assuming 310 is your area
code. Even better, write it in the International format +1 310 739 so
anyone anywhere would know the right number to dial. If she dialled that
number from Norwich, she'd end up talking to someone in Edinburgh!

>afternoon), and by post at Sean Barrett, xxxx xxxxxx Avenue, Los
>Angeles CA 90xxx, USA.  Thank you very much for your time and
>consideration.
>
>Sincerely,

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
"Wikipedians should generally refrain from witch hunts of users who
may be reincarnations of banned users."

However, grave concerns have been raised, and I have reason to think,
based on what's been going on the past few days, that ChuckM, Joe
Canuck, DW/Black Widow, and perhaps some others may (or may not) be
the same person, posting repeatedly on the same sorts of topics and in
the same sorts of obnoxious ways.

So, after a bit of research by one of the sysops, who will remain
nameless unless he wants to take public credit, we've determined that
there is a relatively small block of ip numbers where this user is
coming from.  At least through the weekend, we're going to block all
of those completely.

Next Monday morning, we'll assess whether it worked, and discuss when
to unblock that range of addresses.  It seems unfortunate in case
people in a certain ip block in Canada happen to want to edit this
weekend, but odds are, they won't.

Additionally, any and all of those names can be banned by names, and I
authorize a witch hunt (but please, practice WikiLove) on new
instances.  :-) Just for the weekend.

My concern is that this might spiral out of control into a
full-fledged attack, and I'd just as soon prevent that and deal with
it next week.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

body:
On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:43:36PM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >"reasonable creationist" sounds oxymoron to me.
> >Could we please stop being US-centric ? There aren't any creationists
> >anywhere else in the world, and those in US seems more like some kind of
> >cult than something that has anything to do with science.
>
> There aren't any creationists in Latin America and the Middle East?
> I'd have to disagree with you there, Tomasz.
> Certainly almost all of the creationists in the /West/ are in the US;
> there are very few in Europe and the British Commonwealth.
> But to claim that there are no others in the /world/
> strikes me as rather, well, Eurocentric.

Seriously, I haven't heard of anyone other than radical US protestant sects
supporting creationism. Certainly Catholic Church doesn't, so I don't see why
would there be any creationism in Latin America.

(Some googling revealed that there is some US-imported creationism in Middle East)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.

I suggest starting at
     http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy
which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.

I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.

Magnus

P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)


body:
At 09:54 AM 6/27/03 -0700, Stevertigo wrote:
>| I know at least two people who have experienced gods, and
>| more than two who survived the Shoah. In both cases, I'm basing
>| this on direct personal report.
>|
>| (One of the two mentioned above is now a serious follower of the
>| gods in question; the other had an idle conversation, enjoyed the
>| garden as the god invited him to, and hasn't changed his life in
>| any way.)
>
>I take issue with the above --for its expression that God as an idea or a
>concept is dead.  This tends to come from a natural rejection of dogmatism
>and puritanical/evangelical/fundamental views (those that contradict reality
>and sense) -- and in that sense its an attitude with which I identify with
>highly.

*HUH?* I report that a friend had an encounter with a god, and is now
worshipping that god, and you think that this means I think that god is
dead?

>But its all too typical in AmSociety to deal see God as a leftover relic of
>a primitive humanity.  The primitive "hand of God" notion -- playing with
>humanity like a bunch of toy soldiers -- is indeed a relic, but a relic of a
>misinterpretation.  The monotheist idea of "all is of one " is equivalent to
>the eastern traditional ideas where "all is one".  The meaing of "God" --
>"that which cannot be named" -- regardless of the the time, is quite an idea
>to wrap a human mind around.  Its the idea of something thats too ... to fit
>into an idea.

That is *one* idea of God, an idea within the monotheist tradition. That
isn't the god either of my friends spoke to. Their experiences are as
real as any.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Major new thread: Looking for consensus on content metadata

body:
As I said on wikitech-l, I implemented The Erik-style categories at the test site.

I recommend starting at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy for test purposes.

> ABOUT USAGE
>
> I expect
> * lots of arguments about category schemes
> * pragmatic agreement on the most obvious categories
> * much useful entry of data according to various schemes
> * eventual and wonderful automatic indexes, Bayesian
> auto-classification, etc. etc.

Automatic functions will be *way* less efficient (e.g., slow) in the Erik scheme.

> If we do this right, we can probably _eventually_ get rid of most of the
> list articles entirely: ''but'' there is one fly in the ointment with
> doing things this way: we lose the ability to create links in category
> lists to non-existing articles. This would be a great pity, as it is one
> of the most useful ways to create lists of new candidates for articles
> within a topic.

I vaguely remember a page with requested topics (*not* Most Wanted)...

Magnus

P.S.: As already said on wikitech-l, I'll copy this implementation into the CVS after a few days, *unless* I am told about basic problems with it.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] More people need server access

body:
> Thomas Corell wrote:
>
>> Well, and currently there are so many with CVS but too few (23 vs 1)
>> checking and installing all those things.
>
I seems we need some of the 23 people with CVS access to also have
server access.

Could Jimbo & other people who currently have access suggest who they'd
like from the current list of CVS-people?
Could people volunteer themselves?


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] getting to work

body:
I have been playing around a bit on
http://test.wikipedia.org building preliminary textbook
structures and am noticing a tendency to build layers of
links which organize the information down into bite-size
modules. The style for this one, about organic chemistry,
is not nearly as linear as the physics one that I had
started earlier as a traditional text ... maybe it is
because of the freedom allowed by hyperlinking. I am
excited to see how all of this develops and facilitates
non-linear learning. BTW I aggree that the modules will be
much smaller than traditional textbook chapters. My plan
for now is to refine each module down to one idea and send
out any other ideas to thier own module unless an
exceedingly short comment is all that is required, or one
idea encompasses the relation between a couple of other
linked modules.

PS Is it just me or does it seem like people are using this
space to rant on non related subjects ? Maybe I am
subconsciously taking it personally or something ..

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
> Seriously, I haven't heard of anyone other than
> radical US protestant sects
> supporting creationism. Certainly Catholic Church
> doesn't, so I don't see why
> would there be any creationism in Latin America.
>
> (Some googling revealed that there is some
> US-imported creationism in Middle East)

Creationism and refutal of modern science in the US
are no longer 'radical'. Now, they have become
mainstream. And it isn't just christians. Although
there aren't many, literal jewish bible readers (only
the ultra-orthodox do that) believe in creationism,
and some (mathematical definition) moslems believe in
creationism from interperatation of the /koran/, not
the bible (as shown at
http://members.aol.com/masadi/evol.htm). Besides, even
if creationism were an extremely unpopular belief
outside the US, it still has significant influence in
the United States and historical importance, and that
shouldn't be ignored.

-LDan

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from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> If we do this right, we can probably _eventually_ get rid of most of
> the list articles entirely: ''but'' there is one fly in the ointment
> with doing things this way: we lose the ability to create links in
> category lists to non-existing articles. This would be a great pity,
> as it is one of the most useful ways to create lists of new
candidates
> for articles within a topic.

If the category pages are editable, which they should be for various
reasons, then people can maintain a list of articles-to-be-written on
the very category page.

Axel

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from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] ChuckM (ban)

body:
For those who are concerned, one way or another, [[User:ChuckM/ban]]
now exists. I added this page after ChuckM created a ban page for
Hephaestos, who had only been cleaning up his junk.

