body:
If somebody proposed to trash NPOV policy, or to have popup ads on the
mainpage, issues which many people feel strongly about, and there were
many messages from people who supported the idea, I think there would
be a lot of e-mails like that.

mark

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 21:38:48 +0100 (CET), Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!?
> > As noted before, if these rules had always existed, most of our
> > largest Wikipedias would not exist today!!!
>
> If most people behaved like you, this mailing list would have been
> dead long ago.  Will you please try and moderate yourself?
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

body:
What people aren't realising is that there are people already supporting them.

sc: I just requested because I thought it should exist, and I learned from that.

scn: however had an entire community that pledged to help work on it,
and that's why I requested it.

Friulian had the support of two Wikipedians, and that's why I requested it.

I wouldn't request a Welsh Wikipedia just because I "like welsh" or
something. I'd only request it if some people or a community had
expressed interest and pledged some level of support if it were to be
created.

-Mark

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 16:09:25 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new
> >Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do
> >anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential
> >contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
> >
> >
> There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally
> ability to speak these languages.  I'd wager that were these requests
> coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be
> taken more seriously.  When that has happened, as with Welsh, there were
> no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: make user pages uneditable

body:
I believe that under most circumstances a user's main userpage
[[User:X]] should be a place for that user to state what they want the
community to know about them and their beliefs, philosophies, aims,
goals, etc.  In other words, the main User: page is intentionally POV
and there should rarely be a need for other contributors to edit it.

It is certainly NOT a place for other users to place their opinion of
that user under normal circumstances.

However, all this is accomplished with the current state of affairs.
User pages are indeed rarely edited by anyone but the user.  There are
rare cases of vandalism, quickly undone.  Few users' pages are
regularly vandalised, and those pages can be (and are) protected under
our current policy.

It strikes me that some of those wanting their user pages protected
from editing by other users are not doing so out of actually
experiencing any problems, but rather, as UC says, from a sense of
'ownership'.  This IS a bit troubling.  Certainly userspace is
different than other namespaces in the system, but it seems to me that
the 'Wiki way' is to avoid trying to fix problems in software whenever
possible - instead relying on community norms and consensus to set de
facto policy.

'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the game here, I
think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the current state
of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Delirium

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new
>Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do
>anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential
>contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
>
>
There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally
ability to speak these languages.  I'd wager that were these requests
coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be
taken more seriously.  When that has happened, as with Welsh, there were
no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.

-Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Bill Clark

subject:
[Wikitech-l] WHO was developing LDAP-Authenfication for MediaWiki
	? I forgot

body:
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 21:34:46 +0100, Thomas Gries <mail at tgries.de> wrote:
> Please could the developer who recently posted that he/she is finalising
> an LDAP-interface -->

It was Ryan Lane at the US Naval Observatory: <laner at navo.navy.mil>

Since you also contacted me directly via email (and I've been too busy
with my day job to reply yet), I should point out that I'm working on
integrating my webserver authentication patch into Ryan's code.

-Bill Clark


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Which Mediawiki for own development ?

body:
On various occasions some folks wrote:

> developpers

I'm not trying to come across as totally anally retentive, but IIRC
I've heard people saying "developpers" A LOT, lately.

Nott tryinggg ttto bbe steppppping on anyone's ttttoes here, itttttt's
just thatttt I'm ttttoo much in love with^W^W^W of an obsessive
religious fanatic when it comes to ttthe English language.

Thus:
It's _developers_. So there.

Thanks for listtttening tttto ttthis ppppubbbblic service
announcementtttttttttttt.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?
collection=independent_news&collectionid=Mosh


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Full nice handbag

body:
Vanity conlang - someone makes up their own language, and writes to
write about it on Wikipedia
Vanity programming language - someone makes up their own programming
language, and wants to write about it on Wikipedia (note that these
aren't often actually used by anyone else...)
And what about micronations?

(I'm just trying to explore how far you think vanity stretches into
these areas, and how far our views are actually apart).

-- ambi

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 08:19:19 -0800 (PST), Mark Richards
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Garage bands would mostly seem to be covered by vanity
> pages, I don't know what a vanity conlang is, and
> programming languages? If they are real, I would
> probably keep them.
> Mark
>
>
>
> --- Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What about garage bands? Vanity conlangs and
> > programming languages? Etc, etc.
> >
> > -- ambi
> >
> >
> > On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:33:04 -0700 (PDT), Mark
> > Richards
> > <marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > The vanity criteria are well established and apply
> > > only to biography. I don't see the connection at
> > all.
> > > I oppose taking criteria that were designed for
> > > biography and applying them to places, buildings,
> > > artwork, or other things.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > --- John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Then I believe both of you have just admitted
> > that
> > > > "notability" is a
> > > > valid criteria for inclusion/deletion. After
> > all,
> > > > just try reading the
> > > > definition of vanity according to Wikipedia Mark
> > > > linked to.
> > > >
> > > > John Lee
> > > > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> > > >
> > > > Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I see nothing wrong with his position.  There
> > are
> > > > multiple deletion
> > > > > criteria available.  Each has its own
> > definition.
> > > > We can define a
> > > > > vanity page in terms of self-promotion or
> > > > self-glorification.
> > > > > Verifiability is a different and independent
> > > > criterion.  Using the
> > > > > description of one criterion to determine the
> > > > applicability of a
> > > > > different one is illogical.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ec
> > > > >
> > > > > John Lee wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >> Sorry, I don't understand - why would vanity
> > > > pages be eligible for
> > > > >> deletion if the information therein was 100%
> > > > verifiable and factual?
> > > > >> Delirium said that this isn't a strawman
> > because
> > > > *we get 100%
> > > > >> verifiable articles such as vanity pages
> > which
> > > > are deleted*. You
> > > > >> argue in favour of their deletion, because
> > they
> > > > are vanity pages -
> > > > >> what constitutes a vanity page? A page
> > written by
> > > > someone seeking
> > > > >> glorification? But, why, the information's
> > > > verifiable! Isn't
> > > > >> Wikipedia supposed to be a compendium of
> > human
> > > > knowledge? I honestly
> > > > >> don't understand your paradoxical - dare I
> > say,
> > > > hypocritical - stance
> > > > >> on this.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> John Lee
> > > > >> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Mark Richards wrote:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>> It's a straw man because you are taking the
> > case
> > > > in
> > > > >>> dispute (schools) and claiming that if we
> > keep
> > > > >>> schools, we will have to keep an article on
> > each
> > > > >>> school band member.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> There are existing rules to deal with vanity
> > > > articles,
> > > > >>> and to the extent that we have a problem
> > with
> > > > them,
> > > > >>> they have been deleted as vanity.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Let's not confuse the issues of schools with
> > > > some
> > > > >>> hypothetical deluge of articles about
> > > > cheerleaders or
> > > > >>> dead cats.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> If I have presented my case as an extreme
> > one,
> > > > then I
> > > > >>> have misrepresented my aims. I certainly do
> > not
> > > > >>> support an article on each high school band
> > > > member. I
> > > > >>> doubt that you could really write a
> > verifiable
> > > > and
> > > > >>> factual article on them that was not a
> > vanity
> > > > page
> > > > >>> anyway.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> It's not that these people are not notable,
> > they
> > > > >>> certianly are to some people, it is the fact
> > > > that
> > > > >>> these would be vanity articles, I am not
> > > > proposing to
> > > > >>> remove this criteria for deletion.
> > > > >>
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > >
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We
> > finish.
> > > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > >
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
>
>
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

references:
<cm7dab$qf2$1@sea.gmane.org> <cm7mc3$g8m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7877823C-2CE6-11D9-B23E-0003931DCE20@ropersonline.com>

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:
> On various occasions some folks wrote:
>
>> developpers
>
>
> I'm not trying to come across as totally anally retentive, but IIRC
> I've heard people saying "developpers" A LOT, lately.
>
> Nott tryinggg ttto bbe steppppping on anyone's ttttoes here, itttttt's
> just thatttt I'm ttttoo much in love with^W^W^W of an obsessive
> religious fanatic when it comes to ttthe English language.
>
> Thus:
> It's _developers_. So there.
>
> Thanks for listtttening tttto ttthis ppppubbbblic service
> announcementtttttttttttt.

ROFL :-P

Sorry in French "to develop" is "d?velopper", that's probably why I keep
using two P. I will try to be a bit more careful.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


from_name: N Niedermowwe

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: amount of availible (LA)TEX commands in
	<math>-formulas

body:
On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, Peter Danenberg wrote:

> > How and why are the commands limited anyway ?
>
>
>      Different  security  models:  Texvc's "white list" sup-
> ports only which commands as have explicitly  been  compiled
> in;  WikiTeX' "black list", on the other hand, excludes dan-
> gerous commands.

Is there a webpage where those two lists can be found?

>
> --
> Peter Danenberg                                           .
> wikisophia.org                                           ..:
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi Mark,

Please stop threatening with a possible every now and then.
You have already been told that this is NOT?the proper way to get things done.

