subject: [Wikipedia-l] Recipes

body:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:50:47 -0500, Olve Utne <utne at nvg.org> wrote:
> I agree with Sabine, Giuseppe Guillaume, Sj, & al.: Recipes do belong in
> Wikipedia -- they are excellent sources of cultural information. The
> appropriate level of detail for the recipe may of course vary between
> articles: A recipe for "pinnekj?t(t)" (typical of (mostly) one region of
> Norway) is relatively easy to write down, and the variants are similar
> enough to each other that one can keep it short and clear. A recipe for
> "haroset" (typical of almost all Jewish cultures) is obviously going to be
> a much harder task with all its variety...

I disagree. The recipe may be the _source_ of the information, but we
should extract the information that is important (product
such-and-such has always those ingredients and sometimes those too, it
is baked/cooked/whatever, etcetera) and leave out the information that
is not descriptive of the product, but prosprictive of how it is made,
as well as details that probably differ from person to person (exact
quantities, temperature of the oven, cooking times). At the Dutch page
on asparagus I wrote that a traditional way of eating them is with ham
and eggs. That's essential information. Whether there should be one
egg per 2, 4 or 10 asparagus cannot be specified without going POV.
But a recipe is not complete without it.

Andre Engels


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Recipes

body:
Of course we want to know what they are. And of course you can write
about it. But what I do not want is to be specified how much saffron I
need, just that it's there, and why. That "a microwave just won't cut
it" is as POV as it gets. With fillings "as myriad and complex as the
people themselves" I don't want to get specified one specific filling,
or ten. I just want an overview of the kind of things that are used in
fillings.

I think the difference is what we want to get out of such articles. I
don't want Wikipedia to be telling people, "if you want to make
arancini, do it so-and-so". I do want an article on arancini, and on
how it is made, but I see its function more for someone who has been
to Sicilia, ate arancini, and wonders what it was they just had.

Wikipedia should describe what the world is, what things are. Not be
prescriptive in what one should be doing. The article on food products
should specify what's in them and how they are made, but a recipe is
not a good way to do so. Just like the table article does not specify
which length the legs of a table should be, the arancini article
should not specify what filling should be in or how long it should be
fried.

Andre Engels

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:47:48 +0100 (CET), Giuseppe DAngelo
<pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:

> People want to put up whole articles on individual pokemon cards, but I can' t tell the world about that great Sicilian dish: arancini - that this is their idea of take away food - imagine - arancini vs a Big Mac - and you don't want to get a sense of that?  You don't want to know that you need to add some saffron to get that unique colour and subtle, mysterious flavour.  That you really need to deep fry them, a microwave just won't cut it.  The fillings are as myriad and complex as the people themselves.  For optimum results, make your own bread crumbs - you don't know how to? hopefully an article will tell you about this lost skill/art.  Should we add parmesan or pecorino?  Don't worry, there should be another article explaining the difference.
>
> If you don't know what arancini are - have a look here:
>
> http://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arancina
>
> Alas, it's lacking some key info - but it is an important an article as reading about Terry Wallace.  Don't know who he is?  There's an article on him in en:wiki.  I'm perfectly comfortable with that, but surely recipes are equally deserving of attention.  Bon appititu!


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] portal

body:
Hoi,
Following the great example of wikipedia, wiktionary now knows a portal
too. It can already be found on www.wiktionary.org and I have asked Tim
Starling if he would be so kind to change wiktioanry.org as well.

So we are now all in a scramble to go to the next level so that the
visibility of "our" wiktionary will be a bit better ?? I hope that we
will continue to have fun and be pleased that the international
character of wiktionary is better shown.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

references:
<41EEBBDF.6020300@yahoo.com>	<csmeqk$gr9$1@sea.gmane.org>	<41EEC2F3.70304@yahoo.com>	<csmhcm$p9b$1@sea.gmane.org>	<41EECB81.2000901@yahoo.com>
	<41EED17C.4040403@yahoo.it>

body:
I fully agree.
Recipes alone are just stubs that need to be enhance (history,
diffusion, etc.) like other stubs.

I really fear that interest the majority of wikipedian have on a subject
become the main factor to determine what is encyclopedic or not.
<irony>Sure, the recipes have really no interest while [[geek code]] is
really more important for the humanity!</irony>.

The definition of "encyclopedia" we can found in all French dictionary
is "compendium of all human knowledges". [[en:Encyclopedia]] don't speak
about that, so perhaps we are mistaken about Wikipedia goal? I'd really
appreciate if Jimbo could define what kind of encyclopedia is Wikipedia.

Aoineko

Sabine Cretella wrote:

> I am cutting all the first part - and really this is my consideration
> after having read most of the messages.
>
>> But, as long as there is NO rule, it is just a question of balance.
>> Regular edit wars you would say. Another very bold editor can come
>> and become the new gardian later. And possibly be an inclusive
>> gardian of dish articles, so many recipees will find their way back.
>>
>> If it is a rule, then those restoring may be blocked for not
>> respecting a rule. Huge difference.
>>
>> In effect, looking at the past 3 months, I think there are not much
>> new recipes, so I suppose any daring adding one is immediately
>> stopped in its activity. So, the result is just that a branch of
>> wikipedia was cut in its growth. We made a bonsai !
>>
> Imho wikipedia is much more than only an encyclopedia - it is THE
> encyclopedia that not only gives definitions, but also helps to
> understand other cultures. Food is part of a culture. Every
> Nation/region has its food or cuisine par excellance and many habits
> can be explained through this.
>
> What would Italy be without Pizza? What would the Pizza-culture (yes,
> in some countries it became a real culture) be without the mother of
> all pizzas, the Pizza Margherita, named after a Queen, created in
> Naples made of the Italian national colours to honour the queen (at
> least this is what is known)? So this recipe IS culture and should be
> trasmitted to many people. So why not create just the recipe in the
> hope that someone who knows the whole story will add the rest? An only
> recipe would be nothing else than a stub - stubs are to be completed.
>
> Other Examples are:
> Christmas pudding
> Cheesecake
> Stollen
> Mustaccioli
> Pannettone
> Lebkuchen
> Pasta al pomodoro (noodles with tomato sauce)
> Spaghetti (originally from China as much as I remember)
> Rice dishes
> Sushi
> Sauerkruaut
> Wienerw?rstel (the "Viennese sausages" that are called "Frankfurter"
> in Vienna)
> etc. etc. etc.
>
> I don't feel that there's a need to discuss about this - it is clear
> in itself as wikipedia is clear in itself. Stubs were made for first
> steps on a certain theme - cuisine is a theme, recipes are subtitles
> of  "French cuisine, Mediterranean cuisine, German cuisine, British
> cuisine, American cuisine".
>
> This is the huge difference of Wikipedia to ordinary encyclopedias -
> you/we have the possibility to give all this information - people who
> are not interested in it simply don't read it, but people who are
> interested will prefer Wikipedia 1000 and more times to a paperwork
> where they then need to buy other books and kitchen encyclopedias (the
> exist) in order to have complete overviews.
>
> Why destroy one of the huge powers of Wikipedia? The power of being
> different, the power of digging deeper and deeper.
>
> My 2 cts ;-)
>
> Ciao, Sabine


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Map drawing software online

body:
I have set up an early testing version of my map drawing software. It
can be found at

    http://magnusmanske.de/wikimaps

Note: You'll see SVGs directly. So, you'll need a browser that natively
supports SVG (Konqueror, some Mozilla builds) or a plugin.

The site is basically a 1.4 MediaWiki with an extension called "geomap".
You can see the invokation in the source of the main page.

The actual map rendering extension is running on its own, using the
MediaWiki database as data source. It outputs SVG, which is embedded as
an object in the actual wiki page output.

I will add my demo data of the rest of Germany tonight, so there's more
to see than Bavaria...

Please note that the SVG is actually generated in *real-time*, on *each
view*. Of course, in its final form, it would cache the SVG, and also
offer rendered PNGs. I'm not quite there yet, as ImageMagick tends to
die on SVG-to-PNG conversion :-(

Please visit the demo site, have a look, tweak some stuff (add a city,
resize Bavaria;-) and tell me if (and how) we should make this a "real"
Wikimedia project.

Magnus


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Well done everyone - Wikipedia cluster vs. Google
	supercluster

references:
<loom.20050119T230716-645@post.gmane.org>	<csnmmr$qbf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<41EF65E3.7030202@myrealbox.com>
	<csnu6f$e73$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Just to take this a bit further. I thought I'd compare Wikipedia with
one of the "well-run sites" that we are supposed to be competing with.
Google is a good direct comparison, because of its dynamic content, with
cachable frequent queries.

Looking at the difference in traffic between Google and Wikipedia on
Alexa shows that:
* Wikipedia has 300 page views per million
* Google has 16,000 page views per million
Thus, Google serves roughly 53 times the number of page views compared
to Wikipedia.

However,
* Wikipedia currently has 39 servers
* Google has an estimated 50,000 - 100,000 servers in its worldwide farm
of clusters
Thus, Google has roughly 1250 - 2500 times as many servers as Wikipedia
 [Source: http://www.tnl.net/blog/entry/How_many_Google_machines for an
estimate for April last year, and allowing for more recent expenditure]

Thus, we might regard Wikipedia as being roughly 24 to 48 times more
"efficient" in its use of hardware than Google. Given that Google has
spent over $250M on hardware, to obtain reasonable parity for our
developers to be expected to compete with Google at our current traffic
we should have around 1000 - 2000 high-performance servers, at a cost of
several million US$.

