subject:
[Foundation-l] Chapters, deductibility and donation profiles
	(was Wikimania 2006 - host city contest to open onSeptember 1st 20)

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

> IIRC, The American branch of the Red Cross has specific enabling
> legislation for it in US federal law and enjoys a federal charter.
> [...]
>  Obtaining the same status for Wikimedia would require a massive
> lobbying effort.

The [[International Red Cross]] was established in 1863 followed
in 1864 by the first [[Geneva Convention]] that recognized the red
cross symbol in warfare.  This happened at the same time as
warfare got mechanized, in the decades immediately after the
innovations of steam railroads ([[Stephenson's Rocket]], 1829),
steam propeller ships ([[USS Monitor]], 1862) and machine guns
([[Gatling gun]], 1861).

Supposedly, a "Red W" (Wikinews: neutral reporting) can be adopted
as soon as we have a fully developed information war.  The current
wars (against terrorism, and in Afghanistan and Iraq) are not of
this kind, because of the overwhelming information supremacy of
the winning (western) side, which makes the information aspect of
the current conflicts look more like a minor colonial uprising.
For the nearest decade, it seems unlikely that the Arab world,
Africa or communist China would be able to catch up with the
western information supremacy.  It seems more likely that the
first real information wars will be fought within the current area
of supremacy.

If we just add 150 years, the Gatling Blog will be invented in
2011, the "Red W" could be adopted in 2013, at the height of the
U.S. civil information war, followed in 2021 by the
Franco-Prussian information war, and World Information War I would
be scheduled to take place in 2064-2068.

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


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lars Aronsson


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] postgres + geographic data

body:
Miran Bozicevic wrote:
> The Info Visualization lab here has a policy against using mysql, so I need to
> convert the data to postgres.  Has this been done before with wikipedia dumps?

Try the current XML-format dumps; you can then import them in whatever
format you please. :)

> I have tried two utilities I found "out there", mysql2pgsql.perl and my2pg.pl,
> and neither seems to able to convert Wp dumps correctly.  Since mediawiki 1.5
> will be postgres-enabled, I hope someone has figured out a way to do this
> already.  Am I right?

MediaWiki 1.5 will not work with PostgreSQL, as no one has maintained
the PostgreSQL support code. A future version might work again some day,
should anyone be interested in supporting it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
On 8/18/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> To be precise, I could see no evidence he was. I should add that -Ril-
> doesn't edit anything like Lir IMO - I see no reason to assume -Ril- is
> anything other than what he appears and claims to be, an ordinary
> good-faith editor with a strong interest in ancient Egypt, who has
> unfortunately been conflicting with quite a few people (whoever may be
> considered to "blame" for this).
>
>
> - d.

And the name.

Sam


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chicago meetup

body:
I'm trying to get a group together for a Chicago-area meetup.  If
interested, contact me at the obvious address or drop me a note at
[[User talk:Kelly Martin]].

Thanks.

Kelly


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
Well, assuming he really is not a sockpuppet of anyone, he probably
tried to use the name Ril, found it was in use, and put those dashes
in. If he looked at the profile of ril he would have noticed he was
banned, right? Anyway, it's probably a bad idea to use any name
excessively similar to anyone elses name, in my opinion. But yes, you
are somewhat right, and we should assume the name is in good faith.
(Is that enough to force a name change by the way, assuming he
survives arbcom?)

On 8/18/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/08/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Could it be possible that Lir was gone enough to have developed a
> > completely different style before coming back as -Ril-? Who in there
> > right mind would pick a nick so similar to someone that's banned?
>
> Huh. Who, in their right mind, would familiarise themselves enough
> with the project to know about the banning of users, understand the
> general bias against use of strongly similar names, and check against
> the full list of banned users... before even registering an account,
> which we encourage them to do at the earliest opportunity?
>
> (I don't even know where to *find* a list of banned users, and I've
> been here best part of a year.)
>
> There are very few contexts where this is relevant - either they're
> already a familiarised user, in which case they're 99% sure to have
> registered already - so picking another username would be a red flag
> regardless -  or they're new, in which case it is rather optomistic to
> expect them to go and look for hours for a page telling them what not
> to do.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

>>* exactly on which topic do you feel you are not informed ? Please cite
>>some examples of issues where we have been failing ? Was the information
>>missing related to legal issues ? To partnership ? To budget ?
>
>
>
> This is an amazing statement, how can we ask for information that is seceret
> and that we don't know about?

True. Good point.

I have been thinking of one secret information you might not be aware
of, which I think I can disclose to you.
Please bend over so that I can say it very softly and privately in your
ear (in case you are a tall guy for I am a small size person). Do not
repeat please.

<small>We have some private mailing lists or channels to discuss
quietly, 'cause there are a couple of unpleasant individuals on this
mailing list, whose mails are seemingly limited to criticizing and
adding fire on the oil. And we dare not kicking them of the list. I
know, we are weak...</small>

I'll let Angela answer next points that might concern you.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] 300 Euro for excellent Articles: an experiment

body:
> In general, I am also opposed to people paying for articles. I think that
> this will be the first step toward a breakdown of a volunteer community. Imagine
>  this scenario. If Danny is getting paid to translate or write articles,
> maybe I  should too. Maybe I wont even write an article until I get paid for it.

I completely agree with you. The fact is that we don't really need to
pay people for writing articles since the encyclopedias seem to fill up
quite well...

why change anything and take the risk to lose our credibility or our
reputation.


body:
But with smaller wikipedia, we should be very concerned since if we pay
people to write content, we will be pointed out as trying to impose our
opinions to sovereign countries : neo-colonialism is always a danger...

Maybe we should not be the ones paying for content.

daniwo59 at aol.com a ?crit :
>
> In a message dated 8/18/2005 11:44:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> jwales at wikia.com writes:
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks Jimmy,
>
> As I clarified in a later email, my problem is not in small Wikipedias like
> Bambara, where seed money can be necessary to get the project off the ground.
> In  fact, I was one of the original people to propose this. Rather, my concern
> is  with well established with Wikipedias, like English, German, French,
> Italian, or  Japanese, where the money is being used to promote personal or
> corporate  interests.
>
> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail greylisting

body:
Kate wrote:
>>I recommended greylisting on this list a few months back, so I'm glad to
>>see it's implemented. However, I recommend you turn off SPF and
>>DomainKeys; the primary consumers of these authentication schemes are
>>spammers.
>
>
> no mail is accepted because of either SPF or DK that would not be anyway
> (IOW, the only change is that some more mail is rejected), so i don't
> think this is a concern.

Indeed.  I think this objection to SPF misses the point.  We *want*
spammers to use SPF, because then we can filter on domains, which is a
lot easier than what we have to do otherwise.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Documentation for developers

body:
On 18/08/05, Felipe Pablos <felipepl at unex.es> wrote:
> We are trying to develope one extension for mediawiki,  but the
> information about how mediawiki works is very poor. We would be grateful
> if someone provide us the documentation necesary to begin to understand
> mediawiki and to begin to develope

* http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_extensions
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents

But, ultimately, the source is the documentation. :)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Objectionable material

body:
On 8/18/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
(Jimbo said:)
> >If you know my personal opinions (which, by the way, I do not think
> >should be controlling policy on these matters) on the issue of
> >censorship and what kids should be looking at, you'll know how extremely
> >unlikely it would be that I would be on a talk show saying anything of
> >the sort.
> >
> >I prefer to be able to say: "We thought of that already, and we have
> >gone through a long and difficult process of editorial judgment to treat
> >delicate topics in a respectful and educational manner.  Nothing in
> >Wikipedia is intentionally offensive, but of course there will always be
> >people who are offended by something.  We do our best to take a serious
> >and thoughtful approach to these matters."
> >
> >I have at times been supportive of the idea of tagging, and if that is
> >the best way to treat delicate topics in a respectful and educational
> >manner, then fine.  But I think the default view of Wikipedia should not
> >be affected by such measures, so I would never be saying "oh, but you
> >have to do this, this, and that to see this stuff".
> >
> I dream of a world where my children (eventually), and Jimbo's children,
> and everyone else's children can browse wikipedia in a state where they
> can still see a picture of autofellatio on the article autofellatio but
> can go to the article on USB or the main page and not see a picture of
> some guy's anus blown up to cover the whole page.  I think that we
> should stick to not censoring wikipedia at all and it really isn't up to
> us to take care of what people can see, it's the parent's, teachers, or
> whoevers job as guardians to make sure that the kids aren't browsing
> into the nudity on wikipedia which btw legitimate pictures of nudity on
> articles are few and far between.