Yann

Le Tuesday 2 November 2004 18:00, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
> How exactly am I telling others how they should be spending their time?
>
> Chances are I would spend more time getting people situated at the
> Friulian Wikipedia than anybody on this list would.
>
> Oh, wait, I just found this quote: "You guys should all do hard labour
> for the benifit of Wikipedia, while I sit home and veg out on the
> couch!"
>
> Oh wait, that's not a real quote.
>
> I have worked hard to get small and new Wikipedias up and running.
>
> I have sent e-mails, helped people every step of the way in some
> cases, made logos, watched for vandalism, and have requested new
> Wikipedias for people, scn: having been (so far) a success.
>
> If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new
> Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do
> anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential
> contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
>
> Regarding forks: you may have dealt with forks and the threat of forks
> before, but have you ever dealt with the threat of new policy which
> completely goes against what you think Wikipedia stands for? Whatever
> it is you like about Wikipedia, if all of a sudden that was taken and
> totally reversed, I think there's a very good chance you would start a
> fork or defect to an already-existing one.
>
> Even if I can find no people to help with a fork, I can do it myself.
> It may not be as easy that way, but when drastic changes to policy are
> threatened, sometimes drastic measures have to be taken to ensure a
> continued healthy multilingual environment.
>
> mark

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


references:
<cm7dab$qf2$1@sea.gmane.org> <cm7mc3$g8m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7877823C-2CE6-11D9-B23E-0003931DCE20@ropersonline.com>
	<cm8c3l$g6t$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ah.
I should have asked Gooooooooooogle. My bad.

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

You gotta watch this video:
http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?
collection=independent_news&collectionid=Mosh

On 2 Nov 2004, at 17:20, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Jens Ropers wrote:
>> On various occasions some folks wrote:
>>> developpers
>> I'm not trying to come across as totally anally retentive, but IIRC
>> I've heard people saying "developpers" A LOT, lately.
>> Nott tryinggg ttto bbe steppppping on anyone's ttttoes here,
>> itttttt's  just thatttt I'm ttttoo much in love with^W^W^W of an
>> obsessive  religious fanatic when it comes to ttthe English language.
>> Thus:
>> It's _developers_. So there.
>> Thanks for listtttening tttto ttthis ppppubbbblic service
>> announcementtttttttttttt.
>
> ROFL :-P
>
> Sorry in French "to develop" is "d?velopper", that's probably why I
> keep using two P. I will try to be a bit more careful.
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Questions: MediaWiki > 1.3.7: WHEN ? CVS+Enotif: WHO
 is interested ?

body:
I need to concentrate my work, therefore my questions:

1. Is there a date for a next 1.3.x  release x > 7 ?
2. Is there anyone interested in my Enotif patch for CVS 1.4 HEAD ?

Tom


subject:
[Wikitech-l] WHO was developing LDAP-Authenfication for MediaWiki ?
	I forgot

body:
Please could the developer who recently posted that he/she is finalising
an LDAP-interface -->

--> contact me please ?
Thanks in advance

Tom Gries


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!?
> As noted before, if these rules had always existed, most of our
> largest Wikipedias would not exist today!!!

If most people behaved like you, this mailing list would have been
dead long ago.  Will you please try and moderate yourself?

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


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
In message <4187F785.4090905 at hackish.org>, Delirium
<delirium at hackish.org> writes
>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>If you think I go around selecting random languages to request new
>>Wikipedias for, then you are very very very wrong. Before I do
>>anything like that, I make sure there is at least one potential
>>contributor, and preferrably more or some community involvement.
>>
>There does seem to be an odd mismatch in that you have no personally
>ability to speak these languages.  I'd wager that were these requests
>coming from people who *actually speak the languages*, they would be
>taken more seriously.  When that has happened, as with Welsh, there
>were no arguments over creating the Wikipedia for that language.

Actually, I don't know the history of the Welsh Wikipedia -- it appears
to have been set up with the phase 2 software, a few not very good
articles which mostly resembled a sandbox were created, and then
abandoned. It was converted to Phase 3 fairly early on, at which point I
discovered it. As no-one seemed to be using it, I asked for admin status
and set about creating some articles and creating LanguageCy.php (no
small task when the language is somewhat lacking in computing terms and
you're checking most of the words against two dictionaries!). Pretty
soon [[cy:Defnyddwr:Deb]] arrived and things took off, to the point
where we now have a nice little encyclopaedia with around half a dozen
regular contributors and about 2700 articles.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>I believe that under most circumstances a user's main userpage
>[[User:X]] should be a place for that user to state what they want the
>community to know about them and their beliefs, philosophies, aims,
>goals, etc.  In other words, the main User: page is intentionally POV
>and there should rarely be a need for other contributors to edit it.
>
>It strikes me that some of those wanting their user pages protected
>from editing by other users are not doing so out of actually
>experiencing any problems, but rather, as UC says, from a sense of
>'ownership'.  This IS a bit troubling.  Certainly userspace is
>different than other namespaces in the system, but it seems to me that
>the 'Wiki way' is to avoid trying to fix problems in software whenever
>possible - instead relying on community norms and consensus to set de
>facto policy.
>
>'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the game here, I
>think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the current state
>of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.
>
>
I generally agree that user pages should be respected.  Perhaps the only
circumstance where I would feel justified in editing another user's page
would be to fix a broken link that I created because of an edit that I
did elsewhere.

Ec


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] PDF

body:
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 05:25:00PM +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 10:38:07 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> > Clickable links.
> > Clickable links in them PDFs would be a real boon.
>
> I think that existing wiki2pdf generator was designed with print-outs
> in mind, so clickability wouldn't be very relevant: the German
> Wikipedia sells paper "WikiReaders" generated with it.

No, the Wikireaders (also the weekly digest which is only online availabe)
are done with Openoffice.org.

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Day and month names

body:
Petr Kadlec wrote:
> I think I'll throw my $0.02 in. I regard this as quite an annoying
> problem. The facts that
> * every LanguageXx update requires a developer's action
> * developers are generally very busy
> * we have no developer on cs:
> mean that "our" LanguageCs.php file in CVS is really outdated. I try
> to regularly update/correct LanguageCs.php on meta, but this has no
> effect (and [[meta:Requests for languageXX.php update]] is marked as
> deprecated).
>
> So I was thinking -- would it be possible to give a person some kind
> of "language-maintainer", ("limited-developer") privileges? All that
> would be required is write-access to the language subdirectories in
> CVS and the language-specific wiki(es) or even only to the specific
> LanguageXx.php and maybe some kind of possibility to reinitialize the
> MediaWiki namespace (maybe through a little bit tweaked
> rebuildMessages.php).
>
> Any ideas, opinions, ...?

The answer is automation. We need to get rid of language files
altogether except for the few bits of custom coding such as CJK
character splitting. There's no such thing as a limited developer, we
either give them the keys to the house or we don't. We'd have to write a
script to allow upload of language files through a safe interface, but I
think programming time would be better spent moving everything into
special pages and the MediaWiki namespace, as we have been doing.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: make user pages uneditable

body:
In message <42f90dc004110215456670a8d5 at mail.gmail.com>, Matt Brown
<morven-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>I believe that under most circumstances a user's main userpage
>[[User:X]] should be a place for that user to state what they want the
>community to know about them and their beliefs, philosophies, aims,
>goals, etc.  In other words, the main User: page is intentionally POV
>and there should rarely be a need for other contributors to edit it.
>
>It is certainly NOT a place for other users to place their opinion of
>that user under normal circumstances.
>
>However, all this is accomplished with the current state of affairs.
>User pages are indeed rarely edited by anyone but the user.  There are
>rare cases of vandalism, quickly undone.  Few users' pages are
>regularly vandalised, and those pages can be (and are) protected under
>our current policy.
>
>It strikes me that some of those wanting their user pages protected
>from editing by other users are not doing so out of actually
>experiencing any problems, but rather, as UC says, from a sense of
>'ownership'.  This IS a bit troubling.  Certainly userspace is
>different than other namespaces in the system, but it seems to me that
>the 'Wiki way' is to avoid trying to fix problems in software whenever
>possible - instead relying on community norms and consensus to set de
>facto policy.
>
>'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the game here, I
>think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the current state
>of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.
>
>-Matt (User:Morven)

Well, I just protected my page today, after it had been vandalised for
the 10th time in 8 weeks by the same bastard, using a range of IP
addresses so individual short-term blocks had no effect.

I strongly support the proposal to restrict the editability of user
pages to the user concerned in normal circumstances.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Day and month names

body:
Petr Kadlec wrote:
>>[...] moving everything into
>>special pages and the MediaWiki namespace, as we have been doing.
>
>
> Sure, but three points here:
> * People who downloads MediaWiki right now cannot use Czech for the
> interface, as their LanguageCs.php is just plain terrible.
> * As a special case, this is also true about other Wikimedia projects,
> e.g. Wiktionary. If you take a look at cs:Wiktionary: you can see
> English messages mixed with (bad) Czech.
> * Recently, we have repeatedly experienced switching between
> MediaWiki-based and LanguageCs.php-based messages on cs: Wikipedia.
> The LanguageCs.php-based messages are really terrible to look at.

