subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipede

body:
>Olie ze Kat escrib?: I agree that logo (or variant)
with Miwiki will
> probably closed mascot
> contest...But all wikipedian are not stupid, and
> they understand that Miwiki is
> firstly a mascot project. Let and respect final
> voting !!! :o|

Well I like Anthere appreciate your enthusiasm and
energy, and I can understand that you would like to
assume that people wont be confused. But just as its
not necessarily a good thing to assume stupidity, so
too is it perhaps wise to not assume intelligence
either. ;-)

> I'm  unhappy that some persons believe (say and
> write) that Miwiki is only a
> french project... In my pages, I just wanted to say
> that it is a project which
> started on french wikipedia. But its not ONLY french
> project ! I really want to
> work in according of everybody :o)

Your point c'est understood.

> And remember you ; I send some announces (in
> english...sorry, I dont know
> another langages) on several wikipedia (english,
> deutch, espagnol, italiano,
> etc) on their "Village pump" to organize
> group-working for logo variant with
> Miwiki...But deutch wikipedia (and another) deleted
> it less than one hour after
> I wrote it :o(

Touch?.
让我们不忘记中国人
そして日本人
и
русские. De
Nederlanders? ... En dont vergeet de Nederlanders --
als u als het doen van het extra werk voelt. Il aide
si les gens ne sont pas d?centr?s vers seulement des
langues
latines et germaniques.

But its importante to comprende how to communicate
issues on wikipedia -- when we come up with an idea,
we submit it to the community on the lists,-- like
planting a seed -- it materializes when its ready --
not when we want it to and not in the form we expect.

Such is the case with your new Logo being a primary
catalyst for the new International logo contest --
Your Miwiki project was--simplement indiqu?--the
parent of the entire new logo project. All variations
in the final are in fact decended from your idea and
your energy, even if they dont resemble your image at
all! :-) Such is perhaps the hardest thing for us
humans to accept is that what we create must take upon
itself a life of its own -- one seeming apart from us.
 Such is the way of openness and sharing.  What form
that little essence of ourselves we leave behind
takes, c'est irrelevant.  What matters is that we are
catalysts for effecting positive change while we were
around.

> Please for everybody : stop to spend time of logos
> authors and disturb
> us...Wikipedians will choose the best for all in the
> end :op

Tr?s bien indiqu?.
-S-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l]  Wikipedia.ru & Wikimedia.de

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi,

>I don't know anything about wikimedia.de, but I am under the
>impression that the wikipedia.ru fellow is happy to turn over the
>name.  Did I miss something else that was said about it?

>What's the story on wikimedia.de?

Until now no answer on my mail, but on the other hand, a lot of people
here are still holydaying etc. As I said before, the wikimedia.de looks
like it is closly connected to the German net-activists scene (CCC, some
local Berlin groups), and I can't say how they look on Wikipedia.

Regards,
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Lost and missing images

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:1063091805.10103.9.camel at frank.vibber.org...
> On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 01:29, Tim Starling wrote:
> > .... not
> > including about 15 images that somehow were uploaded with an initial
> > lower case letter.
>
> Files are dated August 29, 2002. Looks like an old conversion script
> error;

Not all of them...

-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       7795 Jun  2 22:06
0/06/Chiang_kai-shek.jpg.html
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     730867 Jun 24 19:41 0/08/Det088.6.02.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     11571 Aug 29  2002 0/0b/earth-mars.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     186409 May 18 17:03
0/0b/Reisfeld_im_Issaan.JPG
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Nov 21  2002 0/0c/PhprJtzbp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     129808 Aug 22  2002 0/0d/Lamarck2.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      15389 Sep  2 14:18
1/10/Alexander_Graham_Bell.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache        552 Apr 18 18:50
1/10/Piktogramm_giftig.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Feb 13  2003 1/14/Danu
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Jul 13 15:55
1/16/Love_Parade_Zahlen
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     230126 May 17 17:28
1/18/Gras_unbekannt_Sorte.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     201905 Feb 10  2003 1/18/Ostsee.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     34542 Aug 29  2002 1/19/che.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      52612 May  5 11:56 1/1a/Formen_guss.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      73235 Mar 23 09:52
1/1a/Halabadscha1.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      10079 Jan 25  2003 1/1c/Philippinen.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      39478 Jul 19 01:51
1/1d/Verkaufstypologie_nach_Bodo_Wiska_-_Berlin.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       1285 Mar 22 13:06 1/1e/Ch-sz.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     11334 Aug 29  2002 2/2d/dragonfly.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     16664 Aug 29  2002
2/2d/earth-apollo17-thumb.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      10110 Sep  7 17:13 2/2f/Cs-map.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       3154 Jun 17 18:59 2/2f/Ogham.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      27943 Aug 23  2002 2/2f/Schnecke.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     45422 Aug 29  2002 3/31/auge.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      14621 Aug 16 12:40 3/33/Idi_Amin.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      14061 Aug 12 17:36 3/34/Pipe_2.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       7153 Aug 24  2002 3/36/Ballon.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      10453 Jun 16 20:13 3/37/Sl-map.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     236546 Nov  4  2002
3/3a/Schwarze-lilie.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      13973 Jun 20 16:35
3/3f/Regensburg_-_Auf_der_Steinernen_Bruecke.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       4218 Aug 23  2002 4/40/Erde.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Nov 18  2002
4/41/Bild:imgres2.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev      6867 Aug 29  2002 4/43/agena.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       9668 Oct 15  2002
4/4c/Flechte_Physconia_enteroxantha.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      36014 Aug 22  2002 4/4e/Sylt.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      58710 May 28 17:34 5/51/Rostratamuk.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      12053 Aug 11 08:30
5/53/Berchtesgaden_auf_Deutschland_Karte.xcf
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       4511 Oct 30  2002
5/54/Quintenzirkel_halbtoene.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     252087 Jul 25 15:31 5/5d/Sc-vesuv_gr.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      23302 Jul 24 19:57
5/5e/Tiara_MK1888.bmp
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     891777 Sep  4 20:02 6/63/Europa.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Sep  3 17:45 6/63/PhpstdPE6.
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Sep  1  2002
6/6e/A:BerlinLiteratur
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Oct  2  2002 6/6f/Phpw0z7Wr
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       1581 Jul  4 09:05 7/74/Vitamind3.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Jul 17 20:29
7/74/Www.fuchshofen.de
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     50921 Aug 29  2002
7/79/cologne_cathedral2.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       8657 Jun 13 12:48
7/7f/KarteKantonNE.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev       706 Aug 29  2002
8/84/dreiecksungleichung.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     13644 Aug 29  2002
9/92/frankfurt-maintower.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     186262 Jul 25 15:31 9/94/Sc-vesuv_gr.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev       734 Aug 29  2002
9/99/afghanistan-flag.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       3879 Jul 24 16:05 9/9d/Stuttgart.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Jul  6 14:05 9/9e/Yamato
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       3540 Jun 12 19:07 a/a1/Us-mi.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     35724 Aug 29  2002
a/a2/dmark-coins-front.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     85169 Aug 29  2002 a/a5/dante.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       8691 Jan 22  2003
a/a5/Thermikkraftwerk_(Schema).jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      15378 Aug 17 07:45
a/ab/Solar_System.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     11901 Aug 29  2002 b/b0/dna-split.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache        556 Jan 23  2003 b/b5/Kiel.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      32874 Jul 24 06:22
b/b5/VertexCoverBeispiel.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      33881 Aug 22  2002 b/bc/Pieta.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     29239 Aug 29  2002 b/bf/copernicus.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      10821 Oct 15  2002
c/c6/Flechte_Psora_globifera.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Jun 19 00:26 c/c7/PhpUJNh8C.
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       2282 Jul 31 13:25 c/c8/EGKS-Flagge.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache       2892 Oct 19  2002 c/c9/Us-wi.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Sep  1  2002
c/ce/Berlin-Literatur
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache          0 Sep  4  2002 d/d0/A:wikitext
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       1147 Jul 17 17:03
d/d1/Antikoerper_igg.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     249565 Feb 24  2003
d/d2/Berchtesgaden.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      22463 May 18 17:16
d/d7/Mekong_bei_Nong-Khai.JPG
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       2142 Aug 17 21:59
d/d7/RadDesJahres.kpm
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     146064 Nov  4  2002 d/d8/Selene.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     32656 Aug 29  2002
d/da/basel.tinguely.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev      8382 Aug 29  2002 d/db/fennek.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache       3493 Jun  1 10:45 d/db/Gufiwappen.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev    100799 Aug 29  2002 d/dc/dna-helix.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     194667 May 21 07:24
d/de/Korund_700_pix.jpg
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      20480 Jun  5 20:50
d/de/Treibhauseffekt1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     13393 Aug 29  2002
e/e0/alexander-fleming.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     310272 Oct 28  2002 e/e1/Openhelp.exe
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     265886 May 28 18:37 e/e4/A11step.wav
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache      13468 Feb  8  2003 e/e5/Et-map.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     12985 Aug 29  2002 e/e6/celsius.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev      2112 Aug 29  2002
e/e6/dollar-zeichen.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     207284 Sep  6 14:23
e/e6/Eurotowermitsymbol.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev       269 Aug 29  2002 e/e9/flagmali.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache          0 Jul  7 09:54 e/ec/Tirol.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 apache   apache     250503 Sep  1  2002 e/ee/Warm_up.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     49031 Aug 29  2002
e/ef/europa-klein.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache     231059 Aug 17 22:00
f/f5/RadDesJahres.png
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     24866 Aug 29  2002 f/f9/charlemagne.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev    224539 Aug 29  2002 f/fa/apollo11.png
-rw-r--r--    1 apache   apache      11965 Jun 16 20:32 f/fa/Sn-map.gif
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brion    wikidev     20479 Aug 29  2002
f/fe/bettinavonarnim.jpg

>these files will be inaccessible through the wiki anyway...

