from_name: Stephan Walter

body:
Please not that in "is.wikipedia.org", "is" is the *language* code for
Islandic.

In "www.wikipedia.is", "is" would be the *country* code for Iceland.

You should not confuse the two, so wikipedia.is should redirect to
is.wikipedia.org.

Regards,
Stephan

?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Which brings me to the point of this all, i would like to know if the
> Wikimedia foundation would be willing to write all interwikilinks to
> the icelandic wikipedia as http://wikipedia.is or
> http://www.wikipedia.is (depending on which we choose) instead of
> http://is.wikipedia.org and whether this would require that it have
> legal custody of the domain ( which would be no issue at all for us ).

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Stw


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Hidden/protected page in MediaWiki

body:
Kiss All wrote:

> I strongly support to add more security levels into MediaWiki.
> Currently there are two levels if I am not mistaken:
>   x."user needs login to be able to write"
>   x. or "not".
> We need at least one more for
>    x. "user needs login to read."

We already have that.

> There is even requirement for
>     x."user's registration needs to be verified by admin"

You can already restrict account creation to sysops. This is a little
more roundabout in that you have to ask through some other means for an
account to be created rather than there being an automatic queue system,
but that's a matter of refinement.

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

from_name: Sj

subject:
Netoholic blocking (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: VfD
	isbroken)

body:
For instance, once a month an admin can ban a difficult user, after
(someone has issued) more than one warning, for up to 3 days, while
working out what to do about said user?  That would be an improvement
over current policy, which is in many cases 'allow logged-in users to
be disruptive until consensus is reached about how to respond'.

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 22:29:09 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> it seems to me all these policies are making things a bit hard to do,
> It might be a good idea to have another policy (yes i know!) that says
> you can ban any user for a certain amount of days (say 10) whilst
> other policies are being reviewed etc.
>
> This way u can stop the problems and then decide on the appropriate
> course of action instead of choosing one course and then getting
> contradicted by others etc.
>
> This probably already is in place, but thought it might be helpful :)
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 16:22:20 -0500, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > Netholic is not an IP address, however - he's a logged in user, and he
> > certainly doesn't qualify as a "new" account, which is a criterion for
> > blocking logged in users under this policy.
> >
> > Not saying I don't think he's a problem - just pointing out once again
> > that we do need more options in the blocking policy, because as it
> > stands the rules don't leave any room for dealing with this.
> >
> > -Snowspinner
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sep 7, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Brian Corr wrote:
> >
> > > The relevant policy is at
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Disruption>,
> > > which says in part:
> > >
> > > "Sysops may, at their judgement, block IP addresses that disrupt the
> > > normal functioning of Wikipedia. Such disruption is to be objectively
> > > defined by specific policies, and may include changing other user's
> > > signed comments or making deliberately misleading edits. Users should
> > > be warned that they are violating policy before they are blocked."
> > >
> > > And, BTW, the warning has now become a discussion. See:
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#Warning_re:
> > > _refactoring>
> > > and
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#refactoring> for the
> > > previous discussion that led up to this.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Brian (BCorr)
> > >
> > > Phil Sandifer wrote
> > > >What portion of the blocking policy are you invoking in this warning?
> > > >
> > > >-Snowspinner
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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
> >
>
>
> --
> Matthew Larsen
>   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
>   > 07739 785 249
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
+sj+


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's paranoia

body:
We have a big need to improve medical articles. RK, who irritates a lot of
folks, will eventually have edit restrictions of some sort placed on him
(should he continue his current pattern--Nothing inevitable about it
Robert), so why don't you wait a bit before returning to Judaisn articles
and perhaps things will have improved.

Fred

> From: "J.F. de Wolff" <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 19:14:29 +0100
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's paranoia
>
> Frankly, my time is limited, and I prefer to work
> on medical articles, especially when every attempt to work on Judaism
> articles leads to edit wars with Robert.


from_name: Alan Wessman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser::strip() and related functions

body:
I'm looking for someone to provide insight on the architecture of
Parser.php, particularly with regard to strip() and related functions.
 (This is for Parser.php version 1.262 from CVS HEAD.)

Questions I have are:

1. Should unstrip() and unstripNoWiki() always be called after strip()
has been called?  If so, why does stripParse() seem to break this
rule?
2. What is the purpose of insertStripItem()?  It is called from only
one place (stripParse()) but looks like it might have been intended
for more general purposes.  What is its status?  How does it relate to
the strip() function -- should strip() be calling insertStripItem()?
3. Should an unstripCompletely() function be defined simply to call
unstrip() and then unstripNoWiki() since most of the time the two are
called consecutively?  This would IMO help people avoid bugs due to
forgetting one of the unstrip calls when both are required.

Thanks,
Alan Wessman


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Database shema : let's start the fun

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Hello !
>
> Sometime ago there was a lot of discussion about a database shema
> change. I am wondering if that's a dead-end horse or if we can
> eventually start discussion again and eventually got the changes in for
> version 1.4 ?

Not for 1.4. It's been more than 3 months since the beta release of 1.3,
currently I'm hoping for a 1.4 release after another 6-8 weeks, i.e.
October or November. There's a lot of new features in CVS already which
need to go live. Changing the schema now would likely push back release
until next year, leaving us with no choice but to backport scalability
and peer review features to 1.3. I think a better idea would be to
branch 1.4 as soon as possible, and to get it up to beta standard in the
next 4 weeks or so, while working on a new schema in HEAD. That's
assuming, of course, that there really is someone interested in coding
this new schema rather than just designing it. Historically we've had a
surplus of design work and a shortage of implementation.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] off-line GPL program

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:

>On Monday 06 September 2004 18:54, Lu?s Fernando wrote:
>
>
>>Well... Of course I want to participate the project, but I want to do a
>>Windows version now (I've learned a lot of Windows APIs from other programs
>>I did before and I'm really not interested on learning all again for other
>>OS at this time). We may change the compiler since I have no problems to
>>make a few "adjustments" in the way I program and I'm a computer science
>>student, so one day or other I'll need to learn that.
>>After this program is done, we could port it to other OS, or if many
>>people don't agree to do it for Windows, we can split and each group
>>start doing it for different OS.
>>
>>
>
>Wouldn't it be by far the easiest if this program would be a small "web
>server" which would retrieve and serve Wikipedia pages to user's web browser
>of choice? That way it could be made quickly, small, and portable.
>
>
>
>
Check out the "waikiki" package from MediaWiki CVS - it already contains
my (a little outdated) version of a command-line wiki-to-HMTL programs
and comes with a no-install web server for windows. It is written in C++
and uses the sqlite library (database-in-a-file, no server required).

I did create a CD for the German wikipedia once, complete with installer
that can copy the software, database and/or images to hard disk, though
only installing the software is required, the rest can stay on CD.

I also have an online update tool that can download a list of articles
via the Special:Export page and update the mentioned sqlite database
accordingly. What would be needed is a Special page to list "all
articles new or changed since XXX", so it can synchronize with the live
site.

Magnus


from_name: Kiss All

body:
I strongly support to add more security levels into MediaWiki.
Currently there are two levels if I am not mistaken:
  x."user needs login to be able to write"
  x. or "not".
We need at least one more for
   x. "user needs login to read."
There is even requirement for
    x."user's registration needs to be verified by admin"
It will absolutely pay for providing more security options to users.
We can gain more users from different application scenarios

By the way, it does not make any sense at all to keep the purity of
some concept. There is only one rule in the world: meeting the
changing and improving requirements. It applies to MediaWiki too
otherwise only a few enthusiasts would like to use it.