That's why I've written a script to dump messages from the MediaWiki
namespace into a file, and a script to import such files into new
MediaWiki namespaces.

-- Tim Starling


list: foundation-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] reports from the projects

body:
Hello,

Inspired by the recent discussions on wikipedia-l, I've started an
experimental reports page on Meta-Wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports

There are subpages for all the projects:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/October_2004/Wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/October_2004/Wiktionary
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/October_2004/Wikibooks
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/October_2004/Wikiquote
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/October_2004/Other_projects

The pages are intended for short reports about the projects. Please have
a look at them, and if there's no information about your project yet,
add a few sentences about the most important developments in your project.

Goal is of course to have them as complete as possible - not sure if
we'll suceed in this, though, but I would love to see for the first time
news of all projects.

greetings,
elian


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] reports from the projects


from_name: Bjarte Sorensen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Language specific versus contry specific Wikimedia
	foundation chapters

body:
Dear all,

I'm [[:nn:User:BjarteSorensen]] (as well as in en: and no:). Over at nn:
(Nynorsk or Neo-Norwegian), we are contemplating the creation of an association
for the promotion of an open-content encyclopedia in Neo-Norwegian.

Just for your briefing, Norway has just below 10 native languages, 3 of them
with a user base greater than 50,000 and with wikipedias (no:, nn: and se:). no:
and nn: are the only active wikis at the moment. These two languages are two
quite different written standards of the Norwegian spoken language, while se:
is North-Saami, a language of a totally different language group. nn: was
created in July, and has since September grown at a respectable rate for a wiki
of a language with an estimated 400,000 - 800,000 users. no: uses mainly Bokm?l
or Dano-Norwegian with between 3 and 4 million users nationwide.

There are many sources one could seek for funding of the development of an
online open-content encyclopedia in Neo-Norwegian, as many non-governmental
organisations as well as governmental bodies for the promotion of this language
exist. However, this would probably not happen in many cases unless it
was ear-marked this particular wikipedia. When I say development, I mean funding
for things such as paid editors, for promotions and demonstrations,
competitions, advertisment etc., i.e. human resources, rather than donations
for hardware etc.

In order to receive money and distribute them fairly, a formal organisation
needs to be in place, of course.

So my question to the mailing-list is: If there was to be such an organisation
for the promotion or development of contents for a specific language wikipedia,
is it your opinion it should be in the name of Wikimedia, i.e. a
language-specific chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, or would it be best to
establish an independent group not associated with Wikimedia?

I believe this question may be relevant for other situations, too. Languages
know little about political borders. Looking forward to hear your opinions.

Yours sincerely,

Bjarte S?rensen


from_name: Anthere

body:
Arwel Parry a ?crit:
> In message
> <42f90dc004110215456670a8d5 at mail.gmail.com>,
> Matt Brown
> <morven-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> writes
>
>> I believe that under most circumstances a user's main userpage
>> [[User:X]] should be a place for that user to state what they want the
>> community to know about them and their beliefs, philosophies, aims,
>> goals, etc.  In other words, the main User: page is intentionally POV
>> and there should rarely be a need for other contributors to edit it.
>>
>> It is certainly NOT a place for other users to place their opinion of
>> that user under normal circumstances.
>>
>> However, all this is accomplished with the current state of affairs.
>> User pages are indeed rarely edited by anyone but the user.  There are
>> rare cases of vandalism, quickly undone.  Few users' pages are
>> regularly vandalised, and those pages can be (and are) protected under
>> our current policy.
>>
>> It strikes me that some of those wanting their user pages protected
>> from editing by other users are not doing so out of actually
>> experiencing any problems, but rather, as UC says, from a sense of
>> 'ownership'.  This IS a bit troubling.  Certainly userspace is
>> different than other namespaces in the system, but it seems to me that
>> the 'Wiki way' is to avoid trying to fix problems in software whenever
>> possible - instead relying on community norms and consensus to set de
>> facto policy.
>>
>> 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the game here, I
>> think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the current state
>> of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.
>>
>> -Matt (User:Morven)
>
>
> Well, I just protected my page today, after it had been vandalised for
> the 10th time in 8 weeks by the same bastard, using a range of IP
> addresses so individual short-term blocks had no effect.
>
> I strongly support the proposal to restrict the editability of user
> pages to the user concerned in normal circumstances.

I may have 30 or 40 user pages now.
Anyone may edit them.
If I do not like the edit, I just revert :-)


from_name: NSK

references:
<20041102220423.23627.qmail@webmail-2-5.mesa1.secureserver.net>
	<42f90dc004110215456670a8d5@mail.gmail.com>
	<ACaXZbYTZCiBFwu$@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
On Wednesday 03 November 2004 02:29, Arwel Parry wrote:
> proposal to restrict the editability of user pages

If you have a look at http://www.openformats.org you will see that the
software it uses, WikkaWiki, has implemented ACLs (Access Control Lists) that
cause every page to have an owner who can give read/write access to anyone
he/she wants. You can even make a page non-readable by anons. I would like to
see ACLs in MW1.4.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.7 plus Enotif 1.34 <minor update to 1.33>

body:
Dear users,

a new ENOTIF Version 1.34 can be downloaded as a tgz file from my server.

   http://www.tgries.de/mw/enotif/mw137+en134.tgz

I needed to fix a problem with "$oldid"s which prevented the correct
delivery of (diff-to-last-visited-version) in enotif mails as originally
proposed by Chris Phoenix. Everything should work now as explained in
the other mails.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 has the diff file
against mw137 only

Tom


from_name: Peter Danenberg

body:
> Is there a webpage where those two lists can be found?

     Certainly,  Nick;  regarding WikiTeX' blacklist, please
consult:

     http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Security

I'd be curious to see whether  you  needed  something  we've
excluded.

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: List statistics

body:
wp_l_Anthere = wp_l_Anthere + 1

Anthere stated for the record:

> Here... now... I feel embarassed.... :-)
>
> Ant
>
>
> Lars Aronsson a ?crit:
>
>> To help everybody on these two lists (wikitech-l, wikipedia-l) to
>> voluntarily moderate themselves and to chose their fights, here are
>> some statistics.  Note that these numbers do not indicate the
>> usefulness of each message, just their numbers. I'm not the moderator,
>> and there is no rule for how much anybody is allowed to post.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] some language codes

body:
tkl; Tokelau
chp; Chipewyan

I have a user who likes to have MORE language codes, these are some of
his crop.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Problems on the Kashmiri Wikipedia

body:
If I recall correctly, this is the second minor Wikipedia that Node-ue
has vandalized (The last being Toki Pona). After Toki Pona, he was
narrowly not globally banned.

I suggest, based on the use of sockpuppetry here, that Node_ue is a
vandal. He goes to small Wikipedias where he thinks his actions won't
be noticed and where there aren't enough sysops to get together and do
anything regarding him.

I repeat the earlier suggestion that he should be banned from all
Wikimedia projects.

-Snowspinner

On Nov 3, 2004, at 9:12 AM, Angela wrote:

> This is a call for help on the Kashmiri Wikipedia. There has been some
> conflict recently over which scripts ought to be used. If anyone has
> any experience with, or knowledge of, the Kashmiri language, I invite
> you to participate in the discussion at
> http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
>
> Currently there seem to be only two users on this Wikipedia. One is Rk
> kaul, and the other is Node-ue. Rk kaul has accused Node-ue of
> vandalism since he is apparently replacing pages with some sort of
> unintelligible machine translation.
>
> An additional problem on this Wikipedia is that Node-ue has been
> editing under various sockpuppet accounts, and also anonymously. He
> managed to deceitfully gain adminship for two days after creating the
> account "User:Akka Akka" which was desysopped after complaints about
> his behaviour. He is also editing under the account "User:Bbbbbbbbb"
> and being generally abusive to the other user on the wiki.
>
> If anyone is able to help or offer suggestions, it would be much
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:12:36 +0000, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a call for help on the Kashmiri Wikipedia. There has been some
> conflict recently over which scripts ought to be used. If anyone has
> any experience with, or knowledge of, the Kashmiri language, I invite
> you to participate in the discussion at
> http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
>
> Currently there seem to be only two users on this Wikipedia. One is Rk
> kaul, and the other is Node-ue. Rk kaul has accused Node-ue of
> vandalism since he is apparently replacing pages with some sort of
> unintelligible machine translation.
>
> An additional problem on this Wikipedia is that Node-ue has been
> editing under various sockpuppet accounts, and also anonymously. He
> managed to deceitfully gain adminship for two days after creating the
> account "User:Akka Akka" which was desysopped after complaints about
> his behaviour. He is also editing under the account "User:Bbbbbbbbb"
> and being generally abusive to the other user on the wiki.
>
> If anyone is able to help or offer suggestions, it would be much appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Angela.

I resent this accusation.