[[Torque]] says different.

-- Tim Starling.


body:
"Tim Starling" wrote...
>
> "Brion Vibber" wrote...
> >these files will be inaccessible through the wiki anyway...
>
> [[Torque]] says different.
>

As do the following articles on de:

Alexander_Graham_Bell
Flechten_(Botanik)
Idi_Amin
Mekong
Issaan
Planet
Thermikkraftwerk
Michigan
Verkauf

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Olie ze kat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipede Steve

body:
Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com>, l'ami(e) des kats,
avait papatt? dans sa niouze :

Jai p? tout compris...on peut me r?zumer la discussion ci-dessous ? :op

|| Since youre here Anthere,
|
| Yes ?
|
|| Maybe I can axe you a couple questions... I actually
|| like the idea of merging ideas and such with two
|| winning logo desigs merging to make something better,
|| but Im not sure that the way whats his name has been
|| going about it is bordering on --well being rude and
|| whatnot.
|
| Oliezekat is his name.
| We call him Kat

Its me...but I prefer to call me "Olie" :o)

|
|| Besides, just throwing a toony 7th place ant on a
|| winning (and shaping up) 1st place logo, only makes
|| the ant look like something we should stomp on.
|
| I see that people feel that way. But the ant escaped
| me a long time ago.
| I don't know what toony means. It is not in the
| dictionnary.
|
|| But I also like the ant as a concept animal -- for a
|| mascot probably even more than I like the Wikipede --
|| which was a clever play on the wikipedia name, but
|| doesnt necessarily mean anything internationally.  I
|| mention on the Wikipedie bio that the only reason he
|| looks cute at all is because he only has six
|| appendages instead of a hundred. In that silly sense,
|| the Wikipedia is less of a centipede than it is an
| ant
|| anyway.
|
| I like your wikipede very much. I have no problem
| finding cute a animal with 100 appendages :-) (in
| truth, it is rather about 30 I think).
| I think both could be mascot, but I also think both
| would not be great mascots, because both animals are
| insects, and insects tend not to be liked by many
| people. I know the ant is a bit scarry to some people
| (I think Angela mentionned it) and probably the
| wikipede as well. Very few insects are well perceived.
|
| I do not feel entirely favorable in truth, to a mascot
| idea. I do not need that to focus on the concept :)
| A great idea imho, is the blown dandelion fruit, used
| on our dictionnaries, representing the dispersion of
| the seeds of knowledge.
|
| Flowers carry concepts very well. Even cactii :-)
|
|| But what I really want to know --this sort of cheezy
|| way of trying to curvumvent the voting process on the
|| mascot--- Is this just a case of 'pushy French
|| attitude' ;) or am I missing something?
|
| Cheezy ? Lol.
| Our cheese are culturally different Steve.
|
| It would be best not to generalize I think.
| Unless you want me to pick up one american wikipedian
| to generalize a specific type of widely-considered
| typical american attitude.
|
| Perhaps, two people are not enough to make hasty
| generalization over a whole population. And perhaps
| also, here, only pushy people may survive and get
| somewhere.
|
| But, yeah, that is pushy :-) I agree.
|
| See the bright side of him : a strong desire of
| involvement. A willingness to strengthen communities
| ties. Enthousiam !
|
| Usually americans are the pushy ones, french more
| attentists and diplomatic. Perhaps here, the french
| are the pushy ones, and unable to be diplomatic.
| Though, on that whole matter, I think more than one
| person lost hir diplomacy.
|
| I don't like spoiling fun others are having. Users
| will choose in the end. And being neither diplomatic
| nor ambassador, it is not mine to say things :-)
|
| What would you suggest doing Steve ?
|
|| Culturally illiterate,
|| -S-
|
| So do I

I agree that logo (or variant) with Miwiki will probably closed mascot
contest...But all wikipedian are not stupid, and they understand that Miwiki is
firstly a mascot project. Let and respect final voting !!! :o|

I'm  unhappy that some persons believe (say and write) that Miwiki is only a
french project... In my pages, I just wanted to say that it is a project which
started on french wikipedia. But its not ONLY french project ! I really want to
work in according of everybody :o)

And remember you ; I send some announces (in english...sorry, I dont know
another langages) on several wikipedia (english, deutch, espagnol, italiano,
etc) on their "Village pump" to organize group-working for logo variant with
Miwiki...But deutch wikipedia (and another) deleted it less than one hour after
I wrote it :o(

...It is a great lesson of community spirit !!!! :o| But I keep hope...Espagnol,
english, and french wikipedia keep (and translate) my announce :o)

Please for everybody : stop to spend time of logos authors and disturb
us...Wikipedians will choose the best for all in the end :op
--
Olie ze kat ---------  http://www.olid.fr.st


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: logo contest (Miwiki nonsense)

body:
Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>,
l'ami(e) des kats, avait papatt? dans sa niouze :

| PS : About the ant on the first logo, Oliezekat just propose it to
| Paullus (the original author) and Paullus decide by himself to put it
| on vote page. It is right, isn't it ?

Its right...Just see history page or comment page of Paullus :o)

And I (will) never start(ed) working on (or submit) a variant with Miwiki if
original author is not agree :o|

--
Olie ze kat ---------  http://www.olid.fr.st


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Backup (was Re: I'm shopping today for upgrades)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Does anyone back up the image and oldimage tables, the user table, the
> watchlist table and the sitestats table? How often are the images
> themselves backed up?

Good question.  I backup everything using rsync to my home computer.
I don't know who else does that, but only the developers would have
access to do that.

I could set up a cron on another machine in the cage to do the same
thing.

Actually, I just checked my cron job and it was wrong, so I haven't
been doing this after all.

Let's keep discussing this -- it's important.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for adminship

in_reply_to:
<20030905174205.BXEE4703.imta01a2.registeredsite.com@smtp.registeredsite.com>;
	from modemac@modemac.com on Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:42:05PM -0400

body:
This should be on wikien-l, but it sounds good to me, if this
hasn't already been taken care of.  (I'm WAY behind and just now
catching up...)

modemac at modemac.com wrote:

> I've posted a request to the page Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, so I hope I'm not committing a transgression by posting here.  The "Requests for adminship" page may not be read as regularly as this mailing list...
>
> <butt-kiss>
>
> I've been hooked on Wikipedia since I stumbled across it in August of 2002.  After more than a year of contributing, I figure it's time to throw my hat into the ring and ask for permission to be a moderator.
>
> I promise to repeal the 2001 tax cuts, increase international cooperation in Iraq...errr, umm, wrong message.  :)
>
> Actually, I'm hoping that my conduct over the past year has been sufficient to show that I intend to use NPOV in a manner that will hopefully prevent heated rivalries (and worse) in the more controversial subjects, as I've tried to do with my additions to the [[Scientology]] articles.  I also enjoy pop culture, and I intend to keep updating such life-changing subjects as movie and cartoon related articles, along with forays into topics related to skepticism, pseudoscience, and cults.
>
> </butt-kiss>
>
> (I also pledge to avoid petty political squabbles and backstabbing as much as possible, as this does not interest me.)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot.

I believe that you are mistaken.  I see their traffic rank as 845, and
ours as 2,140.

I used to have access to the MediaMetrix numbers, which were
considered at the time industry standard.  (Might still be, but since
the dot-com crash, I don't fantasize about selling Bomis for billions
anymore, so I don't worry about such things!)

Anyhow, my research at the time suggested that for every *doubling* of
traffic, you generally *halve* your rank.  That's a rough rule of
thumb, but it held remarkably well.

That is, a site ranked 500 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
1000.  And a site ranked 845 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
1690.  If we are 2,140 and they are 845, then they have more than
twice the traffic that we have.

(Actually I see now that the rank that they show is some kind of
moving average, and that according to this url, our traffic just
recently touched theirs.  I'm skeptical, but we do rock.)

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=medium&compare_sites=slashdot.org&url=http://www.wikipedia.org#top

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vote on voting method for final round

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> This rigid vote where no alternative proposition can be submit is at
> the antipode of my vision of a consensus.

Well, this logo contest is an experiment in voting.  It has gone well
in some ways, and not so well in other ways.  In any case, no matter
how we evaluate it overall, we can all agree that it has been
educational, exposing some of the issues that we are going to have to
deal with as we form scalable, stable, consensus-driven decision
methods.

> And I don't see anything encouraging in this discussion.

What do you mean?  I see a lot that's encouraging.  Look at all the
discussion that we are having.  Look how hard people are working to
try to find mutually agreeable solutions.  Look how civilized and
cautious the decisionmaking is.

The current experiment is a good one because the choice of a logo from
any of the fine leading contenders is not a life or death decision for
the project.  None of the choices available to us are bad, and so we
can learn from this in a low-risk way.

Later, there will have to be some major policy decisions.  In the
past, these have always been made by consensus, which in reality boils
down to us listening to all sides and encouraging different factions
to accomodate each other so that we can find solutions that are better
all around for everyone.

That process works, or at least it has so far.  But there have always
been concerns about how well it would scale.  The more people we have
involved, the more important it is that we have a more formalized
_process_ that people can support even when they don't support the
final _outcome_.

Let me explain that further with an example from the real world.  I
support, generally speaking, the processes of constitutionally limited
democracy.  So in that sense, I support the system *even when the
candidate I don't prefer* gets elected.

In a small group, the consensus method works.  When a final decision
has to be made, then a benevolent dictator who really does look out
for the interests of as many different people as possible also works.
People can, and have, supported that process as effective, even when
they didn't get their way on every last detail.