So, a reasonable answer to critics seems to be:
* the developers are already doing very well indeed coping with the
combination of extremely high demand and very limited resources
* they already know there are big growth and capacity problems, and are
working hard on scalability and reliability
* send money, rather than complaining

-- Neil


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal : wikimaps

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I hereby request this as a new project (we already do have wikimaps.org,
> right?).

I think this is a bit premature. Wikimaps should be as human editable as
possible and I can't really figure out how to do that with the implementation
you presented (and I work as a full time GIS specialist).

Much more time is needed to develop something workable, IMO. Did you contact
the person I mentioned in one of previous posts on this?

There is also a lot that goes into forming a new project. One cannot just ask
and have it happen anymore.

> IMHO a separate, single server would be best suited for this. With a lot
> of data, map generation will slow down, and it should not slow down
> other projects in turn. Also, due to the speed of the wikimedia projects
> (or the lack thereof), I propose waiting for the next batch of servers
> to be installed before doing this.

We have very serious server/performance issues to deal with first.

> There's the question of the license for the data we will collect. PD?
> GFDL? CC-BY-SA? If we say geo-data should be public domain, can we
> really slap a "GFDL" on it? Or maybe we should dual-license out to-be
> data CC-BY-SA and GFDL, to give maximum freedom while ensuring the data
> stays free?

My experience working in the field has convinced me that PD is not at all the
way to do. Way too many people take PD GIS data (such as from the U.S.
Government), make a few improvements and then place their whole version under a
proprietary license. And this is done literally *hundreds* of times, which
heavily divides effort by making a great many incompatible forks.

In fact, needless replication of incompatible effort like this is perhaps the
biggest problem faced in my industry. For example, street centerline files are
created for the whole U.S. by the U.S. Government. These files are often fairly
buggy. So each mid to large-sized city has their own GIS staff correct their
part of the file - but these corrections hardly ever find their way back into
the country-wide files (I've never heard of a single case). Multiply that
several times to get the number of non-local government forks of the same GIS
data (who then sell their versions at a high price).

A copyleft license would encourage and much better enable positive feedback
into improving the GIS files. If not, then people will just treat our work the
same as they do PD U.S. government work with all the associated forking.

This situation will not change until/unless the U.S. federal court system rules
on whether or not all GIS data should be covered by copyright at all. IMO,
slavish tracing of streets and natural features has no creative merit and is
thus not eligible for copyright. Yet copyright claims and lawsuits to protect
those claims are very common.

So we must live within the world that is presented to us and wait for the day
when that world attains some sanity. Until then we need to protect our work
through the use of a copyleft license.

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
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list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Everyking

body:
Unless something has happened since last night that I'm unaware of, no, Everyking has not used his admin powers on the articles he's edit warring.

RickK

David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
So far as I am aware, Everyking has not in fact abused his admin powers on
the articles in contention. If this is not the case, please let us know and
put it on /Evidence !

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] original research, sources, and verification

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> steven l. rubenstein said:
>> > repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
>> > that  claims should come from reputable sources,
>> >
>> Tony Sidaway replied:
>>
>> You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
>> sources should be reputable?
>
>
> The policy states "More than that, you should actively search for
> authoritative references to cite".  Authoritative, in my view, means
> reputable.

At the risk of splitting hairs, I usually interpret "authoritative"
as being with respect to something, while "reputable" is less
focussed. A LaRouche website can be authoritative w.r.t. official
group positions, while being considered non-authoritative on every
other subject, and maybe generally disreputable to boot.

References and external links should include at least brief
caveats about quality of sources, just as one sees in good book
bibliographies.

Stan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> JAY JG wrote:
>
>>> steven l. rubenstein said:
>>> > repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
>>> > that  claims should come from reputable sources,
>>> >
>>> Tony Sidaway replied:
>>>
>>> You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
>>> sources should be reputable?
>>
>> The policy states "More than that, you should actively search for
>> authoritative references to cite".  Authoritative, in my view, means
>> reputable.
>
>
> At the risk of splitting hairs, I usually interpret "authoritative"
> as being with respect to something, while "reputable" is less
> focussed. A LaRouche website can be authoritative w.r.t. official
> group positions, while being considered non-authoritative on every
> other subject, and maybe generally disreputable to boot.
>
> References and external links should include at least brief
> caveats about quality of sources, just as one sees in good book
> bibliographies.

The phrase "you should actively search for" does not imply that the less
autoritative ones should be excluded, only that better ones should be
included.  By adding a caveat to a dubious reference it forewarns the
user of a possible problem.  When that same reference is deleted from
the article the warning goes with it, and our poor user is left to
Google and flounder on his own.  He will probably find the site anyway,
and have to waste his own time determining that the site is pure trash.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] recipes

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>My main problem with the transwiki'ing thing is that Wikibooks has
>considerably different rules, where the major contributors to a
>specific "book" get more say in what can go in and what cannot, or
>what they want it to look like.
>
As the person who coined the term "transwiki" I need to comment on its
intent.  It was meant precisely to deal with the kind of problem that
you mention.  This is a completely different problem from deciding
_what_ should be transferred.  For purposes of this discussion let's at
least assume that choosing to transfer was the right course of action.

The assumption was also made that a person in one project would NOT be
familiar with the rules and customs of the receiving project, nor would
he even know if the material existed there, though perhaps with a
different title.  (That difference may be the result of different naming
policies that he would not be expected to know like the Esperanto
Wikipedia's policy of putting surnames in all capitals.) He probably
also has no wish to become an regular participant in the receiving project.

So he copies the article on Topic A as it appears to [[Transwiki:Topic
A]] on the receiving project.  A member of the receiving project can
then start the procedure of dealing with it in accordance witho that
project's rules.

Ec


from_name: Chip Berlet

subject:
Original Research versus Point of View,
	was Re: [WikiEN-l] The3RR policy sho

body:
Hi,

Actually, you are looking at the wrong block of text.

Here is the text inserted by the LaRouche supporters (as modified
slightly by other editors to make it clear these are unverified claims:

===

He claims to have pioneered such ideas as the International Development
Bank, the [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] or "Star Wars," and the
so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge. It also claimed that he was used by the
[[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] administration as a "back-channel" for
negotiations with the [[Soviet Union]].

According to a speech made by LaRouche science advisor Paul
Gallagher[http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3110sdi_timeline.html],
LaRouche and his representatives met with Reagan administration Energy
Secretary [[Donald Hodel]], Interior Secretary [[James Watt]], Science
Adviser Dr. [[George Keyworth]], and State Department official [[Richard
Morris]] in early [[1981]]. Gallagher also claims that later that year
Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche met with [[CIA]] Deputy Director [[Bobby
Ray Inman]], and cites the following remarks, made in early [[1993]] at
the National Press Club by former head of German Military Intelligence,
Gen. Paul-Albert Scherer:

:"In the Spring of 1982 here in the Soviet Embassy there were very
important secret talks that were held.... The question was: Did the
United States and the Soviet Union wish jointly to develop an
anti-ballistic missile defense that would have made nuclear war
impossible? Then, in August, you had this very sharp Soviet rejection of
the entire idea.... I have discussed this thoroughly with the developer,
the originator of this idea, who is the scientific-technological
strategic expert, Lyndon LaRouche. The [Soviet] rejection came in
August, and at that point the American President Reagan decided to push
this entire thing out into the public eye, so he made his speech of
March 1983."

:::<small>Press Conference at the National Press Club, Washington, DC.,
May 6, 1992; video of Scherer's remarks was broadcast on the "LaRouche
Connection" cable TV program throughout the
U.S.[http://www.larouchepub.com/tv/tlc_programs_1991-1995.html]</small>

===

Here is the text I inserted to provide balance:

===

In his book, Dennis King identifies Scherer as a long-time LaRouche
supporter.<!--See index to King's book-->

According to an article by Chip Berlet: "New Right military specialist,
retired General Daniel O. Graham, says LaRouche followers have
significantly hampered his work. Graham, Director of Project High
Frontier which supports and helped develop President Reagan's Strategic
Defense Initiative plan for anti-missile defense, says the LaRouche
groups have 'caused a lot of problems by adopting our issue in an effort
to sieze credit for the idea.' 'They also mounted a furious attack on me
personally,' says Graham. 'Even today I get mail asking if I'm in league
with LaRouche,' he adds
wearily."[http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/nclc3.html]

[Later pro-Larouche addition here]

There is no independent verification outside of LaRouche group media,
however, of the claim that LaRouche originated or played a major role in
the development of "Star Wars" missile defense.

===

Then the LaRouchites added this [Later pro-Larouche addition]:

===

LaRouche countered, "President Reagan's initial version of SDI was
consistent with what I had introduced into U.S.-Soviet back-channel
discussions over the period beginning February 1982. However,
immediately thereafter, the mice went to work. Daniel Graham, the
leading opponent of SDI up to that time, now proclaimed himself the
virtual author of the policy, and was used, thereafter, to remove all of
the crucial elements from the original
policy."[http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2000/2750_teller.html]

===

And on and on and on.

What is happening is that the pro-LaRouche editors insert an
ever-increasing amount of pro-LaRouche text from LaRouchite
publications, forcing additional text to be added for balance, then more
from the pro-LaRouche editors. On the discussion page (especially on
Talk: Political Views of Lyndon LaRouche) you can see that HK especially
protests every single insertion of material critical of LaRouche. Claims
(falsely) that quotes are invented, then says they are cooked or
misrepresented, then demands context, then demand actual image files.
Then, if the critical sentence remains, HK and other pro-LaRouche
editors adds another unverified quote from a LaRouche publication.