As I have told Angela before, I am neither of these users.

It should be obvious from my support to many different small
Wikipedias that this is not the sort of thing I would do.

If I want to be abusive, I don't do it anonymously or under a name
that is not mine, I own up to it.

You may offer up tokipona: as evidence to the contrary, however I will
make two points on that: 1. I never said it wasn't me and took
responsibility for these actions immediately, 2. I did that IGF,
regardless of whether it was a good or bad decision, and I do not see
how such abuse as has occured on the Kashmiri Wikipedia by all parties
involved could be claimed to be IGF because I do not see how I or
anyone else could even try to begin to justify it.

For those of you that frequent #wikipedia, you will note that when I
get upset and use abusive language, I never do it anonymously.

After the very recent argument where in fact Angela and I took
opposing sides with regards to policy for creating new Wikipedias, I
don't see how anybody could reasonably pin such behaviour on me.

mark


body:
Hmm. Let's see. How many Wikipedias are there? Right. How many of them
have no active users AT ALL? How many would be better candidates for
vandalisation if I wanted to vandalise a Wikipedia? A lot of them, is
the answer.

Toki Pona, as I said before, was something I did IGF although in
retrospect I realise it was a bad decision on my part. I never denied
having done it, and I apologised for it as well.

mark

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 09:23:14 -0600, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> If I recall correctly, this is the second minor Wikipedia that Node-ue
> has vandalized (The last being Toki Pona). After Toki Pona, he was
> narrowly not globally banned.
>
> I suggest, based on the use of sockpuppetry here, that Node_ue is a
> vandal. He goes to small Wikipedias where he thinks his actions won't
> be noticed and where there aren't enough sysops to get together and do
> anything regarding him.
>
> I repeat the earlier suggestion that he should be banned from all
> Wikimedia projects.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
>
>
> On Nov 3, 2004, at 9:12 AM, Angela wrote:
>
> > This is a call for help on the Kashmiri Wikipedia. There has been some
> > conflict recently over which scripts ought to be used. If anyone has
> > any experience with, or knowledge of, the Kashmiri language, I invite
> > you to participate in the discussion at
> > http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
> >
> > Currently there seem to be only two users on this Wikipedia. One is Rk
> > kaul, and the other is Node-ue. Rk kaul has accused Node-ue of
> > vandalism since he is apparently replacing pages with some sort of
> > unintelligible machine translation.
> >
> > An additional problem on this Wikipedia is that Node-ue has been
> > editing under various sockpuppet accounts, and also anonymously. He
> > managed to deceitfully gain adminship for two days after creating the
> > account "User:Akka Akka" which was desysopped after complaints about
> > his behaviour. He is also editing under the account "User:Bbbbbbbbb"
> > and being generally abusive to the other user on the wiki.
> >
> > If anyone is able to help or offer suggestions, it would be much
> > appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Angela.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: byron gamildien

body:
On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 23:05:33 -0800
 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
> >I believe that under most circumstances a user's main
> userpage
> >[[User:X]] should be a place for that user to state what
> they want the
> >community to know about them and their beliefs,
> philosophies, aims,
> >goals, etc.  In other words, the main User: page is
> intentionally POV
> >and there should rarely be a need for other contributors
> to edit it.
> >
> >It strikes me that some of those wanting their user
> pages protected
> >from editing by other users are not doing so out of
> actually
> >experiencing any problems, but rather, as UC says, from
> a sense of
> >'ownership'.  This IS a bit troubling.  Certainly
> userspace is
> >different than other namespaces in the system, but it
> seems to me that
> >the 'Wiki way' is to avoid trying to fix problems in
> software whenever
> >possible - instead relying on community norms and
> consensus to set de
> >facto policy.
> >
> >'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the
> game here, I
> >think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the
> current state
> >of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.
> >
> >
> I generally agree that user pages should be respected.
>  Perhaps the only circumstance where I would feel
> justified in editing another user's page would be to fix
> a broken link that I created because of an edit that I
> did elsewhere.
>
> Ec
> maybe that`s the problem.people today do not seem to like
protecting each other.on wikipedia we are a family so that
means we must protect each other and our views.we do this
by being not so eveready to delete those views.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

______________________________________________________________
http://www.webmail.co.za the South African FREE email service


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I would like to volunteer to mediate with Node and try to come to some sort of resolution of this problem without taking drastic measures.

Danny


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] What to do when a language is not in the current
	ISO	639 code

body:
On Nov 3, 2004, at 6:05 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> There has been some discussion of using Ethnologue codes when there is
> no IS0639 code; when used these can be identified as being all
> capitals. With the big increase of the new ISO  639 codes, we may
> regret using "fantasy" names as they may be assigned to a language by
> this list.

Just to make sure you know: internet domain names are not
case-sensitive. Names in all caps cannot be distinguished from
lowercase names.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] MySQL Version 4.1 Certified as Production-Ready (27
	October 2004)

body:
On Nov 3, 2004, at 5:53 AM, xmlizer wrote:
> May be the question has already been raised, but when do wikimedia
> start to migrate to 4.1 ?

Currently MediaWiki doesn't take advantage of any of MySQL's new
features, so there's no benefit from the risk of an upgrade.

Support for things like collations could be helpful (for sorting
articles in a language-specific way), but afaik nobody's yet had the
opportunity to look into it and see:
a) if it will actually do what we want
b) if we can enable it without a lot of changes
c) if it will require significant downtime for index rebuilding

Further, it would be nice to have this ability on wikis running on
older versions of MySQL, so we might do a different, compatible sorting
implementation anyway.

The one thing we do know is that we've had reports of 'index too long'
errors when using a utf-8 collation mode.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] What to do when a language is not in the current ISO
	639 code

body:
Hoi,
There are many languages that are not in the ISO 639 codes. There were
suggestions of using the ethnologue codes for these. As there is also a
ISO 639-4 code, I think it would suggest that we use this one in stead
for use within wiktionary.

ISO-639-4 is currently in the RFC state (request for comment).

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject:
[Wiktionary-l] What to do when a language is not in the current ISO
	639 code


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
Mattis Manzel wrote:

> I'd like to propose a new Wikipedia: "the multilingual wikipedia"
>
> Some ideas about how to do that are on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_communication
>
> I would be very interested in getting the multilingual features of
> oddmuse (the colored background, the language filters) ported to
> Mediawiki and then start working on two things:
>
> A) Elaborate the engine to make it work for multilingual pages:
> language filters also in the edit mode, inclusion of automatic
> pretranslation in a new translate-mode, etc.
> B) Start making the "multilingual wikipedia". Kinda getting people
> into the fun of translation.
>
> Hopefully this wouldn't require a fork of Mediawiki. Unfortunately I
> have a vage feeling that it does. In that case I propose as a name for
> the multilingual Mediawiki engine: MMediawiki ;)
>
> But who knows?  Maybe things are easier than I think?

Or more difficult.  I think the idea is full of na?ve optimism about
translation in general, and machine translation in particular.  Begin
with an English text and translate it into another language.  Have
someone else, who cannot see the original, translate it back into
English.  Compare the two English versions.  The difference can be amazing.

On another level, articles on the same subject are often separately
developed in each language.  This can often result in having stable
NPOVs in each language that are different, frequently in the wake of
careful negotiation over the exact meaning of a word.  Reconciling these
could be extremely difficult.  I can easily imagine that attitudes
toward US foreign policy might not be as conflicted when written in many
languages other than English.
En


from_name: Robin Shannon

references:
<20041102220423.23627.qmail@webmail-2-5.mesa1.secureserver.net>
	<20041102220423.23627.qmail-n3SY6/QrmYXReRt/Ckk8qJnNrIJ4zgS7ZB7k/664AjasTnJN9+BGXg@public.gmane.org>
	<42f90dc004110215456670a8d5@mail.gmail.com>
	<ACaXZbYTZCiBFwu$@cartref.demon.co.uk> <41883011.7050206@yahoo.com>

body:
far  more important  than blocking or not blocking, is being able to
have just one user page in all the different (wikimedia) wiki projects
and all the different languages within that. or at the very least
being able to act like a logged in user in (EXAMPLE) pt.wikipedia with
my es.wikipedia username, and not being treated like a anon user.

paz y amor,
[[:en:user:the bellman]]

>
> I may have 30 or 40 user pages now.
> Anyone may edit them.
> If I do not like the edit, I just revert :-)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
robin.shannon.id.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Thanks to all

body:
Hi,

Today the wikis are really fast!
I?just wanted to thank all people working on the servers for this.

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


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the rule of the game here, I
> think, and I haven't seen sufficient argument that the current state
> of affairs is so broken as to override the objections.

I agree.

--Jimbo


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
On the topic of multilingual coordination at large, I have often
thought when adding interwiki links to pages that it would be nice to
have a central, language-independent repository of cross-language
links.

(Probably these issues have been raised before; sorry if I'm rehashing
old points or raising them in the wrong place.)