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote in part:
>
> >Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >>Our current NPOV policy does not restrict topical
> >>focus; that was my point.
>
> >Well, it does, though, doesn't it?  If an article
> is about X, then it
> >is about X, not "X plus some other junk that people
> like to argue
> >about".  Often we have to fix this by adding some
> qualifier to the
> >title.
>
> Exactly.  If all that mav means by "DPOV" is
> ?restricting the topic to the discipline at hand and
> NPOV within that limit?,
> then I agree with him about how the textbooks should
> be written.
> But I disagree that this isn't already just part of
> NPOV.
>
> In Wikipedia, when we write an article on part of
> biology,
> then that article too is restricted to the displine
> of biology.
> This doesn't violate NPOV, and neither will the
> biology textbook.
> An important point is the existence (or potential
> existence)
> of other articles on parts of the discipline of
> scientific creationism
> (such as the attempts to pin down the dating of the
> flood
> by cross-referencing Genesis with geological data)
> and similarly, the (potential) existence of a
> textbook on that topic.
> To be sure, we don't have those articles on
> Wikipedia
> and probably never will have that textbook -- but we
> could.
>
> The text in [[en:Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]]
> of course must be changed,
> since it refers to a comprehensive encyclopaedia on
> everything.
> But this is /context/, not the /essence/ of NPOV.
>
>
> -- Toby

Well, I think the encyclopedia should continue being
written as [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] and we should
differentiate between this more on-topic POV and
classic NPOV, by calling this new subset of NPOV
'DPOV'. Just for clarity.
-LDan

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Magnus-
> OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.

Nice! Since you coded it, you may call it a "Magnus style scheme" ;-)

Some feedback:

1) If there's just one article, it still gets a semicolon appended. I have
no opinion yet as to whether the list should be formatted as one big block
or as a list, though.

2) We don't seem to have parent/child categories yet. If a category is
itself added to a category, the parent category should have a section
called

== Child categories ==

And the child category should have a section called

== Parent categories ==

By having this kind of automatic directory-like organization, we could
avoid a lot of category redundancy by only adding the most relevant,
lowest level category to each article.

3) Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.

* Biology
** Medicine
* France
** French monarch
...

4) I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".

5) After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the
category list, e.g.

[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]

> I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage
> links. But, here, you go anyway.

I'm worried about this if we don't have hierarchical categories.
Otherwise, I think we can avoid creating a too big mess by coming up with
a reasonable hierarchy.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pizza / Hawthorn

body:
Tim-
> As far as I've seen, this calculus thing is the first real argument he's
> gotten into, and that was settled quickly and reasonably. PP backed down.
> And making lots of minor edits, thereby wasting disk space, is not on our
> list of bannable offences at this time.

As I said previously, if a banned user returns while still under his ban,
it should take relatively little or nothing for that ban to be enforced.
But since several people have come out in defense of Lir, I'll wait with
doing so.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Textbook-l] getting to work

body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have been playing around a bit on
> http://test.wikipedia.org building preliminary
> textbook
> structures and am noticing a tendency to build
> layers of
> links which organize the information down into
> bite-size
> modules. The style for this one, about organic
> chemistry,
> is not nearly as linear as the physics one that I
> had
> started earlier as a traditional text ... maybe it
> is
> because of the freedom allowed by hyperlinking. I am
> excited to see how all of this develops and
> facilitates
> non-linear learning. BTW I aggree that the modules
> will be
> much smaller than traditional textbook chapters. My
> plan
> for now is to refine each module down to one idea
> and send
> out any other ideas to thier own module unless an
> exceedingly short comment is all that is required,
> or one
> idea encompasses the relation between a couple of
> other
> linked modules.
>
> PS Is it just me or does it seem like people are
> using this
> space to rant on non related subjects ? Maybe I am
> subconsciously taking it personally or something ..

I thought the reason for a textbook was for it to be
linear. Otherwise, people could just use the
encyclopedia.
-LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Notice of Appeal of Ban

body:
David Baltzer wrote:
> I am still waiting for you to name the precise actions I did to
>warrant a ban

And I have answered more than once.

Please refer to the following messages:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-June/004729.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-June/004905.html

>Also, please advise what steps you have taken to protect me, and any
>other users who accept your invitation to participate at Wiklipedia,
>from being harassed and libeled.

Harassment and libel are contrary to Wikipedia policies, and any user
who harasses or libels another is in violation of those policies and
will be asked to make proper amends or be banned.  Additionally, any
libelous material will be removed from the wikipedia.

However, due to your informing me privately that you intend to take
legal action against a user of this site, this conversation is hereby
terminated, and anything else you have to say to me regarding these
issue should take place through formal legal channels.

--Jimbo


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chuck,

body:
I'm a bit uneasy about people reverting ChuckM edits before he has actually
been banned. What must it look like to newbies?

He has already put a very unwelcoming message on JCarriker's talk page.
JCarriker being a new user. Unfortunately it was deleted before I could
replace it with a welcome message so I don't have a copy but it would very
likely have put a new user off. I don't want any of "our" behaviour to look
equally off putting. I'm sure he'll be banned soon enough.

Having said that since it is pretty clear he is DW. We could possibly just
go ahead and put a hardban notice on his ban page.

I don't know, but I do know that I don't want new, potentially very good
wikipedians to think. "This place is far too unfriendly for me" and go away.

Theresa


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pizza / Hawthorn

body:
"tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote in message
news:3EFAC2E5.6070007 at planetunreal.com...
> I'm stepping ina  bit late on this discussion.
>
> Is PIzza Puzzle the same person as  Lir?

Pizza Puzzle should be given the benefit of the doubt, regardless of his
identity. I've briefly given my reasons for this at:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pizza_Puzzle2

So far, Pizza Puzzle has made many valuable contributions to Wikipedia, and
I sincerely hope this continues.

> Is Hawthorn the same paerson as Pizza Puzzle?

No. Hawthorn is Ian Hawthorn, a Kiwi mathematician who has been actively
fighting PP's attempts to change the maths articles.

> I'm getting fed up with their bowdlerization of maths articles.

Please be tolerant.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: David Baltzer

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Notice of Appeal of Ban

body:
I am still waiting for you to name the precise actions I did to warrant a ban by you so that you demonstrate that you do not treat one User different than another. I'm sorry if truth makes you uncomfortable and feel as though you are on trial because the only thing "on trial" is the equality of your actions. I note though, when faced with facts that clearly demonstrate improper conduct, you choose not to reply.

As soon as you state the facts as to why I was banned and who requested that I be banned. Also, please advise what steps you have taken to protect me, and any other users who accept your invitation to participate at Wiklipedia, from being harassed and libeled.

This is a serious matter and I thank you for your attention to it at your earliest convenience.

---------------------------------
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body:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 07:41:32AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Richard Grevers wrote in part:
>
> >You are comparing apples and oranges here... The holocaust is knowable
> >because people actually experienced if first hand. The existence of God is
> >not provable and is based upon belief ('faith'). Anyone who "knows" rather
> >than "believes" that God exists is probably violating the tenets of their
> >professed religion.
>
> I'd wager that there are more people alive today
> that have directly experienced God first hand
> than have /ever/ directly experienced the Shoah.
> I don't pretend to have data to back up that hunch;
> however, I do know some of the former people personally,
> and if you like, then I'll ask if it violates their beliefs
> to claim to /know/ that God exists.  I doubt it.
> Not all faiths are as wishy-washy as (say) liberal Protestantism.

There is exactly 0 people who have experienced any god,
while there are still quite a few that survived Shoah, so
I don't know how you got your results.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pizza / Hawthorn

body:
"Tim Starling"  wrote
>
> "tarquin" wrote

> > I'm stepping ina  bit late on this discussion.

So am I actually. When I replied to you, I hadn't read the rest of the
discussion on this issue. But I have now and I still stand by what I said.
Perhaps this is a Lir reincarnation, but it's different this time.

http://qwert.diaryland.com/030517_17.html

As far as I've seen, this calculus thing is the first real argument he's
gotten into, and that was settled quickly and reasonably. PP backed down.
And making lots of minor edits, thereby wasting disk space, is not on our
list of bannable offences at this time.

http://qwert.diaryland.com/030520_2.html

Sorry, maybe I'm letting my silly morals get in the way of some good old
fashioned banning. Go for your life, Erik.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sue Michael Canuck

body:
New user just appeared in the last hour:

Elvis Presley <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley> (cur
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Elvis_Presley&diff=0&oldid=1086545>;
hist
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Elvis_Presley&action=history>)
. . Sue Michael Canuck
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Michael_Canuck> (Talk?
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Sue_Michael_Canuck&action=edit>)
/(correcting a wee little spelling error - this is so exciting. Elvis!)

/This has got be DW / Canuck, right, surely?
Does DW / Canuck think we're stupid or something?
He's done the "ooh! I'm new and thrilled to be here!" act before.