When the article gets too big, a subsection is spawned, and another
LaRouche-linked page starts to grow like a virus.

In a serious encyclopedia like Wikipedia, LaRouche would get one small
page that represented the majority view of reality, offered a disclaimer
that LaRouche disagrees and claims vast conspiracies against him, and
then linked to several fo the LaRouceh web pages.

Wikipedia has become a propaganda arm of the LaRouche network because
the pro-LaRouche editors are manipulating the system.

Cberlet


subject:
[Foundation-l] Should we go into read-only mode during peak periods
	to deal with slowdowns?

body:
As it is and in spite of very admirable efforts by our volunteer developers,
the site is still effectively dead during peak periods. NOIE: I know more
servers on on the way, but it will be a couple weeks - at least - until they
are on-line.

The slowdown does not make us look good to clueless visitors to our site who
are only looking for information. A great many of those people will simply not
wait and move on while us Wikipediaholics spend hour upon frustrating hour
trying to police the site and contribute content.

As a temporary measure in situations like this, I propose that all the wikis be
locked into read only mode with no log-ins accepted and a sitewide message be
displayed on the top of each page saying what is happening, why, and how they
can help by donating (with a donation link).

This could be phased-in with the English language sites going read-only first,
and then for all other wikis as the site message is translated. Read
performance should greatly improve with all page requests cachable and database
usage at a minimum,

That way we are still available to readers (by far our most numerous users),
everybody is informed, and our editors get a much needed break from a
frustrating editing experience. This should also have a side benefit of greatly
increasing donations.

So, what does everybody else think?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
Tony, you may be mixing up primary and secondary sources. When you use
a publication from the British National Party (an anti-immigration
nationalist group regarded as racist, for those not familiar with it)
as a source of information about itself, you're using it as a primary
source, which is fine, so long as you make clear where you're taking
the information from.

But if you used a BNP pamphlet or website as a source of information
on the British Labour Party, for example, you'd be using it as a
secondary source. It would be hard to justify using the BNP as a
secondary source for anything as they are not what most people would
regard as a reputable organization. If you were to quote their views
on immigration statistics, say, I would regard the BNP as not a
reputable source for that, because they can't be trusted. If you were
to  cite their existence as an example of opposition to immigration
policies in the UK, and quoted from them in that context, that would
be fine.

The evaluation of what a reputable, authoritative, appropriate source
is, is complex and context-dependent. We can't leave it up to the
reader to make up their own minds, as you say. We're an encylopedia,
and our job is to decipher, evaluate, and summarize on behalf of the
reader, though we try to do that in an unbiased and fair manner. The
fundamental issue in all good research at any level is to cite good
sources accurately and appropriately, so that the reader can follow
your argument, look at the context, and make sure you've summarized
your sources' views accurately. But if you want to use any source
whatsoever, and leave all evaluation of sources up to the reader, you
might as well get rid of Wikipedia and let our former readers do
Google searches instead.

Slim

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:54:58 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> steven l. rubenstein said:
> > repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> > that  claims should come from reputable sources,
>
> You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
> sources should be reputable?  What if I want to describe the British
> National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?


body:
Some of the LaRouche insertions are transparent rubbish, Tony, but
some not. I only cited the Star Wars example because it was an obvious
one. Less obvious examples of propaganda are: The LaRouche movement
claims the only reason LaRouche has a bad name is that a series of
meetings took place in the 80s between intelligence officers and
journalists in order to plan a "Get LaRouche" black operation, which
resulted in a barrage of negative media reports about him. There's no
evidence other than LaRouche claims that this campaign existed. The
LaRouche editors tried to edit this information into the LaRouche
articles. Of course, they are allowed to do that because the pages are
about LaRouche and his beliefs, but they expanded on it and inserted
details that were absurd and links which seemed to verify it. A group
of editors opposed them, so the LaRouche editors created a new page
about these meetings and inserted the information there instead, and
linked to it from the LaRouche page.

Another tactic that LaRouche has is to sign up respectable people to
be officers or members of his organization. Why these people agree to
become involved is beyond me, but some do. The LaRouche editors then
create Wikipedia pages about these people, who would otherwise not be
written about, extol their virtues, and link to them from the LaRouche
pages, thereby creating the impression to the casual, non-LaRouche
expert that "Hey, this LaRouche guy can't be all bad. Look at how nice
some of his officers are."

The only reason this stuff hasn't spread like wildfire throughout
Wikipedia is because a number of editors have opposed them since they
first started last May (not always the same group of editors, because
editors get worn out and give up) and so the material is reasonably
contained. But it's an exhausting job. If you want to join in, you are
more than welcome, because one or two of us could do with a break.

Slim

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:59:47 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> So what?  It's transparent rubbish. <snip> Let them quote their own sources forever.  The minute they pretend an external source endorses this nonsense, politely correct the edit.  You could manage this group of pages with one eye shut.


list: commons-l

from_name: notafish

subject: [Commons-l] Photo Information

body:
Most digital cameras, yes. I happen not to use one ;-), yeah,
old-fashioned and all. Well I do believe that a field to be filled on
upload would make things much much easier for everybody.

Ask for a licence is another important field, or warn that unless
provided, the licence will be GFDL or something.

Cheers,

Delphine

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:00:37 -0500, Benjamin Esham <bdesham at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 19, 2005, at 11:51 AM, Fruggo wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure the shutter speed / camera model are really relevant
>
> This information can be interesting, though... instead of asking
> uploaders
> to add this information themselves, it would be nice if MediaWiki could
> extract EXIF data and display it automatically.  I'm pretty sure most
> digital cameras support the embedding of EXIF info.
>
> --
> Benjamin D. Esham        {        http://bdesham.net
> bdesham at gmail.com        }        AIM: bdesham 1 2 8
> Six Gmail invites -- e-mail me if you're interested.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography and
label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a spot
in Wikipedia? Heavens no.

Mark

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:13:14 +0900, Guillaume Blanchard
<gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> Andre Engels a ?crit :
>
> >> I don't see good technical reasons (= technical solution that couldn't
> >> be done on WP) to move lexicological information outside of Wikipedia
> >> but it's not the point. Move cooking information (or a day sport, tv,
> >> celebrities, etc.) outside of the encyclopedia is not legitimate as far
> >> as you don't give reason why is not encyclopedic (witch is impossible if
> >> we don't all us the same definition of what a encyclopedia is). "Present
> >> the whole spectrum of human knowledge" is close to my own definition,
> >> but I'm not sure everybody where have the same definition and it's
> >> clearly not the way we are following removing recipes. I agree the fact
> >> we need some limit to the "whole spectrum", but I'd like to have a
> >> definition of this limit. "Things that didn't interfere life of wide
> >> human group" ?
> >
> > In my opinion, an encyclopedia is in the first place a work of
> > reference, and from that I get my idea of what should be in Wikipedia:
> > All that normally would be found in some reference work (some
> > "encyclopedia of such-and-such"). That also makes me more deletionist
> > than people like you, probably.
> >
> > Andre Engels
>
> Does that mean all recipes we can found into cooking encyclopedias are
> legitimate on Wikipedia?
> I can't imagine a consensus about an exhaustive list of references, so
> your definition moves the debate to "what a reference is?". Personally,
> I think the "reference" concept is not relevant outside of science
> domain. In science, the pertinence criteria are concrete: accuracy of
> formula and reproducibility of experience. What are the pertinence
> criteria for culture?
>
> Aoineko
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Recipes

body:
I agree with you strongly here.

I personally think we should have a separate WikiCookbook project
outside of Wikibooks, but then that's just me.

Mark

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:51:43 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:50:47 -0500, Olve Utne <utne at nvg.org> wrote:
> > I agree with Sabine, Giuseppe Guillaume, Sj, & al.: Recipes do belong in
> > Wikipedia -- they are excellent sources of cultural information. The
> > appropriate level of detail for the recipe may of course vary between
> > articles: A recipe for "pinnekj?t(t)" (typical of (mostly) one region of
> > Norway) is relatively easy to write down, and the variants are similar
> > enough to each other that one can keep it short and clear. A recipe for
> > "haroset" (typical of almost all Jewish cultures) is obviously going to be
> > a much harder task with all its variety...
>
> I disagree. The recipe may be the _source_ of the information, but we
> should extract the information that is important (product
> such-and-such has always those ingredients and sometimes those too, it
> is baked/cooked/whatever, etcetera) and leave out the information that
> is not descriptive of the product, but prosprictive of how it is made,
> as well as details that probably differ from person to person (exact
> quantities, temperature of the oven, cooking times). At the Dutch page
> on asparagus I wrote that a traditional way of eating them is with ham
> and eggs. That's essential information. Whether there should be one
> egg per 2, 4 or 10 asparagus cannot be specified without going POV.
> But a recipe is not complete without it.
>
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Robert Dodier

subject:
[WikiEN-l] agenda promotion,
	was: Re: Original Research versus Point of View

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> The only reason this stuff hasn't spread like wildfire throughout
> Wikipedia is because a number of editors have opposed them since they
> first started last May (not always the same group of editors, because
> editors get worn out and give up) and so the material is reasonably
> contained. But it's an exhausting job. If you want to join in, you
> are more than welcome, because one or two of us could do with a
break.

This discussion points up what seems to be the greatest
hazard and roadblock to Wikipedia: the current editorial
model simply cannot cope with determined agenda promotion.

In the absence of agenda promotion, Wikipedia works great.
For 99% (or more) of the articles, the "anyone can edit anytime"
policy works just fine, and produces good content.