I've seen essentially two problems as is:
- links to new translations don't get added everywherewikipedia
- erroneous cross-language links can persist even after being
corrected somewhere

Robots can solve the first problem but not the second.  An example of
the second is 'Germanic languages'.  There are not too many wikipedias
that have any entry for this topic specifically.  However, someone had
linked a number of them to the equivalent for 'German language' in
other wikipedias, probably not realizing the difference.

I don't see how a robot could solve this problem without semantic
knowledge of the equivalents of 'Germanic language' in various
languages.

Steve


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
You mean "ec" ;)

On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:53:50 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Mattis Manzel wrote:
>
>
>
> > I'd like to propose a new Wikipedia: "the multilingual wikipedia"
> >
> > Some ideas about how to do that are on
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_communication
> >
> > I would be very interested in getting the multilingual features of
> > oddmuse (the colored background, the language filters) ported to
> > Mediawiki and then start working on two things:
> >
> > A) Elaborate the engine to make it work for multilingual pages:
> > language filters also in the edit mode, inclusion of automatic
> > pretranslation in a new translate-mode, etc.
> > B) Start making the "multilingual wikipedia". Kinda getting people
> > into the fun of translation.
> >
> > Hopefully this wouldn't require a fork of Mediawiki. Unfortunately I
> > have a vage feeling that it does. In that case I propose as a name for
> > the multilingual Mediawiki engine: MMediawiki ;)
> >
> > But who knows?  Maybe things are easier than I think?
>
> Or more difficult.  I think the idea is full of na?ve optimism about
> translation in general, and machine translation in particular.  Begin
> with an English text and translate it into another language.  Have
> someone else, who cannot see the original, translate it back into
> English.  Compare the two English versions.  The difference can be amazing.
>
> On another level, articles on the same subject are often separately
> developed in each language.  This can often result in having stable
> NPOVs in each language that are different, frequently in the wake of
> careful negotiation over the exact meaning of a word.  Reconciling these
> could be extremely difficult.  I can easily imagine that attitudes
> toward US foreign policy might not be as conflicted when written in many
> languages other than English.
> En
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: N Niedermowwe

body:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Peter Danenberg wrote:

> > Is there a webpage where those two lists can be found?
>
>
>      Certainly,  Nick;  regarding WikiTeX' blacklist, please
> consult:
>
>      http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Security
>
> I'd be curious to see whether  you  needed  something  we've
> excluded.
>

Indeed, there are no excluded commands I'd need. However, I get an error
message (Failed to parse) when trying to use any of these (which are
listed in the document amsldoc.pdf linked on
wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Math): \text, \textsuperscript, \pod,
\nolimits and \sideset.
Ncik

> --
> Peter Danenberg                                           .
> wikisophia.org                                           ..:
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] List statistics

body:
To help everybody on these two lists (wikitech-l, wikipedia-l) to
voluntarily moderate themselves and to chose their fights, here are
some statistics.  Note that these numbers do not indicate the
usefulness of each message, just their numbers. I'm not the moderator,
and there is no rule for how much anybody is allowed to post.

During October, 349 messages were sent to wikipedia-l by
70 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:

  Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
  ----- -----------------------------
     30 node.ue
     22 2.718281828
     18 nsk2
     18 anthere9
     17 rowan.collins
     15 saintonge
     15 ropers
     14 jwales
     12 stirling.newberry
     10 david
     10 andrew.lih
  ----- -----------------------------

During September, 741 messages were sent to wikipedia-l by
98 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:

  Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
  ----- -----------------------------
     91 node.ue
     44 anthere9
     42 saintonge
     40 ropers
     35 jwales
     25 delirium
     23 yann
     23 stirling.newberry
     19 maveric149
     18 gerardm
     18 fredbaud
     18 chris_mahan
     18 andrew.lih
     16 yuanml
     16 2.718281828
     13 share2002nov
     12 ts4294967296
     12 modean52
     10 craig
     10 beesley
  ----- -----------------------------

During October, 560 messages were sent to wikitech-l by
120 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:

  Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
  ----- -----------------------------
     55 nsk2
     50 brion
     35 rowan.collins
     31 ropers
     23 hashar
     20 magnus.manske
     17 ts4294967296
     15 mail(-at-)tgries.de
     12 danenberg
     11 tomk32
     11 gerardm
     10 timwi
     10 emmanuel
  ----- -----------------------------

During September, 663 messages were sent to wikitech-l by
108 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:

  Posts Sender address
  ----- -----------------------------
     65 brion
     53 timwi
     38 thoane
     29 rowan.collins
     29 gerardm
     22 kissall
     22 erik_moeller
     19 JeLuF
     18 anthere9
     17 mail
     14 jwales
     13 puglisi
     13 brion
     13 avarab
     12 saintonge
     12 ropers
     11 magnus.manske
     11 delirium
     10 wmahan_04
  ----- -----------------------------

The sum over two lists and two months are:

  Posts Sender address
  ----- -----------------------------
    127 brion
    121 node.ue
     98 ropers
     90 rowan.collins
     88 anthere9
     76 saintonge
     73 nsk2
     69 timwi
     69 jwales
     65 gerardm
  ----- -----------------------------

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] List statistics


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:52:18 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:

> There are many languages that are not in the ISO 639 codes. There were
> suggestions of using the ethnologue codes for these. As there is also a
> ISO 639-4 code, I think it would suggest that we use this one in stead
> for use within wiktionary.

For the language codes for Wikipedia and Wiktionary languages, upto
now it has always been decided at the spur of the moment. What has
been done is:

* 'fanrasy' three letter-code: als
* complete name: tokipona, minnan
* ISO 639-2 code for a group plus ethnologue code: roa-rup (formerly
done for min-nan as well)

However, I assume you are asking this for codes for translations in
those languages, rather than for setting up a wiktionary in this
language. I think that in that case, it's more something to decide
internally on Wiktionary.

Still, I would advise against using ethnologue codes. Not only are
they often rather random, with no connection to the name of the
language, they are also a set of three-letter codes and as such might
conflict with ISO 639-2.

Andre Engels


from_name: xmlizer

body:
Hello

May be the question has already been raised, but when do wikimedia start
to migrate to 4.1 ?
May be you'll wait until 5.0 will become certified ?

Xmlizer


from_name: Matthias Pospiech

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: amount of availible (LA)TEX commands in
	<math>-formulas

body:
Peter Danenberg wrote:

>> Is there a webpage where those two lists can be found?
>
>
>      Certainly,  Nick;  regarding WikiTeX' blacklist, please
> consult:
>
>      http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Security
>
> I'd be curious to see whether  you  needed  something  we've
> excluded.

Well, some variabales can only be changed by renewcommand.
I have no certain issue in mind, but this could be useful.

BTW: Is it possible to recieve the code of wikitex ?
I have already seen other independend unofficial implementations (for
mediawiki) that do the same as wikitex, and are used within existing
Mediawiki installations. I just think it would be useless to have again
another implementation...

Since me and some others have ideas for further development it would be
great to have access to the code.

Matthias

--
---------------------------------
www.matthiaspospiech.de


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: MySQL Version 4.1 Certified as Production-Ready
 (27 October 2004)

body:
xmlizer wrote:
> Hello
>
> May be the question has already been raised, but when do wikimedia start
> to migrate to 4.1 ?

Hello,

Brion looked at it but there is some authentication trouble with
MediaWiki (fixed by recompiling php):
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-October/001928.html

> May be you'll wait until 5.0 will become certified ?

What do you prefer:

1/ having wikipedia using mysql 4.1 the day it is released and
eventually have the site down for several days
2/ let dev test for a month and have a smooth migration ?

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:52:18 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
><gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>There are many languages that are not in the ISO 639 codes. There were
>>suggestions of using the ethnologue codes for these. As there is also a
>>ISO 639-4 code, I think it would suggest that we use this one in stead
>>for use within wiktionary.
>>
>>
>
>For the language codes for Wikipedia and Wiktionary languages, upto
>now it has always been decided at the spur of the moment. What has
>been done is:
>
>* 'fanrasy' three letter-code: als
>* complete name: tokipona, minnan
>* ISO 639-2 code for a group plus ethnologue code: roa-rup (formerly
>done for min-nan as well)
>
>However, I assume you are asking this for codes for translations in
>those languages, rather than for setting up a wiktionary in this
>language. I think that in that case, it's more something to decide
>internally on Wiktionary.
>
>Still, I would advise against using ethnologue codes. Not only are
>they often rather random, with no connection to the name of the
>language, they are also a set of three-letter codes and as such might
>conflict with ISO 639-2.
>
>Andre Engels
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/render_download.php?site_id=nrsi&format=file&media_id=ISO_CD_639-3.4&filename=ISO_CD_639-3.4.pdf
is the RFC for the next generation of ISO-639 codes. These codes ARE
compatible with the previous codes. Codes that have been in use and have
been dicontinued, will not be re-used. It says so in the document.

In the wikionary context we will use these codes as it serves a puprose.
Even "Stellingwerfs" has a code :)

There has been some discussion of using Ethnologue codes when there is
no IS0639 code; when used these can be identified as being all capitals.
With the big increase of the new ISO  639 codes, we may regret using
"fantasy" names as they may be assigned to a language by this list.