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 04:17:28 +1000, Tony <twilson at ncable.net.au> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
> > It's looking more and more like a proper security/permission model
> > (i.e. going beyond "user/admin", "normal/protected") is the single
> > most requested feature for users outside of the wikimedia projects.
>
> Brion replied:
>
> > It's also something that's not a wiki. All pages on a wiki are readable
> > by all visitors; if you want something else, you don't want a wiki.?
>
> Err ... but who cares what it's called? Which is better, moral purity to the wiki ideal? Or practical, useful software? Let me
> explain.
>
> Real world organisations nearly always need a way to deal with internal matters that is not open to the public. Any
> organisation with a committee or a board of management needs this. Organisations need to circulaste confidential financial
> and management data. Organisations have to prepare draft position papers and in many cases these need to be private
> during the preparation process (otherwise all sorts of legal and confidentiality issues arise).
>
> But these same organisations also need (wherever possible) to be as open as possible, and to have an inclusive public
> interface. Wiki software is the stand-out best answer to both of these needs.
>
> I agree with Rowan that *the* major issue holding back the broad adoption of wiki software is the rights problem. At present,
> the only way to implement things for most organisations is to have *two* wikis. On the technical side this means substantial
> duplication of effort and wasted server space. Much more significant, however, is what it means for users.
>
> Simply, real world wiki users in real world organisations have considerable difficulty mastering MediaWiki. They have trouble
> uploading images, trouble figuring out how to make links, and an astonishing amount of trouble with logins.
>
> Inflicting multiple logins for multiple wikis on them just takes them too far out of their comfort zone. They can't cope. The
> whole project falls flat on its face because the non-computer savvy, time-constrained users get lost and give up. I've seen this
> for myself several times now.
>
> When I first started working with real world organisations (non-profit volunteer organisations in my case) I was *astonished*
> at the amount of difficulty people have with simple tasks like logging in. Utterly gobsmacked. (And I've been working in
> computing, largely with ordinary home and small business users, for 20+ years.) But I've worked with several different
> organisations over the past few months setting up wikis, and have now realised that we here in the Wikipedia community are
> *very* unrepresentative of the community at large. We think that using MediaWiki is easy (a) because we are geeks and it
> seems like second nature to us, and (b) because we see the evidence of all those thousands and thousands of Wikipedia
> contributors who don't seem to find it too difficult. What we don't realise is that the people who contribute to the 'pedia are a
> tiny *tiny* fraction of the people out there. We only see the ones who can figure it out. Astonishing as it seems, your average
> wiki contributor (the guy who writes up all the B movie actors on Wikipedia, for example) belongs somewhere in the top 5 to
> 10% of that computer competence bell curve. In computer IQ terms, he's a genius.
>
> When you start working with real world organisations, and seeing how much difficulty the other 95% of people have, you get
> a hell of a surprise.
>
> Anyway, my point is that sorting out the permissions problem would be a *huge* improveent. For real world organisations,
> single login is a must-have feature.
>
> Tony (Tannin)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Be good....


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Theresa Knott wrote

>I'd like a name change though to make sure it's
connection to wikipedia is known about.

Nukipedia?  Err, perhaps not, though ...

On the main point, I'd say the 'debate' about WP approximating academic
standards gets played out daily and online.  From where I sit, it's mostly
about retaining the expertise that comes to edit, rather than expecting
things to happen by fiat.

Charles


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Register, Round 2

body:
Future to Make Past Obsolete:

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/001488.html#1488

On Sep 8, 2004, at 11:57 AM, Sj wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 14:47:04 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/07/khmer_rouge_in_daipers/
>>
>> Register folks have no high ground here - they didn't spell their own
>> URL correctly ("daipers" [sic]).
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fact-index.com financially supports the Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
http://www.fact-index.com/c/co/computer_science.html

*Fact-index.com financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation*.

Is this true?

---
[[w:nl:gebruiker:Walter]]


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Register, Round 2

body:
The second round in the Wikipedia-Register battle of 2004 has been
published, and Andrew Orlowski promises a third.  You have to chuckle
at his description of the Wikipedia community as "the Khmer Rouge in
diapers."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/07/khmer_rouge_in_daipers/

He has the advantage of being able to cherry pick the most acerbic,
typo ridden email rants in order to make his case. Then again, the
Register folks have no high ground here - they didn't spell their own
URL correctly ("daipers" [sic]).

--
Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Opening up the Wiktionary content

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>>
>>> But if you had a look at the tables Polyglot uploaded to the meta
>>> site you would have seen that these tables ...
>>
>> I looked at his pdf file and found it pretty.  My browser would not
>> open the other one; I don't know what software is needed for that.
>
> The second file is in Open Office format. :)

Thanks.  I've been informed that the two are just different ways of
presenting the same thing, so now I don't really need to look at both.

>> The first thing that we need to address is the purpose and philosophy
>> of a dictionary.  To me, a dictionary is primarily descriptive, and
>> not prescriptive.  The multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary is a
>> model to be followed.  An ideal Wiktionary article will include a
>> series of definitions that trace the history of the word over the
>> centuries.  The etymology is important for understanding these uses.
>> I tend to view translations as a form of synonym which happens to be
>> in another language.  They are guide lines which the wise translator
>> will consider but will not consider binding.  I would not depend on
>> BabelFish to give me a good Italian translation of Shakespeare or a
>> good English translation of Dante.
>
> Describing it to be like "the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary"
> is as helpfull as the "Dikke van Dale"; both are emminent dead wood
> dictionaries, and therefore there should be differences with
> wiktionary as well. If you propose we follow OED explain what makes it
> so relevant to you describe the features that are important to you. I
> do not have an OED, I have a van Dale, it is as authoritive and I am
> sure it has the same features but I do not know. Van Dale does a NE
> and EN dictionary as well, so models for translation dictionaries exist

My apologies.  I think every language has its great dictionaries that go
into great detail about the language.  The key feature about the OED is
the many quotes that it gives to show how a word has been used and has
evolved over the years.  I would be pleased if we could show how the
language has evolved over the last century since then.  Not only that, I
envision a similar treatment for all languages.

>> A volunteer project does not usually need to think in terms of
>> financial break even points.  Nobody is getting paid. :-)   Better
>> results depend on what you mean by that term.
>
> A volunteer project that does not value the time spent by the
> volunteers is not worth the time. Time of quality people is a scarce
> resource. Is this your argument against re-using content in
> nl:wiktionary for data from en:wiktionary ??

I said nothing about re-using the nl-wiktionary material.  Bolunteers
work on such a project when they have time.  Sometimes that means that
there may be delays that would be intolerable if someone was paying them
for the work.

>> All of what you ask for is needed, but there are already plenty of
>> glossaries that could be uploaded and I am sure, if we have the
>> techniques many companies would agree to pass their glossaries with
>> definitions to OpenContent. So what?  We're not looking for mere
>> glossaries.
>
> When you do not know what these glossaries contain, so how can you
> judge their value to wiktionary. Glossaries add content and with a
> wiktionary it is like a telephone network; the more people who have a
> telephone the more valuable the network is. With so many words not yet
> described, glossaries may fill a need.

Yes.  Glossaries are one way to start an article.

> Contributions from any source are open to discussion; at present we
> discuss opening up the wiktionary content so that it can be shared in
> all wiktionaries. At this moment, nl: does contribute easily to
> en:wiktionary while it is hard to use the en:wiktionary content. Is
> that not a waste of your time; the work you have done could be so much
> more valuable !

Of course I support the sharing of content.  The problem you are trying
to solve here is for me one that does not exist.

>>> So: in any case I support the XML and database way - it will take
>>> some time to develop it, but once it is there wiktionary has all the
>>> characteristics needed to become the main reference tool for people
>>> working with languages and people being interested in languages. The
>>> more people can use it the more will contribute. Gerard, Polyglot
>>> and whoever is convinced about this way: please don't stop going.
>>> You are on the right way.
>>
>> We will be more able to discuss the proposal when we see what it
>> looks like.
>
> At this point we discuss the merites of opening up the wiktionary
> content and use standard XML formats that are/will be shared among
> electronic dictionaries. When we agree that there is a need, from that
> a lot of changes to the wiktionary content will follow. The first
> thing is to agree on the merits of opening up the content. We must
> first agree on this, this is part of our mission as I see it.
> Certainly we will not have less data, we will have data in a proper
> place that will enable open content.

Perhaps you should go ahead and do your XML coding.  Once this is done
we will all be able to experiment with it to see how it works on the
test wiki.  It will be a lot easier to come to an informed judgement at
that point.

Ec


subject: [Wiktionary-l] terms of several languages

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

> That's what I dislike on the actual way of organising terms - you find
> every kind of writing in there - OK, on the English page there are the
> words beginning with other scripts. But how about the student studying
> German and going to the German wiktionary he finds "Anguille" - at a
> first glance if he/she knows french he/she could think that the french
> term is used in German as well - and this will happen - people are
> lazy - don't think about how we use the tools since we know them, but
> think about people who don't take much time - what then happens is
> that the student is being corrected the term and the end is:
> wiktionary is not a good ressource even if the fault is not
> wiktionary's fault, but the student's fault. He'll then talk with his
> friends etc. etc ... what comes out of this.

I don't think that we need to worry about all the stupid things that a
user can do.  If a word has 5 meanings one of them needs to be listed
first.  It's the user's duty to use common sense in making his choice.
On Wikisource we had someone translate the Sherlock Holmes title "His
Last Bow" into French as "Son dernier coup d'archet".  It was the
completely wrong meaning of "bow".  Reasonable people do not hold a
company responsible for the supidities of its users, except in the
United States when they feel they can earn a fortune by startingf a
lawsuit. :-)

> So there are two possibilities: or foreign terms are identified as
> such by colour/symbol/language code in the listing or there are
> subsections for the single listings in different languages.