I appreciate both positions, but in the meantime, we live in the real
world where some parents and teachers and clergymen are going to apply
pressure to stop their children or students or congregations from
using an online encyclopedia that contains material that they consider
objectionable, regardless of how sensitively it is presented or how
much we might wish for there to be no censorship at all.

These sort of people tend to be firm in their convictions and vocal in
presenting their opinions, and if there is a picture of autofellatio
or a gigantic anus in WP, then they will find it and use it against
us. I rather think that they will not be swayed by the arguments noted
above. Just how tasteful and educational is a picture of a naked guy
sucking himself? It's hardly Michaelangelo's David, is it?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Jeffrey McGee

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
Howdy,

I'd like to add a spell checker to MediaWiki using the pspell library.
(Pspell
is part of php and it uses libaspell.) It doesn't help that I'm new to the
MediaWiki code base and PHP isn't exactly my favorite language. (I wouldn't
even call it my _third_ favorite.) Anyway, I'd like to get a little feedback
and advice on where to go from here.

I know a few people have proposed working on spell check before:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-March/021358.html
But, as best I can tell no one has gone anywhere. Does anyone know what
happened to User:Archivist's spellchecker?

Right now I have a proof-of-concept running on my computer. You can see it
at
http://66.205.125.240/spell/index.php/Special:Spellcheck/Main_Page

It is a SpecialPage that reads the article from the database, spell checks
it,
lets the user choose the words from the drop-down box, and then sends a
FauxRequest to EditPage. Eventually I'd like to add it to EditPage, but I
started out with a special page so that I did not have to deal with the
complexity of EditPage.

Here's how I'd like the final version to work:
# There's a button at the bottom of an EditPage beside 'Show Perview' and
'Show
Changes' labeled 'Spell Check'.
# When the user clicks 'Spell Check', they get a preview of their edit where
misspelled words are replaced with drop-down boxes.
# The user changes the words they think are mispelled to one of the
suggestions
or leaves it as is. When they click 'Show Preview', they go back to the
preview page.

A few questions:

Do I not need to deal with multi-byte character functions like mb_substr
since
all the languages use utf-8?

Should the user spell check a preview or the wikitext?

If a word is misspelled in several places, should the user be asked once for
the word or should the user be asked everytime the word appears?

Thanks,
Jeff McGee


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to work better with brittle users?

body:
Im sure there are ways, but keep in mind that some of
these issues are of course systemic rather than of the
individual. Using a conceptualized notion of a
"brittle user" at all carries some baggage of
beurocratic prejudice. Any institution which begins
down the slippery slope of referring to people in
generalities rather than dealing with individuals, has
become a beaurocracy.

"Higher levels of autism" reminds me of Bram Cohen's
recent ripping on Linus Torvalds' concepts rel. code
merge? Anyone can be less than civil in their
discourse when dealing with people whom they percieve
to be idiots.

SV

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>
> This is a question that has occurred to me in the
> context of arbitration,
> and how to avoid it.
>
> There's a common personality type for trouble on
> Wikipedia: brittle in
> interactions with others, can't tolerate ambiguity,
> so gets into
> rules-lawyering. Sees "common sense" and "judgement"
> mostly as excuses to
> exercise bias, not as recognition that all rules are
> fluid in the pursuit
> of our goal.
>
> I am not thinking of any individual, but of a
> general type I've noticed. I
> think something about Wikipedia will tend to attract
> them. I would *guess*
> it's something that attracts people from further up
> the autistic spectrum
> than the general populace, but that's just
> speculation.
>
> The point is that they're good and hard-working
> contributors, but can get
> difficult to work with. And putting them on a
> processing line that leads to
> arbitration strikes me as not being a good thing. Is
> there a better way?
> I welcome your thoughts and speculation.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
JW wrote:
>Merely "breaking Iranian law" isn't particularly
worrisome.

Not unless they first obtain some nukes to help them
enforce their particular notions of IP law.

SV

--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Regardless of where a certain text comes from. It's
> copyrighted as
> soon as the author puts it on paper in a tangible
> form. Some
> governments give up their copyrights over this
> material, but I think
> anything that can be traced to a written source
> that's not
> specifically released under the GFDL or released
> into the PD by it's
> author is off limits to Wikipedia regardless where
> it comes from.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 8/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> > > There are problems with that:
> > > 1) I believe the Wikimedia Foundation would be
> breaking Iranian law by
> > > distributing those material to Iran, that is,
> serving its pages to
> > > Iranian readers. If it wishes to use the
> material, it should block
> > > Iran from its readership.
> > > 2) It's not only the government, and other
> Iranians may wish to sue
> > > the Wikimedia Foundation.
> >
> > Well, although I agree with you about the ultimate
> point here (we should
> > not violate Iranian copyrights, even if it is
> legal to do so in the US),
> > I don't find these two arguments to be the most
> compelling.
> >
> > First, if we are breaking Iranian censorship laws,
> then so be it.  (I
> > have no idea, actually, but I would imagine that
> we are.)   Merely
> > "breaking Iranian law" isn't particularly
> worrisome.
> >
> > Second, I think the point is that such use would
> be legal in the US, and
> > if so, I don't see that Iranians would have much
> of a way to sue us,
> > except perhaps in Iran, which would be more or
> less pointless.
> >
> > I think the most compelling argument is that we
> want to encourage broad
> > re-use, including in Iran, and if Iranian
> copyright laws are more or
> > less as sensible as the laws of other places, then
> we should follow
> > those laws, regardless of ongoing disputes between
> the US and Iran which
> > may prevent an actual treaty.
> >
> > --Jimbo
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Documentation for developers

body:
Felipe Pablos wrote:
> We are trying to develope one extension for mediawiki,  but the
> information about how mediawiki works is very poor. We would be grateful
> if someone provide us the documentation necesary to begin to understand
> mediawiki and to begin to develope
>
> thank you very much
>
> Felipe Pablos

Have a look at ./docs/hooks.txt , should give you an overview of hooks
in MediaWiki.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> As I understand it, they're snowed under in general. (You try running a
> top-50 website and writing bespoke software for it on one and a half
> employees and a handful of volunteers.) Servers are excellent things, but
> another paid coder/sysadmin would (AIUI) do wonders for us. (Xenu help us
> if Kate needs to get a dayjob, for example.) I've mentioned this before as
> something that local chapter money could be put to good use on, though
> possibly it shouldn't be left waiting on that.

There was a discussion in August 2004 about implementing a bounty system
for MediaWiki development. Anthere ran a survey in july 2004 among
developers and published results on meta on August 25th 2004:

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results

About that time, I talked with Anthere about recruiting some of the
developers in the Foundation and having them working full time on
MediaWiki / server management. We agreed on something: monthly payment
would mean that less money would be spend on hardware and the foundation
will have to find a good way to get the needed money every month (not
paying employee is not something you want happening).

In some years, maybe, the foundation will have an office somewhere in
the world and have employees in charge of press, development or paper
version publishing. I would probably be among the firsts to post my
resume on [[Job offering]] :p

WikiMedia is probably not big enough for that yet.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Jitse Niesen

subject: [Wikitech-l] new LaTeX => MathML converter for mediawiki

body:
On 8/3/05, David Harvey <dmharvey at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> I have written a LaTeX to MathML converter designed specifically for
> Wikipedia.

In the meantime, Dave has released a new version which compiles
cleanly on Linux (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex ) and I
have been trying to integrate it in MediaWiki (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex/How_to_make_MathML_work_in_MediaWiki
).

A major issue is that MathML needs to be embedded in XML. This means
that all pages served by MediaWiki need to be valid XHTML (or, at
least, close enough to valid that they are accepted by the browsers,
which are far less forgiving for XHTML documents than for HTML
documents). This probably requires changes in the code all over
MediaWiki; I hope there is some support for this. Furthermore,
Internet Explorer does not render documents with an XHTML or XML media
type, so we need to find a way to serve Internet Explorer plain HTML
documents (as always, without degrading performance too much); see the
second link above for some further details. We'd love to hear some
ideas on how to tackle this.

Furthermore, we'd like to set up a wiki where people can try this out
so that we can get more input from the Wikimedia communities, but
neither Dave nor I have the resources for this. Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Jitse Niesen
[[m:User:Jitse Niesen]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
I wonder how many people objected to obscenity in for
example, the old Sears catalogs, or ads showing
mini-skirts, etc. It seems difficult enough to assert
free use by limiting fair use. But add to that a value
judgement based on taste seems a bit out of character
of maximizing free use. Either its open or its not,
either its free or not, seemed to have been the
standard directions on the compass.