I am not asking for any new projects. But I would argue that when a
fantasy code is in use and, there is a relevant code in this list, that
they are changed. I would also argue that when the whole name is used,
and there is a new code, this would be changed as well.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Ashar Voultoiz a ?crit :

> xmlizer wrote:
>
>> Hello
>>
>> May be the question has already been raised, but when do wikimedia
>> start to migrate to 4.1 ?
>
>
> Hello,
>
> Brion looked at it but there is some authentication trouble with
> MediaWiki (fixed by recompiling php):
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-October/001928.html
>
>> May be you'll wait until 5.0 will become certified ?
>
>
> What do you prefer:
>
> 1/ having wikipedia using mysql 4.1 the day it is released and
> eventually have the site down for several days
> 2/ let dev test for a month and have a smooth migration ?
>
> cheers,
>

I prefer wikipedia working !
I was just asking if it was better to jump to big versions (because of
the cost/risk of migrating) than for minor. There was no trolling at all !

Cheers?


from_name: Angela

body:
This is a call for help on the Kashmiri Wikipedia. There has been some
conflict recently over which scripts ought to be used. If anyone has
any experience with, or knowledge of, the Kashmiri language, I invite
you to participate in the discussion at
http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page

Currently there seem to be only two users on this Wikipedia. One is Rk
kaul, and the other is Node-ue. Rk kaul has accused Node-ue of
vandalism since he is apparently replacing pages with some sort of
unintelligible machine translation.

An additional problem on this Wikipedia is that Node-ue has been
editing under various sockpuppet accounts, and also anonymously. He
managed to deceitfully gain adminship for two days after creating the
account "User:Akka Akka" which was desysopped after complaints about
his behaviour. He is also editing under the account "User:Bbbbbbbbb"
and being generally abusive to the other user on the wiki.

If anyone is able to help or offer suggestions, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Angela.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] XML parser, reloaded

body:
I have commited a demo XML->XHTML output to the CVS. Lacking the
real-time wiki2XML parser, a hardcoded test string is used instead
(ParserXML.php). It shows
* The dumped XML (which looks like plain text)
* The XHTML-parsed part
* The XML as a tree
on the same page.

This petty demo already does many things like lists, tables,
bold/italics etc. but not links so far.
I hope this can become the basis for XHTML generation one day, as well
as PDF generation etc.

To turn it on, put
    $wgUseXMLparser = true ;
in your LocalSettings.php

Magnus


from_name: vic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Color code extension to mediawiki

body:
Hello, i am coding an extension to allow read code on the wiki more
easily, this is an extension that use enscript to put color on the code,
it shows piece of code well colored, and its quite stable.
you can show more info at the wiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coffman/Syntax_Highlight
or examples at my own wiki :
http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Syntax_Highlight_extension

regards

--
Problems with Windows - Reboot.
Problems with Linux   - Be root.

Vic (aKa CoffMan)
vic at wickle.com
wickle at gmail.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: List statistics

body:
Here... now... I feel embarassed.... :-)

Ant

Lars Aronsson a ?crit:
> To help everybody on these two lists (wikitech-l, wikipedia-l) to
> voluntarily moderate themselves and to chose their fights, here are
> some statistics.  Note that these numbers do not indicate the
> usefulness of each message, just their numbers. I'm not the moderator,
> and there is no rule for how much anybody is allowed to post.
>
> During October, 349 messages were sent to wikipedia-l by
> 70 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:
>
>   Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
>   ----- -----------------------------
>      30 node.ue
>      22 2.718281828
>      18 nsk2
>      18 anthere9
>      17 rowan.collins
>      15 saintonge
>      15 ropers
>      14 jwales
>      12 stirling.newberry
>      10 david
>      10 andrew.lih
>   ----- -----------------------------
>
> During September, 741 messages were sent to wikipedia-l by
> 98 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:
>
>   Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
>   ----- -----------------------------
>      91 node.ue
>      44 anthere9
>      42 saintonge
>      40 ropers
>      35 jwales
>      25 delirium
>      23 yann
>      23 stirling.newberry
>      19 maveric149
>      18 gerardm
>      18 fredbaud
>      18 chris_mahan
>      18 andrew.lih
>      16 yuanml
>      16 2.718281828
>      13 share2002nov
>      12 ts4294967296
>      12 modean52
>      10 craig
>      10 beesley
>   ----- -----------------------------
>
> During October, 560 messages were sent to wikitech-l by
> 120 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:
>
>   Posts Sender address (@domain removed)
>   ----- -----------------------------
>      55 nsk2
>      50 brion
>      35 rowan.collins
>      31 ropers
>      23 hashar
>      20 magnus.manske
>      17 ts4294967296
>      15 mail(-at-)tgries.de
>      12 danenberg
>      11 tomk32
>      11 gerardm
>      10 timwi
>      10 emmanuel
>   ----- -----------------------------
>
> During September, 663 messages were sent to wikitech-l by
> 108 different posters.  The following were the most active posters:
>
>   Posts Sender address
>   ----- -----------------------------
>      65 brion
>      53 timwi
>      38 thoane
>      29 rowan.collins
>      29 gerardm
>      22 kissall
>      22 erik_moeller
>      19 JeLuF
>      18 anthere9
>      17 mail
>      14 jwales
>      13 puglisi
>      13 brion
>      13 avarab
>      12 saintonge
>      12 ropers
>      11 magnus.manske
>      11 delirium
>      10 wmahan_04
>   ----- -----------------------------
>
> The sum over two lists and two months are:
>
>   Posts Sender address
>   ----- -----------------------------
>     127 brion
>     121 node.ue
>      98 ropers
>      90 rowan.collins
>      88 anthere9
>      76 saintonge
>      73 nsk2
>      69 timwi
>      69 jwales
>      65 gerardm
>   ----- -----------------------------
>
>
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

body:
Either way, their development would have been impeded.

mark

On 03 Nov 2004 23:17:00 +0100, Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
> >Wait, let me get this straight.
>
> >You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a
> >Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve
> >met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not
> >have until its second month of existance?
>
> Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed
> would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the
> wikipedia proper only afterwards?
>  __ .
>  / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
> . .
>   . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>   . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>   . . . . .
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for new Wikipedias?

body:
Hi all

I had gathered that people were getting fed up with requests from me
for new Wikipedias, and now somebody has said it to my face.

It's really a bit weird from where I am though because I have
requested only two new Wikipedias, the first one having been created
and now growing steadily, and the second one (Friulian) with popular
support from speakers of the language that is surer than it was for
Sicilian (people committed for Sicilian, but they weren't Wikipedians
already).

Now, in this message I don't want to ask your opinion about policy or
about whether or not a certain Wikipedia should be created, I just
want to know this:
Are you fed up with the requests from me for new Wikipedias? Why?

I realise I may not be a fluent speaker of either of the languages I
requested, but the way people are talking (somebody referred to me
"flooding" this list with requests) makes it sound like I am selecting
languages at random from a list and requesting them at a rate of 10
per week or something, when in fact I had already asked fluent
speakers if they would be interested, got a commitment, and so far
have only requested two Wikipedias (a few months ago, I asked Brion to
create sc: on IRC [but not this list!], and I recognise now that was
probably a mistake)

Mark


body:
In addition, from what I've found the enthusiasm grows gradually, at
first people being excited but after they work on it a bit more,
they're really into it and are more committed by then.

Thus most Wikis don't get off the ground with a commitment, or if they
do, it's often a commitment from one or two people.

So far I cannot think of any Wikipedia that is empty and has fallen to
vandalism that was started with a commitment from at least one fluent
speaker to work on it, except na: which shouldn't count because it
wasn't in the language it claimed to be (and even so, it hasn't fallen
to petty vandalism yet)

Speaking of the Nauruan Wikipedia, are we ever going to do something
about it, or is it just going to sit there? If any *real* Nauruan
speakers come and want to write, it will be very discouraging to have
that content there the way we do now.

mark

On 03 Nov 2004 23:17:00 +0100, Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
> >Wait, let me get this straight.
>
> >You think it makes sense to require 5 users pledged to start a
> >Wiki when our 3rd biggest Wiki, the Japanese Wikipedia, wouldn'tve
> >met this requirement itself, and the German Wikipedia would not
> >have until its second month of existance?
>
> Maybe they would have had if they had to? Maybe a rule like the proposed
> would lead to an extended "supporters search" phase, starting the
> wikipedia proper only afterwards?
>  __ .
>  / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
> . .
>   . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>   . Hirschstra?e 5. 79100 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>   . . . . .
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
I'm not 100% sure, Steve, but I think this may have been proposed before.

Unfortunately everybody's very busy ATM, and an earlier proposal to
share all media between all projects instead of having to upload it
separately, Wikimedia Commons, was just launched recently I believe
(that was another idea that lots of people had to improve things).