Each page is divided into separate sections for each language
represented.  Having the English and French for "sensible" on the same
page helps in recognizing that they are false friends.  I like to
approach the problem from the perspective of the user who has a piece of
text in front of him without being certain even of what is the language
of the text.  That is a fascinating challenge.

> Hmmm ... I hope this is understandable - I was just thinking about my
> pupils at school (when I was still teaching) - using the dictionary
> even if you explain over and over again 80% of them just take the
> first translation they found as they don't like reading all the
> context. I'd like to avoid misunderstandings - that's all. For myself
> I have no problems with mixed up lists - working with languages every
> day it is normal, but we should think about those who potentially
> would have difficulties.

No vaccination exists that will prevent infectiously stupid behaviour.
Are you familiar with the Scott Adams cartoon strip "Dilbert"?  See the
archives at
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20040809.html  :-)
Ec


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Delirium [mailto:delirium at hackish.org]

>I don't think academic credentials are very good ones.
> Perhaps some measure of involvement in Wikipedia would
>be a reasonable start, as most of our longtime
>contributors are reasonably reliable.
>
>-Mark

Perhaps articles should be reviewed by at least a couple of people. One
'expert' plus one long term wikipedian, in whom we trust.

Theresa


body:
On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 14:11:51 +0000 (UTC), Walter Vermeir
<walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> *Fact-index.com financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation*. Is this true?

Fact-index have made a substantial donation to the Foundation. Plans
are being made to detail this, and other significant donations, on the
http://wikimediafoundation.org website in future.

Angela.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Matthew Larsen wrote:

>This might be discriminitive against people who do not have academic
>status though. Might have to be careful on that, not all academics are
>experts! (no degree in plumbing as far as I know)
>
>
There's also other credentials, like "long experience in the field".  I
imagine John Carmack has credentials when it comes to game AI, despite
having no PhD in a related field (or even, gasp, a PhD at all!), for
example.

But how to decide this seems a little bit of a case-by-case thing.
Perhaps eventually we'll need a Wikipedia meta-editorial board of
sorts?  Some of these things are really pseudo-editorial decisions, and
someone has to make at least some of them.  Is someone with a PhD who
takes outlandish opinions an expert (Linus Pauling on Vitamin C comes to
mind)?  We'd have to override their qualifications on a case-by-case
basis, hopefully somewhat conservatively.  And which non-credentialled
people have enough experience to make them experts?  Same decision.  Of
course we don't want a board deciding editorial issues directly ("this
article shall say this"), but eventually making some sort of
pseudo-editorial decisions ("this guy is not really an expert in the
field") seems unavoidable.  But how to do that without getting biased
("disqualify all people who disagree with global warming", or something
of that sort) I don't have a good answer for.

-Mark


from_name: Matthew Larsen

body:
That would be a great idea. Gives everyone a chance to agree (on
something). The user can still get browse rights in case they turn out
to be innocent. What do the admins think of this?

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 12:14:26 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> For instance, once a month an admin can ban a difficult user, after
> (someone has issued) more than one warning, for up to 3 days, while
> working out what to do about said user?  That would be an improvement
> over current policy, which is in many cases 'allow logged-in users to
> be disruptive until consensus is reached about how to respond'.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 22:29:09 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > it seems to me all these policies are making things a bit hard to do,
> > It might be a good idea to have another policy (yes i know!) that says
> > you can ban any user for a certain amount of days (say 10) whilst
> > other policies are being reviewed etc.
> >
> > This way u can stop the problems and then decide on the appropriate
> > course of action instead of choosing one course and then getting
> > contradicted by others etc.
> >
> > This probably already is in place, but thought it might be helpful :)
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 16:22:20 -0500, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > > Netholic is not an IP address, however - he's a logged in user, and he
> > > certainly doesn't qualify as a "new" account, which is a criterion for
> > > blocking logged in users under this policy.
> > >
> > > Not saying I don't think he's a problem - just pointing out once again
> > > that we do need more options in the blocking policy, because as it
> > > stands the rules don't leave any room for dealing with this.
> > >
> > > -Snowspinner
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sep 7, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Brian Corr wrote:
> > >
> > > > The relevant policy is at
> > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Disruption>,
> > > > which says in part:
> > > >
> > > > "Sysops may, at their judgement, block IP addresses that disrupt the
> > > > normal functioning of Wikipedia. Such disruption is to be objectively
> > > > defined by specific policies, and may include changing other user's
> > > > signed comments or making deliberately misleading edits. Users should
> > > > be warned that they are violating policy before they are blocked."
> > > >
> > > > And, BTW, the warning has now become a discussion. See:
> > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#Warning_re:
> > > > _refactoring>
> > > > and
> > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#refactoring> for the
> > > > previous discussion that led up to this.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Brian (BCorr)
> > > >
> > > > Phil Sandifer wrote
> > > > >What portion of the blocking policy are you invoking in this warning?
> > > > >
> > > > >-Snowspinner
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Matthew Larsen
> >   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
> >   > 07739 785 249
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> --
> +sj+
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
This might be discriminitive against people who do not have academic
status though. Might have to be careful on that, not all academics are
experts! (no degree in plumbing as far as I know)

I can definatly see the advantage of it however, worth investigating!

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 10:18:31 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Delirium [mailto:delirium at hackish.org]
> >
> > >I don't think academic credentials are very good ones.
> > > Perhaps some measure of involvement in Wikipedia would
> > >be a reasonable start, as most of our longtime
> > >contributors are reasonably reliable.
> > >
> > >-Mark
> >
> >
> > Perhaps articles should be reviewed by at least a couple of people. One
> > 'expert' plus one long term wikipedian, in whom we trust.
>
> Sounds good to me.
>
> --mav
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
>
>
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
--- "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk> wrote:
>
> From: Delirium [mailto:delirium at hackish.org]
>
> >I don't think academic credentials are very good ones.
> > Perhaps some measure of involvement in Wikipedia would
> >be a reasonable start, as most of our longtime
> >contributors are reasonably reliable.
> >
>
> Perhaps articles should be reviewed by at least a couple of people. One
> 'expert' plus one long term wikipedian, in whom we trust.

I think this is spot on; for any Nupedia/Wikipedia 1.0-style project, articles
need to be reviewed from at least two angles. First, a "general" review, which
can be performed by a compentent layperson -- clarity, grammar, spelling,
structure, layout, and basic checks on accuracy, balance and completeness.
Second, we need to have articles reviewed by specialists to ensure that the
articles are entirely correct, balanced and comprehensive; there's no getting
around this, in my opinion.

As an example, I'd point to our current way of marking quality articles: the
Featured Articles system. My guess is that 90% of the review there is of the
"general" variety, and we shouldn't be surprised if a specialist could find
significant flaws in the factual accuracy of a number of Featured Articles. One
such case: after ordering and reading half-a-dozen books on the [[Enigma
machine]] (recently promoted to a Featured Article), I found a number of
errors, and I'm certainly not an expert.

The problem remains to identify experts who can perform specialist review. For
some topics, academic credentials would be reasonable evidence of expertise,
but I certainly don't think this is the only way to find experts. For, say, a
soap opera, perhaps the best way to locate an expert would be to look for a
prominent fan site on the Web. I believe a majority of experts would be willing
to (at least) read through a Wikipedia article and point out problems if asked.
Whether they would be willing to commit to putting down their name (and hence
their reputation) as approving a version of an article is another matter,
though.

--Matt (User:Matt Crypto)

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: using categories

body:
Stan Wiechers wrote:
> hey all!
>
> I set up a wiki for myself and would like to use the wiki category feature.
> They don't seem to work out of the box. I put things like the following in
> my documents:
>
> [[Category:People]]
>
> Now I wish to have a category page that shows all the documents of the
> Category people, how can I make that work?
>
> thanks a lot,
>
> stan wiechers

Hello Stan,

Be sure you are using MediaWiki v1.3 . The list of articles flagged
should be at:

  http://yourserver/wiki/Category:People

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's paranoia

body:
In one day, I've been called dishonest, a fundamentalist and a censor by
Robert, and dishonest and a censor by an antisemitic vandal who decided to
change my userpage. For some reason I've stuck my arm in the crate with
velociraptors, haven't I?

I have stated my real concern with Robert's "critical historical" quotes in
my original post to this list. However, Robert is in fact turning my views
inside out. I do *not* want to eliminate or suppress historical
interpretations, but I'm annoyed that Robert doens't research the
traditional (or Haredi, if you want) take on things. I cannot stand by idly
to see him overwhelm Judaism-related articles with critical-historical
material without making serious mention of the traditional interpretations
(which are not all too hard to find in English-language literature). On
[[Talk:Maimonides]] I asked Robert to reproduce a particular quotation from
the scholar Ibn Tibbon, something that Robert refused to do despite having
photocopies of the article from which the quote could be taken. This would
have immediately settled the argument from my point-of-view; it was the
hinge around which the debate was raging with [[User:Jayjg]],
[[User:Danny]], RK and myself.
I truly regret not being able to offer alternatives whenever Robert gives
his treatment to a page. Frankly, my time is limited, and I prefer to work
on medical articles, especially when every attempt to work on Judaism
articles leads to edit wars with Robert.