//


subject: [Textbook-l] linearity

body:
>I thought the reason for a textbook was for it to be
>linear. Otherwise, people could just use the
>encyclopedia.

The preliminary OChem book I am playing with has trains of
continuity, although they are more flexible than in a
printed book. Its a flexibility to link to all related
subjects that I wish the textbooks that I use had. I dont
think that most people would confuse an interlinked
textbook with an encyclopedia, as a textbook seeks to
actively teach, where an encyclopedia presents information
more passively. Plus there is an overlying scheme of nested
links that adds structure. But thats just how I see this
book on this subject turning out right now, and is no
comment on any other book or any other way or etc.

I guess a textbook as I see it should help lead a person
thru the subject even if it gives him freedom to change
direction. Isnt learning more fun for you as a learner when
you have some say on how you do it ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Adam

from_email: Adam

subject: [WikiEN-l] We can say what we like about...

body:
Jtdirl said: We can say what we want about Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] and Michael,  but they have never stooped to such a  level of vandalism.

How true...

---------------------------------
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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body:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 09:54:53AM -0700, Stevertigo wrote:
> | I know at least two people who have experienced gods, and
> | more than two who survived the Shoah. In both cases, I'm basing
> | this on direct personal report.
> |
> | (One of the two mentioned above is now a serious follower of the
> | gods in question; the other had an idle conversation, enjoyed the
> | garden as the god invited him to, and hasn't changed his life in
> | any way.)
>
> I take issue with the above --for its expression that God as an idea or a
> concept is dead.  This tends to come from a natural rejection of dogmatism
> and puritanical/evangelical/fundamental views (those that contradict reality
> and sense) -- and in that sense its an attitude with which I identify with
> highly.
>
> But its all too typical in AmSociety to deal see God as a leftover relic of
> a primitive humanity.  The primitive "hand of God" notion -- playing with
> humanity like a bunch of toy soldiers -- is indeed a relic, but a relic of a
> misinterpretation.  The monotheist idea of "all is of one " is equivalent to
> the eastern traditional ideas where "all is one".  The meaing of "God" --
> "that which cannot be named" -- regardless of the the time, is quite an idea
> to wrap a human mind around.  Its the idea of something thats too ... to fit
> into an idea.
>
> >From the twisting of this rather spiritual concept into the more idolized,
> Zeuslike interpretations of God, is where the original dislike for "pagan"
> religion sprouted from.  Of course, these other notions were identical in
> spirit to the monotheistic one -- but were judged by as "primitive" by other
> primitives.
>
> The point is, that if judged by the misuse -- the Western monotheist
> tradition looks like a big pile of crud - such is politics.  But if you
> understand it correctly - the legacy and importance of this particular
> aspect of everyone's culture, theres a lot worth respecting -- and of having
> some respect for.

Questions like "is there a god or not" or "was Mary a virgin" etc. were invented
just to distract people from the real one - "why should one pay money to the church,
and obey church rules". But it seems like it doesn't work any more - at least
in Europe people were able to stop caring about the church without changing
their beliefs much. Power of churches fell much more than number of believers.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re:ChuckM

body:
Anthere writes:

> > For those who are concerned, one way or another,
> > [[User:ChuckM/ban]] now exists. I added this page
> > after ChuckM created a ban page for Hephaestos,
> > who had only been cleaning up his junk.
> >
> > Evercat
>
> one hit for each hit, right ?

Well, it seemed the most appropriate time, but discussion of a ban
was warranted anyway, in my view. Anyway, it's largely irrelevant
now, DW has moved on to his next account.

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dynamic dates

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>I've written some PHP code to convert date formats from those typed to a
>user preference. A demonstration is now available at:
>
>http://www.piclab.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Date_demonstration
>
>There's also some information at:
>
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dates
>
>Any comments would be appreciated. There's just a few minor things left to
>do: for example I want to have an option in LocalSettings.php to disable it.
>

I haven't seen your code, but if you haven't already done so I highly
recommend putting the guts of this into Language.php, so it doesn't
clutter up the common code, and so other languages that want such an
option can adapt it cleanly.

The user option should also override the sitewide setting in
Language::date() ($wgAmericanDates true or false -- incidentally,
although there were terrible flame wars a few months ago when it was
suggested to change the date format used to display timestamps from
American to British order, I've not heard a peep since the default got
flipped during the server upgrade over a month ago.)

>Can I please have whatever access is necessary to enable me to install this
>on test.wikipedia.org, and ultimately on the live server?
>
>
I'll see about setting up a login for you. (Erik probably should get
one, too.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposed new layout

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Here's my rough version of a new layout.
> It's not too radical a departure from what we have, but I think it is
> much clearer, particularly for newcomers.
>
> Is it possible someone could upload those two test page files somewhere
> on the server so people can easily see the test page & comment?

http://test.wikipedia.org/Paddington%20-%20pass%202.html

> I would sugest that the current default skin be kept as an option, but
> that this become the new default skin.

It's fairly pleasant. :)

A few thoughts...

* The width of the sidebar is fixed in pixels, so it doesn't scale for
people with larger than normal text. Personally, my default font
settings on Mozilla at home are just a tad larger than conventional, and
most of the lines break (as they do on the current default skin).
Screenshot: http://leuksman.com/misc/paddington.png

Consider using a font-based em width for this. (Hmm, are min-width and
max-width usefully supported?)

* There needs to be a little space before the language links; it all
runs together visually for me.

* Is it really necessary to say "Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia"
_three times_ in the first column-inch? :)

* Another problem that's common with the current skin: if your window is
modestly sized in the horizontal way, the things in the topbar get
rather ugly: http://leuksman.com/misc/paddington-crunch.png

The 'go' and 'search' buttons should be locked together so they line
break as a unit if necessary. <nobr> isn't standard, but I think you can
use the whitespace CSS property to disable line breaking...?

* It's been occasionally requested that we clean up the top of the page
so Google etc. will actually show useful extracts in search results.
Just something to think about...

* There's still a lot of stuff in the top links, particularly when a lot
of language links are present. (Magnus's experimental ErikCategories
code puts category links at the top, too.) While convenient for those of
us with a good scroll wheel, this poses accessibility problems: imagine
you're blind, and have to listen to fifty generic-sounding links *every
time* you visit a Wikipedia page. Some voice-based browsers may have a
feature to skip to headings, but if we move two dozen links between the
first header and the body text, we defeat that. It may be useful to have
a (hidden?) "skip navigation" link that takes us to an anchor at the
actual article body.

(Incidentally, we can probably trash the "internal" class for links, and
just treat the rarer "external" links with a special class. That'll save
on bandwidth. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
>"Wikipedians should generally refrain from witch hunts of users who
>may be reincarnations of banned users."
>
>However, grave concerns have been raised, and I have reason to think,
>based on what's been going on the past few days, that ChuckM, Joe
>Canuck, DW/Black Widow, and perhaps some others may (or may not) be
>the same person, posting repeatedly on the same sorts of topics and in
>the same sorts of obnoxious ways.
>
>So, after a bit of research by one of the sysops, who will remain
>nameless unless he wants to take public credit, we've determined that
>there is a relatively small block of ip numbers where this user is
>coming from.  At least through the weekend, we're going to block all
>of those completely.
>
>Next Monday morning, we'll assess whether it worked, and discuss when
>to unblock that range of addresses.  It seems unfortunate in case
>people in a certain ip block in Canada happen to want to edit this
>weekend, but odds are, they won't.
>
>Additionally, any and all of those names can be banned by names, and I
>authorize a witch hunt (but please, practice WikiLove) on new
>instances.  :-) Just for the weekend.
>
>My concern is that this might spiral out of control into a
>full-fledged attack, and I'd just as soon prevent that and deal with
>it next week.
>
>--Jimbo

Is there any program that can be written to keep track of any new users
coming from those IPs and perhaps highlight them to a handful of senior
figures on wiki? That way, subtle watch could be kept to see if similar
patterns are appearing. Given that David Baltzer (if that is his real name,
and not yet another phoney name) has seemingly used such an astonishing
array of identities on wiki it seems exceedingly likely that he will not try
to come on again. (Triton and Tritonian are just the latest two to come to
light since my original messsage pointing out the astonishing similarities
between DW, Black Widow, Ron Davis, Olga Bityerkokoff, Jacques Delson, Joe
Canuck, ChuckM et al - I'm kicking myself for not coping on immediately who
Triton was; the topic, the 'I'm just a poor foreigner whose poor english . .
. ' malarkey, the person he ganged up on, the tone adopted, etc was all
classic DW, he having used it all before a couple of times, but it was only
by spending hours wading through past 'visitatons' that the pattern could
truly be spotted and conclusions drawn.)