As we get bigger, we need to preserve and improve on our success in
that area: when decisions are made, they need to be as inclusive as
possible, i.e. to make as many people happy as possible, and at the
same time, they need to be made by a process that people can support
even when their exact preferences are not chosen.

Do we agree about that?

We've done a couple of experiments with voting.  I've always been a
skeptic of voting, but the one thing that voting can do is generate
legitimacy for decisions.  People can support the outcome of a vote,
even when the vote doesn't go their way.

I like one of the logos best of all.  I hope that it wins.  But if it
doesn't, I can live with that.  They are all reasonable choices, and I
like that we went through a process that people can live with.

But it is JUST A LOGO.  So a serious amount of relaxation is probably
in order.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Research and Plagarism Defined (HUMOUR)

body:
"When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many,
it's research." --Wilson Mizner


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 10:19:30AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Adam Bishop wrote:
> >I don't know if anyone has noticed this yet, but Wikipedia has been
> >mentioned on Slashdot again, and there have been a few vandals who seem
> >to have arrived from there in the past few minutes. I suppose the
> >"slashdot effect" may be imminent...
>
> According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot. So it follows
> that they have as much to fear from us as we have to fear from them.
> Maybe if we mentioned Slashdot on our main page, they would get a sudden
> influx of visitors which they would be obliged to refer to as the
> "Wikipedia effect". :)

I doubt that. The ./ comes due many people reading the same article
at one time and following its links. But WP has to many articles and
it's impossible to led all the read at one time to a certain article and
it's links.
But it's good to know that WP can handle slashdots (and umlauts ;-)

ciao, tom

--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	        Urlaub? http://www.tomk32.de/fewo-koll/
   / \              http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com


list: wikien-l

from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: Bork [OT] was (Re: [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia down)

body:
On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 10:19:26 -0700 (PDT), Steve Vertigum
<utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com> gave utterance to the following:

> I believer this is the first time I have ever seen a
> use of the term "borked" in a discussion before.
>
> Newbies should be clued in that the term comes from
> the nomination hearing of a Judge Bork to the Supreme
> court (or a federal bench) -- where Democrates blocked
> the Regan nominee. Hence the term, referring to a
> blockage or an act of blockage.
>
> If I ever bothered with wiktionary, Id add a "borking"
> entry :-)

Actually, borked and borken have been common usage among regular Opera
users for the past year.

Back then, MSN rewrote their site so that Opera was sent a stylesheet
which mis-rendered in Opera, truncating paragraphs on the left to make
them unreadable. MSN's claim that this was simply a fallback stylesheet
was easily disproven - the stylesheet served to Opera differed from that
sent to "fallback" browsers in key places which resulted in the stated
rendering, thus this was considered by the IT press to be deliberate
targeting.

Opera's response (within a week) was to issue "Opera 6.02 Bork" - a
modified version of the browser which utilised Opera's superior CSS
support to "translate" any MSN page into "Bork" - the pseudo language used
by the Swedish Chef character on the Muppets. Microsoft had very public
egg on their face, changed MSN back imemdiately and claimed that it was an
unauthorised prank by two developers. Press opinion said "Yeah right!"
(This was the second MSN "attack" targeting Opera)

Incidentally, Google offers Bork as an option in their interface languages
(they do Klingon, too).
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

in_reply_to:
<bjne0p$fqa$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from ts4294967296@hotmail.com on Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:56:12AM
	+1000

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I was just going off the entry in
> [[Wikipedia:Announcements]]. Anyway, even if they have double our
> traffic, I still don't think they're very scary.

Well, until we get our upgrades in place next week, I'm afraid
of obscure Geocities homepages linking to us! ;-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
on 9/10/03 6:44 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at bomis.com wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>> According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot.
>
> I believe that you are mistaken.  I see their traffic rank as 845, and
> ours as 2,140.
>
> I used to have access to the MediaMetrix numbers, which were
> considered at the time industry standard.  (Might still be, but since
> the dot-com crash, I don't fantasize about selling Bomis for billions
> anymore, so I don't worry about such things!)
>
> Anyhow, my research at the time suggested that for every *doubling* of
> traffic, you generally *halve* your rank.  That's a rough rule of
> thumb, but it held remarkably well.
>
> That is, a site ranked 500 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1000.  And a site ranked 845 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1690.  If we are 2,140 and they are 845, then they have more than
> twice the traffic that we have.
>
> (Actually I see now that the rank that they show is some kind of
> moving average, and that according to this url, our traffic just
> recently touched theirs.  I'm skeptical, but we do rock.)

Slashdot has a good rate of growth over the last two years but has recently
leveled off a bit. After all their appeal really is to the computer literate
and wannabes, a limited audience. Our rate of growth is better and we
potentially serve a mass audience in all languages. Unless there is some
limiting factor we will soon equal and pass them. I would say within a year
at most.

Fred


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo contest (Miwiki nonsense)

body:
> Since youre here Anthere,
>
> Maybe I can axe you a couple questions... I actually
> like the idea of merging ideas and such with two
> winning logo desigs merging to make something better,
> but Im not sure that the way whats his name has been
> going about it is bordering on --well being rude and
> whatnot.
> Besides, just throwing a toony 7th place ant on a
> winning (and shaping up) 1st place logo, only makes
> the ant look like something we should stomp on.
>
> But I also like the ant as a concept animal -- for a
> mascot probably even more than I like the Wikipede --
> which was a clever play on the wikipedia name, but
> doesnt necessarily mean anything internationally.  I
> mention on the Wikipedie bio that the only reason he
> looks cute at all is because he only has six
> appendages instead of a hundred. In that silly sense,
> the Wikipedia is less of a centipede than it is an ant
> anyway.
>
> But what I really want to know --this sort of cheezy
> way of trying to curvumvent the voting process on the
> mascot--- Is this just a case of 'pushy French
> attitude' ;) or am I missing something?
>
> Culturally illiterate,
> -S-

On the French Wikipedia we try to make all our decisions by consensus
discussion (no rigid vote). It not an easy and quick way, but we think it
the fairest solution. In the consensus process, we always trying to found
alternative solution to avoid problems and make progress the decision
process. In my point of view (perhaps shared by some French wikipedians),
create new logo by mixing the finalist ones, was a way of trying to found
alternative proposition that may please people. If you don't like them, just
don't vote for it, what is the problem? If the organizer decide those logo
are illegitimate, then make clear rules and remove those logo. In all case,
please stop make contentious on a wikipedian just because (s)he is French.

Aoineko

PS : About the ant on the first logo, Oliezekat just propose it to Paullus
(the original author) and Paullus decide by himself to put it on vote page.
It is right, isn't it ?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
Adam Bishop wrote:
> I don't know if anyone has noticed this yet, but Wikipedia has been
> mentioned on Slashdot again, and there have been a few vandals who seem
> to have arrived from there in the past few minutes. I suppose the
> "slashdot effect" may be imminent...

According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot. So it follows
that they have as much to fear from us as we have to fear from them.
Maybe if we mentioned Slashdot on our main page, they would get a sudden
influx of visitors which they would be obliged to refer to as the
"Wikipedia effect". :)

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


in_reply_to:
<084101c377bc$fed40290$0400a8c0@aoineko>;
	from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 02:00:10AM
	+0900

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> I didn't read all post (translate is fastidious for me), but in
> those I read I see words as "silly", "pushy French attitude" and
> other not so friendly sentence. Hope it's just translation mistake
> ;o).

Well, I hope so, too.  I have not seen any such remarks, and I
personally thought you were Japanese.  :-)

> On the other hand, I didn't read any proposition to make vote
> process become more close to a consensus. For me, the vote method is
> not the real problem (average method & Condorcet are not so
> different in fact). Imho, the problem is a standard vote doesn't
> offer any dynamic solution.

Well, I share this concern, and indeed this is one of my main
objections to voting processes in general.  As you may or may not
know, I'm a longstanding skeptic of voting.

Here's the basic problem with voting -- voting is selection among
alternatives.  But often, rather than selecting from alternatives, we
are better off being creative at addressing the concerns of everyone,
of trying to combine options A and B to get C, which is preferred by
almost everyone.

HOWEVER, I also think that voting does have some benefits, and it does
at least scale well.  The problem with consensus is simply that
ultimately, it comes down to someone (me) saying what the consensus is
-- and if I'm unfair or don't listen thoughtfully to everyone, then
the entire process is a sham.

Of course I'm perfect in every way, ha ha, but still I can see how
people could be concerned about this.

> I'm aware that is only a personal point of view but I expected to
> ear some alternative solution instead of the eternal debate on the
> best way of count vote. But perhaps I just miss those discussions.

Maybe.  It's an important topic, and I think your point of view is
basically correct, i.e. we should be concerned about how a move
towards voting can give rise to dangerous divisions within the
community that wouldn't appear if we all continue in a commitment to
find solutions that are widely accepted.

> I agree consensus become harder as we get bigger. But instead of
> switch decision process to a standard vote method, we can perhaps
> just create some rules to make consensus easier to achieve.

I think that's a good idea.

And I also think that there need not be *one single* decision method
for every decision that needs to be made.

There are some decisions, like technical decisions, that need to be
made by technical people, period.  A popular vote by nonprogrammers on
whether to use ISAM tables or InnoDB tables would be silly.  A popular
vote on what kind of hardware to buy, or where to locate servers,
would be silly.  Those are primarily technical questions.

There are some decisions that don't even have to be made all at once
-- most editing decisions, for example, can stand to be left undecided
until experimentation shows us the way.

But sometimes there are decisions that are big, and that have to be
made in a timely fashion, and have to be made in a transparent manner
that takes into account as many views as possible, etc., and I think
voting can be useful for that.