My rant on [[Talk:Artscroll]] on Jewish unity was aimed at Robert's
persistent attempts to insert the most base of allegations about an
(Ultra-)Orthodox Jewish publisher into Wikipedia. Robert may not like their
religious publications, but this random repeating of conspiracy theories
from internet mailing lists is not conducive to any Wikipedia article.

I regret Robert fails to get my point. As he mentions, we have worked very
constructively in the past, and it is my solemn intention to keep doing
this. Sometimes, however, the discussion reaches boiling point, and the
postings become nasty.
I call upon Robert to heed Jimbo's posting and end this discussion. The
mailing list is not the right forum to complain about other users. For this
purpose we have RfC, RfM and RFAr. Robert must also be aware of Danny's
hard work on behalf on Wikimedia projects, and the fact that any attack on
him will likely meet with resistance.

-- Jfdwolff

------------------------------------
    jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk
------------------------------------


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Why is DL/DD (rather than CSS) used for indented
	text?

references:
<20040903234320.11332.qmail@web50409.mail.yahoo.com>	<41390CCB.804@pobox.com>
	<shbrgg19hd.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>>Now, theoretically we could special-case that to produce something like
>><p class="indent">. IMHO there's not much benefit to this,
>
> As long as you have standard web browsers in mind, you are right.
> You're statement is wrong from the accessibility POV if you think about
> other output devices (audio devices, braille).

Can you provide a list of HTML readers known to render the current
markup in an incorrect fashion, with a description of the actual
incorrect rendering and a description of the actual rendering of
proposed corrected markup?

If the proposal is to improve correctness, it would be nice to know what
the actual result would be.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Fact-index.com financially supports the
	Wikimedia Foundation

body:
Angela_ wrote:

>On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 14:11:51 +0000 (UTC), Walter Vermeir
><walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
>
>
>>*Fact-index.com financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation*. Is this true?
>>
>>
>Fact-index have made a substantial donation to the Foundation. Plans
>are being made to detail this, and other significant donations, on the
>http://wikimediafoundation.org website in future.
>
Fact-index is a mirror that apparently makes its money by combining
Wikipedia content with Google ads. With them donating some of this money
to the Foundation, the end result is that Wikipedia manages to raise
money through advertising even though Wikipedia itself remains free of
commercial advertising. Having your cake and eating it too is an
impressive trick.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] 130.633 word English dictionary,
	standards what standards

body:
Looking for XML and dictionaries I found a free dictionary with said
amount of words. It is based on the "Webster's Revised Unabridged
Dictionary Version published 1913" and on WordNet, a semantic network
created by the Cognitive Science Department of Princeton University"
..This electronic dictionary is published under the GPL. It is using
"GCIDE_XML".

There are also standards for this kind of content; ISO 12620, a JAVA
application from IBM "Dictionary and Thesaurus API for Java", an article
how the OED Oxford English Dictionary uses  SGML for its electronic
content [http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/oed-tech/]

I am still only scratching the surface...

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/
Semantic web..

The list goes on. What I am now looking for is an aricle that explains
in simple terms what the relations between all these systems are and
what they are good for.

Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Wednesday 08 September 2004 21:08, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Kiss All wrote:
> > I strongly support to add more security levels into MediaWiki.
> > Currently there are two levels if I am not mistaken:
> >   x."user needs login to be able to write"
> >   x. or "not".
> > We need at least one more for
> >    x. "user needs login to read."
>
> We already have that.

It would be really nice if it would be possible to set these per article, and
then per users/groups...

One can dream :)


from_name: Samuel J. Howard

subject: [WikiEN-l] ABOUT LATITUDE.

body:
> Ec (from the one country where the people of the United States could be
> considered sudamericanos.)

Except of course for the French and the Danish.

(Greenland, St. Pierre, and Miquelon)

Sam Howard


from_name: Wil Mahan

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Can you provide a list of HTML readers known to render the current
> markup in an incorrect fashion, with a description of the actual
> incorrect rendering and a description of the actual rendering of
> proposed corrected markup?

I think the most important difference between using dd/dl and CSS is
that the current markup forces linebreaks at the end of each line, as
Mark pointed out. Thus if one indents a block of normal text by placing
a ':' in front of each line, the linebreaks suddenly become relevant,
which is arguably unintuitive if one simply wants to indent the text.
Of course, it is also common to rely on this feature and assume that
linebreaks occur in specific places, e.g. in a poem.

I think the space indented by dd/dl can sometimes vary between
browsers, so using CSS would have the very slight advantage of
providing more control over layout. But I agree that as a practical
matter, using dd/dl seems to work well.

By the way, my understanding is that <p> isn't allowed to contain other
block-level elements (for example, <table>), whereas <dd> can. I'm not
sure if it is ever desired to indent block-level elements this way, but
I thought I'd point that out.

-- Wil

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
Wil Mahan wrote:
> I think the most important difference between using dd/dl and CSS is
> that the current markup forces linebreaks at the end of each line, as
> Mark pointed out.

This has nothing to do with the HTML/CSS markup produced; it is purely a
a matter of MediaWiki's wikitext parser interpreting the line break in
one way or another.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> This has nothing to do with the HTML/CSS markup produced; it is
> purely a
> a matter of MediaWiki's wikitext parser interpreting the line break
> in
> one way or another.

You're right, of course. In that case I agree with you that there is
little practical reason to change the current style.

-- Wil

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.3 released

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

MediaWiki 1.3.3 is a bug fix release. In particular upgrading is
recommended to anyone running a non-English wiki where some links
mysteriously don't work in 1.3.2.

Changes from 1.3.2:
* Fix for long numeric page titles
* Fix Go search for "0", numeric almost-self-links
* Avoid caching of pages with "You have new messages" headers
* Fix for upgrades as non-root users from 1.2 command-line installs.
* Fix for $wgDebugDumpSql debug mode.
* $wgExtraNamespaces setting for configuring additional namespaces
~  (see note in DefaultSettings.php)
* 'recache' on query pages now disabled when miser mode is on; special
~  case the global settings in your LocalSettings.php to do automatic
~  updates.
* Don't block UTF-8 titles containing byte 0xA0 (bug added in 1.3.2)
* Watch/unwatch tabs now shown on edit pages in MonoBook.
* Fix default skin in Irish localization (ga)
* Add Traditional Chinese localization (zh-tw)
* Changed default sortkey of subcategories. Don't include "Category:"
~  prefix any longer
* More helpful info on spam catcher.
* Allow larger offsets for queries such as Special:Listusers
* Semicolon (;) added to French non-break space rules
* Possible fix for some install errors with path names permission
~  problems.
* Removed [[Project:All system messages]], which has been superceded by
~  the much faster [[Special:Allmessages]]. This speeds up installation
~  considerably.

Anyone still running the 1.3 beta releases is _strongly_ recommended to
upgrade to the current code due to numerous fixed bugs and a security
vulnerability in the betas with some PHP configurations.

Note that while MediaWiki through 1.1 required register_globals to be
on, 1.2 and 1.3 *do not*. If you have register_globals on, you should
turn it off unless you are absolutely sure you require it for some other
package. See http://php.net/register_globals for general information.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=266667

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.3.tar.gz?download

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [WikiEN-l] no more PD satellite photos?

body:
Hi all,

I just saw this on /.:

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001096.html

U.S. government is proposing to exempt satellite images from the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA), meaning that it wouldn't have to release them
to the public.

If this law gets passed, this could be the end of a great source of PD
satellite images: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov

What do you think? Something we should do? Stockpiling nasa images? Or
am I just panicking? :-)

Regards,
Stephan Walter

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Stw


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration

body:
I think, Rick, that it would be really helpful perhaps, if you agreed to
come on irc from time to time.