Ensuring a subtle private eye can be kept to spot a user with classic DWism
from those IPs would help avoid recent situations where people in the dark
had to spot similarities, the new 'DW' in the process having caused a lot of
damage, bad feeling and probably as DW has managed to do in the past driven
people away, as well as in the process having uploaded many images with
serious copyright problems. (There are still images from past DWs that have
yet to be examined. Those I have checked at random uniformly lacked any
information whatsoever on source, though I strongly suspect they all came
from one sourcebook or source, because all are almost identical in
composition, size, colour, shape, etc.)

But that private eye program should not be generally available. All users
should be treated with the presumption of innocence. But a quiet track of
users from those IPs (maybe only for a couple of weeks) might help wiki spot
the new DW within days and react, rather than the current weeks or longer it
has taken, during which time a lot of damage has already been done by him.

One final point - even by DW's standards, his 'Sue Joe Canuck' antics hit a
new low. To pretend to be a paedophile, editing pages on sexual matters and
leaving summaries asking could he ''keep'' a copy of an image of 'Pan'
copulating with an goat and especially asking could he copy a picture of a
child from one page, was horrifying.

18:33 27 Jun 2003 Incest (a linky)
18:30 27 Jun 2003 Talk:Child (can I copy this photo too?)
18:29 27 Jun 2003 Child pornography (one teeny weenie linky!)
18:21 27 Jun 2003 North American Man-Boy Love Association (another linky
pooh by Sue-Sue!)

God knows what visitors to wiki thought when they saw someone all this. We
can say what he want about Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] and Michael, but they have never
stooped to such a  level of vandalism. If DW is willing to stoop to such
levels, what else will he try when he comes back. This is one user that wiki
needs to be ready and able to clamp down on as soon as possible.

JT

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Anthere wrote:
> btw, what is that link about interlanguage links at
> the top ?
> I hope it is not planned that interlanguage links will
> only be displayed in another page than the article
> page ? If so, this is very very bad imho.

No worry, it's just an attempt to get the language links into their own
database table; just another experiment, it has nothing to do with the
category scheme.

Magnus


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>LD and I were talking about this at length. In attempting to sort out some
>basic rules for phonetic schemes, it occurred to us that though phonetics
>are important, they would tend to default to majority accents - which are
>irreconcilable ethno-political fodder.

For giving the pronunciation of English words to English speakers,
I prefer abandoning phonemic transcription for morphophones.
A morphophone is a concept such as .long-i.,
which doesn't specify what sound .long-i. is,
only that it's the same sound as in "lie", "fight", "file", "fire", etc.
To get a specific sound (either phoneme or phone),
you'd have to specify an accent (a dialect or even idiolect)
and possibly also a context (the surrounding morphophones).
But the translation should be unambiguous for any combination.

For example, in transcribing "fire", we can give .f.long-i.r.,
and we don't have to argue whether it's pronounced /fai@/ or /fair/,
because the rule is that .r. between a long vowel and the end of a word
is /@/ for some people but /r/ for others, and that's just fine.
(And for some people, it depends on how the next word begins,
whether a vowel or a consonant, and that's fine too.)

Of course this has the same problem as a phonemic transcription,
that ASCII isn't much up to the challenge of rendering .long-i.,
but we'll likely have this problem with essentially any solution.

>I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is both easy to read (SAMPA
>eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these attempt to.

Well, I still prefer Evan Kirschbaum's ASCII IPA to SAMPA's. ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Some feedback:
>
> 1) If there's just one article, it still gets a semicolon appended. I have
> no opinion yet as to whether the list should be formatted as one big block
> or as a list, though.

Fixed.

> 2) We don't seem to have parent/child categories yet. If a category is
> itself added to a category, the parent category should have a section
> called
>
> == Child categories ==

Done.

> And the child category should have a section called
>
> == Parent categories ==

Unnecessary. They're displayed as "normal" categories of this very page.

> 3) Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
> structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
>
> * Biology
> ** Medicine
> * France
> ** French monarch
> ...

What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology"
and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?

> 4) I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
> bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".

Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.

> 5) After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
> useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the
> category list, e.g.
>
> [[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]

*Way* too complicated without a separate database table (which, I won't
get tired of reminding you, was my initial implementation ;-)

>>I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage
>>links. But, here, you go anyway.
>
>
> I'm worried about this if we don't have hierarchical categories.
> Otherwise, I think we can avoid creating a too big mess by coming up with
> a reasonable hierarchy.

Let's see how this works out...

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Getting back on topic (Was: English phonology)

body:
Anthere wrote in part:

>We should have sounds in wiktionary...
>to be NPOV, each word would have to respect each pronunciation :-)

I'd suggest developing a morphophonic system for each language.
Then the transcription can link to a page that explains
how the morphophones correspond to phonemes (even phones)
in some major dialects.  But the morphophones don't play favourites
(and you can always keep adding to the list of "major" dialects).

I explained briefly what morphophones are in a previous post.
The classic reference seems to be: Smith, Henry Lee, Jr.;
1967; The Concept of the Morphophone; Language 43:3:306-341.
I should look that up if I'm going to talk much more. ^_^

>And...I pronounce nuclear, newclear :-(((

What you don't realise is that /everybody/ pronounces "nuclear" as "newclear".
It is "new" itself that's pronounced "nyoo" /nju:/ in some dialects
and "noo" /nu:/ in others.  This is the English morphphone .long-u..

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Professor XYZ (Was: Chuck, Pizza Puzzle, etc.)

body:
Julie Kemp wrote in part:

>Otherwise, hi all -- is someone please going to wipe my real name?
>Please?

I don't think that there have been any specific recommendations
as to how Julie's past presence in Wikipedia ought to be rendered
other than my suggestion here to replace all mention with "Professor XYZ".
(Briefly, the purpose of this is to preserve a single name
for reference to a single individual that's had influence
on the development of various policies and standards in our history,
without allowing reference to her to appear in Internet searches.)
If there are no objections, then I'll start searching for her
(looking for text like "JHK" and "Hofmann Kemp",
and of course following backlinks from her user pages)
and replacing these as I discover them.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposed new layout

body:
Tarquin wrote:

>Here's my rough version of a new layout.
>It's not too radical a departure from what we have, but I think it is
>much clearer, particularly for newcomers.

I like having "Wikipedia" right at the top.
And I like the separation between article links and Wikipedia links.

For people whose eyes are scanning directly for content,
it'd be really nice to have the
Paddington station

directly above the text, hence after the language links etc.
Your horizontal rule would serve to separate
those links which are specific to the article
from those links which are general to Wikipedia.
(Some more whitespace would be good too if that happens.)

Also, in Netscape 6 for Windows (at least),
the vertical rule doesn't go down all the way;
it just stops in the middle of the sidebar for no reason.
One could try to fix that, but more generally,
I think that the looser rule style of the classic skin is nicer;
we don't need all of the rules to touch each other precisely.

I miss the dropdown box for special pages.
A link to [[Special:Specialpages]] isn't the same!
But you could move that box to the sidebar (and the bottom),
and I wouldn't mind.

When you do write the bottom, remember that everything on the sidebar
also has to appear on the bottom for people with no sidebar.

>Is it possible someone could upload those two test page files somewhere
>on the server so people can easily see the test page & comment?

>I would sugest that the current default skin be kept as an option, but
>that this become the new default skin.

"classic skin" (not quite as old as "nostalgia" ^_^)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.

Cool!

Comments:

When you list subcategories on a category page,
you link to [[XXX]] when you should link to [[Category:XXX]].
On [[test:]] at least, this means a lot of spurious red links!