However some of the most important (or popular, at least)
articles fall in that tiny fraction. GW Bush, Reagan, Israel
and Palestine come to mind. What I see is that WP can get in
the neighborhood of a great article, but can't ever get
there. It's like driving across town to see a movie only to
have edit warriors grabbing the steering wheel every time
you try to park, so you end up circling the block forever.

Since Wikipedia isn't an experiment in participatory democracy,
there shouldn't be any problem in modifying the "anyone can
edit anytime" policy, since it is not always serving the larger goal
of creating an encyclopedia. My own proposal is that contentious
pages (and only those) be controlled by editorial boards staffed
by demonstrably boring bureaucrats. I'm sure there are a
multitude of proposals -- I'd certainly like to hear about them.

For what it's worth,
Robert Dodier

__________________________________
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All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

> If an encyclopedia were really a compendium of all human knowledge, we
> wouldn't need Wiktionary.
>
> Mark

Exactly! If Wikipedia was a compendium of human knowledge, we wouldn't
need Wiktionary because Wiktionary excluded some linguistic knowledge
from the main encyclopedia. Now, some wikipadians would like to exclude
some cooking knowledge. What next? What is the argument to say what is
encyclopedic or not? Actually, Wikipedians are not representative at all
of human diversity (sex, age, culture, etc.) so, imho, majority's
opinion is not relevant to answer this question.
So I ask again to Jimbo, "What kind of encyclopedia is Wikipedia?"

Aoineko


body:
Hi,

This type of glib response is not helpful. This is a serious issue. The
reverts, deletions, and additions take place constantly. People get
tired out.

-Cberlet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 3:00 PM
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: RE: Original Research versus Point of View,was Re:
> [WikiEN-l] The3RR policy sho
>
>
> Chip Berlet said:
> >
> > What is happening is that the pro-LaRouche editors insert an
> > ever-increasing amount of pro-LaRouche text from LaRouchite
> > publications,
>
> So what?  It's transparent rubbish.
>
>
> > forcing additional text to be added for balance,
>
> Bilge.  Let them quote their own sources forever.  The minute
> they pretend an external source endorses this nonsense,
> politely correct the edit.  You could manage this group of
> pages with one eye shut.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>steven l. rubenstein said:
> > repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> > that  claims should come from reputable sources,
> >
>Tony Sidaway replied:
>
>You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
>sources should be reputable?

The policy states "More than that, you should actively search for
authoritative references to cite".  Authoritative, in my view, means
reputable.


body:
>What if I want to describe the British
>National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?  Wouldn't the best way
>to do that be to cite the official policy itself?  It isn't produced by a
>reputable organisation, but it's pretty authoritative on official
>published party policy.

That's not the issue.  Citing the National Party on it's own policy is
perfectly reasonable.  However, the real issues occur when people want to
cite webpages like this
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/fake_invasion.htm on the
George Bush article:  to prove that George Bush "first started selling drugs
to our children. The drug money was used to finance the deep underground
alien bases."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Recipe

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>
>But even without looking at that, the way they are presented, they are
>not examples. They are descriptions, and often rather forcibly so
>("you should do this-and-that"). My objections would be much less _if
>they were indeed given as examples_. On the Dutch Wikipedia I have
>recently proposed to consider recepies "a kind of image", and add them
>in a separate block as such, not part of the main description.
>
I think what you're proposing is exactly right; the main description
is "chicken curry traditionally includes...", and then you can have
one sidebar giving the "Betty Crocker recipe" and a second with the
"1895 Cordon Bleu recipe", in just the same way that the article on
chairs can include photographs of several different chairs, but
nobody takes it to mean that all chairs must look exactly like one
of the illustrations.

Stan


body:
JAY JG wrote:

>
>> There should be a way to do it that the proponents would  not reasonably
>> object to. For instance, [[Rudolf Hess]] contains an external link to
>> the
>> [[Institute for Historical Review]] which notes that they are Holocaust
>> revisionists, which they do claim to be. And both the majority
>> against such
>> revisionism and the minority for it know exactly what "Holocaust
>> revisionism" means; and anyone who doesn't can follow the link on
>> "revisionist".
>
>
> Hmm, Historical revisionist seems a bit too easy.  How would you
> characterize that link I gave in the earlier e-mail, in way that
> warned people what kind of site it was, but the people running it
> could agree with?

"The people running this website claim to reveal the truth about
everything".

Stan


body:
>Bilge.  Let them quote their own sources forever.  The minute they pretend
>an external source endorses this nonsense, politely correct the edit.  You
>could manage this group of pages with one eye shut.

Why don't you go for it Tony?  Manage the LaRouche pages "with one eye shut"
for the next couple of weeks, and see exactly how easy it is?

Jay.


body:
I just thought I'd submit this here, so it can go through the "proper
chanels"... :-)

My latest software can generate maps from data stored in wiki pages.
Automatically generated maps should be used in Wikimedia and other
projects (wikitravel comes to mind). You probably saw my mail(s) on
wikipedia-l, but here's the link to the demo site again:
    http://magnusmanske.de/wikimaps/index.php/Main_Page
(requires SVG-enabeled browser).

I hereby request this as a new project (we already do have wikimaps.org,
right?).

IMHO a separate, single server would be best suited for this. With a lot
of data, map generation will slow down, and it should not slow down
other projects in turn. Also, due to the speed of the wikimedia projects
(or the lack thereof), I propose waiting for the next batch of servers
to be installed before doing this.

There's the question of the license for the data we will collect. PD?
GFDL? CC-BY-SA? If we say geo-data should be public domain, can we
really slap a "GFDL" on it? Or maybe we should dual-license out to-be
data CC-BY-SA and GFDL, to give maximum freedom while ensuring the data
stays free?

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimaps: autotracing

body:
This GPL'd software might come in useful for converting raster maps to a
vector format:

http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/index.html

-- Neil


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[Foundation-l] Should we go into read-only mode during peak
	periods to de...

body:
I would support the idea but with the caveat that perhaps it may be better to
start by doing that to smaller projects first. I dont know enough about
computers to be able to tell, but if we were to do that to wikisource, wikibooks,
and maybe some of the smaller languages first, the larger projects would be
able to function adequately.

Danny


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[Fwd: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be
	blindlyfollowed]

body:
JAY JG said:
>>Tony Sideway wrote:
>>
>>So this is all about "other" people, then?
>
> Why, did you think it was about you, Tony?

No, but since you seem to be rejecting every single reasonable suggestion,
I have been forming the opinion that it might *not* actually be about
people but at all, but the ways in which people interact.  I've been
trying to suggest that there are ways of doing things that aren't being
fully exploited.>
>>Where there is an edit dispute, get more people to look
>>at the article.  That solves the problem far quicker and more
>>effectively than tit-for-tat editing.
>
> Have you not been following the discussion? People have been pointing
> out  that that simply doesn't work in many cases, due to lack of time,
> or  interest in, or knowledge of, the subject area.
>
I've been following the discussion but I do not see any great wealth of
examples of this kind of activity going on without being satisfactorily
dealt with.  Really I'm not.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>> Exactly! If Wikipedia was a compendium of human knowledge, we
>> wouldn't need Wiktionary because Wiktionary excluded some linguistic
>> knowledge from the main encyclopedia. Now, some wikipadians would
>> like to exclude some cooking knowledge. What next? What is the
>> argument to say what is encyclopedic or not? Actually, Wikipedians
>> are not representative at all of human diversity (sex, age, culture,
>> etc.) so, imho, majority's opinion is not relevant to answer this
>> question.
>> So I ask again to Jimbo, "What kind of encyclopedia is Wikipedia?"
>>
>> Aoineko
>
> When you look outside the "wikipedia" box, still being in the
> "wikimedia" box,  you will find your dictionary information. When we
> finally have our "interproject links" it will even be obvious that
> there IS information within our projects about the lexicological
> information for a word. Like with the pictures and recordings in
> Commons, there is a technical reason why there is merit in having the
> lexicological information seperate from the encyclopedic information.
> This will become even more obvious when we get the hoped for "ultimate
> wiktionary".
>
> So to answer Aoineko, we are inclusive, it is all in the projects. We
> want to present the whole spectrum of human knowledge and make it
> available to all who can absorb it.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM

I don't see good technical reasons (= technical solution that couldn't
be done on WP) to move lexicological information outside of Wikipedia
but it's not the point. Move cooking information (or a day sport, tv,
celebrities, etc.) outside of the encyclopedia is not legitimate as far
as you don't give reason why is not encyclopedic (witch is impossible if
we don't all us the same definition of what a encyclopedia is). "Present
the whole spectrum of human knowledge" is close to my own definition,
but I'm not sure everybody where have the same definition and it's
clearly not the way we are following removing recipes. I agree the fact
we need some limit to the "whole spectrum", but I'd like to have a
definition of this limit. "Things that didn't interfere life of wide
human group" ?

Aoineko


body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>The phrase "you should actively search for" does not imply that the less
>autoritative ones should be excluded, only that better ones should be
>included.  By adding a caveat to a dubious reference it forewarns the user
>of a possible problem.  When that same reference is deleted from the
>article the warning goes with it, and our poor user is left to Google and
>flounder on his own.  He will probably find the site anyway, and have to
>waste his own time determining that the site is pure trash.

And what form should that "caveat" take?  "Warning, this site is run by
kooks"?

Jay.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski a ?crit :

>GB> I don't see good technical reasons (= technical solution that couldn't
>GB> be done on WP) to move lexicological information outside of Wikipedia
>
>I do. Imagine having dictionary definitions, grammatical information,
>equivalents in other languages for the article name and all names that
>redirect to that name in the same article...
>
Feasible into a new Wikipedia namespace with special rules ;o)
Again, it's not the point.