However that is definitely something we should pursue.

mark

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:48:22 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 20:11:36 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > As a bot writer and operator, I can say that bots _could_ help in
> > finding this kind of cases. We might go work more on it (the bot
> > notices it if it can get to two pages on the same language - in this
> > case "Germanic languages" and "German language"). There's quite a
> > number of such problems; a common cause is that when a page turns into
> > a disambiguation page on some Wikipedia, the interwiki links to it are
> > usually not changed.
>
> I see your point that bots can help; my point was that they can't do
> so automatically.  A bot would have to inform a human that both
> 'Germanic language' and 'German language' were encountered, and the
> human would have to take action based on this.
>
> What I suggest is to have a language-independent 'linker' page
> maintained in a separate namespace.  (Maybe 'meta' or something new,
> e.g. 'interwiki').  All it would consist of is a list of interwiki
> links, with the meaning that any page named on the linker page was to
> be taken to be an equivalent for any other named page.
>
> Under this new scheme, suppose I'm reading the English wikipedia
> article on 'Germanic languages''.  If I then notice a link to
> [[da:Tysk sprog]] and fix it, I will be editing this linker page.  If
> the previous error had been propogated into other wikipedias, they
> will have their link corrected immediately, without having to wait for
> a bot or human to spot the bad link and fix it.
>
> Some more advantages:
>
> 1) Since interwiki changes would then be changes to the linker page,
> they would not add volume to the changelist history of linked pages.
>
> 2) There would be fewer anonymous edits to wikipedias.  Right now, if
> I want to add an interwiki link to a language I don't speak, I won't
> bother creating an account, because I wouldn't particularly benefit
> from having one.  In this proposed system, I would merely need to have
> an account on 'meta' or 'interwiki'.
>
> 3) The bloat factor of interwiki links on pages would be reduced.
>
> 4) The problems with broken interwiki links caused by a wikipedia
> munging foreign characters entered as literals in the input would be
> more easily fixed.  I've seen a few interwiki links to Cyrillic
> wikipedias appear as, for example, [[bg:????????]], probably because
> someone tried to copy-paste a literal character from one page to
> another, and their system didn't support the character set.
>
> Hmm, that was a bit longer than I intended. :)  Again, please feel
> free to give me feedback on the above idea, or redirect me to the
> appropriate forum to post it if this isn't it.
>
> regards,
>
> Steve
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Hi,

Le Wednesday 3 November 2004 16:23, Phil Sandifer a ?crit :
> If I recall correctly, this is the second minor Wikipedia that Node-ue
> has vandalized (The last being Toki Pona). After Toki Pona, he was
> narrowly not globally banned.
>
> I suggest, based on the use of sockpuppetry here, that Node_ue is a
> vandal. He goes to small Wikipedias where he thinks his actions won't
> be noticed and where there aren't enough sysops to get together and do
> anything regarding him.
>
> I repeat the earlier suggestion that he should be banned from all
> Wikimedia projects.

I think that a formal warning should be given to him.
May be a temporary ban would do ?

> -Snowspinner

Yann

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


from_name: John Collison

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interview with wikipedians

body:
I'm doing a project for an Irish science fair (The Young Scientist
Exhibition -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esat_Young_Scientist_Exhibition ) about
radically different methods of building online projects, namely a
conventional approach and the wiki approach. As part of this I'd like
to get a short interview done by email with as many wikipedians as
possible. I would contact people this week or at the end of the month.

Anybody willing to participate in the interview can contact me at this
email address.

Cheers,
John Collison (AKA Ludraman)


references:
<cmanrh$53r$1@sea.gmane.org> <cmaod3$6op$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4188E6C8.6090309@netcourrier.com>

body:
xmlizer wrote:
<snip>
> I prefer wikipedia working !
> I was just asking if it was better to jump to big versions (because of
> the cost/risk of migrating) than for minor. There was no trolling at all !

Well we already use MySQL 4.0.20, so 4.1 is not that much a big jump I
believe :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 20:11:36 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> As a bot writer and operator, I can say that bots _could_ help in
> finding this kind of cases. We might go work more on it (the bot
> notices it if it can get to two pages on the same language - in this
> case "Germanic languages" and "German language"). There's quite a
> number of such problems; a common cause is that when a page turns into
> a disambiguation page on some Wikipedia, the interwiki links to it are
> usually not changed.

I see your point that bots can help; my point was that they can't do
so automatically.  A bot would have to inform a human that both
'Germanic language' and 'German language' were encountered, and the
human would have to take action based on this.

What I suggest is to have a language-independent 'linker' page
maintained in a separate namespace.  (Maybe 'meta' or something new,
e.g. 'interwiki').  All it would consist of is a list of interwiki
links, with the meaning that any page named on the linker page was to
be taken to be an equivalent for any other named page.

Under this new scheme, suppose I'm reading the English wikipedia
article on 'Germanic languages''.  If I then notice a link to
[[da:Tysk sprog]] and fix it, I will be editing this linker page.  If
the previous error had been propogated into other wikipedias, they
will have their link corrected immediately, without having to wait for
a bot or human to spot the bad link and fix it.

Some more advantages:

1) Since interwiki changes would then be changes to the linker page,
they would not add volume to the changelist history of linked pages.

2) There would be fewer anonymous edits to wikipedias.  Right now, if
I want to add an interwiki link to a language I don't speak, I won't
bother creating an account, because I wouldn't particularly benefit
from having one.  In this proposed system, I would merely need to have
an account on 'meta' or 'interwiki'.

3) The bloat factor of interwiki links on pages would be reduced.

4) The problems with broken interwiki links caused by a wikipedia
munging foreign characters entered as literals in the input would be
more easily fixed.  I've seen a few interwiki links to Cyrillic
wikipedias appear as, for example, [[bg:????????]], probably because
someone tried to copy-paste a literal character from one page to
another, and their system didn't support the character set.

Hmm, that was a bit longer than I intended. :)  Again, please feel
free to give me feedback on the above idea, or redirect me to the
appropriate forum to post it if this isn't it.

regards,

Steve


from_name: Mattis Manzel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual wikipedia

body:
I'd like to propose a new Wikipedia: "the multilingual wikipedia"

Some ideas about how to do that are on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_communication

I would be very interested in getting the multilingual features of
oddmuse (the colored background, the language filters) ported to
Mediawiki and then start working on two things:

A) Elaborate the engine to make it work for multilingual pages: language
filters also in the edit mode, inclusion of automatic pretranslation in
a new translate-mode, etc.
B) Start making the "multilingual wikipedia". Kinda getting people into
the fun of translation.

Hopefully this wouldn't require a fork of Mediawiki. Unfortunately I
have a vage feeling that it does. In that case I propose as a name for
the multilingual Mediawiki engine: MMediawiki ;)

But who knows?  Maybe things are easier than I think?

thank you

MattisManzel


body:
Is the only reason you edit Wikipedia so that in the future you will
be able to claim to have contributed to those articles, or do you do
it because you love Wikipedia?

The explanation for my requests for new Wikipedias is simple: 1. I
love languages and am a strong supporter of linguistic diversity, and
2. I love Wikipedia, especially because of its fairly lax policies
regarding sites in other languages.

As of yet I have not claimed to being the "founder" of scn:, and I
never plan on doing so. Sure, I requested its creation, but the real
founder is Giuseppe d'Angelo because he did all the work (adding new
content, translating the interface, etc etc)

Even for nv:, a Wikipedia that I have so far done all of the work on
(actually including the logo), I do not and will not go around saying
that I was the founder, because to me this is about building
Wikipedias in languages that don't have them, not about fame and
glory.

As you can see if you go to any one of a number of different small
Wikipedias that already exist, or if you could read my email outbox,
you would see that many of my contributions are virtually invisible to
such a degree that even if I wanted to, I couldn't reasonably lay
claim to having founded those Wikipedias. For example, on the Tibetan
Wikipedia (bo), I added a few articles about plants and animals with
very small amounts of text (small enough that I could be sure the
Tibetan I used was correct) and with interwiki links to en:. On the
Romansh Wikipedia (rm), I translated the topics on the mainpage as
best I could to Romansh. On the Haitian Creole Wikipedia (ht), I
changed the mainpage from just saying that it was there for someone to
expand, to having a welcome and a list of topics (similar to the one
on fr:) in Haitian Creole; I also did this for the Hawai'ian Wikipedia
(haw).

I have also made similar minor contributions to many other Wikipedias,
for example the Yiddish Wikipedia (yi) where there are 19 articles, I
changed the mainpage from a simple welcome and description of
Wikipedia to something similar to what ht: and haw: have, with the
exception that the welcome text itself is in Yiddish (I have spent any
time I'm not on the computer in the last few days scouring a Yiddish
dictionary for words from the topic index, such as "Christianity",
which is fairly difficult because it's a one-way dictionary so I have
to 1. guess the first sound of the Yiddish word 2. use my poor
knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet to find the appropriate place which
is usually the most time-consuming part, and 3. sometimes search up
and down individual pages over and over again until I actually notice
the word, if it's there).