> If I enter the debate it's just because I worried to see Oliezekat
> spend all his time to try to found alternative proposition (he
> really worked hard) and to be bother just because he didn't strictly
> respect the saintly rules.  Imho, the wikipedians must to be more
> flexible and patient; especially with those you have difficulty to
> speak/understand English. Next time, a non-American organizer!?

Sure, maybe next time we'll choose a European?  (This is a joke.  Erik
is not American, he's German.)

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 15:38:46 +0200
From: "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Message-ID:
<20030910133846.GA19613 at tomk32.homelinux.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 05:44:10AM -0700, Jimmy Wales
wrote:
>
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=medium&compare_sites=slashdot.org&url=http://www.wikipedia.org#top

I doubt there is anything correct in these stats.
It say that 5% go to fr.wikipedia and 3% to de... But
looking at the
stats (webalizer for example) I see that DE is about
2-3 times bigger.

I am surprised as well. Not because DE is about 2/3
times bigger. But because when I did the press release
(about 2-3 weeks ago), I think the french wiki was
about 2% of the total traffic. At least, I am *sure*
it was 2% at the end of july.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
>> > And I don't see anything encouraging in this
discussion.
>>
>> What do you mean?  I see a lot that's encouraging.
>Look at all the
>> discussion that we are having.  Look how hard
people >are working to
>> try to find mutually agreeable solutions.  Look how
>civilized and
>> cautious the decisionmaking is.

>I didn't read all post (translate is fastidious for
>me), but in those I read I see words as "silly",
>"pushy French attitude" and other not so
>friendly sentence. Hope it's just translation mistake
>;o)

In american english (and in Maverick voice), I think
"silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros b?ta". It
is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach.
Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.

Not in french. Saying to someone he is "idiot" (the
translation of silly) is *not* friendly. And not
encouraging at all.

I remember Mav also told me I was silly once. I then
thought of a computer game I played a long time ago,
where the hero party met a colony of very friendly
spiders.  The cute little spiders were using the
adjective "silly" (this was the english version). But
they did not mean to offense. So, I said nothing to
Mav.

But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious while
using this word ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Nick Reinking wrote:
>
>>Definitely.  Do we have any kind of tape backup for our database dumps?
>>Are they kept onsite or offsite if we do?
>
>
> Tape sucks!
>
> I think lots of people backup the database dumps periodically, all
> over the world.  I do, anyway, once a week I think, but I should check
> my cron job.
>
> --Jimbo

Does anyone back up the image and oldimage tables, the user table, the
watchlist table and the sitestats table? How often are the images
themselves backed up?

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia

body:
--- "Merritt L. Perkins" <mlperkins3 at juno.com> wrote
> I will certainly appreciate any help that I can get
> because I really need
> it.

No problem. :) Just keep it at low-doses, -- ask short
specific questions, and address most of them to the
list. I cant promise to be available to you
exclusively.

> I don't understand what username is; is it like a
> nickname?

Its a nickname, or it can be your real name.

1. go to www.wikipedia.org
2.. click "Log in" in the upper right corner.  Then
chose a unique name --just 'Merritt' is fine - (keep
it simple).
3.

> .With regard to enclosing and inclosing I have a
> dictionary that seems to
> favor inclosing. I debated which to use when I wrote
> the post. There
> seems to be a difference of opinion on this.
> What does disambignate mean?
> In speaking of text, what is meant by front cover
> and back cover?
> I have trouble with acronyms. I can guess that IMO
> stands for in my
> opinion, and IMHO for in my humble opinion. but what
> does TADAA mean?
> You mentioned LOGAN, this seems to refer is
> something that I don't have.
> I see from the time that you must live on the West
> Coast. I live in
> southwestern Lower Michigan and we are in the
> Eastern time zone. Your
> e-mail addresses so long that I am liable to make a
> mistake in typing it.
> I will try to send information on B12 and rose of
> Sharon in separate
> e-mails..
> Merritt L. Perkins

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] FWD:Wikipedia

body:
--- "Merritt L. Perkins" <mlperkins3 at juno.com> wrote
> I will certainly appreciate any help that I can get
> because I really need
> it.

No problem. :) Just keep it at low-doses, -- ask short
specific questions, and address most of them to the
list. I cant promise to be available to you
exclusively. I like the way you broke up your emails
into distinct parts--this makes it a lot easier to
read. I wont do anything with the info on B12 and
Sharon -- its no good to send it here. You should look
at the articles on Wikipedia and edit them if
something needs changing, adding, and (sometimes)
removing--and so on...

> I don't understand what username is; is it like a
> nickname?

Its can be a nickname, or it can be your real name.
Your username is what you use to log into the system,
with a password.  Then every change you make will be
connected to your username. People can leave you
messages on your talk page, and you can sign your
comments with three of these ~ like this ~~~ and it
leaves a link to your page.
Its about identity-- your username can be anonymous or
legitimate -- as long as it lets people feel like they
are talking to Merritt --not an IP address like
'11.20.209.293'

How:
1. go to www.wikipedia.org
2.. click "Log in" in the upper right corner.  Then
chose a unique name --just 'Merritt' is fine - (keep
it simple).
3.type your password
4.type it again just to make sure you have it right
5.add your email address1
6. click the bottom button that says "register."
7. The next screen will have your username at the top
right-- click on it.
8. Then click "edit this page"
9. write a little about yourself and click "save" when
youre done.

Thats it.

> .With regard to enclosing and inclosing I have a
> dictionary that seems to
> favor inclosing. I debated which to use when I wrote
> the post. There
> seems to be a difference of opinion on this.

Our conventions are well thought out. Print books have
the luxury of not having to actually do anything --
they are not code that has to work.  Our [[wiki
"markup"]] works, its simple, and thats the end of
that. We do make changes from time to time, but these
are never based on any old typographic standards.

> What does disambignate mean?

It means "to clear up"--- to "make less ambiguous".
Ambiguous means "may be one thing or the other"

So a "disambiguation page" is one that "clears up"
whether something is one or the other.

1.Do a search for "Go" in the upper right.

That article shows different meanings for the word
"go", and links to them.

> In speaking of text, what is meant by front cover
> and back cover?

I dont know.

> I have trouble with acronyms. I can guess that IMO
> stands for in my
> opinion, and IMHO for in my humble opinion.

Not bad. I didnt know these myself till i looked them
up. See "internet jargon" ( think ) for more on this.

but what
> does TADAA mean?

Never mind.

> You mentioned LOGAN, this seems to refer is
> something that I don't have.

Is said "LOG IN."

> I see from the time that you must live on the West
> Coast. I live in
> southwestern Lower Michigan and we are in the
> Eastern time zone. Your
> e-mail addresses so long that I am liable to make a
> mistake in typing it.

You can select it and then copy it and then paste it.
No typing required.

> I will try to send information on B12 and rose of
> Sharon in separate
> e-mails..
> Merritt L. Perkins

Please dont. I have no use for them. Add them to the
article. This mailing list is reserved for issues
pertaining to Wikipedia as a whole-- not to specific
articles.

Be well,
~S~

P.S. Ive sent this to the mailing list as well so that
others are clued in to your situation. Send me a
little note when you log in.
-Stevertigo

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

>I mean, you select some solutions
>(before the vote start), then you start the vote and block any new
>proposition.
>
At some point that has to be right, as long as there initially were
ample opportunities to present new alternatives

>For example, imagine you want to select a color. Favorite
>colors are black and white (just an example), so people propose those 2
>colors to be voted. After some time you see both colors have closed score.
>With standard vote system you must select one of those colors (by any
>method) and make happy only half of people instead of be able to propose a
>gray that may satisfy more people (just an example).
>
The question should really be, "Was there an opportunity to suggest gray
before the voting started?"  In a truly democratic system there is no
excuse for negligence.

>I think discussion,
>proposition and vote have better to take place concurrently. I mean allow
>participant to propose new solution and change vote during the decision
>process. I'm aware that is only a personal point of view but I expected to
>ear some alternative solution instead of the eternal debate on the best way
>of count vote. But perhaps I just miss those discussions.
>
When a large number of options are offered, there needs to be a way to
narrow those options.  When 10 options are offered the top vote getter
can easily win a plurality of 15% which then means that 85% of the
participants voted for something else.  Several rounds of voting where
the lowest vote getter(s) are dropped until someone has an absolute
majority is a workable system.  The second round of voting in French
elections somewhat reflects that.  Transferable ballots try to
accomplish the same thing in one round.

Once something has been decided there still needs to be a process that
allows for change.  The conditions for change (in the current situation
in relation to a logo) need to be made clear.  This will allow newcomers
to have a say, and it will allow others to change their vote.  An
overthrow threshhold needs to be established that prevents rapid changes
in policy between two very equally supported alternatives.  Thus
'''changing''' an agreed logo could require that 60% of voters support
the change.  Voting could take place on any alternative proposal with
minimal support (say 10 Wikipedians).  Voting could remain open for an
extended period of time: 90 days? 6 months?  The threshhold would not be
very easy to reach, but everyone's opportunity to having meaningful
influence would be respected.

>>Later, there will have to be some major policy decisions.  In the
>>past, these have always been made by consensus, which in reality boils
>>down to us listening to all sides and encouraging different factions
>>to accomodate each other so that we can find solutions that are better
>>all around for everyone.
>>
At times a decision MUST be made to prevent everything from grinding to
a halt.  An excess of democracy was a fatal flaw for the Paris Commune
of 1871.  By contrast American Republicans deserve all the appropriate
credit for having no fear of making the wrong decision. ;-)

>>That process works, or at least it has so far.  But there have always
>>been concerns about how well it would scale.  The more people we have
>>involved, the more important it is that we have a more formalized
>>_process_ that people can support even when they don't support the
>>final _outcome_.
>>
The scaling problem is real.  Nevertheless every formalization carries
the risk that it will diminish the consensus process.  The more
hard-wired the formalization, the greater the risk.  To support the
implementation of a majority opinion, the minority must be able to see
the result as fair and not unnecessarily diminishing their rights.