Aoineko


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Nature of a Wiki, was agenda promotion,
	was: Re: Original Research versus Point of View

body:
Wikipedia can be considered an exercise in participatory democracy engaged
in the task of creating an encyclopedia. Its purpose is not to refine and
perfect particatory demococracy, but wiki software is premised on wide and
more or less equal participation by the publics.

One may change that premise, but one should know that is what you are
discussing doing.

Fred

> From: Robert Dodier <robert_dodier at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:24:12 -0800 (PST)
> To: slimvirgin at gmail.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] agenda promotion, was: Re: Original Research versus Point
> of View
>
> Since Wikipedia isn't an experiment in participatory democracy,
> there shouldn't be any problem in modifying the "anyone can
> edit anytime" policy, since it is not always serving the larger goal
> of creating an encyclopedia. My own proposal is that contentious
> pages (and only those) be controlled by editorial boards staffed
> by demonstrably boring bureaucrats. I'm sure there are a
> multitude of proposals -- I'd certainly like to hear about them.
>
> For what it's worth,
> Robert Dodier


body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>
>> The phrase "you should actively search for" does not imply that the
>> less autoritative ones should be excluded, only that better ones
>> should be included.  By adding a caveat to a dubious reference it
>> forewarns the user of a possible problem.  When that same reference
>> is deleted from the article the warning goes with it, and our poor
>> user is left to Google and flounder on his own.  He will probably
>> find the site anyway, and have to waste his own time determining that
>> the site is pure trash.
>
> And what form should that "caveat" take?  "Warning, this site is run
> by kooks"?

It doesn't need to be any longer, but a little more respectful would help.

Ec


body:
It's good!

However I have a couple of concerns.

First of all, the package you use to convert images to coordinates is
difficult to use. If I want to import a map of 3 countries, I have to
click the right spots exactly, and I have to click a lot of different
spots unless all the borders/coastlines are straight or almost
straight. However it is better than none at all.

Second of all, aren't there already systems available with coordinate
information for the outlines of all current countries that you can get
online? Subdivisions of individual countries may be more difficult to
find, but just country outlines (and maybe capital cities?) you should
be able to get off the internet.

Mark

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:21:24 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I have set up an early testing version of my map drawing software. It
> can be found at
>
>     http://magnusmanske.de/wikimaps
>
> Note: You'll see SVGs directly. So, you'll need a browser that natively
> supports SVG (Konqueror, some Mozilla builds) or a plugin.
>
> The site is basically a 1.4 MediaWiki with an extension called "geomap".
> You can see the invokation in the source of the main page.
>
> The actual map rendering extension is running on its own, using the
> MediaWiki database as data source. It outputs SVG, which is embedded as
> an object in the actual wiki page output.
>
> I will add my demo data of the rest of Germany tonight, so there's more
> to see than Bavaria...
>
> Please note that the SVG is actually generated in *real-time*, on *each
> view*. Of course, in its final form, it would cache the SVG, and also
> offer rendered PNGs. I'm not quite there yet, as ImageMagick tends to
> die on SVG-to-PNG conversion :-(
>
> Please visit the demo site, have a look, tweak some stuff (add a city,
> resize Bavaria;-) and tell me if (and how) we should make this a "real"
> Wikimedia project.
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Well, if I don't ask, nothing's gonna happen at all, right? Right??
> How
> many of my (and other peoples) projects keep rotting in CVS and
> other
> unspeakable places, because they didn't get the necessary push? I
> stopped counting.

Yeah, ask, bang the drum. That's the only way. Go go go!

>
> I invested quite some brain-power into this one; and as far as I
> can
> judge my own 'ware objectively, it strikes me as both very useful
> and
> thought-through, despite the (relatively!) short time I've been
> working
> on it. But since presentation and persistance (read: creation of
> Klingon
> wikipedia and the like) have become, as you imply yourself, more
> important than writing code, I'm now bugging everyone as much as I
> can,
> in the vague hope something good comes out of it this time, and my
> work
> will not be in vain yet again.

Bug away, also, make simple simple website explaining the stuff. You
may reach people beyond WP. Which is good.

> What else do you expect? Me
> to
> finish the whole world data set before I get approval? :-)

<sarcasm level="full">
Of course, and with altitude, cover, and air data. and don't forget
to map all the latitude longitude coordinates automagically.
</sarcasm>

> Agreed; we might have to wait a *very* long time for that, though
> :-(

Don't wait. Did Linus wait? Just do it.

> P.S.: Glancing over this mail again, I might annoy someone or the
> other with it. Sorry!

Not as many as you cheer up. Carry on.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
1. I never said they were. I just said that there are many different
encyclopedias, and illustrated that it was not practical to use what
is included in a single encyclopedia as a criterium for inclusion,
especially when the encyclopaedia isn't one of general knowledge.

2. Can you prove they're not equivalent?

3. If you can prove they're not equivalent, can you prove they're not analogous?

Mark

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:19:16 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050121 08:21]:
>
> > There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
> > All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography and
> > label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a spot
> > in Wikipedia? Heavens no.
>
>
> Recipe encyclopedias are not equivalent to this hypothetical example. Do
> you have any real examples?
>
>
> - d.
>
>


from_name: Robert Brookes

body:
--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> >What if I want to describe the British
> >National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?
>  Wouldn't the best way
> >to do that be to cite the official policy itself?
> It isn't produced by a
> >reputable organisation, but it's pretty
> authoritative on official
> >published party policy.
>
> That's not the issue.  Citing the National Party on
> it's own policy is
> perfectly reasonable.  However, the real issues
> occur when people want to
> cite webpages like this
>
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/fake_invasion.htm
> on the
> George Bush article:  to prove that George Bush
> "first started selling drugs
> to our children. The drug money was used to finance
> the deep underground
> alien bases."
>

I agree to the extent that where one cites information
from say virusmyth.net one should clearly state that
the website presents opinion that questions the
"HIV-causes-AIDS" hypothesis. Such information is only
OK if it is in context and the source clearly stated
IMHO.

Robert

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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
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from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] few questions (namespaces and RTL printing)

body:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:54:11 +0200, Eran <eran_roz at netvision.net.il> wrote:
> In the Hebrew Wikipedia the "Category" namespace isn't translated (it
> should be translated to ??????? ).
> When it will be translated, what will happen to the category pages- will
> those pages be moved automatically to the new namespace? Will the links
> to category pages be modified automatically?

The pages will not be "moved", since the namespace isn't striclty
speaking part of the title - the database refers to the namespaces by
a seperate, numeric, field. But from a user point of view, the title
of each page will become translated with no manual intervention
required.

Existing links, however, since they are just stored in the text of the
individual articles, will *not* be altered - but it won't matter,
because every copy of MediaWiki has a hard-coded set of "canonical"
namespace names, which are the same as those of the English Wikipedia,
with the exception of "Project:" (and "Project_talk:") where Wikipedia
would have "Wikipedia:". These names are valid alternative titles for
whatever pages exist - so, for example, one can refer to
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:IMSoP and find oneself at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:IMSoP. In the case of Category
links, therefore, you can use the prefix "Category:" to refer to a
category page whatever language you're using.

To drift off topic, and I know it's been said before, but it would
make a lot of sense if we didn't save the actual text of things like
category links, and instead reconstructed them on demand from the
links table(s). That way, categories could be managed from both
directions, as it were - e.g. you could rename a category and have the
members of the category transferred, not just the description.
Something to think about, I feel, for future schema designing etc.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Andre Engels a ?crit :

>> I don't see good technical reasons (= technical solution that couldn't
>> be done on WP) to move lexicological information outside of Wikipedia
>> but it's not the point. Move cooking information (or a day sport, tv,
>> celebrities, etc.) outside of the encyclopedia is not legitimate as far
>> as you don't give reason why is not encyclopedic (witch is impossible if
>> we don't all us the same definition of what a encyclopedia is). "Present
>> the whole spectrum of human knowledge" is close to my own definition,
>> but I'm not sure everybody where have the same definition and it's
>> clearly not the way we are following removing recipes. I agree the fact
>> we need some limit to the "whole spectrum", but I'd like to have a
>> definition of this limit. "Things that didn't interfere life of wide
>> human group" ?
>
> In my opinion, an encyclopedia is in the first place a work of
> reference, and from that I get my idea of what should be in Wikipedia:
> All that normally would be found in some reference work (some
> "encyclopedia of such-and-such"). That also makes me more deletionist
> than people like you, probably.
>
> Andre Engels

Does that mean all recipes we can found into cooking encyclopedias are
legitimate on Wikipedia?
I can't imagine a consensus about an exhaustive list of references, so
your definition moves the debate to "what a reference is?". Personally,
I think the "reference" concept is not relevant outside of science
domain. In science, the pertinence criteria are concrete: accuracy of
formula and reproducibility of experience. What are the pertinence
criteria for culture?

Aoineko


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

body:
On 19 Jan 2005, at 3:48 pm, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> like google labs, only wikilabs? a place to put all our crazy
>> dreams...
>> sounds like a good idea.
>
> Not as a stand-alone Wikimedia project.

Why not?

Christianan


body:
>There should be a way to do it that the proponents would  not reasonably
>object to. For instance, [[Rudolf Hess]] contains an external link to the
>[[Institute for Historical Review]] which notes that they are Holocaust
>revisionists, which they do claim to be. And both the majority against such
>revisionism and the minority for it know exactly what "Holocaust
>revisionism" means; and anyone who doesn't can follow the link on
>"revisionist".