If I add a category link to an article and return to the category page,
then my browser isn't told that the category page has been changed.
This means that I should never trust a category page without reloading.
A simple solution might be to never cache category pages,
yet this will be problematic when the category pages become long.
The more complete solution is to tell the cache to expire
whenever the table of categories is changed for that category,
rather than only when the category page itself has been edited;
but I don't know how well that would fit into your code.

If a category page doesn't exist but I go to it anyway,
then all I see is "(There is currently no text in this page)".
There's no indication that there are already articels in the category.
Could we still list them after "(There is currently no text ...)"?

The following two concerns may have a combined solution:

There is no support for redirected categories.
For example, [[Category:Abstract Algebra]]
redirects to the correct [[Category:Abstract algebra]]
(and we want to allow this, or people will duplicate things!).
Yet [[Category:Abstract algebra]] doesn't list
the items that link to [[Category:Abstract Algebra]].
Instead, it only lists [[Category:Abstract Algebra]]
as a subcategory, which is not what it really is.
Category redirects were an important feature of Erik's idea.

You also don't list subcategories of subcategories.
We don't really need this, since you can look at the subcategories,
but it could confuse people as to what categories already exist.
Now, we could ask people to link to [[Category:Mathematics]]
whenever they link a category page to [[Category:Group theory]]
(of course, you would not require this in ordinary articles).
OTOH, you could list subcategories of subcategories fairly cleanly
by using nested list structures in the rendered HTML;
without that, it would end up being pretty messy.

The combined solution:
Use a nested list structure similar to that on [[Special:Whatlinkshere]].
Then [[Category:Mathematics]] (as things now stand on [[test:]]) would say:
"== Subcategories ==
"* [[Category:Advanced mathematics]]
"** [[Category:Abstract algebra]]
"*** [[Category:Abstract Algebra]] (redirect)
"**** [[Category:Group theory]]
"** [[Category:Set theory]]
"* [[Category:Logic]]
"* [[Category:Philosophy of mathematics]]
"** [[Category:Foundations of mathematics]]
It would be nicer, of course, to elide the redirect entirely,
but perhaps that would be more difficult to programme?
Potentially, you could stick a list of all articles in each subcategory
inside this nested list structure, but that would probably be too long.
(BTW, I've decided that [[Category:Advanced mathematics]] is a bad idea,
but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)

The following comments are not very important,
so don't hold off on implementation because of them:

Links to categories probably shouldn't show up as stubs (brown text).
But they should still show up as nonexistent (red text) when applicable.

If I put category links or interlanguage links at the bottom of a page,
then this puts additional whitespace at the bottom of the HTML
that really shouldn't be there; and this is not a new problem.
It makes [[Category:Logic]] (for example) look kind of funny.

Shouldn't category pages have yellow backgrounds?  I'm conflicted.

The list of articles in a category would look nicer
if titles were given using spaces instead of underscores.
The same goes for the list of subcategories of a category
and the list of all categories on [[Special:Categories]].

>P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real
>problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into
>the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)

Perhaps this should be announced on <wikipedia-L>?
After all, we've been discussing category schemes over there.
Then give them maybe a week?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Magnus-

Bug report first: The new "Subcategories" links do not point to the
Category: namespace but into the main namespace.

>> And the child category should have a section called
>>
>> == Parent categories ==

> Unnecessary. They're displayed as "normal" categories of this very page.

Of course! D'oh.

>> 3) Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
>> structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
>>
>> * Biology
>> ** Medicine
>> * France
>> ** French monarch
>> ...

> What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology"
> and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?

Yes, I think it should appear under both. A little redundancy here won't
hurt.

>> 4) I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
>> bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".

> Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.

I agree, looks fine to me.

>> 5) After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
>> useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the
>> category list, e.g.
>>
>> [[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]

> *Way* too complicated without a separate database table

I presume you're using the LINKS table. Why not add a LINK_ID to the table
and have a separate LINK_AS table that includes the sorting criteria and
can be looked up for categories? Updated on page save?

As for separation, let's keep the idea of a meta namespace open -- we can
always move this stuff if need be. I envision a scheme where by default, a
user sees two edit windows for each page, the big article editor and a
small meta editor, but he can decide to disable the meta stuff if he
doesn't care about it at all.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposed new layout

body:
I wrote in part:

>Tarquin wrote:

>>Here's my rough version of a new layout.
>>It's not too radical a departure from what we have, but I think it is
>>much clearer, particularly for newcomers.

>I like having "Wikipedia" right at the top.
>And I like the separation between article links and Wikipedia links.

And then I made a bunch of suggestions.

So now I've implemented my suggestions in the attached files.

I don't know CSS, and writing this involved more CSS
than I had ever dealt with in the rest of my life combined.
So I didn't figure out how the rules (or rather, border lines) work.
Tarquin's don't work right on all browsers anyway,
so I'm not going to worry about it now,
since he'll doubtless come up with something new.

Otherwise, the attached is what /I/ like. ^_^

-- Toby
-------------- next part --------------
body.encyclopedia {
	background: white
	}
body.meta {
	background: #ffffdd
	}
body {
	margin: 0px;
	padding: 0px;
	}
form.inline {
	display: inline;
	}

/* ********************************** TOPBAR */
#topbar {
	border-bottom: solid 1px black;
        padding-bottom: 4px;
	}
/* common to all 3 topbar blocks */
#topbar div.navbox {
	/*
	background-color: #eef;
	background-color: #f8f8f8;
	*/
	padding: 0px 4px;
	margin: 0px;
	}
div.navbox {
	font-size: 0.9em;
	}
h1.sitename {
	padding-top: 0;
	margin-top: 0;
	padding-bottom: 0;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	font-size: 2.2em;
	}
p.subtitle {
	padding: 0em 1em;
	margin: 0em;
	color: #723;
	}
#topbar div#header {
	padding-bottom: 2px;
	}
#topbar div#search {
	}
#topbar div#sitelinks {
	padding-bottom: 2px;
	}

div.spacer {
	clear: both;
	}
div.row span.left {
	float: left;
	text-align: left;
	width: 49%;
	}
div.row span.right {
	float: right;
	text-align: right;
	width: 49%;
	}

/* ********************************* CONTENT */
#content {
	top: 0px;
	margin: 0px;
	/*
	padding: 0px 5px 0px;
	position: relative;
	*/
	}
a.interwiki, a.external {
	color: #3366BB;
	}
a.printable {
	text-decoration: underline;
	}
a.stub {
	color: #772233;
	text-decoration: none;
	}
h1.pagetitle {
	padding-top: 0;
	margin-top: 0;
	padding-bottom: 0;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	font-size: 2em;
	}
h2 {
	font-size: 125%;
	}
h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
	margin-bottom: 0;
	}
h3 {
	font-size: 112.5%;
	}
h4 {
	font-size: 106.25%;
	}
h5 {
	font-size: 103.125%;
	}
h6 {
	font-size: 100%;
	}
p.languages , p.actions {
	padding: 0em 1em;
	margin: 0em;
	font-size: 0.9em;
	color: #723;
	}
p.languages {
	font-style: italic;
	}
#article {
	padding: 4px 4px;
	}

/* ********************************* quickbar */
#quickbar-left , #quickbar-right {
	position: absolute;
	top: 0px;
	bottom: 0px;
	width: 148px;
	padding: 0px;
	visibility: visible;
	z-index: 99;
	}
#quickbar-left {
	left: 0px;
	border-right: 1px solid black;
	}
#quickbar-right {
	right: 0px;
	border-left: 1px solid black;
	}
.quickbarsection {
	padding: 6px;
	border-bottom: 1px solid black;
	}
/* ********************************** QUICKBAR DEPENDENCIES */
#content {
	margin-left: 148px;
	}
-------------- next part --------------
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<title>Paddington station - Wikipedia</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="Toby.css">

Wikipedia

The free encyclopedia

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Paddington station

Paddington station or London Paddington is the name of a major
railway station in the Paddington area of
London, which is the London terminus for long distance trains to the West
of England and South Wales and some West London commuter services. Stops on
several lines of the London Underground are also part of the station
complex: the Hammersmith & City Line at a surface station on the north
side of the station and parallel with it; the District Line and
Circle Line in a cutting in front of the station and perpendicular
to it, and the Bakerloo Line in deep-level tubes below the station.