>>Let me explain that further with an example from the real world.  I
>>support, generally speaking, the processes of constitutionally limited
>>democracy.  So in that sense, I support the system *even when the
>>candidate I don't prefer* gets elected.
>>
Candidates in a "representative" democracy are different from issues.
 An elected representative must often decide on a very wide range of
issues that were never a factor in his election.  Inevitably he must
take positions with which you do not agree.

>>As we get bigger, we need to preserve and improve on our success in
>>that area: when decisions are made, they need to be as inclusive as
>>possible, i.e. to make as many people happy as possible, and at the
>>same time, they need to be made by a process that people can support
>>even when their exact preferences are not chosen.
>>
>>Do we agree about that?
>>
>I agree consensus become harder as we get bigger. But instead of switch
>decision process to a standard vote method, we can perhaps just create some
>rules to make consensus easier to achieve.
>
Voting only ''appears'' to make things easier.  More rules seems just as
anti-consensus.

>>But it is JUST A LOGO.  So a serious amount of relaxation is probably
>>in order.  :-)
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
Certainly

>Next time, a non-American organizer!?
>
I don't think that Eric is American.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Timestamps in EDT

body:
Since the server was restarted, timestamps in ~~~~ signatures have been
displayed in EDT, e.g.:

::Yes, I shall bear that in mind in future, thanks again. Why didn't I
think of that? [[User:Dieter Simon|Dieter Simon]] 19:32, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

See the village pump for some more examples of this.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as
> Slashdot.
>
> I believe that you are mistaken.  I see their
> traffic rank as 845, and
> ours as 2,140.

I dont think its as complicated as that. The 2140 and
the 845 represent 3 month averages. Of course WP is
going to reflect lower numbers than it has currently
if has to account for the last three months. What
matters is that WP is shooting upward at a 33 #@(%!^&
degree angle while Slashdot has been flat. And on
recent brief moments WP surpassed Slashdot-- They have
a slow week, WP has an up week -- boom. For all
intents and purposes, given that the trends hold, WP
will be neck and neck with Slashdot in about a week.

So I only care about their up to the minute marks.
This number is the least arbitrary -- the overall may
have some value with marketers... But I dont
understand why we would care about their overall
ranking-- unless, Jim you're considering....   selling
advertising? (?). : ]

Of course, all of this is speculative--in part,
because Alexa has yet to register the effects of
yesterdays poor server performance, -- which may
mostly be mitigated by the fast response today.
Pedians are loyal and understanding.
But some were complaining yesterday about the
slowness, which is why I added a little "but running
slow" tag to the "Server is back up" note on recent
changes. With the web the masses are always unsure of
whats going on if nobody tells them whats going on. In
troubling times, calm words of reassurance can soothe
the savage Wikipediholic.

"I'm skeptical, but we do rock."
Hear hear.
~S~

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] On restarting the web server process on larousse

body:
Those with logins to larousse can if need be restart Apache with these
handy dandy aliases:

apache-start
apache-stop
apache-restart
apache-graceful

A 'graceful' restart reloads the configuration file and kills off all
server threads once they've finished the current request; new requests
are served by new threads with the new configuration. Every once in a
while it may not be enough; for instance, changes to the PHP
configuration don't seem to get reloaded by this, or the httpd process
may be in a zombie-like undead state where it just doesn't respond.

A regular restart (or stop followed by start) will interrupt any
connections currently trying to transfer data, but may be more thorough
about reloading things.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

in_reply_to:
<20030910193943.82418.qmail@web80709.mail.yahoo.com>;
	from utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com on Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at
	12:39:43PM -0700

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:
> have some value with marketers... But I dont
> understand why we would care about their overall
> ranking-- unless, Jim you're considering....   selling
> advertising? (?). : ]

Please, don't even joke about that!  :-) I can't take any more grief
over things I'm actually against.

I'm feverishly at work today puzzling over motherboard specs and other
such annoying information to order the parts for next week's upgrades.

I might even go to California to work on it myself.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Anthere:
>In american english (and in Maverick voice), I think
>"silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros b?ta". It
>is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach.
>Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.

Yep - "silly" isn't meant to be offensive at all.

>...
>But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious
>while using this word ?

Agreed - the word does not translate well.

--mav


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Don't take Alexa's Slashdot.org numbers too seriously
	(was Re: Slashdot)

body:
Alexa's numbers for Slashdot.org /should not/ be taken too seriously; the
Slashdot crowd (readers and posters) is on the techy/nerdy end of the
spectrum and is made of a disproportionately large percentage of users who do
not use Internet Explorer and/or MS Windows and thus cannot install the Alexa
toolbar to be counted in the first place (there is also the "spyware" fear
that would be more prevalent in even those Slashdot users that /do/ use
IE/Windows).

Even though our /contributors/ would tend to have a similar demographic, I'm
pretty sure our /readers/ (who massively outnumber our contributors) tend to
be more representative of the the average Internet user. Thus a comparison to
Britannica.com would be more reliable than a comparison to Slashdot.org.

We still rock though.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
>Next time, a non-American organizer!?

That's a bit insulting since it presumes there is something wrong with being
American. Erik isn't American either, BTW.

Why is it when people see that something is not going the way they want it,
that they automatically assume it is some type of Anglo or "worse" American
conspiracy?

This has to stop.

--mav


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot.

Indeed!  Does anybody know how many "postings" per month Slashdot
receives?  The English Wikipedia had 125K "edits" in August 2003,
coming from more than 2K different users.

My hypothesis is that trends in postings/edits/writes are predictors
for trends in page views/visitors/reads.  But I only have numbers for
Wikipedia and a few wikis, not for other projects such as Slashdot.

Right now, susning.nu and the German Wikipedia are equal in size
(each having 30K articles), but the German Wikipedia has twice the
amount of edits per month (35K vs 18K).  This either results in more
articles or better articles, either of which should be a driver of
future readership.

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


body:
"Silly" is now considered a silly word to use, eh? I
think thats silly, myself.
~S~

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere:
> >In american english (and in Maverick voice), I
> think
> >"silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros
b???ta".
> It
> >is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach.
> >Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.
>
> Yep - "silly" isn't meant to be offensive at all.
>
> >...
> >But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious
> >while using this word ?
>
> Agreed - the word does not translate well.
>
> --mav
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 05:44:10AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=medium&compare_sites=slashdot.org&url=http://www.wikipedia.org#top

I doubt there is anything correct in these stats.
It say that 5% go to fr.wikipedia and 3% to de... But looking at the
stats (webalizer for example) I see that DE is about 2-3 times bigger.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	        Urlaub? http://www.tomk32.de/fewo-koll/
   / \              http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki namespace for software customisation

body:
The problem of changing messages given by software, and making it easier
to translate the software into other languages, has been around for a
while. I wrote some code to allow wfMsg() to access the database, and on
September 1, Brion wrote:

 > Another possibility is to make [[Special:xxx]] just appear a little
 > more like a normal page; that is, there would be an "edit this page"
 > link by which you can edit the header text.
 >
 > So instead of a separate [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] to find and
 > maintain, you'd just go to [[Special:Recentchanges]] and hit edit in
 > the usual fashion. A [[Special talk:xxx]] namespace to go with it
 > would be useful too.

Now this is a nice idea, but IMHO main problem with it is that some
special pages have many different text messages, and some text messages
which we want to customise are not on special pages (e.g. deletion).

I propose creating a new namespace "MediaWiki:" as namespace 8, with a
"MediaWiki talk:" namespace as #9. This namespace would contain a page
for each message in Language.php, plus categorisation and miscellaneous
related pages. Clicking on "edit this page" in a special page (or
deletion, etc.) would take you to a page in the MediaWiki namespace
determined by the local language. In most cases, I imagine that page
would be a list of links to customisable messages, with edit links for
convenience. For the benefit of special pages where there is only one
customisable message, some "edit this page" links could go straight to
an edit page.

All the help pages should stay in the Wikipedia: namespace. The
MediaWiki: namespace should be reserved for pages which directly affect
the functioning of the software, and closely related information.
[[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] and [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] should be
moved to MediaWiki:.

Using the name "MediaWiki" avoids the technical difficulties associated
with using "Special" for two different purposes. It also brings more
prominence to the new name of our software. At the moment, most editors
still just call it "the software" or "the PHP script". Using the
existing "Wikipedia" namespace would clutter it up with hundreds of
small articles, most of which are of no interest to editors or readers.

Some messages may need to be protected. Many messages currently require
raw HTML. There's no need to change that in a hurry, as long as the user
is informed of the issues. Unfiltered HTML messages should certainly be
protected, to avoid security problems.

-- Tim Starling <t(starling_physics*unimelb^edu!au>


body:
Anthere wrote:

>In american english (and in Maverick voice), I think
>"silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros b?ta". It
>is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach.
>Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.
>
>Not in french. Saying to someone he is "idiot" (the
>translation of silly) is *not* friendly. And not
>encouraging at all.
>
The problem here is that the French "idiot" is not a good translation of
"silly".  This is perhaps an instance where the "idiot" of the two
languages are mostly not false friends.  Your choice of "b?ta" (but
certainly not "b?te") is more appropriate for "silly".  "Silly" often
tends to be used about children, and suggests something childish about
the person or action.  It is indeed a gentle reproach, but if used to
excess tends to have a cumulative effect.