This is a great place to chat and solve some misundertandings (also a
great place to create others, but well :-))

Why would you not do this ?

ant

Guanaco a ?crit:
> Guanaco wrote:
>
>> Rick wrote:
>>
>>> Every time I have attempted to discuss it with Guanaco, he has
>>> deleted my posting off his Talk page without responding.
>>>
>>> RickK
>>>
>>> Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Are you sure Rick, that the best solution to this case is arbitration
>>> rather than mediation ?
>>>
>>> After all, what we are dealing here with, is much more a conflict
>>> between two different personalities, and between two different
>>> approaches of the sysop role, than a conflict with a vandal.
>>>
>>> Would not it be solve by discussing with Guanaco first ?
>>>
>>>
>> The "attempts" he posted were completely unhelpful and were not real
>> attempts at serious disruption.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Guanaco&diff=5493896&oldid=5493886
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Guanaco&diff=5494122&oldid=5494051
>>
>>
>> I would be willing to deal with this through mediation, but
>> arbitration has lately become a "second resort" through which every
>> significant dispute is eventually handled.
>>
>> --Guanaco
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> Oops, I meant /discussion/, not /disruption/.
>
> --Guanaco


body:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:

>Imagine using the quick and easy way to move an
>article "topo" from Italian or "nezumi" from
>Japanese into a new Wiktionary language. Let's say
>the to a German Wiktionary.
>
....

>So in the German Wiktionary we have just created an
>article named "Maus" with a translation section which
>says "English: mouse, rat".
>
>The problem is that English "rat" is not a translation
>of German "Maus" just because they are both
>translations of the same Italian word "topo".
>
"Topo" is a good example in defense of having the word explained for
several languages on one page.  For Italian the anumal translates as a
mouse, but for the  Spanish it is a mole.

Ec


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/maintenance/postgresql
 pg_tables.sql, 1.7,	1.8

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Modified Files:
> 	pg_tables.sql
> Log Message:
> specify defaults for cur_user and cur_user_text

Honestly these should never ever be left as NULL by an insertion; if
they ever do that in itself is a bug. What's the circumstance where this
happens?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [googlealerts-noreply@google.com: Google Alert -
	wikipedia]

body:
This is a fascinating article in many respects.  It's particularly
interesting that Britannica talks about our disclaimer.  It's also
interesting that they interviewed Larry Sanger, which would make sense
in an article about the ancient history of the project, but the casua
reader would get the impression from the article that Larry is still
around.

I talked to the reporter yesterday, and she was very enthusiastic and
knowledgeable.  Top quality journalist.  But I suspect that some older
wikipedia pages somewhere do not properly make clear Larry's role
today, nor really his role in the past as a hired employee.

--Jimbo

----- Forwarded message from Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com> -----

From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 22:31:26 -0700 (PDT)
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: Google Alert - wikipedia

A New-Age Reference
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
... Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia started in January 2001, has
since surprised Web watchers by maturing into a popular reference site.
...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5430-2004Sep8.html>

This as it happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Remove this Google Alert:
http://www.google.com/alerts/remove?s=239e2e51c626dd22&hl=en

Create another Google Alert:
http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

Try Google News:
http://news.google.com/

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

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
I personally support the notion of One Chinese Wikipedia.  I think it
makes the most sense from a language point of view, and additionally,
I think it makes the most sense from the point of view of having a top
quality NPOV resource.

--Jimbo

Lorenzarius wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) was started in October 2002. At
> that time, almost all texts were in simplified Chinese, because the
> first Chinese wikipedians are mainly from mainland China. (Being a
> traditional Chinese user since birth, I was "scared away" when I first
> went to zh: and saw that the whole site is in simp. Chinese.) But at
> that time, most of the zh wikipedians agree that there should only be
> one Chinese Wikipedia, but not two, because simp. and traditional
> Chinese is one language actually, the difference being that some
> characters are written in a different way and that wikipedians from
> different part of the world have different names/terms for the same
> object. (Just like a British would write "The centre of a sulphur atom
> on a railway ." while an American would write "The center of a sulfur
> atom on a railroad.") Most of the zh wikipedians can read both form of
> characters, though we write in our respective native form. That's why
> we want to have ONE zh: only.
>
> We have been discussing on how to deal with this trad/simp problem
> since the beginning. The consensus is that pages would be converted
> between simp. and trad. according to the need of the reader/editor by
> some automatic script or software. Though the development of such a
> software has not started until recently (due to a lack of technical
> assistance).
>
> I am writing this mail because I see that zh-tw.wikipedia.org has been
> set up. Being a long-time contributor to zh:, I feel quite frustrated
> because it seems that all the discussion we have on how to solve this
> problem are in vain.
>
> Therefore I request that zh-tw.wikipedia.org and zh-cn.wikipedia.org
> be redirected to zh.wikipedia.org.
>
> Regards
> Lorenzarius
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Launch of the Wikimedia Commons

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> In conclusion, the "commons" idea have been around for sometime now, we
> should not start things in a hurry and hope to fix it later. It will
> just give us a LOT more works. Instead I think we should carefully plan
> the project needs, do and don't, find an already existent solution and
> then either use it or enhance it (that's what GPL softwares are all about).

While I very much understand and agree with what you're saying, the
situation is that this is a major pressing need *today*, and there's
much demand for even this step forward.  If there is some other software
that you know about which we could evaluate and test this week, and install
next week, that'd be a good thing.  But in the meantime, we had to just
get the ball rolling.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] off-line GPL program

body:
One reason I am so interested in this is that as I continue to work to
expand my contacts in Africa, I keep hearing that CD-ROM is good for
them, they have a pressing need for content CD-ROMs, and their
internet access is terrible.

Getting wikipedia->CD working easily is one piece of the puzzle there.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Help Request: Changing an Existing Non-Wiki
 Project into a Wiki Project

body:
James Moore wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I have for the past four years been the webmaster and chief author of the Outcyclopedia, an online reference guide for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community.  I would like to revamp the project into a wiki, using articles already existing on the site, any future articles written by myself or contributors, plus articles forked from Wikipedia, per Wikipedia's copyright guidelines, using and granting permissions under either the GNU or Creative Commons License.
>
> The change from a site using html to one utilizing PHP, MySQL, and MediaWiki would take me into new territory, technical and otherwise. I would therefore appreciate any and all help and advice which may be offered, especially from persons running their own non-Wikipedia wiki projects, such as Memory Alpha or Jewpedia, and of course any other GLBt Wikipedians that may be out there. Thanks.
>
> Cheers,
>
> James
>
> http://outcyclopedia.0catch.com

Hello james,

Have a look at the MediaWiki software mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

That's the best place to get answers :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

in_reply_to:
<41390CCB.804@pobox.com> (Brion Vibber's message of "Fri, 03 Sep
	2004 17:31:07 -0700")

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Now, theoretically we could special-case that to produce something like
> <p class="indent">. IMHO there's not much benefit to this,

As long as you have standard web browsers in mind, you are right.
You're statement is wrong from the accessibility POV if you think about
other output devices (audio devices, braille).

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


in_reply_to:
<chbeo2$ngd$1@sea.gmane.org> (Ashar Voultoiz's message of "Sat,
	04 Sep 2004 06:02:10 +0200")

body:
Ashar Voultoiz <thoane at altern.org> writes:

> There is no indentation in HTML, one can still use <blockquote> or
> rely on the good old '    ' sequence to emulate
> tabulations.

Going to blockquote for indentation would be a good decision; if it
isn't a quote you want to indent, you can add a class attribute.

One should avoid ' ' sequences as much as possible.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Tony

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> It's looking more and more like a proper security/permission model
> (i.e. going beyond "user/admin", "normal/protected") is the single
> most requested feature for users outside of the wikimedia projects.

Brion replied:

> It's also something that's not a wiki. All pages on a wiki are readable
> by all visitors; if you want something else, you don't want a wiki.?

Err ... but who cares what it's called? Which is better, moral purity to the wiki ideal? Or practical, useful software? Let me
explain.

Real world organisations nearly always need a way to deal with internal matters that is not open to the public. Any
organisation with a committee or a board of management needs this. Organisations need to circulaste confidential financial
and management data. Organisations have to prepare draft position papers and in many cases these need to be private
during the preparation process (otherwise all sorts of legal and confidentiality issues arise).

But these same organisations also need (wherever possible) to be as open as possible, and to have an inclusive public
interface. Wiki software is the stand-out best answer to both of these needs.

I agree with Rowan that *the* major issue holding back the broad adoption of wiki software is the rights problem. At present,
the only way to implement things for most organisations is to have *two* wikis. On the technical side this means substantial
duplication of effort and wasted server space. Much more significant, however, is what it means for users.

Simply, real world wiki users in real world organisations have considerable difficulty mastering MediaWiki. They have trouble
uploading images, trouble figuring out how to make links, and an astonishing amount of trouble with logins.

Inflicting multiple logins for multiple wikis on them just takes them too far out of their comfort zone. They can't cope. The
whole project falls flat on its face because the non-computer savvy, time-constrained users get lost and give up. I've seen this
for myself several times now.