Granted, some images are controversial, but that
likewise makes them either or both newsworthy and
encyclopedic. [[Virgin Killer]] or [[Houses of the
Holy]] (what happened to the real controversial
Zeppelin one?) might be objected to for inclusion on
WP, but only on the basis of the same puritanical (ie.
"moral") grounds which made it controversial or
noteworthy to begin with. Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken,
"The great encyclopedists of the world are never
Puritans, and seldom respectable. No virtuous man
--that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense --has ever
written an encyclopedia worth reading..."

But not to come across as being too libertine, I
strongly agree with those who wish to immediately
remove all facials images from Wikipedia --though even
such agreeable censorship might contradict the goal of
documenting and representing a rather climactic aspect
of commercialized human sexuality, and not to mention
the seeding interest for establishing the internet in
the first place.

SV

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Please bend over so that I can say it very softly and privately in
>
>
> "Please lower your head to my level" would have been a better turn of
> phrase. :)
>
>
>><small>We have some private mailing lists or channels to discuss
>>quietly, 'cause there are a couple of unpleasant individuals on
>>this
>>mailing list, whose mails are seemingly limited to criticizing and
>>adding fire on the oil. And we dare not kicking them of the list. I
>>know, we are weak...</small>
>
>
> Ant, this statement, while true I am sure, does nothing to instill
> confidence. In fact, it heightens an atmosphere of suspicion which
> already seems to exist.
>
> The reason people are on this mailing list is that they really care
> about wikipedia. Some are better in english than others; and some are
> more politically astute than others. I personally welcome all
> comments, including the criticizing and adding oil to the fire.
> Sometimes, that's what it takes to get the ball rolling. Also, in
> some cultures and for some people individually, not speaking is a
> form of assent, and speaking is reserved for pointing out problems.
> This may make some people seem to only criticize, when in fact they
> fully support and are involved.
>
> If one or more individuals are seriously getting in the way of
> business getting done, let the rest of us know. And let them know.
> But, please, be diplomatic.
>
>
>
>
>
> Chris Mahan
> 818.943.1850 cell
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> chris.mahan at gmail.com
> http://www.christophermahan.com/

I talked privately with Puddl. My mail and yours raised a new light on
the issue. I apologied to him and hopefully we understand each other
better. My apologies to readers of this list, but I am currently too
drained out for good discussion. I am *supposed* to be on wikibreak.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Ryan Norton

body:
Hi,

I don't know, and this will sound wild, but I think its just people who
are depressed for some reason and trying to find a "home", as it were.
Wikipedia makes a logical choice because you can do pretty much
anything in a place with a lot of content. (I really don't think it has
to do with a particular mental disability per se)

For the solution, I remember something proposed regarding -Ril-'s RfC
(well, actually I think it was the one he filed against the admin)
where the person proposed to have a group of 3 good editors help out
-Ril- to become a better one (or something like that).  I think this
could be a great idea for those who want it - sort of like a wikitutor
program.

More importantly, I think admins/users friendly to the person (and if
there isn't one someone should step up because everyone needs someone
to turn to) in trouble should try to step in and help the person more
when it looks like he/she is going to get into a major conflict. This
one thing I think could save a lot conflicts from escalating to a RfA,
but then that's just me :).

Because I think ultimately you want to build people who can stay calm
in heated situations and can think rationally (i.e. past the rules-only
phase).

Sorry if that was too deep, LOL!

Ryan


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
On 18/08/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could it be possible that Lir was gone enough to have developed a
> completely different style before coming back as -Ril-? Who in there
> right mind would pick a nick so similar to someone that's banned?

Huh. Who, in their right mind, would familiarise themselves enough
with the project to know about the banning of users, understand the
general bias against use of strongly similar names, and check against
the full list of banned users... before even registering an account,
which we encourage them to do at the earliest opportunity?

(I don't even know where to *find* a list of banned users, and I've
been here best part of a year.)

There are very few contexts where this is relevant - either they're
already a familiarised user, in which case they're 99% sure to have
registered already - so picking another username would be a red flag
regardless -  or they're new, in which case it is rather optomistic to
expect them to go and look for hours for a page telling them what not
to do.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam

body:
I don't know what to say to this -- everything on the Malayalam
Wikipedia is written by native speakers.

I sincerely doubt that the logo is wrong, because the logo itself was
made by native speakers.

I don't know what font it uses, but it appears to render the words correctly.

In fact, the native speaker who translated the logo text is a
different person from the one who actually made the logo, so that
means it went through at least two people, and more have worked on the
Malayalam Wikipedia since then and nobody has complained or even
mentioned it there.

If you have a problem with anything about the Malayalam Wikipedia,
please discuss it with the Malayalam Wikipedia community first.

Mark

On 18/08/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ginu, deciding what font to use for the logo text is still a gray
> area, particularly in non-latin scripts.  I believe there are one or
> two malayalam editors on the translators mailing list; I am including
> it in copy.
>
> What are your thoughts about the font currently used for Wikipedia article text?
>
> To update other interface messages, see
>  http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages
>
> You must be an administrator to edit the message pages.
> (But you can also get adminship just to do that kind of work)
>
> Sj
>
> On 8/18/05, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In which format I have to send the text. Could you please tell the font name
> > or can attach the same in reply. Otherwise I can send a font file along with
> > the correctly written font.
> >
> >
> > Regards
> >
> >
> > Ginu George
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sj [mailto:2.718281828 at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 12:46 AM
> > To: Ginu George
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam
> >
> > Hello Ginu,
> >
> > Did you get a response about Malayalam and editing the logo?
> >
> > To edit the logo you should write the text you want to include, and send it
> > in an email to the wikitech-l  list....
> >
> > Let me know if you have any trouble.
> >   SJ
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:08:17 +0400, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > I saw the language version for Malayalam in Wikipedia is not in full
> > > mode for long. But i go through the entire stuff. There is no option
> > > to edit the logo text. Thats wrong. And i would like to do the project
> > > for malayalam. So if you can provide further information, then thats
> > > better i think.
> > >
> > > Hope you respond soon
> > >
> > > --
> > > Regards
> > > Ginu George
> > > www.ginugeorge.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > +sj+
> >  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [Wikitech-l] mail greylisting

body:
Ahh, OK.

I thought perhaps you were labelling legitimate messages as "might as
well be spam"  because you disagreed with their content ;)

Mark

On 18/08/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050811 06:36]:
> > On 09/08/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > > Kate (keturner at livejournal.com) [050809 21:57]:
>
> > > > be rejected because of it.  more information on greylisting can be found at
> > > > http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/.
>
> > > And from spam and might-as-well-be-spam just now: 3.3, 18.4, 18.2, 2.6,
> > > 2.6, 0.4, 0.4, 4.2, 4.0, 4.0.
>
> > David, what do you count as "might as well be spam"?
>
>
> I think the examples in that particular pile were press releases and cranks
> who email lots of people that they think might further their cause. Which
> is technically spam too, I suppose, but not the serious bulk stuff - just
> people adding wikien-l to their general publicity list.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

>I 'm suprised at the tone of your reply, Anthere. Longtime editors like
>Michael, who've invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the project
>don't deserve to be snapped at when they politely express concerns over a
>lack of openess.
>
>
Just to note, I don't feel that Anthere was snapping at me in her
response. I did try to be as polite as possible, recognizing that it's a
sensitive subject, so that she and others hopefully wouldn't think I was
snapping at them.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
<snip>
> At a minimum, all relevant tech issues need to get noted at
> http://wp.wikidev.net/Server_admin_log so all of us can keep track of
> what's broken, what needs to be left untouched or fixed immediately,
> etc. Hopefully, more public announcements of general issues can get done
> too.
>
> Roughly we can speak of three kinds of issues:
> * Here's this neat new feature / old bug we fixed!
> * There was a brief service hiccup, here's what happened, and a list of
> expected side effects.
> * Massive ongoing breakage: here's what's down and roughly when we hope
> to have it fixed.

We also have a livejournal blog [1]. Maybe the admin internal stuff can
be kept on wp.wikidev.net as it is now and have messages aimed at the
whole community on livejournal blog ?

[1] http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Axel

body:
On 8/18/05, Jitse Niesen <jitse.niesen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/05, David Harvey <dmharvey at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I have written a LaTeX to MathML converter designed specifically for
> > Wikipedia.
>
> In the meantime, Dave has released a new version which compiles
> cleanly on Linux (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex ) and I
> have been trying to integrate it in MediaWiki (see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex/How_to_make_MathML_work_in_MediaWiki
> ).
>
> A major issue is that MathML needs to be embedded in XML. This means
> that all pages served by MediaWiki need to be valid XHTML (or, at
> least, close enough to valid that they are accepted by the browsers,
> which are far less forgiving for XHTML documents than for HTML
> documents). This probably requires changes in the code all over
> MediaWiki; I hope there is some support for this. Furthermore,
> Internet Explorer does not render documents with an XHTML or XML media
> type, so we need to find a way to serve Internet Explorer plain HTML
> documents (as always, without degrading performance too much); see the
> second link above for some further details. We'd love to hear some
> ideas on how to tackle this.