Hmm, Historical revisionist seems a bit too easy.  How would you
characterize that link I gave in the earlier e-mail, in way that warned
people what kind of site it was, but the people running it could agree with?

Jay.


from_name: Jeff Cook

subject: [WikiEN-l] "The"

body:
There's been a little bit of debate on [[Wikipedia:Requested moves]]
recently with the proposals to move [[Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints]] to [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints]] (which isn't on the page anymore; discussion archived at
[[Talk:Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]]) and [[The George
Washington University]] to [[George Washington University]], which you
can still vote for. I just wanted to point this out to people not
aware.

I would also like to peddle my point of view now. I nominated the
changed for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and GWU was
listed after it was cited as precedent in that case. I believe we
should call things by their name whenever that's feasible; if that's
an organization, by the legal name; if it's something else, by it's
most common name. In both instances, "The" is included in the common
and legal name. The Church released a style guide a few years back
which specifically advised media that the "The" was to be included, at
least in the first reference. The George Washington University has
been similarly vigilant about its moniker. Largely an outgrowth of
these efforts, both seem to include the "The" in the majority of uses
by reputable publications. [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]] also
agrees with all of this, as it states that the definite article should
be used "in titles of works [and] official names".

kthx
--
Jeff "cookiecaper" Cook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cookiecaper
:)


body:
>>Hmm, Historical revisionist seems a bit too easy.  How would you
>>characterize that link I gave in the earlier e-mail, in way that warned
>>people what kind of site it was, but the people running it could agree
>>with?
>
>"The people running this website claim to reveal the truth about
>everything".

LOL!  Good answer!


from_name: Olve Utne

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Recipes

body:
There seems to be a difference in opinion about what a recipe is. Those who
are against having recipes as part of the food articles appear to think
that including a recipe is a(n attempt of) falsification of different
points of view.

A well-written recipe is, in my opinion, a very valuable part of a food
article. When that is said, it is of course essential from a lexicographic
point of view that:

1) It is clear that the recipe is a description rather than proscription.
2) The provided recipe/s is/are reasonably representative for the tradition
in question.
3) Common variations are listed in the recipe/s.
4) It is made clear what the general source for the provided recipe is.

Also, some recipes are very loosely defined, whilst others are by nature
extremely fine-tuned. The provided examples (recipes)  will, if properly
written, help make this clear.

>From: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
>Of course we want to know what they are. And of course you can write about
>it. But what I do not want is to be specified how much saffron I need,
>just that it's there, and why.

Sometimes this is essential information, and other times it is not.

>Wikipedia should describe what the world is, what things are. Not be
>prescriptive in what one should be doing. The article on food products
>should specify what's in them and how they are made, but a recipe is not a
>good way to do so. Just like the table article does not specify which
>length the legs of a table should be,

I beg to differ: It is essential information to mention the difference in
leg length of a diningroom table as opposed to a sofa table.

>the arancini article should not specify what filling should be in or how
>long it should be fried.

Maybe not. But that depends on what arancini-like foods one needs to
distinguish arancini from in a contrastive perspective. It also depends on
what the actual cultural criteria are for how much variation there can be
in the preparation before the result is no longer considered to be
arancini. (Which is not to say that the resulting non-arancini need to be
inferior in any way. They just happen to be something-else-than-arancini.)

>From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>In 3 years now, I have NEVER seen an edit war on a recipe. I have seen
>people adding that "though beef was usually used for the recipe, pork was
>also used as well". And I never saw anyone complain with this.

Sounds about right... :)

>From: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
>Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific
>information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?

Maybe. If describing boiled eggs, it may be essential to describe the
process well enough that a person who doesn't already know how many minutes
it is boiled *in a specific tradition* is able to find this information. It
is also essential that any such cultural description be relativised through
explicitly providing the information about *who* cook/s the eggs for the
specified number of minutes. If people from one culture tend to boil eggs
for two minutes and slurp them up from the shell with a bit of salt, there
is nothing wrong in Wikipedia articles mentioning this as long as the
description is properly qualified. It should then, of course, also be
mentioned that other cultures slow-cook their eggs for close to 20 hours,
peel the eggs before serving, and serve these eggs one-per-person as a
brown-grean-and-yellow almost creamy hors d'oeuvre.

>But even without looking at that, the way they are presented, they are not
>examples. They are descriptions, and often rather forcibly so ("you should
>do this-and-that"). My objections would be much less _if they were indeed
>given as examples_. On the Dutch Wikipedia I have recently proposed to
>consider recepies "a kind of image", and add them in a separate block as
>such, not part of the main description.

Not at all a bad idea! :-)

>Which to me is exactly the reason why we should not have them in
>Wikipedia. If recepies were just "general directions", I would not be so
>much against them. But they are not. They give one, specific recepy, and
>take that as the be all and end all.

Not if they are well integrated and properly qualified. Just like a
picture, a data table, or a graph representing specific data of relevance.

>But what defines "valid information". Is it "valid information" that an
>egg should boil a certain amount of time? Unless we give ourselves an
>amount of authority I'd say we should not even strive for, my answer is no.

That it "should" boil a certain amount of time? Probably not. That it *is
typically* boiled a certain amount of time in a particular and explicitly
specified cultural setting? Yes, in my opinion.

-Olve

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org


from_name: Eran

body:
In the Hebrew Wikipedia the "Category" namespace isn't translated (it
should be translated to ??????? ).
When it will be translated, what will happen to the category pages- will
those pages be moved automatically to the new namespace? Will the links
to category pages be modified automatically?

And another thing... printing in RTL languages is aligned to left
because of this code in commonPrint.css:
#content {
    background: none;
    border: none ! important;
    font-size: 11pt;
    padding: 0 ! important;
    margin: 0 ! important;
    text-align: left;
}
In the Hebrew Wikipedia we added this code to Mediawiki:monobook.css
which align it to right:
@media print {
    #content{
text-align:right;
}
}

Can someone add this code to RTL.css?

Thanks


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Livejournal

references:
<loom.20050119T230716-645@post.gmane.org>	<csnmmr$qbf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<41EF65E3.7030202@myrealbox.com>
	<csnu6f$e73$1@sea.gmane.org> <41EF98DB.90202@tonal.clara.co.uk>

body:
I'm sorry that I upset you Kate. As the performance of the site became worse and
worse with time, I and many others became most fustrated in the information
vacuum. I put voice to those fustrations. They were unfounded and unwarranted.
If I'd known the extent of the 'behind-the-scenes' work attempting to rectify
the problems I wouldn't have said it.

I'm just suggesting that to avoid such situations in future, people let us know
what's happening.

Dan100


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Recipe

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Would mentioning a cookbook in which the recipe is mentionned enough to satisfy those hungry for "credentials" ?
>
>
It would at least help avoid the argument over whether recipes are
copyrighted. Given the skeletal nature of a recipe, it may be tenuous to
take the position that they are, but there are a significant number of
people out there who are concerned about reprinting published recipes
for that reason. If we credit the cookbook, we're complying with Article
10 of the Berne Convention, which requires that you make mention of the
soure when quoting.

Also, the way we traditionally handle certain types of POV - one of the
main complaints about recipes - is by attributing that POV to a credible
source (not by removing it entirely). A recipe from a standard cookbook
for a given style of cuisine, or from a noteworthy cook (not your Aunt
Tillie, in other words), can satisfy this angle too.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Mark Williamson schrieb:
>
>> There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
>> All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography and
>> label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a spot
>> in Wikipedia?
>
> Of course! We can pipe these articles into my map software, and render
> Jimbo for future generations to come! :-)

Ah, the wiki approach to human cloning.

--Michael Snow


body:
steven l. rubenstein said:
> repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> that  claims should come from reputable sources,

You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
sources should be reputable?  What if I want to describe the British
National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?  Wouldn't the best way
to do that be to cite the official policy itself?  It isn't produced by a
reputable organisation, but it's pretty authoritative on official
published party policy.
Evaluation of sources is something that can be left to the reader.  NPOV
means that we report facts, and facts about opinions.  We do not present
an evaluation, we simply take care to describe the source accurately and
correctly identify the information that the source provides. So for
instance an official LaRouche website is a very good source for the
content of the official statements of the LaRouche people, an official
government website is a good source for the content of official statements
of the government, and the UN website is a good source for the official
published minutes of UN meetings and the like.  It's up to the reader to
decide what to make of the respective organisations.