History

The first station to open in the Paddington area was a temporary terminus for
the Great Western Railway on the west side of Bishop's Bridge Road. The
first GWR services from London to Taplow, near Maidenhead, ran from here in
1838. After the opening of the main station in 1854, this became the site of
the goods yard. After years of dereliction, it is now being redeveloped as a mixed residential and business area called "Paddington Central".

The main Paddington station between Bishops Bridge Road and Praed Street was
opened in 1854. It was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, though much of
the architectural detailing was by his associate Matthew Digby Wyatt. The Great Western Hotel was built in front of it in 1868-74 by P. C. Hardwick. The
station was substantially enlarged in 1906-15.

In 1863 the Metropolitan Railway opened the first underground railway, running
from Paddington to Farringdon. Its line emerged from the tunnels at a station
(known for many years as Bishop's Road) on the north side of the mainline
station, with a connection to the GWR mainline which allowed it to run regular
services onto the GWR's Hammersmith branch. From the 1930s until the late 1960s
the Metropolitan Line and GWR suburban services shared a group of four platforms, but
the Underground is now entirely separate and forms Paddington station on the
Hammersmith & City Line.

In 1868 the Metropolitan Railway opened a new branch to Kensington, with a station
called Praed Street in a cutting across that street from
the mainline station. This station is now Paddington station on the Circle and District
Lines. It is linked to the mainline station and the Bakerloo line by a footway that
passes underneath Praed Street and the Great Western Hotel.

The deep-level Baker Street and Waterloo Railway - now the Bakerloo Line -
arrived in 1913, with platforms underneath the mainline station.

 Trivia

The children's book character Paddington Bear was named after Paddington station.

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subject: [Textbook-l] linearity

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I think one important point of the textbook project
> is that we can
> actually *print* it as a textbook. That doesn't mean
> it should not take
> advantage of the dead-easy wiki hyperlinks, just
> that there should be a
> way to run a script and get a PDF, RTF, or
> something, that actually
> handles like a book.
>
> One way would be for each page containing a link
> with a defined name,
> like [[The next topic|>>>]] (or just "next" or
> "forward" instead of
> ">>>"). A script could run through that easily, as
> could a reader who
> prefers linearity over mini-webs.
>
> Magnus

I'm not the programmer, but should it really be a link
to a regular wiki page? I think it would be more
appropriate if it linked to something like
[[Special:Next]] or {{NEXTPAGE}}. It would also be
convienient for that to appear at the bottom of the
screen automatically, but that would take some coding.
-LDan

__________________________________
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subject: [Textbook-l] I'm leaving for a while

body:
I'm going to summer camp for the next four weeks, so I
won't be here on the list. Between now and then, I
expect you'll either make many important policy
decisions about the textbook, keep talking about for a
long time but not do anything, or slowly abandon it.
Since I'm hoping for the first one, here are my
opinions on the textbook:

1. It should not require logins to work on it. We
don't need more regulation, and I see no reason to
change our current policy.

2. I haven't said this yet, but I think we should
delete every page not listed on the structure page
that is worthless or a stub, without discussion on
votes for deletion.

3. A textbook should be DPOV, which is a subset of
NPOV, but completely different than how NPOV is
applied in the textbook. We should also have links to
other online and Wikipedia references that show other
POVs not represented in the book, or perhaps links to
specially created resources for this.

4. From the start, we should be able to print out the
whole textbook, cover to cover, complete with notices
about copyrights and a cover and back. PDF or PS sound
like good formats, or perhaps just a long HTML/CSS
page? Once this is done, we should make that format
accessable online so others can see how the finished
product would look, but only downloaded, say, a
chapter at a time, to decrease server load.
-LDan

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] sue Michael Canuck

body:
Julie Kemp wrote:

>like a
>stalker who knows exactly how far his restraining order operates, and so
>stays six inches beyond it at all times.  Don?t feed it.
>
>Jules
>

Nicely put.
I just wonder what on earth the guy gets out of doing this.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: Bug Report (was: Re: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style)

body:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 12:57:22PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
>
> I suggest starting at
>      http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy
> which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
>

The "Categories"-link that is added to the top of each article is also
added to the special pages or to talk pages. (OK, the later could
sometimes need a [[Category:Flame War]]). I would expect categories
to be limited to the article namespace.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>If the category pages are editable, which they should be for various
>reasons, then people can maintain a list of articles-to-be-written on
>the very category page.

Brilliance!

And Erik's-scheme-as-incarnated-by-Magnus does allow just this.

-- Toby


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Questions like "is there a god or not" or "was Mary a virgin" etc. were invented
>just to distract people from the real one - "why should one pay money to the church,
>and obey church rules". But it seems like it doesn't work any more - at least
>in Europe people were able to stop caring about the church without changing
>their beliefs much. Power of churches fell much more than number of believers.

Well, if Europeans manage to believe in God without giving power to the Church,
then why is it that you're the one bringing churches' power into this,
when the rest of us were simply talking about belief in God?
Indeed, as I'm about to demonstrate in another post,
it's /your/ position that depends heavily on the technical point
of whether or not some God manages to actually exist.
NPOV, of course, cannot judge.

-- Toby


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Richard Grevers wrote in part:

>>>You are comparing apples and oranges here... The holocaust is knowable
>>>because people actually experienced if first hand. The existence of God is
>>>not provable and is based upon belief ('faith'). Anyone who "knows" rather
>>>than "believes" that God exists is probably violating the tenets of their
>>>professed religion.

>>I'd wager that there are more people alive today
>>that have directly experienced God first hand
>>than have /ever/ directly experienced the Shoah.
>>I don't pretend to have data to back up that hunch;
>>however, I do know some of the former people personally,
>>and if you like, then I'll ask if it violates their beliefs
>>to claim to /know/ that God exists.  I doubt it.
>>Not all faiths are as wishy-washy as (say) liberal Protestantism.

>There is exactly 0 people who have experienced any god,
>while there are still quite a few that survived Shoah, so
>I don't know how you got your results.

You're now relying on a technicality to make your point.
But NPOV can't judge whether these people's
(claimed) direct experience of God is real or all in their heads --
any more than it should judge this of the Shoah.
(And then you get /my/ interpretation -- it's real /and/ all in their heads.)

As for how I got my results, I'm figuring that 12E6 people died in the Shoah
(using a common estimate, if you don't limit the victims only to Jews),
so if the Nazis killed most, then that's 20E6 experiencers of the Shoah ever.
Compare that to 6E9 people now alive, of whom 90% believe in God.
For my estimate to be true, only 1 in 300 need experience God directly,
which seems reasonable to me (even though it's all in their head).

I should also note that I'm using "God" here
as a generic term for ?the Presence of a Divine Person?.
I don't assume that there is only 1 such Divine Person,
much less that Christian Triune thingy.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposed new layout

body:
I wrote in small part:

>So now I've implemented my suggestions in the attached files.

These were munged a bit in a bad FTP between Windows and Unix.
Try the attached files now.

-- Toby
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

body:
james duffy wrote in part:

>Is there any program that can be written to keep track of any new users
>coming from those IPs and perhaps highlight them to a handful of senior
>figures on wiki?

>But that private eye program should not be generally available. All users
>should be treated with the presumption of innocence.

Watch out that we don't develop a corps (or cabal?) of "senior figures"
that keep tabs on suspected bad guys without others' knowing what's going on.
We have [[meta:List of Michael's pseudonyms]] available to all;
any list of DW's pseudonyms should similarly be open to inspection.
To be sure, such lists should state up front that these are /suspected/.
(Michael's now does.)

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Textbooks

body:
LittleDan wrote:

>Well, I think the encyclopedia should continue being
>written as [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] and we should
>differentiate between this more on-topic POV and
>classic NPOV, by calling this new subset of NPOV
>'DPOV'. Just for clarity.

Since "NPOV" has never meant ?encyclopaedic?,
I don't see the need to change letters to clarify.
And if I understand my Wikipedia history right,
Jimbo's concept of NPOV predated the -pedias (even Nu-).