However none of the contributions I have just given as examples were
really very big in comparison to the contributions I hope will come
from others in the future.

Let it also be known that I am not just sitting here after I do that
saying "OK, now all I have to do is sit back and wait for somebody to
come", instead I take a more active approach and search for people who
might be interested and send them e-mails. I have also reached out a
little through people I actually know to try to get contributors.

However as I said before, by the time these Wikipedias have even 100
articles, my contribution will be nothing.

The only reason I do any of this for these Wikipedias is that I want
to watch them grow, and I want people to have fun working on them, and
I want the people who speak that language to have a Wikipedia in that
language, and I don't want that language to die in the digital age
because of low presence on the web (in some cases).

If I wanted to do it for other reasons, I think it's more probable
that I would've requested adminship at all these Wikipedias. So far, I
am only an admin at nv: which is a language I can claim to speak at
least decently enough to write some good content in and translate the
interface, but I plan to ask to be desysopped when the Wikipedia takes
off. Other people who have worse intentions have requested adminship
at Wikipedias they make only minor contributions to near the beginning
and they don't speak the language at all, and even other people who
don't have worse intentions have done so.

For me, seeing a new Wikipedia sprout and begin to grow feels like it
feels when you get a letter you have been waiting for and are excited
to recieve, except it never stops after that Wikipedia starts growing.

These are the reasons I am so upset about these proposed changes in
policy I feel would limit the ability of Wikipedia-seeds to be sown
and to sprout and to grow. Even if I am not the one who starts every
single Wikipedia from here on out (which I certainly hope not to be,
for I hope others continue to request new Wikipedias), I am concerned
that one person who is very excited and determined to start a
Wikipedia and is the kind of person who ends up writing 200 articles
for the new Wikipedia in a month or two and 1000 by year's end, will
not be able to start a Wikipedia unless they find four other people
who speak the language that will commit to working on it and they will
presumably have to get the other four people to commit to it on this
ML or on meta or something instead of just by asking them and getting
verbal commitments.

I would add to that that WikiTravel currently has 5 different
languages using their policy, 4 of them from rich first-world Western
European countries, and the fifth from an Eastern European country
which is quickly advancing economically (Romania and Moldova), whereas
Wikipedia currently has Wikipedias with more than 10000 articles in
languages from Europe and Asia, 1000 articles in languages from
Europe, Asia, and Africa, and 100 articles in languages from Europe,
Asia (including the highly-populated South Asia), Africa,  and
hopefully in the near future North America (when nv: or nah: reaches
100 articles). This ranges from languages with very few or no native
speakers, to languages with over 1 billion speakers. Most notably,
WikiTravel does not have Chinese.

As far as comparisons to Wikipedia, WikiTravel does not have Japanese
(though there is a Japanese "expedition", it was created only last
month and so far AFAIK none of the volunteers are native speakers, on
top of that there are only 2 volunteers), which is the 3rd largest
Wikipedia in terms of the number of "legitimate" articles.

I am afraid that that will happen to us, and unlike most of us here,
that is my main concern on Wikipedia. Many of you may worry mostly
about the foundation, or about an individual Wikipedia, or a couple or
a few Wikipedias, with only a bit of concern for the other languages,
but this is something I care deeply about.

The same way that an ant colony has different ants assigned to
different jobs, I see myself as one of only a few "language ants" (as
opposed to "ants of all trades") whose 1RY concern is the multilingual
nature of Wikipedia, especially new Wikipedias.

As you might imagine, a "language ant" would be much more worried if
the colony is about to make a major change in the handling of policy
regarding languages that might restrict the free growth of new
languages than would an "en.rc-patrol ant" or an "ant of all trades".

mark

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 00:01:57 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 3 Nov 2004, at 23:48, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi all
> >
> > I had gathered that people were getting fed up with requests from me
> > for new Wikipedias, and now somebody has said it to my face.
> >
> > It's really a bit weird from where I am though because I have
> > requested only two new Wikipedias, the first one having been created
> > and now growing steadily, and the second one (Friulian) with popular
> > support from speakers of the language that is surer than it was for
> > Sicilian (people committed for Sicilian, but they weren't Wikipedians
> > already).
> >
> > Now, in this message I don't want to ask your opinion about policy or
> > about whether or not a certain Wikipedia should be created, I just
> > want to know this:
> > Are you fed up with the requests from me for new Wikipedias? Why?
>
> Yes, I am "fed up" (as you say).
> I put it to you that you have no reason to push for new Wikipedias
> other than hoping that in the future you'll be able to claim being the
> "founder" of said Wikipedias.
>
>
>
> > I realise I may not be a fluent speaker of either of the languages I
> > requested, but the way people are talking (somebody referred to me
> > "flooding" this list with requests) makes it sound like I am selecting
> > languages at random from a list and requesting them at a rate of 10
> > per week or something, when in fact I had already asked fluent
> > speakers if they would be interested, got a commitment, and so far
> > have only requested two Wikipedias (a few months ago, I asked Brion to
> > create sc: on IRC [but not this list!], and I recognise now that was
> > probably a mistake)
> >
> > Mark
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


body:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:48:10 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> Now, in this message I don't want to ask your opinion about policy or
> about whether or not a certain Wikipedia should be created, I just
> want to know this:
> Are you fed up with the requests from me for new Wikipedias? Why?

Having only joined this list the day before yesterday, I have no opinion.

However, in reading over the archive for the last couple of months,
you appear to have argued for the creation of several other languages,
even if you didn't explicitly request them.  Examples are Ancient
Greek, Gothic, Simplified Chinese, and Syriac.

I say this not to criticize: as I said, I'm new here.  But to me this
helps to explain the apparent perception by others that you are
requesting many new languages.

Steve


body:
Hi Steve,

You may be correct with a small exception: I don't recall being
involved in an ancient greek Wikipedia request except perhaps someone
saying "it'd be a good idea" and me saying "I would support it".

For Syriac, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion (partially because
ATM I have directed potential Syriac-speaking Wikipedians to build the
Syriac Wikipedia at arc: (Aramaic), and if they add content, it can be
moved later; and partially because I have found nobody who even
replied to my e-mails regarding Syriac).

For Simplified Chinese, it was a discussion of whether or not one
existing Wikipedia should be split in two, although that's not really
a good excuse and it can in a way be considered a request for a new
Wikipedia (however, it was more because it already existed, somebody
requested it be deleted, it was closed, I was the one doing most of
the work on it, I found all of a sudden I couldn't edit it, so I was
fairly angry because I couldn't find who to talk to about it until
eventually somebody referred me here, and there was already a
brand-new discussion regarding the issue that wasn't started by me,
though admittedly I sent the most e-mails in that conflict I believe)

mark

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 18:23:32 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:48:10 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Now, in this message I don't want to ask your opinion about policy or
> > about whether or not a certain Wikipedia should be created, I just
> > want to know this:
> > Are you fed up with the requests from me for new Wikipedias? Why?
>
> Having only joined this list the day before yesterday, I have no opinion.
>
> However, in reading over the archive for the last couple of months,
> you appear to have argued for the creation of several other languages,
> even if you didn't explicitly request them.  Examples are Ancient
> Greek, Gothic, Simplified Chinese, and Syriac.
>
> I say this not to criticize: as I said, I'm new here.  But to me this
> helps to explain the apparent perception by others that you are
> requesting many new languages.
>
> Steve
>


body:
The thing is though, it's not like I sent 20 messages in a row asking
for a Friulian Wikipedia, I wrote one, and responded to peoples
questions and objections. To not do that might seem like I no longer
want it created.

--node

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 01:01:01 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing that gets me irritated is that you do not use 1 or 2
> messages for Friulian, but over 20 already. That quickly destroys any
> wish to support you. After 3 or 4 messages, the reaction changes to
> "we know that already". At least for me.
>
> Andre Engels
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:48:10 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all
> >
> > I had gathered that people were getting fed up with requests from me
> > for new Wikipedias, and now somebody has said it to my face.
> >
> > It's really a bit weird from where I am though because I have
> > requested only two new Wikipedias, the first one having been created
> > and now growing steadily, and the second one (Friulian) with popular
> > support from speakers of the language that is surer than it was for
> > Sicilian (people committed for Sicilian, but they weren't Wikipedians
> > already).
> >
> > Now, in this message I don't want to ask your opinion about policy or
> > about whether or not a certain Wikipedia should be created, I just
> > want to know this:
> > Are you fed up with the requests from me for new Wikipedias? Why?
> >
> > I realise I may not be a fluent speaker of either of the languages I
> > requested, but the way people are talking (somebody referred to me
> > "flooding" this list with requests) makes it sound like I am selecting
> > languages at random from a list and requesting them at a rate of 10
> > per week or something, when in fact I had already asked fluent
> > speakers if they would be interested, got a commitment, and so far
> > have only requested two Wikipedias (a few months ago, I asked Brion to
> > create sc: on IRC [but not this list!], and I recognise now that was
> > probably a mistake)
> >
> > Mark
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>