Can't you use the Javascript/DOM manipulation trick,
Peter Jipsen has suggested for HTML files:
 http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/mathhtmltest.phtml

Or is this an undocumented feature of most Gecko based browsers?


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
Geoff Burling (llywrch at agora.rdrop.com) [050818 20:35]:

> Disclaimer: Yes, I have contributed material towards both. However, I
> learned of both by accident; there is no organized group out to get -Ril-,
> just an increasing number of people who have grown weary of him. And
> many of whom no longer care -- if they ever did -- that David has
> determined he is not a sockpuppet for Lir.

To be precise, I could see no evidence he was. I should add that -Ril-
doesn't edit anything like Lir IMO - I see no reason to assume -Ril- is
anything other than what he appears and claims to be, an ordinary
good-faith editor with a strong interest in ancient Egypt, who has
unfortunately been conflicting with quite a few people (whoever may be
considered to "blame" for this).

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
Jimmy Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050818 20:33]:
> Phroziac wrote:

> > Also, I think pictures should be encyclopedic. It's a little silly to
> > just show a picture of a dick with no labels. Look at the picture on
> > the clitoris article. It's all nice and labeled, and I think that's
> > pretty encyclopedic. In fact, I was intending to make a labeled
> > version of those penis pictures, but never got around to it yet.

> I think that's exactly the right approach.  Contrary to common
> impressions, I don't think even very conservative parents in the deep
> south of the US (my own upbringing, you see) have a problem at all with
> a serious and respectful article like 'clitoris' with a useful
> illustration.

I'm waiting for a fully labeled autofellatio photo. "This vertebra is
placed under particular strain." Heck, pixelate the penis on the inline
version, it'd be an amazing and unique encyclopaedic work!

- d.


from_name: Matthew Davis

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked because of constant spam?

body:
This is my son's email address.  My son just discovered your website yesterday 8-18-05 and was very excited to find such an website where he can edit his own information about his favorite  singers Shania Twain, Britney Spears, etc.  As he was new to your site he had some problems with the posting of the information he was editing, which I believe is the reason for the accused constant spamming.  Please rethink your decision on having him blocked as this could happen to any new user to your site.

                                                                Sincerely,
                                                               Norma Davis

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Now that several people have expressed their feeling we are non
> transparent, I would like that they go further than just stating a
> situation, and make suggestions to improve.

Not non-transparent, quite; just not transparent enough. And I'm happy
to try and help think of suggestions.

> I have a problem with the equation
>
> board : amount of time spent answering personal mails + amount of time
> spend on OTRS + amount of time spent writing board meeting reports +
> amount of time spent writing to this list + amount of time spent on
> setting up a wikimedia foundation website + amount of time spent
> writing Quarto
>
> With
>
> Wikipedians : we are not informed.
>
> It does not fit :-)

Using this framework, I would like to analyze a small part of the problem.

A significant portion of the tasks you mention are important, but do
almost nothing to keep the community informed. Much of this is dealing
with people outside Wikimedia, which is important for public relations,
but not terribly relevant to internal lines of communication. The
Wikimedia website and OTRS particularly fall into this category. Quarto
mixes the two, but given its nature and time schedule, it works best at
the motivational and look-what-we've-accomplished aspects, not so much
the things that require feedback and interaction with the community
(that's not a criticism of the Quarto, I think it's wonderful at what it
does).

You mention answering personal mails. I would guess that again, many of
these deal more with the non-Wikimedia world. And some of the others
probably are just making you waste time in answering. As for the ones
that really are useful, if you answer them, what have you accomplished?
You've informed one person, that's all. The community at large has no
more information than before.

Consider that for this one person who asked, there may well be several
people with the same question who didn't ask. How do you know who they
are? You don't, so instead think about answering more of these questions
publicly, so there's at least a chance the other people will get that
information. I think you can judge which questions warrant public
answers, but I would venture that almost any time you've been asked the
same question twice by different people, you should be making the answer
publicly available.

This mailing list, or another one as appropriate to the topic, can be a
good place to do this, and I won't go into that item from your list
beyond that comment. However, with respect to writing board meeting
reports, other people have mentioned that it would be nice to see logs.
In fact, I would go farther than this - don't write reports at all! Do
less work for a change, because here I think other people can do it for
you. If you post the raw material and simply provide a link, those of us
who are really interested will read the whole thing, and people from
that group can produce a summary for the rest. That's part of the idea
behind a project like the Signpost.

> * exactly on which topic do you feel you are not informed ?

I'll mention one example for now. I've asked a few times on this list
about the progress with direct credit card payment processing (at least
twice, once after the last fundraiser and then following up later). I
don't recall that there was any response. Finally, in the latest board
meeting notes, it's mentioned that this is expected to be ready for the
current fundraiser. But even then, when I go to the fundraising page
right now, this option is still not there.

Well, time is short for all of us, this has been a long message, and
I'll have to wait to say more until later.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Next London Meetup

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

(Sorry for spamming the two lists, but... :-))

This is just a notice that the next London Meetup will be as follows:

  Date   : Sunday the 11th September 2005
  Time   : 13:00 onwards
  Place  : A pub, yet again, this time The Archery Tavern just next to
           Lancaster Gate tube station (they do food, too).
  People : All welcome, especially people who haven't made it to one of
           the London meetups yet.
  Topics : Anything and everything wiki, including further discussions
           on setting up a UK Chapter. Maybe.

Meetups are always fun (well, they have been so far); feel free to come
along. If you are going to do so, please add your name to the list on
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/London (yes, I
know, it should probably be on Meta; it isn't for hysterical raisins).
If you're already on the list, please check that you can still make it,
and possible upgrade your status to "definite". :-)

Look forward to seeing as many as possible of you all there.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Miran Bozicevic

subject: [Wikitech-l] postgres + geographic data

body:
Hello wikitechies,

I'm currently visiting Indiana University working on a Wikipedia visualization
project.  I've got two questions, I'd appreciate any advice you could give me.

The Info Visualization lab here has a policy against using mysql, so I need to
convert the data to postgres.  Has this been done before with wikipedia dumps?
I have tried two utilities I found "out there", mysql2pgsql.perl and my2pg.pl,
and neither seems to able to convert Wp dumps correctly.  Since mediawiki 1.5
will be postgres-enabled, I hope someone has figured out a way to do this
already.  Am I right?

It'd be great to somehow overlay a map of Wikipedia articles onto the map of the
world, but to do this we'd need to associate articles with geographic locations
(one-to-one or one-to-many, no matter).  One way to do this would be via edit
histories, using IP addresses of anonymous users and generating a map of
anonymous usage of Wp.  However there seems to be no trivial way to do this for
the entire dataset.  If anyone has an idea we're more than happy to listen &
share Wikipedia visualization fame with them :).

Thank you!
Miran


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>articles in those languages. In fact, Gerard, much of the Africa  scholarship project idea was mine.
>
Sure about that?

Waerth/Walter


body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron (jbsoufron at gmail.com) [050819 02:51]:

> But with smaller wikipedia, we should be very concerned since if we pay
> people to write content, we will be pointed out as trying to impose our
> opinions to sovereign countries : neo-colonialism is always a danger...

In that case, the objectors know what we will then say they should do ;-D

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Stephen Bain (stephen.bain at gmail.com) [050815 05:51]:
> On 8/7/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > steve v (vertigosteve at yahoo.com) [050806 05:49]:

> > > From [[ minority ]]:
> > > ''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
> > > an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
> > > (song)|Minority]].''
> > > !

> > Heh. In cases like that, {{otheruses}} on the main article and a disambig
> > with two entries seems entirely sensible to me ;-)

> Done and done.

And in the case of [[Clear (Scientology)]], I wrote the article then
created a disambig at [[Clear]].

Editorial judgement. It's lots more fun than policy!

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] mail greylisting

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050811 06:36]:
> On 09/08/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Kate (keturner at livejournal.com) [050809 21:57]:

> > > be rejected because of it.  more information on greylisting can be found at
> > > http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/.

> > And from spam and might-as-well-be-spam just now: 3.3, 18.4, 18.2, 2.6,
> > 2.6, 0.4, 0.4, 4.2, 4.0, 4.0.

> David, what do you count as "might as well be spam"?