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] linearity

body:
I think one important point of the textbook project is that we can
actually *print* it as a textbook. That doesn't mean it should not take
advantage of the dead-easy wiki hyperlinks, just that there should be a
way to run a script and get a PDF, RTF, or something, that actually
handles like a book.

One way would be for each page containing a link with a defined name,
like [[The next topic|>>>]] (or just "next" or "forward" instead of
">>>"). A script could run through that easily, as could a reader who
prefers linearity over mini-webs.

Magnus

Karl Wick wrote:
>>I thought the reason for a textbook was for it to be
>>linear. Otherwise, people could just use the
>>encyclopedia.
>
>
> The preliminary OChem book I am playing with has trains of
> continuity, although they are more flexible than in a
> printed book. Its a flexibility to link to all related
> subjects that I wish the textbooks that I use had. I dont
> think that most people would confuse an interlinked
> textbook with an encyclopedia, as a textbook seeks to
> actively teach, where an encyclopedia presents information
> more passively. Plus there is an overlying scheme of nested
> links that adds structure. But thats just how I see this
> book on this subject turning out right now, and is no
> comment on any other book or any other way or etc.
>
> I guess a textbook as I see it should help lead a person
> thru the subject even if it gives him freedom to change
> direction. Isnt learning more fun for you as a learner when
> you have some say on how you do it ?
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CVS

body:
Timwi wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I have just checked out the phase3 CVS repository.
>
>Now I've fixed my first bug. How do I get write access so I can commit
>it? Or does somebody want to look over it first?
>
Cool, thanks! Better to look it over first, and make sure it doesn't
break test cases:

* ''em''
* '''strong'''
* '''''em-strong''''' (currently wrong markup)
* ''em '''em-strong'''''
* '''''em-strong''' em'' (currently wrong markup)
* ''em '''em-strong''' em''
* '''strong ''em-strong''''' (currently wrong markup)
* '''''em-strong'' strong'''
* '''strong ''em-string'' strong'''

>What I'm wanting to commit fixes the bug I reported at
>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=762315
>&group_id=34373&atid=411195. (Sorry I accidentally reported it as a
>feature request, but I couldn't find a way of deleting it, nor would the
>bug tracker let me submit the same thing again as a bug report.)
>
Don't worry about it. I just deleted it as a duplicate of an existing
bug report, anyway. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CVS

body:
Timwi -- I just noticed you posted this on the Wikipedia-l general
discussion mailing list. You should probably sign up for the Wikitech-l
development list:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I've forwarded your message and my response there.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] CVS]

body:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Wikipedia-l] CVS
Date: 	Sat, 28 Jun 2003 13:40:40 +0200
From: 	Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
Reply-To: 	wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
To: 	wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org

Hi,

I have just checked out the phase3 CVS repository.

Now I've fixed my first bug. How do I get write access so I can commit
it? Or does somebody want to look over it first?

What I'm wanting to commit fixes the bug I reported at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=762315
&group_id=34373&atid=411195. (Sorry I accidentally reported it as a
feature request, but I couldn't find a way of deleting it, nor would the
bug tracker let me submit the same thing again as a bug report.)

Greetings,
Timwi

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: Re: [Wikipedia-l] CVS]

body:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Wikipedia-l] CVS
Date: 	Sat, 28 Jun 2003 11:50:42 -0700
From: 	Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Reply-To: 	wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
To: 	wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
References: 	<DXV3X3XXV62RQNL74NLQOFSM3ZWS65.3efd7eb8 at xptoe>

Timwi wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I have just checked out the phase3 CVS repository.
>
>Now I've fixed my first bug. How do I get write access so I can commit
>it? Or does somebody want to look over it first?
>
Cool, thanks! Better to look it over first, and make sure it doesn't
break test cases:

* ''em''
* '''strong'''
* '''''em-strong''''' (currently wrong markup)
* ''em '''em-strong'''''
* '''''em-strong''' em'' (currently wrong markup)
* ''em '''em-strong''' em''
* '''strong ''em-strong''''' (currently wrong markup)
* '''''em-strong'' strong'''
* '''strong ''em-string'' strong'''

>What I'm wanting to commit fixes the bug I reported at
>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=762315
>&group_id=34373&atid=411195. (Sorry I accidentally reported it as a
>feature request, but I couldn't find a way of deleting it, nor would the
>bug tracker let me submit the same thing again as a bug report.)
>
Don't worry about it. I just deleted it as a duplicate of an existing
bug report, anyway. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CVS

body:
Hi,

I have just checked out the phase3 CVS repository.

Now I've fixed my first bug. How do I get write access so I can commit
it? Or does somebody want to look over it first?

What I'm wanting to commit fixes the bug I reported at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=762315
&group_id=34373&atid=411195. (Sorry I accidentally reported it as a
feature request, but I couldn't find a way of deleting it, nor would the
bug tracker let me submit the same thing again as a bug report.)

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dynamic dates

body:
In response to desires expressed on:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numb
ers)

I've written some PHP code to convert date formats from those typed to a
user preference. A demonstration is now available at:

http://www.piclab.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Date_demonstration

There's also some information at:

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

Any comments would be appreciated. There's just a few minor things left to
do: for example I want to have an option in LocalSettings.php to disable it.
I'm busy this weekend, expect an upload to CVS some time next week. I'll
also upload that minor enhancement to RC I wrote some time ago.

Can I please have whatever access is necessary to enable me to install this
on test.wikipedia.org, and ultimately on the live server?

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Professor XYZ

body:
Toby-
> Julie Kemp wrote in part:

>> Otherwise, hi all -- is someone please going to wipe my real name?
>> Please?

> I don't think that there have been any specific recommendations
> as to how Julie's past presence in Wikipedia ought to be rendered

She mailed me privately and said that it would be OK to change all
occurances of "J Hofmann Kemp" to "JHK". I changed her username and the
article histories, but changing the talk page sigs is a bit of work, and
I'm wary of running a potentially destructive SQL query on hundreds of
pages.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories, Erik style

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Bug report first: The new "Subcategories" links do not point to the
> Category: namespace but into the main namespace.

Whoopsie ;-)
Fixed.

>>>3) Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
>>>structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
>
>>What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology"
>>and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?
>
> Yes, I think it should appear under both. A little redundancy here won't
> hurt.

Maybe later today...

>>>4) I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
>>>bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".
>
>>Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.
>
> I agree, looks fine to me.

One thing I can leave unchanged :-)

>>>5) After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
>>>useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the
>>>category list, e.g.
>>>
>>>[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]
>
>>*Way* too complicated without a separate database table
>
> I presume you're using the LINKS table. Why not add a LINK_ID to the table
> and have a separate LINK_AS table that includes the sorting criteria and
> can be looked up for categories? Updated on page save?

Yes, that should work. I'll have a look at that part of the code.

> As for separation, let's keep the idea of a meta namespace open -- we can
> always move this stuff if need be. I envision a scheme where by default, a
> user sees two edit windows for each page, the big article editor and a
> small meta editor, but he can decide to disable the meta stuff if he
> doesn't care about it at all.

Maybe that could be done "on-the-fly", when showing the edit page? Like
this:
1. Load the article to edit from the database.
2. Extract all meta information.
3. Show the article in a big box, and the meta stuff in the small one.
4. Upon saving, attach the meta stuff at the end of the article.
Advantages:
1. No need to change the database at all.
2. No need to change *any* code except the edit page code.
3. Option to display "classic" (like now), "split" and "article only".
4. Visual separation of article and meta data for the user.
Disadvantages:
1. No internal separation of article and meta data.
(Which doesn't matter for the categories, as we do them via the links
table anyway.)

Magnus


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession is out of hand, again.

body:
We have another problem with Anthere and here obsession
with all the Gaia articles.  Despite repeated
clarifications, she keeps causing problems.  She has
invented her own private naming system that no scientist in
the world uses, and is insisting on naming Wikipedia
articles in this way.

I and others have tried to work with her before, but she
refused to discuss anything; she again is just using
reversions.  No talk or discussion, mind you. Just reverts.
And worst of all, Anthere has no regard for how thousands
of other English speakers and scientists use these terms.