Circumstances can, of course, change things.  When my son was 3 or 4
years old we kidded him about something by saying that he was a "petit
niaiseux".  To emphasize that he was getting bigger he replied "J'suis
pas un petit niaiseux, j'suis un grand niaiseux" :-D

>I remember Mav also told me I was silly once. I then
>thought of a computer game I played a long time ago,
>where the hero party met a colony of very friendly
>spiders.  The cute little spiders were using the
>adjective "silly" (this was the english version). But
>they did not mean to offense. So, I said nothing to
>Mav.
>
Pikmin?!

>But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious while
>using this word ?
>
Always advisable when going across languages.

Ec


from_name: Jay Bowks

body:
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia down
> Big thanks to Jason for driving back down to San Diego to bang on the
> server again; we finally got it back up and online about a half hour
> ago.

Ahhh! Then, gold foil kudos to Jason!

Thanks so much for the efforts
to help us all keep getting our
wiki dosage regularly ;-)

Well, at least it a healthy habit...

w/ regards,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wikipede

body:
From: "Anthere" <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
> I like your wikipede very much. I have no problem
> finding cute a animal with 100 appendages :-) (in
> truth, it is rather about 30 I think).

Yes, I think the other 40 are aliases... ;-)

But really, you mean the centipede has
about 30, and the millipede many more,
but a "wikipede" has a wicked lot more.

The idea of a logo and that of a mascot
may merge in some points but they can
be co-exist. E.g. a mascot doesn't necessarily
need to appear on the logo, but the mascot
may wear the logo on it, I think...

w/ regards,
Jay B.


from_name: Carl Witty

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot [OT]

body:
On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 05:44, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anyhow, my research at the time suggested that for every *doubling* of
> traffic, you generally *halve* your rank.  That's a rough rule of
> thumb, but it held remarkably well.
>
> That is, a site ranked 500 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1000.  And a site ranked 845 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1690.  If we are 2,140 and they are 845, then they have more than
> twice the traffic that we have.

Actually, I read somewhere that this seems to be a general law for all
kinds of rankings.  That is, if you rank cities in the United States (or
the world) by population, a city with twice the rank will have about
half the population.  If you rank English words by frequency of usage,
then a word with twice the rank will be used about half as often.  (And
of course there's nothing special about "doubling"; something with a
rank ten times as high will have one-tenth the popularity.)

Carl Witty


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject: [Wikitech-l] Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

body:
(This is a reply for Alex's message:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005919.html )

>I you certain that you would be considered an "administrator" under the
Japanese law

Well, I am not certain. I am not a lawyer or a law school student. But what
I have
gathered are two things:

There is a famous case regarding an alleged defamation at an online BBS. The
one who posted the defamatory messages, a sysop of the BBS, and the company
which runs those BBSs were all sued. The first trial concluded that, among
other
things, sysop was indeed guilty for not fulfilling his obligation to delete
such a
posting from the BBS.

The second trial concluded that sysop in general could be held liable for
his
inaction, and the said postings are defamatory, but there is no unreasonably
slow action or illegal inaction found in this case. The judge found that the
actions taken were reasonable.

I think what is important is how the court understood the sysop.
Sysop in this case is a volunteer stuff, spending only his spare time for
the
BBS. He receives small monetary conpensation. And there is some
manual or guideline that he and other sysops are supposed to follow.

The volume of traffic and the part-time nature of sysop was considered by
the court and, quite reasonably in my opinion, it is said that it was not
the
obligation of sysop to monitor all the postings.

At the same time, after being notified or obtaining a knowledge of
such problematic posting, sysop bears a legal obligation to delete it
within a reasonable time.

Just to clarify, some of the messages are somewhat obvious case of
defamation,
I think, in a sense that readers do not have to wonder if the messages are
factually accurate. The messages are more like: "Tomos, you miserable
loser!"
(but including sexual and racial connotations).

I have looked through a dozen web sites (some by lawyers and scholars,
others
by journalists) dealing with this case, but did not find other cases
discussed together
that deal with the obligation of sysops. There may or may no be other cases.

The sentense include reference to the specific nature of the BBS's topic -
it is
a place to discuss feminism - and make certain judgment based on that. So
the extent to which this case applies to things that happens on Japanese
Wikipedia remains uncertain.

Aside from that, there is a recently enacted law often called provider
liability law,
specifying when certain people like sysops can and cannot be held liable.

Provider in this law is defined as those who provide facilities for
telecommunication
or mediate the communication. The communication is said to have to be open
to
unspecified recipients in nature - so not among just a small group of
members,
I think. The examples given by a document issued by a ministry is web pages
and
electronic bulletin boards.

This annotated version of the law issed by a ministry specifically explains
that
provider includes people doing web hosting and people who serve as an
administrator
for electronic bulletin boards.

Now are we as volunteer, unpaid, admins are admins in this sense? Or only
Jimbo
can be thought of as an admin? I don't know.

But from what I have read, some people would think that we are likely to be
found so.
There is no case that I am aware of.

If only Jimbo is the admin, it would mean that so-called admins at Japanese
wikipedia can just ignore defamatory or copyright infringing material even
when they
obtain a knowledge of it, and tell concerned parties to talk to Jimbo. I am
personally
quite unsure if the court would find that it is the case.

(And I am not sure if Jimbo, an American living in the US, can be held
liable for a
message that is stored in a US server, defamating Japanese in Japanese
language
in Japanese social context. It sounds close to the case if Yahoo! can sell
Nazi
memorabillia in the U.S. because it is against French law.)

Among the difficult issue here is that providers, based on other law, to
serve
the users in an indiscriminatory manner. (I am not sure how this obligation
is actually
interpreted in the actual cases). Because of that clause (is the right term
here?),
there is a possibility that deleting something from a BBS or wikipedia is
illegal -
because that deletion may curtail paricular users' right to communicate. And
of
course there is the other possibility - not deleting is possibly illegal
when the
posting is defamatory, copyright infringing, etc.

The basic conditions on whith a provider can be held liable is that
1) s/he had a technological means to stop the violation of others rights
(such as by
deleting a message), but haven't used it.
and
2) either of the following two:
2-a) s/he had a knowledge of it
2-b) s/he is in a situation in which s/he could have reasonably came to
believe
that there is a violation.
(by not responding to a request to look into a specific posting, or not
taking a reasonable step to make sure that the posting does not
violate of others' rights, for example).
(also notice that that, even if a provider makes a factually wrong judgement
regarding violation/ non-violation, the provider cannot be held liable as
long as
it was reasonable to believe what the provider came to believe.)

As I understand, defamation and copyright infringement is quite
difficult to judge - the existence of an external web page having the
same text as the one recently posted on Wikipedia does not prove anything,
even though it is an indication of infringement. The external web page
may be from another public domain text, and the wikipedia posting
is also the same PD source, for example. And admins are in a
double-bind where they can be held liable by deleting something by
mistake as well as not deleting something by mistake.

The law further specifies, for example, that when a victim makes a
formal request to delete certain posting for certain reason, and the
poster of the message do not oppose to the deletion after an
inquiry has been sent and certain time has passed, then the
provider can delete the posting without possibilities of being
held liable for the deletion.

There are other cases, when the poster opposes, for example.

But what if just a third party leaves a message on
Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion regarding potential violation?

The law, and annotated version issued by the government,
do not say anything specific. Another widely-referred guidelines
issued by an industry assosiation (kind of) with many legal experts'
helps, specifically say that that kind of third party notification
is something they cannot touch upon because the law and cases
do not give us any reason to believe that
1) a third party notification constitute a knowledge of infringement
or a situation in which a provider can reasonably come to believe
that such an infringement exist.
NOR
2) a third party notification do not constitute a knowledge of infringement,
and the victim has to notice the infringement (which is often very
difficult)
and notify the provider.

So, all combined, all I can say is that there is no strong indication that
admins at japanese wikipedia will not be held liable, and the uncertainties
include how the past court case regarding a sysop for a BBS could apply to
wikipedia admins, and if the definition of provider in the provider
liability law
covers wikipedia admins, among other things.

I hope I could answer you better, or at least quicker, and I am sorry for
this untimely reply. But I really appreciate your concern.

best,

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Update to gfdl copyright notice needed (tomos)

body:
(This is a reply to Anthere's posting:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005941.html )

Ant;

>We practice unilateral deletion less than on the en.
>This is cultural I think. We are just less bold. This
>is also true for editing. Many editors explain they
>will make change in the talk page first, or contact
>the main editor when there is one. And many are quite
>disturbed when one remove some text from an article
>without previous warning. This is often seen as bad
>manners. I understood this is similar on ja.

Until I came to the last sentense, I was seriously
wondering if you were quoting something I
wrote somewhere before :-)

Thanks for the information!

Tomos

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body:
This is a reply to mav's posting
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005944.html )
and Alex's reply
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-September/005945.html )
regarding updating GFDL copyright notice.

After reading Alex's page on the proposed change, it looks like this is
quite an
improvement regarding reducing legal risks for the projects and admins.

What is frustrating is that I am not prepared well enough to give any
concrete
opinion or question in relation to Japanese laws...

Well, I will bring them up somewhere if I find something.

Tomos

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body:
Consider, Daniel, that WP is largely American run--
its set up in San Diego, its

Its important that we-- the braintrust of the whole of
WP, are sensitive to this sentiment. And if we value
our non-English wikis and our non-English members we
must be somewhat considerate. While you and I may talk
to people all around the world in plain English, those
people will talk with others who do not speak a word
of English. The concerns of those people cannot be
thought of as invalid simply because they dont speak
English, and must go through a represenative who can.

This goes to the issue of governance and the eventual
need for a less "trickle-down" form of Wikigovernance
(if we value our non-English wikis and our non-English
members). I dont mean any offense to my fellow
American contingent, but this is an important
discussion about the course of Wiki, and what
decisions are made -- not just tactical or practical
ones, but principled ones -- are what will determine
if Wikipedia continues as it is doing -- growing like
a weed -- or fracture into a half dozen unreconcled
and uncommunicative ones. It has nothing to do at all
with branding or the Wikipedia trademark, as has been
stated -- it has everything to do with extending
respect  to people you cant see or communicate with,
and answering their concerns in some way as they come
in.