I think the examples in that particular pile were press releases and cranks
who email lots of people that they think might further their cause. Which
is technically spam too, I suppose, but not the serious bulk stuff - just
people adding wikien-l to their general publicity list.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Michael Snow (wikipedia at earthlink.net) [050819 00:47]:
> Anthere wrote:

> >What is funny is that it is assumed allright that developers only
> >communicate in their area, but it is not allright for others. Why ?

> I tried to explain the difference in my earlier message. Basically,
> people see developer decisions and actions as more technical than
> political (most of the time), so they feel less need to be informed. And
> even so there have been plenty of complaints about lack of information
> from the developers - usually when something has gone wrong and the
> developers are too busy trying to fix it to provide much information
> back to the community.

As I understand it, they're snowed under in general. (You try running a
top-50 website and writing bespoke software for it on one and a half
employees and a handful of volunteers.) Servers are excellent things, but
another paid coder/sysadmin would (AIUI) do wonders for us. (Xenu help us
if Kate needs to get a dayjob, for example.) I've mentioned this before as
something that local chapter money could be put to good use on, though
possibly it shouldn't be left waiting on that.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Chicago meetup

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20050819/06ee7749/attachment.diff


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
On 8/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, assuming he really is not a sockpuppet of anyone, he probably
> tried to use the name Ril, found it was in use, and put those dashes
> in. If he looked at the profile of ril he would have noticed he was
> banned, right?

You're expecting too much of someone new to the project creating a
username.  When you have a preferred online 'handle' and you try to
register at a site and find your usual name is taken, would you just
try a variation on it?  I think most of us would.  I doubt he looked
at the user's page - he just got a 'that name already exists' at the
account creation screen.

> Anyway, it's probably a bad idea to use any name
> excessively similar to anyone elses name, in my opinion. But yes, you
> are somewhat right, and we should assume the name is in good faith.
> (Is that enough to force a name change by the way, assuming he
> survives arbcom?)

No, it is not.  We do not enforce any 'names must be sufficiently
dissimilar' rule between two active users; it would be wrong to make
the names of banned users MORE protected than those who contribute to
the project.

-Matt


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> There was a discussion in August 2004 about implementing a bounty system
> for MediaWiki development. Anthere ran a survey in july 2004 among
> developers and published results on meta on August 25th 2004:
>
>   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results

A bounty system assumes someone (unpaid? community vote? donator
decides?) can define the tasks and assign the bounties. One
question in Anthere's poll was "Which tasks, if any, really ought
to be done, but currently are not?".  That method of design can
only result in a bazaar.  To build a cathedral you need an
architect with somewhat dictatorial powers, and the authority and
salary for an architect is the least likely outcome of a bounty
system.  For example, what if there is a $2000 bounty for adding
complex graphics and another $2000 bounty for improving
performance?  These bounties are in conflict.  Who is to decide?
Eric Raymond thinks bazaars are better than cathedrals because of
this lack of authority, but not everyone agrees with Eric Raymond.
For example, Linus Torvalds' architectural control over the Linux
kernel is a good example of dictatorial powers at their best.

Wikipedia has been extremely successful despite (not because) the
lack of a technical architect, especially in the last two years.
Some people ask how the Swedish Wikipedia can be the 5th biggest
with a language spoken by only 9 million people.  One strong
reason is that the Swedish wiki community enjoyed sub-second
response times at susning.nu in 2002 and 2003, while Wikipedia's
utter sluggishness during software phase II and III scared away
thousands of volunteers.  After susning.nu closed, this community
has moved over to the Swedish Wikipedia.  Just imagine if
Wikipedia had performed like that in every language.  And once
again, I do this only to promote Swedish language among Germans:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/017624.html

While I appreciate Anthere's outreach, the board should not ask
the developers which features need to be implemented.  The board
should promote growth of free contents (e.g. more encyclopedia
articles, more dictionary definitions, more photos, etc.) and
investigate why some sectors are growing slower than others.  If
there are technical bottlenecks, such as slow response times or
lacking features, the developers should be informed and asked (and
perhaps paid) to help the situation.  The goal is never technical
features, but the quicker generation of more contents. This is
just like any commercial company where the board monitors
customers and sales, except that the Wikimedia Foundation is not a
profit-optimizing organization but a free-content-optimizing one.

So don't ask why the Swedish Wikipedia is growing so fast, ask why
all the others grow so slowly.  We can do better than this.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: A. Nony Mouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Exercises in social engineering

body:
1. Is your first name Jason?
--No

2. Is your last name Boothy?
--No

3. Does the end of your username contain 443?
--No.

A. Nony Mouse

On 8/17/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is your first name Jason, or your last name Boothy, or the end of your
> username ending with 443, by any chance?
>
> On 8/17/05, A. Nony Mouse <mousyme at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/17/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 1. How long have you been an editor?
> > I've been editing off and on since January 2003.
> >
> > > 2. Are you an admin?
> > No. I was nominated once but I turned down the nomination. It makes
> > you too jaded over time.
> >
> > > 3. Do you promise never to do anything so completely stupid ever again?
> > The experiment has run its course, with results far beyond what I
> > could have anticipated. I won't be doing it again.
> >
> > A. Nony Mouse
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Spamschutz

subject: [Wikitech-l] StopWords ? Is it possible to translate ?

body:
Hi,

just a smal question. Im german and we have a german smal Mediawiki running.
If we put some new words in FulltextStoplist.php it dont work.
How can we set some stopwords?

regards


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Objectionable material

body:
On 8/19/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Skyring wrote:
>
> >I appreciate both positions, but in the meantime, we live in the real
> >world where some parents and teachers and clergymen are going to apply
> >pressure to stop their children or students or congregations from
> >using an online encyclopedia that contains material that they consider
> >objectionable, regardless of how sensitively it is presented or how
> >much we might wish for there to be no censorship at all.
> >
> >
> I really don't think that the best way to deal with closed-mindedness
> and dogmatism is to surrender to it. Of course, that carries its own
> special risk, because we might end up being dogmatic in our response.
> They key here, it seems, is to emphasize the Wiki philosophy of good
> faith, openness, and /respect/ that all people have it in them to be
> mature and responsible /without /having someone to tell them what they
> can and can't know and what they can and can't look at.

I'm certainly not advocating surrendering to narrow-mindedness. On the contrary.

We can't do a real lot about the attitudes of people whose minds are
closed, but it is hardly fair on the children of such people to be
deprived of a useful resource. I'd like to see some effort being made
to reach these children. Trying to sway their parents with arguments
that haven't worked in the past is not a strategy for success.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
A quick glance at the block log leads me to suspect that the user in
question was 24.253.211.204 (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/24.253.211.204)

This user was adding links to a GeoCities site constantly.  He was
warned several times
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.253.211.204).

Curiously, however, and in contradiction of policy, Madchester blocked
the anon indefinitely.  This cannot be right, so I am reducing the
block to 24 hours.

Please understand that spamming links to personal sites is _not_
allowed.  On the other hand, you are more than welcome to add
information to articles.  If you have any questions, feel free to
email me.

Sam

On 8/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Often blocks like this are for a mere 24 hours, so he should get
> access back quite soon.
>
> If not, it would help to know the username and IP address he was using
> at the time, the latter of which could be seen if you click edit while
> blocked. Without it, it's very hard to determine who to unblock,
> because the site blocks spammers and vandals on a regular basis, which
> means yesterday a few hundred or thousands of blocks were performed.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> [[User:MacGyverMagic]]
>
>
> On 8/19/05, Matthew Davis <superstarking89 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > This is my son's email address.  My son just discovered your website yesterday 8-18-05 and was very excited to find such an website where he can edit his own information about his favorite  singers Shania Twain, Britney Spears, etc.  As he was new to your site he had some problems with the posting of the information he was editing, which I believe is the reason for the accused constant spamming.  Please rethink your decision on having him blocked as this could happen to any new user to your site.
> >
> >                                                                Sincerely,
> >                                                               Norma Davis
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] locksearchindex ? Missing argument

body:
Hi,
a last question :-)
------------------
< php updateSearchIndex.php
Updating searchindex between 20050819072015 and 20050819072924
   --- Waiting for lock ---
Warning: Missing argument 1 for locksearchindex() in
/var/www/html/wiki2/maintenance/updateSearchIndex.inc on line 79

Done
-------------------

any ideas whats wrong?