body:
steven l. rubenstein said:
> This concerns the exchanges between SlimVirgin and others on policing
> POV  and the quality of sources.
>
> It seems that most people, including Jimbo, are committed to the quasi
> anarchic aspect of Wikipedia in which a large community of diverse
> editors  are always available to edit or comment on controversial
> articles.  I share  this commitment and agree that when editors come
> into conflict over content  or sources, the first thing to do is to
> invite others to look and comment,  and to give this process time so
> that as many people who might want to  comment as possible, do.
>
> But we all recognize that sometimes these informal processes are not
> sufficient, which is why we have mediation and arbitration mechanisms.
>
> I think SlimVirgin is calling attention to another situation where
> these  informal processes are not sufficient, but I don't think that
> our mediation  or arbitration mechanisms as currently conceived are of
> help.  I have two  points I'd like to make.
>
> If I understand her correctly,  SlimVirgin is pointing out that in some
>  cases concerning content, one must have special knowledge in order to
> identify and evaluate bias (or POV), and to evaluate the quality of
> sources.  This is especially important when there is division over the
> repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> that  claims should come from reputable sources, but there is not clear
> standard  of what a reputable source is -- nor do I think we can come
> up with one,  clear, inclusive explanation, it varies so much from
> field to field.  In  some cases, our normal procedures work fine (I am
> thinking specifically of  a fellow a couple of years ago who thought he
> had proven Einstein wrong;  enough folks here know enough about physics
> and the world of physicists  that over time it was clear that there was
> an informed consensus to revert  what this fellow had been adding.  In
> other cases, however, this does not  happen.  There may be different
> reasons why -- my sense is that even now  there are far more people who
> regularly contribute to Wikipedia who know a  lot about computers, than
> about ancient Near Eastern history.  Also, I (as  an outsider to this
> world) get the sense that there are lots of people who  really are
> quite expert in matters concerning computers, even if they do  not have
> PhD's in computer science and don't teach in Universities.  But  there
> may be some topics where the gulf in knowledge and understanding
> between experts and laypeople is immense.
>
> My first point is that the standard (and in my opinion ideal) process
> for  dealing with edit-conflicts is biased to work very well in some
> areas, and  less well in others.  In areas where there are very few
> editors
> knowledgeable enough to evaluate accuracy and the reputation of
> sources, we  often end up with edit wars that go in circles for weeks
> if not months.
>
> My second point is that we don't really have a good mechanism for
> resolving  conflict in these cases.  I have a high regard for our
> mediation and  arbitration processes, but in my experience mediators
> and arbitrators  usually focus on violation of behavioral guidelines.
> We do not have a  comparable mechanism for dealing with violations of
> content guidelines.  On  the guidelines and policies page we do
> distinguish between behavioral and  content guidelines, and there are a
> variety of policies in each
> category.  But we have institutional recourse for one category, and not
> the  other.
>
> I think we should either expand the brief of the mediation and
> arbitration  committees to enforce content guidelines or, if those
> committees prefer  having a more limited brief, form some other clear
> process to resolve  conflicts over content and enforce content
> policies.
>
> I believe very strongly that any mechanism we come up with should be a
> last  resort.  I believe it should be employed only when it is clear
> that the  ordinary anarchic way of dealing with such problems is not,
> even given  considerable time, working.  But I do think we need some
> mechanism.
>
> Steve
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] The essence of NPOV

body:
Without commenting directly on any of the flashpoints of frustration
currently under discussion, I think it's worth expressing what I believe
"neutral point of view" means to the overall content of an article. For
an article on a contentious subject to be NPOV, it must be an article
everyone can _live with_, *not* an article everyone is happy with.

There are some people who will never be happy with an article precisely
because it is not presented from their point of view.

--Michael Snow


body:
steven l. rubenstein said:
> Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> that  claims should come from reputable sources,

You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  I don't think it does.
Where does it say thatsources should be reputable?  What if I want to describe the British
National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?  Wouldn't the best way
to do that be to cite the official policy itself?  It isn't produced by a
reputable organisation, but it's pretty authoritative on official
published party policy.

Evaluation of sources is something that can be left to the reader.  NPOV
means that we report facts, and facts about opinions.  We do not present
an evaluation, we simply take care to describe the source accurately and
correctly identify the information that the source provides. So for
instance an official LaRouche website is a very good source for the
content of the official statements of the LaRouche people, an official
government website is a good source for the content of official statements
of the government, and the UN website is a good source for the official
published minutes of UN meetings and the like.  It's up to the reader to
decide what to make of the respective organisations.


body:
Chip Berlet said:
>
> What is happening is that the pro-LaRouche editors insert an
> ever-increasing amount of pro-LaRouche text from LaRouchite
> publications,

So what?  It's transparent rubbish.

> forcing additional text to be added for balance,

Bilge.  Let them quote their own sources forever.  The minute they pretend
an external source endorses this nonsense, politely correct the edit.  You
could manage this group of pages with one eye shut.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Well done everyone (was Re: Please use the
	LiveJournal!)

references:
<loom.20050119T230716-645@post.gmane.org>	<csnmmr$qbf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41EF65E3.7030202@myrealbox.com>

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Kate and all others,
> Considering that everything is done on such a LOW budget it is sheer
> magic. I am one of those people that "lurks in the background" offering
> little or no advice. What people do not realise is that in a
> "professional" setting solutions are often bought. You buy the latest
> doda, you hire that magic expert who comes to do his trick again. With
> the current budget you have a lot on your plate not only PHP but also
> Apache, not only Apache but also Squid, not only Squid but also MySQL,
> not only MySQL but also ..

I said on the village pump that I thought we are doing a great job, but
I don't think any of the developers I was aiming that comment at read
it. Let me take this opportunity to thank everyone and recognise what we
have acheived.

We've been working in adverse circumstances. During peak times, the site
has been extremely heavily loaded and unstable. Any slight error in
misconfiguration, or inaction at a particular time when action should
have been taken, causes the site to crash. I've lost count of how many
problems we've identified and fixed just over the last few weeks.

Many users say "the developers are doing a great job", or "we all know
that the developers are very busy", but the fact is that 99% of users
don't have a clue what we are doing. They don't know what our
achievements have been and they don't know the challenges we face.
Gerard's comments are certainly refreshing in this regard, but I think I
can add to them. Assume I am speaking on behalf of the users, since I'm
sure every user would agree with me if they only knew who to thank.

Big thanks go to JamesDay, who almost single-handedly administers 8
database servers, a task requiring constant monitoring and work on the
order of hours per day. James's advice to the MediaWiki developers and
other system administrators is invaluable.

Also on the topic of database administration, Kate's servmon and
WikiServices bots which have kept the site running when otherwise it
would have been choked with long-running queries.

Thanks to Med and Submarine for their work in network and hardware
administration of the Paris squids. Well done Mark and Kate for getting
PowerDNS up and running and thus getting the Paris squids into service.

Domas's setproctitle() patch is amazing and we all know it. Of course
his other system administration and development work is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Brion, JeLuF and Hashar for their tireless and usually
unrecognised work in fixing MediaWiki bugs.

Thanks to Kate for setting up Pen and Perlbal. This is the third time
I'm thanking Kate and that's no coincidence - if she left us we'd be
left with a dozen pieces of software that no-one else knows how to use.

I know you're all stressed, all we seem to get is complaints despite
what we've acheived. I decided after Caroline Ewen's post on wikipedia-l
that I can't afford to answer every single question asking "why is the
site slow" or every report of "I'm getting backtrace errors!" The fact
is that the site has grown to such a size that every time something goes
wrong, we can expect a flood of complaints and queries. My advice would
be to answer only some of them, and let alert users distribute the
information to everyone who asks. Or just ignore them -- remember your
time is valuable. Think of what you could have achieved in the time it
took you to put a single user out of their ignorance.

When the public forums are too noisy with uninformed speculation, let's
organise what we need to make the site better in less visible, more
constructive forums, and work with the Board to make it happen.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Well done everyone - Wikipedia cluster vs. Google
	supercluster

references:
<loom.20050119T230716-645@post.gmane.org>	<csnmmr$qbf$1@sea.gmane.org>	<41EF65E3.7030202@myrealbox.com>	<csnu6f$e73$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41EF98DB.90202@tonal.clara.co.uk>

body:
As a neophyte, I found your comparisons very interesting.
I think journalists commenting on our speed might find it interesting as
  well ;-) Thanks for this.

Anthere

Neil Harris a ?crit:
> Just to take this a bit further. I thought I'd compare Wikipedia with
> one of the "well-run sites" that we are supposed to be competing with.
> Google is a good direct comparison, because of its dynamic content, with
> cachable frequent queries.
>
> Looking at the difference in traffic between Google and Wikipedia on
> Alexa shows that:
> * Wikipedia has 300 page views per million
> * Google has 16,000 page views per million
> Thus, Google serves roughly 53 times the number of page views compared
> to Wikipedia.
>
> However,
> * Wikipedia currently has 39 servers
> * Google has an estimated 50,000 - 100,000 servers in its worldwide farm
> of clusters
> Thus, Google has roughly 1250 - 2500 times as many servers as Wikipedia
> [Source: http://www.tnl.net/blog/entry/How_many_Google_machines for an
> estimate for April last year, and allowing for more recent expenditure]
>
> Thus, we might regard Wikipedia as being roughly 24 to 48 times more
> "efficient" in its use of hardware than Google. Given that Google has
> spent over $250M on hardware, to obtain reasonable parity for our
> developers to be expected to compete with Google at our current traffic
> we should have around 1000 - 2000 high-performance servers, at a cost of
> several million US$.
>
> So, a reasonable answer to critics seems to be:
> * the developers are already doing very well indeed coping with the
> combination of extremely high demand and very limited resources
> * they already know there are big growth and capacity problems, and are
> working hard on scalability and reliability
> * send money, rather than complaining
>
> -- Neil


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS in 1.4

body:
Some time ago I posted a complaint about MW1.3's RSS feed that I received. Is
it now settled in 1.4?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/freehosting


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Well done everyone (was Re: Please use the
	LiveJournal!)

body:
Tim Starling a ?crit:

> I said on the village pump that I thought we are doing a great job, but
> I don't think any of the developers I was aiming that comment at read
> it. Let me take this opportunity to thank everyone and recognise what we
> have acheived.