As for the nonsense with the name-calling and the mock
ethnic squabbling -- its either intended in good fun,
is limited to very few people with bad habits, or its
not worth mentioning.  By taking a hard line on this
Dan, you just might be fanning flames -- something I
know was not in your intent -- so please take my
comments with a grain of salt.

(If we value our non-English wikis and our non-English
members)
~S~

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth
when you know that you would lie if you were in his
place."- H.L. Mencken

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> >Next time, a non-American organizer!?
>
> That's a bit insulting since it presumes there is
> something wrong with being
> American. Erik isn't American either, BTW.
>
> Why is it when people see that something is not
> going the way they want it,
> that they automatically assume it is some type of
> Anglo or "worse" American
> conspiracy?
>
> This has to stop.
>
> --mav
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Guillaume-
> For example, imagine you want to select a color.

Your black/white/gray example is perfectly applicable to our process.
There has been the possibility of discussion during the entire logo
submission process (for more than a month); discussions continued during
voting, and even now after the submission deadline has been closed you can
still submit variants and try to convince the artist to put these variants
up for final voting. So I fail to see how and when we could or should have
been trying harder to find compromise solutions. Many logos have been
modified based on viewer feedback, especially NcWiki, Stygian's logo and
Paullusmagnus' puzzle sphere. Some people have created vector variants of
existing logos, others have changed the colors, and others have added
their favorite mascot (*cough*).

There have been some complaints (not by me) about Olie's attempts to get
Miwiki integrated into virtually every logo. Are you saying these users
should just shut up? What exactly are you asking for here? I think you
should be glad that we have a formalized process in place to handle these
variants, because otherwise we would now be knee deep in a flamewar about
whether Olie should be allowed to do this or not.

> I agree consensus become harder as we get bigger. But instead of switch
> decision process to a standard vote method, we can perhaps just create some
> rules to make consensus easier to achieve.

I fail to see how it will ever be possible to achieve "consensus" on which
logo to pick from a selection of more than 130. Feel free to prove me
wrong -- just leave a message on the user talk page of everyone who voted
and tell them your arguments why you think a particular logo or compromise
should be used.

Realistically, when you stop using voting for decisions like this, you
will end up with a cabal that makes decisions for the majority of users.
The funny thing is: I think the people who complain about voting would not
complain about such a cabal -- because they know that the only alternative
is voting, which they despise.

> If I enter the debate it's just because I worried to see Oliezekat spend all
> his time to try to found alternative proposition (he really worked hard) and
> to be bother just because he didn't strictly respect the saintly rules.

I did not "bother" Olie about anything. Which "saintly rules" do you think
should be relaxed? Should Olie be allowed to submit his Miwiki variants
for final voting even if the artists do not agree? What exactly do you
want? If you just want to express your solidarity with the Miwiki
campaign, well, maybe there are other places to do that.

> Next time, a non-American organizer!?

I'm not an American, but perhaps it's a problem that I speak
understandable English. In that case, maybe we should try to get Brion to
organize the next contest in Esperanto. Or how about Volap?k? I hear it's
all the rage with the kids these days.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Strange things happening on some of non-english
	wikipedias

body:
On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 22:46, Richard Gallagher wrote:
> There seem to be some strange things happening with some of the
> non-english wikipedias.  For instance if you follow the Afrikaans link
> on the front page http://af.wikipedia.com/ it takes to a page about
> something called The TV Clubhouse.  It seems to affect all the
> language wikipedias that are under wikipedia.com while the ones
> under wikipedia.org seem to work as normal.  The simple english
> http://simple.wikipedia.com/ also seems to be affected.

Yes, that server is on the blink. They should soon be transferred over
to the Wikipedia servers which, hopefully, are slightly less likely to
explode. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] What constitutes a copyvio?

body:
I put [[Thomas Sutpen]] on the [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/copyvio]] page because it is a word-for-word copy from [[http://www.uic.edu/depts/engl/projects/dissertations/kdorwick/engl214/juan/gloss.html]].  [[User:Stevertigo]] rolled back the copyvio boilerplate I'd put on the page and said in  [[Talk:Thomas Sutpen]]: "I rolled the copyvio deletion back because this little text --even if copied from an edu site does not constitute a problem for us. There was no copyright notice on the source page, it was not copied in full, and theres no reason why the effort placed in calling this a copyviolation cant be better put toward changing the text to make it unique."

I'm certainly not qualified to do anything to this article.  I had no idea who Thomas Sutpen was until I read this article.  Am I then not allowed to discuss the article because I can't change the text?  I don't know what to change it to, I don't have the background to do so.  In the meantime, does that mean that I have to leave all texts alone that I know are copyright violations because I don't have the expertise to change them?

Is Stevevertigo correct that, because the page doesn't specifically have a copyright on it, it's fair game to be stolen and incorporated onto Wikipedia?  I can't believe that.

RickK

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body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> > Maybe it slows down the voting a bit, but also it helps us to find a
> > voting system that fits wikipedia. So maybe this slow discussion is
> > helpful after all, in the longer run.
>
> Sure!  It's the wikipedia way to discuss everything to death in public
> forums for months until a rough consensus is achieved, and then of
> course to be accused of all decisions being made in secret, overnight,
> and by absolute fiat.  :-)

It seems we don't have the same definition of what a consensus is.

This rigid vote where no alternative proposition can be submit is at the
antipode of my vision of a consensus.

And I don't see anything encouraging in this discussion.

Hope I wrong...

Aoineko

> --Jimbo


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
A lot of interesting points being made, hmm.
Some replies, in no particular order:
I'll note that the FPTP vote on voting method wasn't a great choice, but eh,
we can live with it. It shouldn't be a terribly different result with any
decent system. I'd recommend establishing some sort of standards for voting
system... not 'we use X system always' (though if we could find one people
consistently agree upon as good enough, that'd be /nice/ (I'm not holding my
breath here)) but maybe 'we use system X, Y, or Z' (Which to me are
Condorcet, IRV, and Average, in no particular order). And if we really feel
the need, specify how we choose among X/Y/Z  (I'd say by average voting).
I find it distressing that our French friends think 'silly' equates to
'idiot'. Silly is mostly a friendly term... it can be considered a little
patronizing to have your idea called silly, but it's not really personally
offensive, and being called silly as a person can almost be a compliment.
I wouldn't vote in favor of a Miwki-ed logo, but I don't have an issue with
the existence of such variants. We really should have (or should have had)
more variants... and I'd have liked to see some creation of new logos after
the Round 1 determination of what people want to see... more fusions of
logos, etc. (The black/white/grey example is a good one.) I could make more
detailed suggestions, but it'd be academic now, the current system isn't
bad, and suggestions of "I'd do it this way" would seem like undue
criticism. I can understand if Erik gets very irritable about such things
(Though he seems to show quite good restraint on this so far...)
I definitely understand the concerns of the foreign-language Wikipedians
about having to go through intermediaries, and possibly being ignored by the
English-only-speaking majority. For starters, I suggest that posting in
their language may be better than staying quiet: translation can happen.
Babelfish doesn't exactly produce brilliant prose, but it rarely fails to
convey the gist, and has improved drastically from how it used to be... and
sometimes you'll be surprised who understands you. Also, try not to read
American or Anglophonic conspiracies into things- any that exist are likely
unintentional. Remember Hanlon's Razor: 'Never attribute to malice that
which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' (Though I don't think
stupidity is necessarily the right word here, perhaps ignorance might be
better.)
I have a lot of thoughts on voting, governance, and including
non-Anglophonic Wikipedians, but they're lengthy and scattered, so I'll not
burden you with them... maybe I'll post something on my userspace later....
though I'm still rather self-conscious about making such statements, not
having been here terribly long.

Anyway, in general, the best prescription for all of us is just to relax.
I'll shut up for a while now ;).

--Jake


body:
Note on last message: There were blank lines between paragraphs when I sent
that, making it much more readable. Bah. Oh, and in ' It shouldn't be a
terribly different result with any decent system.', 'it' is both the choice
of voting system and choice of logo.

--Jake


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot.
>
> I believe that you are mistaken.  I see their traffic rank as 845, and
> ours as 2,140.

I was just going off the entry in [[Wikipedia:Announcements]]. Anyway, even
if they have double our traffic, I still don't think they're very scary.

-- Tim Starling <t<starling<physics<>unimelb>edu>au>


from_name: Adam Raizen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

body:
David Friedland wrote:
 > Anyhow, it seems that just using the HTML entities for the Unicode IPA
 > extensions is not an acceptable solution because it leaves IE users with
 > lovely but useless rectangles where there ought to be IPA characters.
 > There is a LaTeX extension called TIPA that allows the complete set of
 > IPA characters and diacritics. If this were installed into the TeX math
 > extensions, then a similar syntax could be used to generate images of
 > the IPA from LaTeX input.
 > I see the following possible solutions (in the order that I think is
good):
 >
 > 1.) Auto-detect the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that
 > support it and TIPA LaTeX images to those that don't. (Pros: attractive
 > display of IPA for all users. Cons: lots of  programming)
 >
 > 2.) Just send TIPA LaTeX images (Pros: attractive display of IPA. Cons:
 > Uses images in text when for some users embedded IPA Unicode would look
 > better)
 >
 > 3.) Store the IPA in a special format or in a special tag, auto-detect
 > the browser and send IPA Unicode to browsers that support it and SAMPA
 > to the rest. (Pros: doesn't require inserting images or using TeX. Cons:
 > SAMPA is ugly and hard to read)
 >
 > 4.) Render IPA into GIFs or PNGs and just insert them as images. (Pros:
 > compatible with everything. Cons: time-consuming, and difficult to
change)
 >
 > 5.) Devise a Wikipedia-specific pronunciation scheme and just use that
 > (blech!) (Pros: no coding required. Cons: YAAHPS (Yet Another Ad Hoc
 > Pronunciation Scheme))
 >
 > 6.) Do nothing and continue to allow people to use ad-hoc pronunciation
 > schemes (BLECH!!) (Pros: no action required. Cons: maintains status quo
 > harms as described above)

I was just thinking of this problem, and the idea I came up with was to
have an option in user preferences of something like "Display
pronunciations in: o Unicode IPA o SAMPA" and then anything in an
article which begins with "SAMPA " would be detected and displayed
correctly (converting SAMPA to IPA if necessary), similarly to the idea
with the magic ISBNs. I think this is probably the simplest solution to
get working quickly, and it can be easily expanded to include additional
ASCII IPA schemes (there are several) or auto-generated IPA images if
someone implements that. Also, someone using IE but who has the correct
fonts installed would be able to see IPA.