Regards


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
On 8/19/05, Matthew Davis <superstarking89 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is my son's email address.  My son just discovered your website yesterday 8-18-05 and was very excited to find such an website where he can edit his own information about his favorite  singers Shania Twain, Britney Spears, etc.  As he was new to your site he had some problems with the posting of the information he was editing, which I believe is the reason for the accused constant spamming.  Please rethink your decision on having him blocked as this could happen to any new user to your site.
>
>                                                                 Sincerely,
>                                                                Norma Davis
>

The looks like 24.253.211.204  he does appear to be a clueless newbie
rather than a spammer. However he was warned repeatedly that if he
continued added commercial links he would be blocked. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.253.211.204

Norma I am happy to unblock your son. But before I do he must email me
_himself_ so that I can be sure that he understands our policies on
commercial spam, revert wars, use of the preview button, the blocking
policy and warnings from other users.

If I unblock him without having spoke to him first, and he continues
as before he will inevitably end up getting blocked again.

Theresa


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Often blocks like this are for a mere 24 hours, so he should get
access back quite soon.

If not, it would help to know the username and IP address he was using
at the time, the latter of which could be seen if you click edit while
blocked. Without it, it's very hard to determine who to unblock,
because the site blocks spammers and vandals on a regular basis, which
means yesterday a few hundred or thousands of blocks were performed.

Sincerely,

[[User:MacGyverMagic]]

On 8/19/05, Matthew Davis <superstarking89 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is my son's email address.  My son just discovered your website yesterday 8-18-05 and was very excited to find such an website where he can edit his own information about his favorite  singers Shania Twain, Britney Spears, etc.  As he was new to your site he had some problems with the posting of the information he was editing, which I believe is the reason for the accused constant spamming.  Please rethink your decision on having him blocked as this could happen to any new user to your site.
>
>                                                                Sincerely,
>                                                               Norma Davis
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
ok. Personally, no combination of my pseudonym would look good, in my
opinion. :)

On 8/19/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/18/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, assuming he really is not a sockpuppet of anyone, he probably
> > tried to use the name Ril, found it was in use, and put those dashes
> > in. If he looked at the profile of ril he would have noticed he was
> > banned, right?
>
> You're expecting too much of someone new to the project creating a
> username.  When you have a preferred online 'handle' and you try to
> register at a site and find your usual name is taken, would you just
> try a variation on it?  I think most of us would.  I doubt he looked
> at the user's page - he just got a 'that name already exists' at the
> account creation screen.
>
> > Anyway, it's probably a bad idea to use any name
> > excessively similar to anyone elses name, in my opinion. But yes, you
> > are somewhat right, and we should assume the name is in good faith.
> > (Is that enough to force a name change by the way, assuming he
> > survives arbcom?)
>
> No, it is not.  We do not enforce any 'names must be sufficiently
> dissimilar' rule between two active users; it would be wrong to make
> the names of banned users MORE protected than those who contribute to
> the project.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Lisa Thurston

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What I Don't Like About Wikipedia

body:
Lester, though I wasn't the one to revert your additions. I have written
some explanation for you on your user talk page. I think your contributions
can be valuable so I hope that reverter didn't scare you away. Please stay!

Lisa

I am a Chinese-American of the third generation. I worked as a political
> negotiator, during the Iraq War in 1990. My college background is four
> years of college as a business management major and history minor. My
> family are very prominent Chinese people as my second cousin is China's
> renowned Premier Zhou Enlai. I am a member of China's Imperial family and
> a self-taught cultural expert on China and the Middle East.
>
> I wrote additions to the topics of "Eber," "Joktan," and the "Zhou
> Dynasty." My family's dynasty of which I am a qualified expert. In
> history, there are conflicting interpretations as to events and dates. I
> think that it is wrong to only allow one view to dominate and to not
> publish all valid views. Somehow, your editors erased what I had
> republished about two or three hours ago (my time, at this writing, is
> August 17, 2005, 11:10 p.m.). Then, too, I think that it is wrong for
> people (the general public) to erase all of the hard work and time that
> you
> have put into your article and to continually erase it every time you
> post.
>


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 8/19/05, Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't know, and this will sound wild, but I think its just people who
> are depressed for some reason and trying to find a "home", as it were.
> Wikipedia makes a logical choice because you can do pretty much
> anything in a place with a lot of content. (I really don't think it has
> to do with a particular mental disability per se)
>
> For the solution, I remember something proposed regarding -Ril-'s RfC
> (well, actually I think it was the one he filed against the admin)
> where the person proposed to have a group of 3 good editors help out
> -Ril- to become a better one (or something like that).  I think this
> could be a great idea for those who want it - sort of like a wikitutor
> program.
>
> More importantly, I think admins/users friendly to the person (and if
> there isn't one someone should step up because everyone needs someone
> to turn to) in trouble should try to step in and help the person more
> when it looks like he/she is going to get into a major conflict. This
> one thing I think could save a lot conflicts from escalating to a RfA,
> but then that's just me :).
>
> Because I think ultimately you want to build people who can stay calm
> in heated situations and can think rationally (i.e. past the rules-only
> phase).
>
> Sorry if that was too deep, LOL!
>
> Ryan
>
>

Thank you very much for this Ryan, I agree with you 100%

Well, maybe 99%, as I don't believe it's always necessary to identify
the reasons people act the way they do (eg. depression), but rather
recognise that anyone can be brittle, rude, obnoxious etc. and that
the main thing is to help them see a more productive and social mode
of discourse which is what we're creating here, as much as an
encyclopedia.

Cormac


from_name: Ginu George

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam

body:
Dear Mark,

Even if its native speakers, its wrong!!!
I dont know who edited the logo and the pages.

In fact, the native speaker who translated the logo text is a
different person from the one who actually made the logo, so that
means it went through at least two people, and more have worked on the
Malayalam Wikipedia since then and nobody has complained or even mentioned
it there.

>>>>>>> I dont know what they feel? But its wrong, I have already send the
scanned image for the same to the list. I dont know whether u saw that or
not. Feel the difference first.

last time i requested to wiki for creating a mailing list for malayalam.
Yann said we will think about that later. So how come i can send mail to a a
non-existing list. First of all let it come, then i will discuss!!!

Regards

Ginu George

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 5:37 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam

I don't know what to say to this -- everything on the Malayalam
Wikipedia is written by native speakers.

I sincerely doubt that the logo is wrong, because the logo itself was
made by native speakers.

I don't know what font it uses, but it appears to render the words
correctly.

In fact, the native speaker who translated the logo text is a
different person from the one who actually made the logo, so that
means it went through at least two people, and more have worked on the
Malayalam Wikipedia since then and nobody has complained or even
mentioned it there.

If you have a problem with anything about the Malayalam Wikipedia,
please discuss it with the Malayalam Wikipedia community first.

Mark

On 18/08/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ginu, deciding what font to use for the logo text is still a gray
> area, particularly in non-latin scripts.  I believe there are one or
> two malayalam editors on the translators mailing list; I am including
> it in copy.
>
> What are your thoughts about the font currently used for Wikipedia article
text?
>
> To update other interface messages, see
>  http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allmessages
>
> You must be an administrator to edit the message pages.
> (But you can also get adminship just to do that kind of work)
>
> Sj
>
> On 8/18/05, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In which format I have to send the text. Could you please tell the font
name
> > or can attach the same in reply. Otherwise I can send a font file along
with
> > the correctly written font.
> >
> >
> > Regards
> >
> >
> > Ginu George
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sj [mailto:2.718281828 at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 12:46 AM
> > To: Ginu George
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiPedia Malayalam
> >
> > Hello Ginu,
> >
> > Did you get a response about Malayalam and editing the logo?
> >
> > To edit the logo you should write the text you want to include, and send
it
> > in an email to the wikitech-l  list....
> >
> > Let me know if you have any trouble.
> >   SJ
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:08:17 +0400, Ginu George <ginu.george at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > I saw the language version for Malayalam in Wikipedia is not in full
> > > mode for long. But i go through the entire stuff. There is no option
> > > to edit the logo text. Thats wrong. And i would like to do the project
> > > for malayalam. So if you can provide further information, then thats
> > > better i think.
> > >
> > > Hope you respond soon
> > >
> > > --
> > > Regards
> > > Ginu George
> > > www.ginugeorge.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > +sj+
> >  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> As I said, I don't know what arguments were raised in the internal
> discussions, but I do know that I was a bit surprised Jimmy was the one
> announcing the appointments, so I specifically asked Anthere and Angela
> whether they reflected the opinion of the board, or just that of Jimmy
> Wales personally. Anthere's response was:
>
>> Yes, the appointments reflect an internal agreement of the board.
>> However, since it was highly official decision, we considered it
>> appropriate that Jimbo announced it,
>> which is his role as the president of Wikimedia Foundation.
>
>> As previously indicated, the board does not take decisions by vote,
>> but by consensus.
>> This means all positions given received opinions between strong
>> support to neutral opinion.
>
> This was publicly posted on this list:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-May/003340.html
>
> Have you read that e-mail? Or are you accusing Anthere of lying?