When I first started working with real world organisations (non-profit volunteer organisations in my case) I was *astonished*
at the amount of difficulty people have with simple tasks like logging in. Utterly gobsmacked. (And I've been working in
computing, largely with ordinary home and small business users, for 20+ years.) But I've worked with several different
organisations over the past few months setting up wikis, and have now realised that we here in the Wikipedia community are
*very* unrepresentative of the community at large. We think that using MediaWiki is easy (a) because we are geeks and it
seems like second nature to us, and (b) because we see the evidence of all those thousands and thousands of Wikipedia
contributors who don't seem to find it too difficult. What we don't realise is that the people who contribute to the 'pedia are a
tiny *tiny* fraction of the people out there. We only see the ones who can figure it out. Astonishing as it seems, your average
wiki contributor (the guy who writes up all the B movie actors on Wikipedia, for example) belongs somewhere in the top 5 to
10% of that computer competence bell curve. In computer IQ terms, he's a genius.

When you start working with real world organisations, and seeing how much difficulty the other 95% of people have, you get
a hell of a surprise.

Anyway, my point is that sorting out the permissions problem would be a *huge* improveent. For real world organisations,
single login is a must-have feature.

Tony (Tannin)


body:
Angela wrote:
> I am pleased to announce that a database has now been set up for the
> Wikimedia Commons.
>
> The site is temporarily located at http://commons.wikimedia.org/ until
> the project gets its own domain.
>
> This provides a space for those interested to begin forming the
> guidelines for the site, and to discuss how the software will need to
> adapt to make the Commons as useful as possible.
>
> The previous discussions are now linked to from
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_plan.
>
> Batches of files may be uploaded as compressed zip files. Some time in
> the next few days, a script will be written to decompress these zip
> files on the server side. Please make sure you use appropriate file
> names inside the archives.
>
> Thanks to Tim Starling for creating the database, and to all those who
> have contributed to the discussion so far.
>
> Angela.

Hello,

In my mind, MediaWiki is not a software to manage a gallery of pictures
or media.

As I understand the announcment, the community already choose MediaWiki
and will just ask developpers to code new features. Basicly developpers
will have to write from scratch a gallery system whereas there is
already such software under GPL (example: http://pnavy.com/dcgallery/
with dublin data core support).

There is so much features that are needed for a media gallery, that soon
the dev team will be overhelmed. What will happen when the community
will want dublin core metadata, EXIF automatic parsing, e-commerce,
XML-RPC, multiple fields search, ogg tags parsing, videos preview ... We
don't even have a license system : we rely on using templates instead
wich is clearly not a solution in term of search capabilities.

A wiki is not a database, it's a tool to create collaborative text. A
media gallery is a database. Guess what ? A wiki system is not meant to
act as a media gallery.

As for the batch zip uncompression, that just lead to easy vandalism
(uploading a 3MB zip can easily generate 1GB of data).

In conclusion, the "commons" idea have been around for sometime now, we
should not start things in a hurry and hope to fix it later. It will
just give us a LOT more works. Instead I think we should carefully plan
the project needs, do and don't, find an already existent solution and
then either use it or enhance it (that's what GPL softwares are all about).

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Ashar-
> In my mind, MediaWiki is not a software to manage a gallery of pictures
> or media.

Hmmm, kind of a bad naming choice for the software then ;-)

> There is so much features that are needed for a media gallery, that soon
> the dev team will be overhelmed. What will happen when the community
> will want dublin core metadata, EXIF automatic parsing, e-commerce,
> XML-RPC, multiple fields search, ogg tags parsing, videos preview ...

Each of these features must be judged on its merits. As you pointed out on
wikitech-l, the template system provides us with a direct path towards
metadata. An existing gallery system is not an option as this is not what
we are trying to create here. Users are encouraged, for example, to edit
captions as they see fit, or to replace images with higher quality
versions. We want to use all the cool features a wiki gives us - recent
changes, diffs, page histories, and so on.

Wikis are something fundamentally new. Old software concepts do not apply.
We need to instead think about how we transfer the benefits of the wiki to
different applications. For example, there's no reason not to have a
specific editing template associated with a namespace, so that all pages
within that namespace have certain defined fields, and still allow diffs
and versioning. As for galleries, a <gallery> tag that accepts a list of
images seems like the best solution. For the actual gallery generation we
may be able to use some existing code.

MediaWiki, in my vision of it, should eventually be capable of
intelligently dealing with a wide range of media and enable massive online
collaboration on them (it could interface with network-enabled purpose-
specific applications like Inkscape or the GIMP to allow several people to
work on the same image at the same time). The fundamental core idea of the
wiki is not just "a page that anyone can edit", but "a way for people to
collaborate on content without barriers."

There's indeed no need to hurry. While I find the early launch of the
Commons somewhat suboptimal, I am sure that it will evolve together with
the software.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] no more PD satellite photos?

body:
I think this just means that, if a particular satellite image reveals
important military information, the government is allowed to keep it
secret -- instead of being REQUIRED BY LAW to make it public, i.e.,
reveal it to enemies.

I really doubt that the typical "map showing my house" or "aerial view
of my community" is in any jeopardy.

It's like the GPS satellites, I guess: a high-grade signal for navy
ships and infantry teams -- with a degraded signal for commuters and
backpackers.

Ed Poor
A former soldier


subject: [WikiEN-l] ABOUT LATITUDE.

body:
There are seven traditional continents in geography. In no particular
order, they are:

* North America
* South America
* Europe
* Africa
* Asia
* Australia (the "island continent")
* Antarctica (no inhabitants but penguins and a handful of researchers)

This leaves two issues:
1. Where do the various islands go?
2. What about geographical vs. cultural/political distinctions?

To answer the second question first: as a matter of GEOGRAPHY, the North
American "continent" consists of 10 major countries:

* Canada
* United States (excluding Hawaii)
* Mexico
* The 7 Central American countries: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica & Panama

The South American "continent" begins with Columbia, Venezuela & Peru
and has several more (sorry, can't list 'em off the top of my head).

HOWEVER:

Culturally or politically, Latin America crosses continental boundaries
and adds Central America and Mexico to South America where there is a
primarily "Latino" population (Spanish & Portuguese speakers) who refer
to citizens of Canada & the US as 'norteamericanos' (i.e., 'North
Americans').

Obviously, this means that [[North America]] can be either a "continent"
or a linguistic/cultural/political region.

BUT:
This leaves the first question unanswered, and I now yield the floor to
my betters...

Ed Poor


from_name: Muke Tever

body:
On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 11:20:19 +0200, cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net> wrote:
> If topo in Italian means both mouse and rat. Then it should be a word
> with two definitions. One will translate into mouse, the other will
> translate into rat.

Just because a word refers to multiple objects doesn't mean it has multiple definitions.

To give an exaggerated example, it is like saying that the English word "bird" has over 9000 definitions because there are over 9000 kinds of birds and "bird" refers to them all.

Less extremely, the word "dolphin" in everyday English[1] refers indiscriminately to dolphins that live in the ocean, dolphins that live in rivers, and (for some people) porpoises; however, there are languages that distinguish them:  in Latin for example they are "delphinus", "platanista", and "thursio" respectively[2], and I wouldn't be surprised if other languages did similarly.

English has lots of words like these, that get defined nonspecifically as "a member of taxonomic group X or Y".

	*Muke!
[1] Excepting in technical language, or language trying to be specific.  In such cases even languages that don't ordinarily differentiate rat/mouse can find ways to be specific.
[2] It's a really obscure example, I know, but it's the only one I'm familiar with offhand, from writing about dolphins in Latin.  Pliny, who describes the animals, does not give them as kinds of dolphins, though he does say the _thursio_ "delphinorum similitudinem habent" (has the dolphins' likeness), and the _platanista_ is "rostro delphini et cauda" ([possessed] of a dolphin's muzzle and tail).
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
As a temporary measure, we are shutting it down right now.  Switching
it to read-only, moving it to closed-zh-tw subdomain so people can
salvage their work if it's important.

Looking at it, I see exactly 1 user in the past 7 days.  So we are not
stomping on a group of people trying to do something.

If it continues to exist, it would attract an audience even if it is
not a good idea.

We can leave the issue open for the zh community to decide.  I
personally advice for unity.  Similar to "One China, Two Systems", I
propose "One zh, two character sets."