You malign ad hoc pronunciation schemes, but they do have *some*
redeeming value. You can use a single ad-hoc system to represent
different dialects more easily than you can use IPA for the same
purpose, since users will read their own dialect into the pronunciation
guide for the ad-hoc system. Still, I can't imagine making up an ad-hoc
scheme for wikipedia; IPA is probably best for us.

I'm digging around the code to see how this could be done (and learning
PHP), but in the meantime, any comments?.

(Anything more on this should probably go to wikitech-l.)

-- Adam Raizen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA


body:
Aioneko, please forgive me for saying this, but the
Babelfish text was actually very good -- *perhaps in
some ways better than your current English :D

Which dispenses with the nonsense claims of some that
machine translation is generally useless.

May my French someday be as good as your English is
now,
~S~

> Perhaps you can't imagine how sometime it is
> frustrating to don't be able to
> get to the heart of something just because of a
> language lack. It's not a
> problem to speak about weather, but for deeper
> subject it can be. Sure we
> have to develop embassy, but found someone fluent in
> English who are agree
> to read all post and make summary for those who
> don't speak English is not
> an easy thing ;o) We have better to learn English
> that is the in facto
> international language. In fact, this time we had a
> lack of information
> inside the French Wikipedia, mainly because this
> vote occurred in a period
> of many ??? main ??? French wikipedians were
missing. I
> am very interesting to
> hear your proposition to develop collaboration with
> non-Anglophonic
> wikipedians.
>
>
>
> Aoineko
>
>
>
> Just for fun, here is the Babelfish translation of
> my text above:
>
>
>
> Perhaps that you cannot imagine how much it is
> sometimes frustrating not to
> be able to go at the bottom of the things simply
> because of a problem of
> language. It is not a problem to speak about time,
> but that can be it for a
> major subject. We must certainly develop the
> embassies, but finds somebody
> who speaks usually English, and who is close with
> reading all the messages
> and to make of them summaries for those which do not
> speak English, is not
> an easy thing;o) One shoed to better learn English
> who is in facto, the
> language international. In fact, this time there was
> a lack of information
> inside French-speaking Wikip???dia, in particular
> because owing to the fact
> that the vote intervened at one period or much of
> the French-speaking
> wikip???diens "major" missed. I am very interest to
> hear your proposals to
> develop collaboration with the wikip???diens not
> english-speaking.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> This is not my decision, it is the artist's
> decision. He/she can choose up
> to 5 versions of each logo.

Well, the interesting thing to me is whether
Pallusmagnus feels like hes under some kind of
pressure to go along with or humour the rather
charismatic Olie, and whether there may or may not be
an argument between them over Pallus' choice of
finals.

> That's simply not true. The voting rules have all
> been on [[International
> logo vote]] before the vote started. I have been
> careful not to change any
> rules during voting.

Yes, they the contest has been rather smooth so far
and has avoided most or all of Murphy's laws
altogether.

> Some people perceive it as such. This has more to do
> with the logo/mascot
> distinction than with the contest as such. But if
> the artists accept the
> Miwiki variants, then they will be voted on like all
> other logos. For
> example, Paullusmagnus has accepted one Miwiki
> variant.

Ah - so its only one variant -- but its been a while
since I looked.

~S~

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body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> > This rigid vote where no alternative proposition can be submit is at
> > the antipode of my vision of a consensus.
>
> Well, this logo contest is an experiment in voting.  It has gone well
> in some ways, and not so well in other ways.  In any case, no matter
> how we evaluate it overall, we can all agree that it has been
> educational, exposing some of the issues that we are going to have to
> deal with as we form scalable, stable, consensus-driven decision
> methods.

I just hope people concluded something about those discussions.

> > And I don't see anything encouraging in this discussion.
>
> What do you mean?  I see a lot that's encouraging.  Look at all the
> discussion that we are having.  Look how hard people are working to
> try to find mutually agreeable solutions.  Look how civilized and
> cautious the decisionmaking is.

I didn't read all post (translate is fastidious for me), but in those I read
I see words as "silly", "pushy French attitude" and other not so friendly
sentence. Hope it's just translation mistake ;o). On the other hand, I
didn't read any proposition to make vote process become more close to a
consensus. For me, the vote method is not the real problem (average method &
Condorcet are not so different in fact). Imho, the problem is a standard
vote doesn't offer any dynamic solution. I mean, you select some solutions
(before the vote start), then you start the vote and block any new
proposition. For example, imagine you want to select a color. Favorite
colors are black and white (just an example), so people propose those 2
colors to be voted. After some time you see both colors have closed score.
With standard vote system you must select one of those colors (by any
method) and make happy only half of people instead of be able to propose a
gray that may satisfy more people (just an example). I think discussion,
proposition and vote have better to take place concurrently. I mean allow
participant to propose new solution and change vote during the decision
process. I'm aware that is only a personal point of view but I expected to
ear some alternative solution instead of the eternal debate on the best way
of count vote. But perhaps I just miss those discussions.

> The current experiment is a good one because the choice of a logo from
> any of the fine leading contenders is not a life or death decision for
> the project.  None of the choices available to us are bad, and so we
> can learn from this in a low-risk way.
>
> Later, there will have to be some major policy decisions.  In the
> past, these have always been made by consensus, which in reality boils
> down to us listening to all sides and encouraging different factions
> to accomodate each other so that we can find solutions that are better
> all around for everyone.
>
> That process works, or at least it has so far.  But there have always
> been concerns about how well it would scale.  The more people we have
> involved, the more important it is that we have a more formalized
> _process_ that people can support even when they don't support the
> final _outcome_.
>
> Let me explain that further with an example from the real world.  I
> support, generally speaking, the processes of constitutionally limited
> democracy.  So in that sense, I support the system *even when the
> candidate I don't prefer* gets elected.
>
> In a small group, the consensus method works.  When a final decision
> has to be made, then a benevolent dictator who really does look out
> for the interests of as many different people as possible also works.
> People can, and have, supported that process as effective, even when
> they didn't get their way on every last detail.
>
> As we get bigger, we need to preserve and improve on our success in
> that area: when decisions are made, they need to be as inclusive as
> possible, i.e. to make as many people happy as possible, and at the
> same time, they need to be made by a process that people can support
> even when their exact preferences are not chosen.
>
> Do we agree about that?

I agree consensus become harder as we get bigger. But instead of switch
decision process to a standard vote method, we can perhaps just create some
rules to make consensus easier to achieve.

> We've done a couple of experiments with voting.  I've always been a
> skeptic of voting, but the one thing that voting can do is generate
> legitimacy for decisions.  People can support the outcome of a vote,
> even when the vote doesn't go their way.
>
> I like one of the logos best of all.  I hope that it wins.  But if it
> doesn't, I can live with that.  They are all reasonable choices, and I
> like that we went through a process that people can live with.
>
> But it is JUST A LOGO.  So a serious amount of relaxation is probably
> in order.  :-)
>
> --Jimbo

Sure, more friendly are relations, more easy are decisions ;o)

If I enter the debate it's just because I worried to see Oliezekat spend all
his time to try to found alternative proposition (he really worked hard) and
to be bother just because he didn't strictly respect the saintly rules.
Imho, the wikipedians must to be more flexible and patient; especially with
those you have difficulty to speak/understand English. Next time, a
non-American organizer!?

Thanks for your answers.

Aoineko


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>What if their IP# has made 10 edits?

>Sorry, no dice. Everyone can register an account -- the level of anonymity
>is the same, you don't even need an email to sign up -- so I see no reason
>to let entirely anonymous users vote.

The reason would be that they didn't know, until just recently
(and possibly not until the last day of the election!),
that they had to user a username for at least 10 of their edits
in order to vote on the logo.

There are quite a few Wikipedians that are known
only by their (static) IP address.  Unfortunately,
none of their names are very memorable. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] What constitutes a copyvio?

body:
on 9/10/03 10:24 PM, Rick at giantsrick13 at yahoo.com wrote:

Is Stevevertigo correct that, because the page doesn't specifically have a
copyright on it, it's fair game to be stolen and incorporated onto
Wikipedia?  I can't believe that.

You should not believe that. Everything is copyright by its author, if no
one else, notice or no notice, unless it has been released into the public
domain either by the passage of time, some specific license to use it or
simply a declaration that people are "free to use it" as one sometimes sees.

You did the correct thing. If User:Stevertigo wishs to do enough editing to
create a credibly new article using the factual material in the copywrited
material (thus conserving energy as he alleges) that is fine. But in fact he
did not. He just reverted. User:Stevertigo's demand that you edit it rather
than request deletion is inappropriate.

Fred