Yes, fair enough, that's a good point. It looks like I was mistaken the
whole deal thing. I suppose I was mis-remembering her comments.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Resignation as CRO


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Phroziac wrote:

> Could it be possible that Lir was gone enough to have developed a
> completely different style before coming back as -Ril-? Who in there
> right mind would pick a nick so similar to someone that's banned?
>
I must be the only person on Wikipedia who saw -Ril-'s nick, & did
not immediately think of Lir.

Then again, I know Lir mostly by reputation not from having interacted
with hir[*], although I have editted enough of Lir's articles to be
familiar with hir style: for one thing, Lir's contributions are about
what I expect a 13-year-old to contribute (my apologies to all
13-year-olds who have made useful contributions to Wikipedia), & -Ril-
writes at a much more informed & literate level.

In any case, the matter is over & done with. Unless someone provides
clear proof that they are the same person, let's move on to another
issue -- which is something both Lir & -Ril- seem unable to do.

Geoff

[*] "hir" is a proposed gender-indefinite pronoun that I've seen used
in some Usenet groups, years ago. Many people dislike it. Lir has
claimed in the past to be a woman in a man's body; I feel its use
in reference to Lir is appropriate.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks and low EQs

body:
Yep, very true. If only people weighed their words before posting a
lot of problems could be avoided. A lot of people refuse to apologize
too, but I think apologies can help a lot to stop arguments.

--Mgm

On 8/18/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/18/05, ANDREA MARTIN <escvelocity at email.wintu.edu> wrote:
> >     Hi I was reading your post about personal attacks, to avoid personal attacks is just how it sounds. Avoid using the word "you". If someone wants to point something out as being hypocritical, they should use language such as that was a hypocritical statement, not you are a hypocrite. Calling someone a hypocrite implies they are a hypocrite in general, and not just being a hypocrite about a certain topic.
> > ANDREA MARTIN
>
> I agree but i don't remember the post to which you are referring
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

body:
I don't mind nudity, genitals, nipples etc. and I don't think most people,
even in Alabama, Iran or Bugabooland do. Well, maybe Iran - I don't know.
I *do* mind pictures of pregnant women stabbed to death, even when topical
and illustrative. Thus I don't think Charles Manson related pages should
contain such pictures. Nor do I think we should link to shock sites
featuring such material without warning and I removed one external link
like that the other day.

Regards,
Haukur


list: commons-l

from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [Commons-l] Mailing List Administrator

body:
Hello everyone.

As many of you are aware, Erik Moeller has quit Wikimedia. Erik was
the administrator of this mailing list. The new list administrator is
Avatar, a user who I am told is of exceptional integrity.

Please feel free to approach Avatar with any mailing list issues you
may be experiencing. The administrator of the list is always
contactable by the owner email account, commons-l-owner at wikimedia.org.

~Mark Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 8/19/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> JW wrote:
> >Merely "breaking Iranian law" isn't particularly
> worrisome.
>
> Not unless they first obtain some nukes to help them
> enforce their particular notions of IP law.

It's not their IP law that Jimbo was referring to, but the enforcement
of their standards of official decency. I can't say that I pay much
attention to it when I send packages of romance books to a friend of
mine in Teheran, but still I have to wonder about the foreign-ness of
a culture where Mills&Boon/Harlequin type romances are on the
blacklist.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail for mail.wikimedia.org loops back to myself

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It seems, there is a bug with the mail server.

Seems to be working ok for me; it reaches the mailing list software.

> Votre courrier ? 'Wikimediafr-l' dont l'objet est
>
>     Testing
>
> est en attente jusqu'? ce que le mod?rateur de la liste puisse le
> consulter pour approbation.
>
> La raison de cette mise en attente :
>
>     Envoi par un non-abonn? sur une liste reserv?e aux abonn?s

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Over-eager new admins

body:
>From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>
>Today's blocking of an IP indefinitely for just being a clueless
>newbie is only the most recent example of a recently-promoted admin
>being too keen to block, and to block for too long.
>
>I have raised this issue once on the Admin's noticeboard:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN#New_admins_being_over-enthusiastic_with_blocks
>
>But I also want to raise it here for any extra input, and also in the
>hope certain people are listening :-).

Speaking from experience, fine control on the dropdown time blocking box is
sometimes elusive, and blocks that are intended for shorter periods end up
as indefinite blocks.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Over-eager new admins

body:
>From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
>
>I also think the bureaucrats might want to be a bit less eager to
>promote, on highly disputed nominations.

Can you provide examples of where bureaucrats have been "eager to promote"
on "highly disputed nominations"?

Jay.


from_name: Measure

subject: [WikiEN-l] A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
I find the idea laughable. Wikis tend to produce nuetral viewpoints, so a
bigoted wiki would be hard to create, unless they require registration and
ban any users who disagree with them... but they'd have to make it harder to
register to stop people from just making up a new name and pass on the spot.

On 8/19/05, andyl2004 at sympatico.ca <andyl2004 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> The neo-Nazi site "Stormfront" operated by Don Black is preparing to
> launch its own "Stormfront Wikipedia" via Mediawiki
>
> http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=223684
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steven K Levine

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Museum of Industrial Design

body: We are writing the Wikipedia community per Angela's request. We have started the Museum of Industrial Design, a not for profit organization chartered by the state of New York (USA). Part of our mission concerns the history of industrial design. We think the format (and software) of Wikipedia would be very helpful in the collection and dissemination of this information on an international basis. This may fit in with Wikipedia's mission. We would like to 'borrow' Wikipedia's facility, or coordinate with Wikipedia in some way, to achieve our goal. Please let us know if this might be possible.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] StopWords ? Is it possible to translate ? - Try
	it	again

body:
Spamsammler wrote:
> Hi,
> (dont no that it was send, i do not became it. I try it again)

Please don't send a message four times to the same mailing list. :)

> just a small question. Im german and we have a german small Mediawiki
> running.
> If we put some new words in FulltextStoplist.php it dont work.
> How can we set some stopwords?

That's just a list of the default stopwords compiled into MySQL 3 to
work around a problem with how searching is done there. It is not used
at all with MySQL 4, and it doesn't control actual stopwords in any way.

See the MySQL online documentation on dev.mysql.com for information on
how to change the stopword list.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
What is NPOV?

Thanks for your note. I'm all for getting paid too, but nobody will placed
under duress to assist.

I was actually thinking that this area would be put together by the
industrial design community (and available to all) without regard to
financial incentive. The Wikipedia format seems to me to be an ideal format
for this project.

This is a worthwhile project and we need assistance. The question is whether
Wikipedia, whose systems are in place, is going to fulfill that role.

Steven

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter van Kalken" <walter at vankalken.net>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 3:51 PM
Subject: >>: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: 300 Euro -> grey market...

> Fantasy wrote:
>
>>Maybe one last comment for today:
>>
>>I think it is happening already, that people get money for Articles in
>>Wikipedia.
>>I am favoring transparency.
>>
>>If we forbid giving money for articles, we move all this "market" into a
>>"grey market", and I don't think that that is in the interrest of
>>Wikipedia...
>>
>>
> I personally really do not mind if people get financial incentives. As
> long as we guard our principal of NPOV. I am happy to know if people were
> making money on writing articles! I would love to join them :)
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 300 Euro -> grey market...


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
--- Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Then I
> realised THEY HAVE TO REFERENCE WIKIPEDIA ON EVERY PAGE per the
> GFDL.
> Holy mother of crap! I don't want to read an article on how good
> JewWatch or whatever it's name is and then see on the bottom of the
> page "Original article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". I
> feel
> dirty....................

Ah, I guess we'll have to start WikiTeen.com, the Encyclopedia for
Suburban American Teenagers. It will be the best-cleaned
encyclopedia, as millions of caring parents and most worldwide
advertisers will scour space to remove anything mildly controversial,
painful, or reminiscent of suffering. Come to think of it, the
Holocaust would probably not be featured but be scrubbed, along with
WWI, WWII, and all wars since and before. Of course, WikiTeen will
get the huge media contracts and giant sponsorship deals, so there
will be money for getting people to write not-so NPOV articles...
Wait, did I just describe current American media? Arrggg!!!

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
andyl2004 at sympatico.ca stated for the record:

> According to this other thread the name of the Nazi wiki will be Pseudodoxia
> http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225536&highlight=wikipedia
>
> is there anyway to prevent them from forking wikipedia. I'm sure a lot of editors would be displeased to see their work on a neo-Nazi site.

It's not "their work."  If they do not want their writing to be edited
mercilessly BY NAZIS and redistributed at will BY NAZIS, they should not
have submitted it.