--Jimbo

Andrew Lih wrote:

> I'm not sure why zh-tw was created recently. I can count at least
> three times before where we've requested it not be established so that
> ZH would work towards a traditional-simplified solution.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
>
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 03:17:09 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > I personally support the notion of One Chinese Wikipedia.  I think it
> > makes the most sense from a language point of view, and additionally,
> > I think it makes the most sense from the point of view of having a top
> > quality NPOV resource.
> >
> > --Jimbo
> >
> >
> >
> > Lorenzarius wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) was started in October 2002. At
> > > that time, almost all texts were in simplified Chinese, because the
> > > first Chinese wikipedians are mainly from mainland China. (Being a
> > > traditional Chinese user since birth, I was "scared away" when I first
> > > went to zh: and saw that the whole site is in simp. Chinese.) But at
> > > that time, most of the zh wikipedians agree that there should only be
> > > one Chinese Wikipedia, but not two, because simp. and traditional
> > > Chinese is one language actually, the difference being that some
> > > characters are written in a different way and that wikipedians from
> > > different part of the world have different names/terms for the same
> > > object. (Just like a British would write "The centre of a sulphur atom
> > > on a railway ." while an American would write "The center of a sulfur
> > > atom on a railroad.") Most of the zh wikipedians can read both form of
> > > characters, though we write in our respective native form. That's why
> > > we want to have ONE zh: only.
> > >
> > > We have been discussing on how to deal with this trad/simp problem
> > > since the beginning. The consensus is that pages would be converted
> > > between simp. and trad. according to the need of the reader/editor by
> > > some automatic script or software. Though the development of such a
> > > software has not started until recently (due to a lack of technical
> > > assistance).
> > >
> > > I am writing this mail because I see that zh-tw.wikipedia.org has been
> > > set up. Being a long-time contributor to zh:, I feel quite frustrated
> > > because it seems that all the discussion we have on how to solve this
> > > problem are in vain.
> > >
> > > Therefore I request that zh-tw.wikipedia.org and zh-cn.wikipedia.org
> > > be redirected to zh.wikipedia.org.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > Lorenzarius
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > --
> > "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>
> > --- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>
> wrote:
> >
> >>Sorry, this week is full of work and I won't have
> >>too much time to dedicate before the week end.
> >>
> >>Referring to the posts of Ray and Gerard: my
> >>problem was and still is (but much less now) how
> >>to make e.g. multilingual ressources of my project
> >>on sourceforge.net available to wiktionary. At the
> >>moment we are talking about how to be able to pass
> >>translations of words easily from one wiktionary
> >>to the other as this part is the easiest of all.
> >
> >I still think even this much is a bad idea. Copy &
> >paste in every arena always makes it quicker and
> >easier to make mistakes. The only time you can copy
> >all the translations from word A in language X to
> >word A' in language Y is when the sense and
> >subtleties are *identical*. It will not work for
> >"mouse" or "rat" into many languages. Just thinking
> >about it for "moose" or "elk" is painful. Just
> >because "mouse" in English can be translated into
> >a/b/c/d in languages W/X/Y/Z, does not mean that
> >"mus" in "language W" can also be translated into
> >b/c/d in languages X/Y/Z. Every single one must be
> >checked. Copying and pasting is the opposite of
> >checking!
> >
> We are not talking about copy and paste; that would
> not be helpfull.

But further along you specifically mention cut and
paste. I don't understand.

> When a meaning does not have a word or phrase that
> is the literal translation, there is no translation
> in that other language. This does not mean that this
> meaning cannot be defined. When translations are not
> the same, they are not. But this is not what is at
> issue, at issue is opening up data to both other
> wiktionaries and other electronic dictionaries.

Yes of course but on Wiktionary there are two ways to
do a definition:
1. Every word in the same language as the Wiktionary
   is defined fully as in a monolingual dictionary.
2. Every word from a foreign language is defined only
   by giving one or more translations or glosses into
   the Wiktionary language. Words which do not
   translate neatly into the Wiktionary language will
   be given a full definition (when somebody contrib-
   utes one) no matter what the language.

Imagine using the quick and easy way to move an
article "topo" from Italian or "nezumi" from
Japanese into a new Wiktionary language. Let's say
the to a German Wiktionary.

In the translation section for both Italian and
Japanese there will be a line with the translations
into the English language. Both articles will give
"mouse" and "rat".

So because we are using this new quick system, all
the {{lang}} macros translated all the language names
fine. Perhaps we don't speak English and everything
looks fine to us because it's just what the other
Wiktionary says.

So in the German Wiktionary we have just created an
article named "Maus" with a translation section which
says "English: mouse, rat".

The problem is that English "rat" is not a translation
of German "Maus" just because they are both
translations of the same Italian word "topo".

So there is not a quick way to import from the Italian
Wiktionary to the German Wiktionary. The importer has
to check each entry with an Italian<->German
dictionary or somebody who knows both languages.

> >>But if you had a look at the tables Polyglot
> >>uploaded to the meta site you would have seen that
> >>these tables include punctuation, synonyms,
> >>opposites, definitions, part of speech and much,
> >>much more (to me it was quite overwhelming as we
> >>translators think in glossaries and not all those
> >>particular definitions for a term).
> >
> >Can you point to these tables please?
> >
> The discussion and papers are on Meta.
>
Umm in any particular place on Meta or is too obvious?

> >>So now we have quite a good method to copy and
> >>paste quite easily translations into the different
> >>wiktionaries

Which makes me wonder why you just said "We are not
talking about copy and paste; that would not be
helpfull." Which is why I'm confused.

> >>but does it make sense that a work needs to be
> >>repetead for every language again and again?

Because of examples like I've given about you can
see that it is necessary.

> > Yes. Because every language is different. If it
> > wasn't we'd just use Babelfish and the results
> > would always be perfect.
>
> When the word "applepie" gets its entry in
> nl:wiktionary, would it not be fair to say that the
> en:wiktionary content for that word is relevant?
> Would it not make sense to use all the content
> with some translations where needed?

Yes it's relevant. Yes it makes sense to use most
of the content. But with the translations you must
go through each of them very carefully.

> > <>Do we really have that much time to spend?
>
> >Whether or not we have the time to spend, a good
> >quality dictionary requires time spent. If we
> >choose not to spend that time we will not have a
> >good quality dictionary. Ask any professional
> >lexicographer. The OED, Websters, Le Grand Robert,
> >you name it - all the big, quality dictionares
> >took a long time. That is the nature of the game.
> >
> Yes, but contrary to Websters, OED, van Dale, we are
> not in the business of making money out of it. We
> are in the business of making open content and
> we can and should accept open content contributions
> from others. It is the aim of the wiktionary to have
> open content; and that is where we fail at this
> moment.

Absolutely! Not because we don't want to but because
it's hard and we have limited support- especially of
the technical kind.

> >>Up to some weeks it was not even possible to think
> >>about a copy and paste method and thanks Gerard it
> >>is there - so its one huge step ahead, but it is
> >>still far away from being "time friendly".  Users
> >>(contributing users) should talk about
> >>concentrating efforts in order to have better
> >>results in less time. Now we are using the
> >>wiktionary just like the huge dictionary editors
> >>used to do years ago when every single word with
> >>all the relevant information was written on single
> >>sheets.
> >
> >You will find they still do it this way. They use
> >computers now but the work is still painstaking and
> >precise and slow. Dictionary building is not a
> >race.
> >
> When the en:wiktionary content were open, I would be
> able to re-use that content in nl:wiktionary at this
> stage we cannot. Am I to believe all this work is
not
> relevant to nl:

But it is open and you can and should use it. You just
need to go through it very carefully, deciding what
will cross the languages OK, change the language of
headings, change the format (unfortunately).

> >>The techinques are there to avoid double or in
> >>case of language translatios multiple work (how
> >>many wiktionaries are there? 20? 30? I did not
> >>check this out) so instead of one person needing
> >>one hour for a certain work this menas 30 hours
> >>of work to do the same job for 30 witkonaries.
> >>
> > I can guarantee if you avoid half the work you
> > will double the errors.
>
> What work are you talking about: does {{en}} not
> translate well between the wiktionaries ?

Yes it does. But that is the very easiest part!
That only makes a small impact. It's the synonyms
and related sections which will move easily between
dictionaries. The translations require most of the
work. The names of the languages in this section
is close to none of the work.

<snip>

Andrew Dunbar.

=====
http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl    http://www.abisource.com

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
I understand the frustration behind the outburst, however!

-Morven

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 10:47:06 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I think referring to him as "this prick" is not cool despite his referring
> to you as part of the "lunatic fringe".
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 17:04:21 +0100
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Would people check out this pricks edits please and state on his rfc if
> > he is a simple vandal that can be blocked by any admin or a more usual
> > POV pusher that needs to go to the AC.
> >
> > It's a bit of an in-between case IMO. I think he's a vandal who is here
> > to get his kicks from insulting people, but maybe I am biased because
> > he's called me part of a "lunatic fringe".
> >
> > What do other people think?
> >
> > Theresa
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Ray Saintonge

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 11:20:19 +0200, cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net>
> wrote:
>
>> If topo in Italian means both mouse and rat. Then it should be a word
>> with two definitions. One will translate into mouse, the other will
>> translate into rat.
>
> Just because a word refers to multiple objects doesn't mean it has
> multiple definitions.
>
> Less extremely, the word "dolphin" in everyday English[1] refers
> indiscriminately to dolphins that live in the ocean, dolphins that
> live in rivers, and (for some people) porpoises; however, there are
> languages that distinguish them:  in Latin for example they are
> "delphinus", "platanista", and "thursio" respectively[2], and I
> wouldn't be surprised if other languages did similarly.