Let me crystal clear: English speakers DO NOT use the
bizarre terminology that she uses.  She should not be
allowed to rewrite Wikipedia entries to suit her peculiar
desired.

English speakers do NOT use the terminolgy she uses, plain
and simple.  I have read books on this subject, articles on
the subject, and followed Google links to a huge number of
websites. The result is always the same: She doesn't know
she is talking about.

This isn't about science, mind you. It isn't about NPOV. It
s about the fact that no one uses Anthere's perculiar
terminology.  This isn't the French Wikipedia, its the
English one. If she doesn't like, she can go elsewhere. But
her reversions, and your refusal to even admit that English
speakers *might* be misled by your private terminology only
proves that she is not a team player.

I am tired of her trolling.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on Athere

body:
More on Anthere. Sigh, It just keeps getting worse.  She
has now made a comment on a Talk page, rebutting a position
she thinks I have. The problem is, I don't have the
position that she attributes to me.

Do you see why I keep saying that this is the *English*
Wikipedia?

Anthere bizarrely writes "RK, you just can't remove this
page. Gaia Theory was originally proposed as The Gaia
Hypothesis by James Lovelock in 1972. Please check your
references. It was found in Gaia: a new look at life on
earth. It just is not the same thing that the Gaia theory
proposed later."

This is just insane. (A) I never claimed that post-Lovelock
ideas of gaia are the same as his 1972 hypothesis. In fact,
I repeatedly wrote the exact opposite!  (B) English
speakers DO NOT use the bizarre terminology that Anthere
uses. She uses the title of Lovelock's book (gaia
hypothesis) as the name for his version of the theory, and
the nam "Gaia theory" for Margulis's version. The problem
is that most English speaking scientists DO NOT use this
terminology.

Most English speakers use the names "Gaia theory" and "Gaia
hypothesis" interchangably.  They do make a distinction
between Lovelock's Gaia theory and Margulis's Gaia theory,
but not with the terminology she uses.

Further, we *already* have an article on this subject
[[Gaia theory (biology)]] that discusses both points of
view in detail. Yet Anthere keeps insisting that we have
THREE articles on this same topic, in the same detail.  One
on [[Gaia theory (biology)]], one on [[Gaia theory]] and on
[[Gaia hypothesis]]. No English speaking scientists use
this terminology.

Look, we already went through this once before, and now I
am asking Wikipedai Sysops to talk to her. If she can't
follow English speaking conventions, then she should not be
here at all. Let her work on Wikipedia-French, or any other
forum.

But I am sick of her confusion...or trolling.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sigh..more bizarre Gaia obesessions

body:
I don't know what is wrong with Anthere, but she is
*totally* obsessed with the Gaia theory.  (Oh no, I mean
the gaia hypothesis!  No, wait, I mean the gaia theory
(biology)...!)

She now keeps on insisting that an article on the Greek
goddess Gaia have a scientific discussion on Jim Lovelock's
gaia hypotheis.  This can not possibly be about her poor
English comprehension skills; there is no way she can
possibly be this stupid. She is ismply trolling at this
point.

We already have a convention: It is called SEE ALSO.  In
worst case scenarios, we have another convention. It is
called disambiguation. But Anthere's bizarre obsession with
the Gaia idea is causing her to make more and more pages
about the same damn topic.  Three full length gaia article
about the same topic already exist, four when you include
Anthere's insistence on adding science discussions to
ancient Greek theology articles.  And who knows when she
will stop?

Will someone please do something about her?

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] More on Athere

body:
Robert wrote:
[snip]

>Most English speakers use the names "Gaia theory" and "Gaia
>hypothesis" interchangably.  They do make a distinction
>between Lovelock's Gaia theory and Margulis's Gaia theory,
>but not with the terminology she uses.
>
>Further, we *already* have an article on this subject
>[[Gaia theory (biology)]] that discusses both points of
>view in detail. Yet Anthere keeps insisting that we have
>THREE articles on this same topic, in the same detail.
>
[snip]

Without devolving into flames and calls for banning, could you please
answer the following questions?

a) What's wrong with having three articles (overview, specific on
Lovelock, specific on Margulis)?

and

b) What terminology would you recommend, and on what basis?

And Anthere, can you please answer these questions?

a) What's wrong with one big article covering both these two specific
versions and other variants?

and

b) What's the basis for the particular page titles you're advancing?

That would go a long way towards sorting this out.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch & CVS

body:
Timwi wrote:

>in response to Brion Vibber's reply to my posting to the wrong mailing
>list (apologies),
>
No problem. :)

>This takes care of quite a lot of weird cases and nestings. However, of
>course I'm aware that it is not perfect. I can construct cases where it
>will still fail, but those are cases that I don't think will ever
>actually come up in an encyclopedia article (or if they do, the author
>was feeling fancy and deserves to be shot ;-) ).
>
Hmm, here are some cases that really oughtn't fail; even if they're
probably rare, they're perfectly legit. Using a pattern twice on the
same line shouldn't cause it to fail. :(

* ''em '''em-strong''''' normal ''em '''em-strong'''''
goes to:
em em-strong normal em
em-strong

* '''strong ''em-strong''''' normal '''strong ''em-strong'''''
strong em-strong normal strong
em-strong

* '''''em-strong'' strong''' normal '''''em-strong'' strong'''
em-strong strong normal
em-strong strong

An alternate implementation, incidentally, might be to treat '' and '''
as toggles rather than nestable delimiters, and ensure that the correct
nesting level in the output HTML is maintained upon changing the toggles.

>How do you usually handle casual programmer contributions? Are they
>usually posted to this mailing list? Or do you have a BugZilla
>installation somewhere where I should upload this as a patch? Or is
>there an actual chance I might get write access to the repository?
>
In theory you can upload patches on sourceforge, but no one will ever
look at it. :) Posting to the list is the most likely way to get people
to look it over.

If we ever get around to setting up a CVS commit notification mailer
that would do as well...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Dante Alighieri

body:
At 07:08 PM 6/28/2003, Robert wrote:
>I don't know what is wrong with Anthere...

<snip>

A couple of observations:

For someone who is criticizing another's facility with the English
language, your own seems less than perfect. I'm not certain if this is the
result of an agitated state of mind, careless typing errors, or an
imperfect knowledge of English. It seems to me to be worth noting.

Three emails to the list in 20 minutes all on the same topic? Dear lord, I
don't think Michael or DW excite people quite that much. Is it possible
that you are overreacting. One might think that the Wikipedia was in
imminent danger of destruction...

In your first of the three emails you start out by calling her position an
obsession, and you close by calling her a troll. This is not likely to win
you much support among the readers of this list, as it is my understanding
that people who make free accusations of trolling against established
contributors are normally taken with a grain of salt.

That being said, I know precious little about the subject. You may, indeed,
be correct. Nevertheless the tenor of your emails, coupled with their
slapdash appearance, doesn't go very far towards convincing me of the
merits of your argument. Perhaps if you wait until you are in a more calm
frame of mind, you might be a bit more successful in your aim of acquiring
some allies on this issue.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 10:35:59AM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >Questions like "is there a god or not" or "was Mary a virgin" etc. were invented
> >just to distract people from the real one - "why should one pay money to the church,
> >and obey church rules". But it seems like it doesn't work any more - at least
> >in Europe people were able to stop caring about the church without changing
> >their beliefs much. Power of churches fell much more than number of believers.
>
> Well, if Europeans manage to believe in God without giving power to the Church,
> then why is it that you're the one bringing churches' power into this,
> when the rest of us were simply talking about belief in God?
> Indeed, as I'm about to demonstrate in another post,
> it's /your/ position that depends heavily on the technical point
> of whether or not some God manages to actually exist.
> NPOV, of course, cannot judge.

It's wrong to say that most Europeans believe in god or that they don't -
most don't give a shit either way. They managed to see the real question
and answered it "no" - they aren't going to give church any powers.
Having done so, whether they think "god exists" or not is as important as
believing in fluffy elephants bringing luck or in existence of Neptune -
it doesn't affect them, so they may answer like others do, or the way
they feel any given day.