--
  Sean Barrett     | I'm a big fan of scientific advancement,
  sean at epoptic.com | especially if nudity's involved.


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Over-eager new admins

body:
Today's blocking of an IP indefinitely for just being a clueless
newbie is only the most recent example of a recently-promoted admin
being too keen to block, and to block for too long.

I have raised this issue once on the Admin's noticeboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN#New_admins_being_over-enthusiastic_with_blocks

But I also want to raise it here for any extra input, and also in the
hope certain people are listening :-).

Perhaps the beauracrats could add to their "congrats" message a word
of advice on (not) blocking.

Dan


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Page title change

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>[...] I am thinking perhaps that the best way to go is ignore the whole
>thing and hope that they forget about it.
>
Unless they get a lot smarter than they've proven so far, they're
going to have a hard time just getting it running - 10 pages of
homemade wiki is easy, 600K+ articles plus 400K+ pictures (counting
commons, where many reside now) takes rather more system-fu.

But keep watching stormfront.org, so you can enjoy the complaints
about how their MW setup difficulties are clear evidence of Brion's
collaboration with the international Zionist conspiracy. :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

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from_name: Fantasy

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 300 Euro for excellent Articles: an experiment

body:
On Thursday 18 August 2005 Jimbo wrote:
> ...to Guaka to fund the creation of 300 articles in Bambara Wikipedia.
> This seems very nice to me. :-)

Yes, I like this Idea :-)    (Transfer details please in private email)

> I don't think that work done for money in Bambara Wikipedia will cause
> anyone in English wikipedia to think "No fair, someone in Mali is making
> $10 a week writing wikipedia articles, where is my money?"

I think, there is a general misunderstanding. My experiment was not supposed
to be 	    *"work done for money"*
but        *"a contest where the winner gets a prize (money)"*

This is a BIG difference!

In July 2003 i offered 100 Euro for the Wikipedia-Logo contest, no one
objected: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logo_contest
So we have already a "do something for Wikipedia and the winner gets money".
- Was the Wikipedia community hurt? No
- Do we have now a bad logo? No
- Did it work? Yes

		If we clearly name it as a "contest" I think it will work.

I would still be ready to give money for a contest, but I have the feeling
that you, Jimbo, and others, are not so sure if we should do it, so I will
not start any contest, except you say it is ok. (Maybe the idea just needs
some more time to mature)

Thanks for your replies,
Fantasy :-)

PS: On the german Wikipedia a lot of contests where you can get things worth
some money are working quite well ;-)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Auftragsarbeiten


from_name: Jeffrey McGee

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
On 8/19/05, Niklas Laxstr?m <niklas.laxstrom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/08/05, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > This function can be useful. But now whit the google toolbar for Firefox
> > you can do very easy spell checking. For IE is there also a version. The
> > need is reduced.
>
> In my understanding google toolbar supports only English. Does pspell
> support other languages? And there is people who don't want to install
> google toolbar anyway.
>
> ----
> Niklas Laxstr?m

Pspell (http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pspell.php) uses the GNU Aspell
library and Aspell claims to support quite a few languages:
http://aspell.sourceforge.net/man-html/Supported.html

I have tested my prototype a little with Spanish:
http://66.205.125.240/spell/index.php/User_talk:192.168.1.101
But you won't be able to test it since you can't change $wgLanguageCode.

Jeff


from_name: andyl2004 at sympatico.ca

subject: [WikiEN-l] A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
The neo-Nazi site "Stormfront" operated by Don Black is preparing to launch its own "Stormfront Wikipedia" via Mediawiki

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=223684


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
I'm perfectly happy that they're doing this; it will keep the moron naziboys
away from Wikipedia.

jpgordon


from_name: Jake Waskett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image info

body:
Sorry to bother anybody, but I'm perplexed. Can anyone tell me how to find the
licensing information and identity of whoever uploaded an image?

Thanks in advance

Jake


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

It seems, there is a bug with the mail server.

Yann

----------  Message transmis  ----------

Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
Date: Friday 19 August 2005 18:33
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON at zwinger.wikimedia.org>
To: yann at forget-me.net

This is the Postfix program at host zwinger.wikimedia.org.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

			The Postfix program

<wikimediafr-l at mail.wikimedia.org>: mail for mail.wikimedia.org loops back to
    myself

-------------------------------------------------------

--
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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
According to this other thread the name of the Nazi wiki will be Pseudodoxia
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225536&highlight=wikipedia

is there anyway to prevent them from forking wikipedia. I'm sure a lot of editors would be displeased to see their work on a neo-Nazi site. It might be too late to stop them from using existing material but could any of the rights be rewritten to prevent them from using future revisions and new material?

BTW, here is "Amalekite"'s "Wikipedia Intelligence Report #1":

Reply With Quote
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Old Yesterday, 04:11 PM   #4
Frank Sinatra
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 6 Frank Sinatra is on a distinguished road
Location:
Default Re: Zionist Cabal taking over Wikipedia
Wikipedia Intelligence Report #001

The following is an incomplete list of those suspected to be members of, or to be the "useful idiots" of, the so-called "Elders of Wikipedia" (the Zionist cabal which has Wikipedia in its grip). Those at the top of the list are definite members and are the most ruthless and vicious of the bunch; those at the bottom I'm less sure about. Monitor the activities of the first 5 on the list (watch their user contribution pages and their user talk pages) and you'll have a good idea of what the entire gang is up to.

The suspected "Elders of Wikipedia" are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayjg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jfdwolff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gzuckier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:IZAK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eliezer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TShilo12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Max_rspct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ezra_Wax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MathKnight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Leifern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Humus_sapiens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fintor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kuratowski's_Ghost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PhatJew
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:RachelBrown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SlimVirgin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jpgordon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jdavidb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Themindset
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_McClenon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RyanFreisling

>
> From: "Ryan W. (Merovingian)" <bigwiki at earthling.net>
> Date: 2005/08/19 Fri PM 06:40:57 EST
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia
>
> What a ridiculous idea!  It completely defeats the purpose of having a wiki, _especially_ if they're going to run it like Nazis!
>
> --Ryan
>
> PS. Somebody please tell them to stop using our name.  Something tells me that I might go to Hell/be excommunicated (yeah, somebody's going to the give the Pope my IP) if I post on a neo-Nazi forum.
>
> > From: <andyl2004 at sympatico.ca>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] A neo-Nazi wikipedia
> >
> > The neo-Nazi site "Stormfront" operated by Don Black is preparing
> > to launch its own "Stormfront Wikipedia" via Mediawiki
> >
> > http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=223684
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________________
> Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image info

body:
On 19/08/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> Sorry to bother anybody, but I'm perplexed. Can anyone tell me how to find the
> licensing information and identity of whoever uploaded an image?

Click on the image, and you go to a page with a name like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Filename.jpg

This should have, at the bottom, a tag saying the image license, and a
log showing the user who uploaded it.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image info

body:
On Friday 19 August 2005 18:46, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 19/08/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> > Sorry to bother anybody, but I'm perplexed. Can anyone tell me how to
> > find the licensing information and identity of whoever uploaded an image?
>
> Click on the image, and you go to a page with a name like
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Filename.jpg
>
> This should have, at the bottom, a tag saying the image license, and a
> log showing the user who uploaded it.

Thanks Andrew and Mgm.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with Wikimedia IRC channels

body:
Hi,

Can someone explain me why I got this when trying to join Wikimedia
IRC?channels ?

Thanks,
Yann

--- Cannot join #wikimedia-tech (You are banned).
--- Cannot join #wikimedia (You are banned).
--- Cannot join #mediawiki (You are banned).

--
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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> It seems, there is a bug with the mail server.
>
>
> Seems to be working ok for me; it reaches the mailing list software.

Ok, found the problem -- it was only with sending direct to
@mail.wikimedia.org. When the mail server had been moved, somebody
changed the 'myhostname' parameter in Zwinger's postfix config, so it no
longer recognized itself as mail.wikimedia.org. It should be working
correctly now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with Wikimedia IRC channels

body:
2005/8/19, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>:
> Can someone explain me why I got this when trying to join Wikimedia
> IRCchannels ?

I can't see anything on the ban list, which could be a ban for your
hostmask. Could you try joining #wikipedia? There are no bans there.

Also, what's your hostname? PM me when you'll connect to the server
(my nick's Datrio).

--
Best regards,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image info

body:
Yes you can. All information about an image can be found in the image
description page which you can reach by clicking the image in
question.

--Mgm

On 8/19/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> Sorry to bother anybody, but I'm perplexed. Can anyone tell me how to find the
> licensing information and identity of whoever uploaded an image?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Jake
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>