A dolphin can also be a fish, the dorado or mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus)

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
I think referring to him as "this prick" is not cool despite his referring
to you as part of the "lunatic fringe".

Fred

> From: "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 17:04:21 +0100
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes
>
>
>
> Would people check out this pricks edits please and state on his rfc if
> he is a simple vandal that can be blocked by any admin or a more usual
> POV pusher that needs to go to the AC.
>
> It's a bit of an in-between case IMO. I think he's a vandal who is here
> to get his kicks from insulting people, but maybe I am biased because
> he's called me part of a "lunatic fringe".
>
> What do other people think?
>
> Theresa
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Reacting toAndrew Dunbar.

A word may have several meanings in a language. Each meaning has its own
definition. Your "topo" would propably best translate to rodent which
includes both mice and rats. When there is no exact word or phrase for
mouse in Italian, it should not be only translated with the Italian
topo. I am sure a description in Italian for a mouse is possible.

At this moment in time we do not have a new quick system. What we are
discussing is the need for publishing our content in a re-usable
intermediary way like XML this should allow us to publish our current
content. How this XML will be used is what you talk about and you are
right it should be used with care. However, an en:wikionary English
word, its pronounciation, its translations its usage can all be validly
used in nl:wiktionary, the definition of the meanings the etymology need
translation. We can make an interwiki to en: and we can find these for
the time we have not done that yet.

It is not only {{lang}} but also {{-trans-}} ((-syn-}} {{-ant-}} etc.
that will get their local meaning in the local setup. This is not ideal.
These codes and their associated content should end up in a proper
database so that all of this can be done by the software.

Now when a good non en:wictionary editor starts with a word and comes up
with inaccuracies in the en:wiktionary, would you not like to know about
that? Would it not be valuable to you that you can benefit from the work ?

Articles on wiktionary in META can be found by their inclusion in the
category:wiktionary.

As to copying and pasting, this is the technique that is currently open
to us. We do not have something better. Because of copy and paste I was
able to add loads of translations to English, Japanese, Vietnamese words.

Opening up the wiktionary content will be hard. That is why I want us to
discuss it first before we commit to it. Once we decide that we need
this, the database will change, the way we enter content will change,
much content needs to be revisited. All this while the basic content
stays the same. We still want all the data that we have, but we will be
able to share it.

I have asked the wikimedia board to consider open content strategic;
this is one way of eventually getting developer attention.

There are open content English on-line dictionaries bigger than
wiktionary that use XML, would it not be great if we could cooperate ??
Use their researched content and them using our content ??

One aim for content could be to have a definition in wiktionary for all
Open Office words...

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: no more PD satellite photos?

body:
Dan Drake wrote:

>On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 13:00:12 UTC, "Poor, Edmund W"
><Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I think this just means that, if a particular satellite image reveals
>>important military information, the government is allowed to keep it
>>secret -- instead of being REQUIRED BY LAW to make it public, i.e.,
>>reveal it to enemies.
>>
>>I really doubt that the typical "map showing my house" or "aerial view
>>of my community" is in any jeopardy.
>>
>
>Ah, well, that's because you conservatives have complete trust in the
>Government to behave decently and reasonably on its own, without oversight
>by the citizens.
>
:-)

One thing I noticed is that the article mentions images created by
private companies and then bought for use by the government. It
occurs to me that people might have been using FOIA as an endrun to
avoid paying the companies for their images - find out that the
government happens to be one of their customers, demand copies
from the government under FOIA, and then use the images for free
"because it's from the government".

I'm no conservative, but if a company has put up their own satellite
and network, I think they're as deserving of making a profit from it
as the portrait photographer down the street.

Stan


body:
 --- Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Reacting toAndrew Dunbar.
>
> A word may have several meanings in a language. Each
> meaning has its own definition. Your "topo" would
> propably best translate to rodent which includes

Absolutely not! I cannot find the Italian for "rodent"
but Spanish is "roedor" and Romanian is "roz?tor" so
it is surely something close to that.

Rodent is a whole category which includes a host of
animals with different names for every language. In
some languages the individual names do not map neatly
to other languages. A guinea pig is also a rodent but
it is a "cavia" in Italian. Not a "topo" or a
"sorcio".

> both mice and rats. When there is no exact
> word or phrase for mouse in Italian, it should not
> be only translated with the Italian topo. I am sure
> a description in Italian for a mouse is possible.

We should have both a description/definition and a
list of translations. Each translation can have a
small note if needed. The English wiktionary has so
far been resistant to definitions feeling that a
gloss "mouse" or "rat" is enough. I think this is
unwise.

<snip>
Regrettably I have no time to reply to other points
right now. I hope to tomorrow.

Andrew Dunbar.

=====
http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl    http://www.abisource.com

___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<20040903234320.11332.qmail@web50409.mail.yahoo.com>	<41390CCB.804@pobox.com>
	<shbrgg19hd.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>	<413FD78F.5040905@pobox.com>
	<shd60vz5sk.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>>Can you provide a list of HTML readers known to render the current
>>markup in an incorrect fashion, with a description of the actual
>>incorrect rendering and a description of the actual rendering of
>>proposed corrected markup?
>
> No, but I can imagine that an audio device may "read" the tags and when
> the device says:

Your imagination, unfortunately, doesn't provide factual information
about the rendering of markup by devices and software that actually exist.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/maintenance/postgresql
	pg_tables.sql, 1.7, 1.8

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> By InitialiseMessages, mediawiki messages are imported with NULL
> cur_user/cur_user_text

That's a bug, isn't it? I seem to recall they're supposed to be marked
with id 0 and text 'MediaWiki default'.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
My vote is for "POV pusher".  His inflexibility and his inability to
work with others towards a neutral article are the main reasons I asked
for protection on [[circumcision]].

--
Jim Redmond
jim at scrubnugget.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] enabling categories in 1.2.6

body:
Stan Wiechers wrote:
> I'm running mediawiki 1.2.6 on debian. Everything works fine except that I
> don't seem to be able to use categories.

Categories are not functional in 1.2.x; you should to upgrade to 1.3.3.

> Can somebody help me setting this up? If that is not the right group to post
> that message could you refer me to a different one?

It's ok here but this is more the software development and Wikipedia
server issue list. mediawiki-l is meant more for the user (ie site
administrator who is running a wiki).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] How to safely update from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3?

body:
Kiss All wrote:
> I am worrying about some configuration will lost and database crash
> and something like this.
> Any successful experience here?

Just copy in the new files. There are no database restructurings so that
should be all that's necessary.

Obviously if you've modified parts of the software, the skins, the
stylesheet files, etc you should be sure to merge your changes back in.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: cookfire

body:
If topo in Italian means both mouse and rat. Then it should be a word
with two definitions. One will translate into mouse, the other will
translate into rat.

If this distinction was not made initially, the split will have to be
performed afterwards.

Polyglot


from_name: Mike Halterman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
Oh, yeah, me too. I don't blame her one bit. I'm totally behind Theresa on this observation.

-Mike H

Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
I understand the frustration behind the outburst, however!

-Morven

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 10:47:06 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> I think referring to him as "this prick" is not cool despite his referring
> to you as part of the "lunatic fringe".
>
> Fred
>
> > From: "KNOTT, T"
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> > Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 17:04:21 +0100
> > To: "English Wikipedia"
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Would people check out this pricks edits please and state on his rfc if
> > he is a simple vandal that can be blocked by any admin or a more usual
> > POV pusher that needs to go to the AC.
> >
> > It's a bit of an in-between case IMO. I think he's a vandal who is here
> > to get his kicks from insulting people, but maybe I am biased because
> > he's called me part of a "lunatic fringe".
> >
> > What do other people think?
> >
> > Theresa
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes
	SpecialAncientpages.php, 1.15, 1.16

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> remove unix_timestamp() from query, and wfUnix2Timestamp(). I could
 > not find any reason, really, no other reason, for that redundant job.
 > Fixes bug386

To store a timestamp in an integer column in the querycache table.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> I'm not sure why zh-tw was created recently. I can count at least
> three times before where we've requested it not be established so that
> ZH would work towards a traditional-simplified solution.

There's a bug in the new wiki creation script which allows zh-tw, zh-cn,
nn, and perhaps other language codes which are defined but had been
intended as aliases to be automatically created as separate wikis. Such
accidentally created wikis are not supported and may get closed down
when noticed and someone gets around to backing up their content.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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