Good idea for commenting it here, as I do not think everyone reads the
village pump :-)

> We've been working in adverse circumstances. During peak times, the site
> has been extremely heavily loaded and unstable. Any slight error in
> misconfiguration, or inaction at a particular time when action should
> have been taken, causes the site to crash. I've lost count of how many
> problems we've identified and fixed just over the last few weeks.
>
> Many users say "the developers are doing a great job", or "we all know
> that the developers are very busy", but the fact is that 99% of users
> don't have a clue what we are doing. They don't know what our
> achievements have been and they don't know the challenges we face.
> Gerard's comments are certainly refreshing in this regard, but I think I
> can add to them. Assume I am speaking on behalf of the users, since I'm
> sure every user would agree with me if they only knew who to thank.
>
> Big thanks go to JamesDay, who almost single-handedly administers 8
> database servers, a task requiring constant monitoring and work on the
> order of hours per day. James's advice to the MediaWiki developers and
> other system administrators is invaluable.
>
> Also on the topic of database administration, Kate's servmon and
> WikiServices bots which have kept the site running when otherwise it
> would have been choked with long-running queries.
>
> Thanks to Med and Submarine for their work in network and hardware
> administration of the Paris squids. Well done Mark and Kate for getting
> PowerDNS up and running and thus getting the Paris squids into service.
>
> Domas's setproctitle() patch is amazing and we all know it. Of course
> his other system administration and development work is greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks to Brion, JeLuF and Hashar for their tireless and usually
> unrecognised work in fixing MediaWiki bugs.
>
> Thanks to Kate for setting up Pen and Perlbal. This is the third time
> I'm thanking Kate and that's no coincidence - if she left us we'd be
> left with a dozen pieces of software that no-one else knows how to use.
>
> I know you're all stressed, all we seem to get is complaints despite
> what we've acheived. I decided after Caroline Ewen's post on wikipedia-l
> that I can't afford to answer every single question asking "why is the
> site slow" or every report of "I'm getting backtrace errors!" The fact
> is that the site has grown to such a size that every time something goes
> wrong, we can expect a flood of complaints and queries. My advice would
> be to answer only some of them, and let alert users distribute the
> information to everyone who asks. Or just ignore them -- remember your
> time is valuable. Think of what you could have achieved in the time it
> took you to put a single user out of their ignorance.
>
> When the public forums are too noisy with uninformed speculation, let's
> organise what we need to make the site better in less visible, more
> constructive forums, and work with the Board to make it happen.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Well, as one reporting problems from time to time on #mediawiki and
basically little able to understand what your job involves, I must say I
appreciate these comments very much Tim.

One of the way I would like that we help you (but this is difficult when
you are busy and when we are not tech people) is to relieve you of
having to inform people one by one, or channel by channel, or public
forum by public forum. It takes time and energy.

One thing I learned in my job is that a customer tolerate much better a
delay when he is "warned" of the delay in advance, and understands much
better a "problem" when the source of the problem is explained to him.
As you say, it avoids speculation, as well as anger or nervousness,
which may results in one being under fire of requests for immediate
explanation.

I know not really how we could achieve this, as precisely when there are
problems, you are all very busy; but if one of you could make a report,
and some of us could attempt to have it published in many places, so
that most people read this report instead of asking you over and over
what is going on, I think that might be worth it. As it was, I did not
really have the feeling to see much feedback from "alert users". Perhaps
should it be more clear that you expect from them to distribute the
information ?

Ant


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
But really, how many people would be interested in cataloguing
molecules of an individual's body? I think it would be better done by
nanotechnology of some sort, but it would be difficult to get very far
because beyond the outermost layer, there is very little information
you could get without some sort of invasive procedure (digestive
system, perhaps, but this still excludes important organs). ;p

Mark

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:35:16 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> > Mark Williamson schrieb:
> >
> >> There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
> >> All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography and
> >> label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a spot
> >> in Wikipedia?
> >
> > Of course! We can pipe these articles into my map software, and render
> > Jimbo for future generations to come! :-)
>
> Ah, the wiki approach to human cloning.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Everyking

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050120 13:02]:
> csherlock at ljh.com.au said:

> > Surely a rollback should be classed as a revert?

> It's a gray area.  If an admin knowingly abused rollback power while
> blocked this should probably be a summary de-admin offence, in my opinion,
> but here Everyking was apparently using his rollback power to deal with
> simple vandalism, which strikes me as a very admirable way to use his
> suddenly acquired spare time.

The current arbcom temporary injunction on Everyking says that he gets one
edit *of any sort* per day to any article Ashlee Simpson related (and of
course he can be as convincing as he likes on talk pages so his edits are
accepted) - and that should he be blocked, using admin rollback on
Ashlee-related articles will get a de-adminning for the duration of the
case.

So far as I am aware, Everyking has not in fact abused his admin powers on
the articles in contention. If this is not the case, please let us know and
put it on /Evidence !

- d.


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
On Jan 20, 2005, at 9:18 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
> But really, how many people would be interested in cataloguing
> molecules of an individual's body? I think it would be better done by
> nanotechnology of some sort, but it would be difficult to get very far
> because beyond the outermost layer, there is very little information
> you could get without some sort of invasive procedure (digestive
> system, perhaps, but this still excludes important organs). ;p

Well, Jimbo has already given a lot to the project, maybe he's willing
to make the ultimate sacrifice?

> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:35:16 -0800, Michael Snow
> <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Magnus Manske wrote:
>>> Mark Williamson schrieb:
>>>> There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
>>>> All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography
>>>> and
>>>> label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a
>>>> spot
>>>> in Wikipedia?
>>> Of course! We can pipe these articles into my map software, and
>>> render
>>> Jimbo for future generations to come! :-)
>> Ah, the wiki approach to human cloning.

-Bop


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
We dealt with this in the Spanish wikipedia sometime
ago.
We decided that bare recipes would be moved to
wikibooks,
while recipes that illustrated a typical dish of some
region, with additional encyclopedical information
about the dish, could stay. We have had not had more
troubles with this ever since, and I believe that
excluding recipes just because of their POV makes, as
somebody said, as much sense as removing photographs
because they illustrate the POV of the photographer.

AstroNomer

__________________________________
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Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
Mark Williamson schrieb:

>There are many different encyclopedias. If I write "Encyclopedia of
>All the Molecules in Jimbo Wales' body, with a detailed biography and
>label for each", does that mean each article in there deserves a spot
>in Wikipedia?
>
Of course! We can pipe these articles into my map software, and render
Jimbo for future generations to come! :-)

Magnus


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Should we go into read-only mode during peak
	periods to de...

body:
I fear that these projects takes too little of our resources to really
make a difference Danny.

The other point I would make is that one really "feel" the difference
when USA is waking up :-(
During mornings here, wikipedia is perfectly editable.

Rather than making all sites unavailable at peak hours, would it be
possible to imagine turns ?

Other ideas ?

daniwo59 at aol.com a ?crit:
> I would support the idea but with the caveat that perhaps it may be better to
> start by doing that to smaller projects first. I dont know enough about
> computers to be able to tell, but if we were to do that to wikisource, wikibooks,
> and maybe some of the smaller languages first, the larger projects would be
> able to function adequately.
>
> Danny


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] agenda promotion, was: Re: Original Research versus
	Point of View

body:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Robert Dodier wrote:

> --- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > The only reason this stuff hasn't spread like wildfire throughout
> > Wikipedia is because a number of editors have opposed them since they
> > first started last May (not always the same group of editors, because
> > editors get worn out and give up) and so the material is reasonably
> > contained. But it's an exhausting job. If you want to join in, you
> > are more than welcome, because one or two of us could do with a
> break.
>
> This discussion points up what seems to be the greatest
> hazard and roadblock to Wikipedia: the current editorial
> model simply cannot cope with determined agenda promotion.
>
> In the absence of agenda promotion, Wikipedia works great.
> For 99% (or more) of the articles, the "anyone can edit anytime"
> policy works just fine, and produces good content.
>
> However some of the most important (or popular, at least)
> articles fall in that tiny fraction. GW Bush, Reagan, Israel
> and Palestine come to mind. What I see is that WP can get in
> the neighborhood of a great article, but can't ever get
> there. It's like driving across town to see a movie only to
> have edit warriors grabbing the steering wheel every time
> you try to park, so you end up circling the block forever.
>
I had much the same thought today. After all, we mark a number
of articles with {{NPOV}} or {{disptued}}, so why not create
a category for articles where the normal rules of behavior
on Wikipedia are replaced with more stringent ones actively
monitored to enforce compliance?

Articles would then be moved in & out of that category much as
we vote on articles at {{VfD}} or for Featured Article status.
The more stringent rules would then be set up with the goal of
hammering out compromise language & ending these interminable
disputes -- while adhering to the goals of NPOV.

At the same time, this new approach should only be done if it
adds a negligible amount -- or no -- extra burden to the ArbCom.

I've spun out a few different mechanisms for how these zones
could work, but it's far more important to see if there's a
consensus on Wikipedia that this is an idea worth trying first.
And I have to admit I'm not entirely keen on the idea myself:
telling people that certain parts of Wikipedia are under
"martial law" somehow just doesn't fit with the image *I* have
for this  project.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: recipes

body:
> You're the one making the assertion that they are, not me.

But I never said they were equivalent. See #1.

> And again. Your argument goes "1. I compare it to this ridiculous idea. 3.
> Therefore it is ridiculous." As the one making the argument, it's up to you
> to substantiate "2. It is equivalent or analogous to this ridiculous idea."

It is analogous:

Some articles in specialised encyclopedias may not be fit for
inclusion in Wikipedia. Thus, an article's inclusion in a specialised
encyclopedia does not nessecarily justify its inclusion in Wikipedia.

Conclusion: An article's inclusion in any given cooking encyclopedia
does not nessecarily justify its inclusion in Wikipedia.

While the logic isn't totally sound, I think in general the
assumptions I have made are warranted.

Mark