from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 05:25:26AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>This requests goes out _especially_ to the 'hands dirty' developers
>>who are intricately familiar with where our hardware bottlenecks are
>>most likely to be.  But anyone with solid, non-speculative ideas is
>>welcome to comment!

If I remember it right it should be:
pliny    => datebase and all wikis but en and de ...?
larousse => webserver (php) for en and de

If I'm wrong, adapt the following or correct me writing in thes list ;)

I think Nick is right, getting a fast 'php' (Webserver) frontend for all
the languages still running on pliny. And giving the database enought
memory,  and a fast RAID (striping is usually the version with fast read
access, if I remember, feel free to correct me) will help to get a
database-server only doing mysql and this hopefully at all his speed and
memory.

We can in the future easily take a look at the load of the hosts and see
what is slowing us down, the database server or the frontend hosts. And we
can move languages from one frontend to the other to optimize the load (not
all big wiki's on one host etc. ).

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:

[..]
> newserver (mail + backup + misc):
> 1x PIII 866MHz
> 2GB PC133
> 1x 36GB SCSI disk
> 10/100 ethernet
>
> I'd then directly connect pliny and larousse over gigabit ethernet with
> a crossover cable.  It's more expensive than $4000, but I think this
> configuration would at least make a significant performance difference.

Looks very nice. And you can move some very small wikipedias to the
'newserver', which can handle them without problems, IMHO.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Before I go on to make a page caching proposal, I was wondering - what
parts of articles are currently dynamic and, as such, can't be used for
logged in users who have special preferences?  (Things such as whether
to make a link red, or add a question mark).

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
On Sun, Aug 10, 2003 at 05:44:03PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> So, with the MediaWiki (sweet name, btw), users uploading an image
> write up the rights info for an image on the Image: page.
>
> It would be a lot easier for downstream users to have data in the
> database about what's under a free license, what's copyrighted, and
> who has copyright on what. Especially for a license like the GFDL or
> the by-sa, where attribution is required to re-use content, it becomes
> pretty necessary.
>
> I was thinking that IWBNI there was a radio-button list on the upload
> page for defining the rights of an image. Something like this:
>
>      I affirm that:
>
>      ( ) I am the copyright holder of this image and I agree to
>          license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
>      ( ) The copyright holder is [textbox here] and they have agreed
>          to license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
>      ( ) This image is in the public domain because [textbox].
>      ( ) This image was created by [textbox here] and I am uploading
>          it here according to the principle of $FAIR_USE_PAGE|fair use
>          because [textbox].
>      (o) I left the default value of this radio button list checked
>          because I don't read fine print, especially about confusing
>          copyright info.

Is it another attempt to introduce images of dubious legal status (claimed
by some to be under "fair use") into Wikipedia ?


list: wikien-l

from_name: Michael Becker

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

body:
It has been discussed (here:  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content) that the gfdl notice on the bottom of every page needs updating.  The following notice is the result of the discussion "All text is available under the terms of the [[Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License|GNU Free Documentation License]]. See [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] for suggested practices."  I would like to request that as long as no one has any more suggestion to make on the talk page, this new notice be instituted ASAP.  Also, the "Printable version" pages need to have the same notice (currently they don't).

--
Michael Becker


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] DW now on French wiki.

body:
>james-
> > I received the following message:
>
> > Hi; I thought you might be interested in knowing that DW is up to his
>old
> > shenanigans on the French wiki under the name JacquesD. (I'm off on
>vacation
> > so may not be able to reply for a while) - Hephaestos 16:07, 11 Aug 2003
> > (UTC)
>
> > Does a hard ban apply across the wikis?  If it does, shouldn't  DW as
> > JacquesD be automatically banned? Comments please.

>Erik asked
>Has it ever been safely established that Jacques Delson and DW are the
>same person?

If I remember correctly, he used both the name and an IP number, the latter
of which DW has also used, as had other 'DW' identities. He edited the same
pages the same way, reacted in an identical way to criticism, appeared
immediately after DW's previous identity had left and was the replaced
straight away by an IP which DW used and which was then replaced by another
DW identity who in turn when rumbled was replaced by another DW identity.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] CologneBlue stylesheet

body:
Daniel Herding wrote:

> If you delete
>
>>padding: 0;
>>
>>
>everything looks fine.
>
>
>I also want to remind you about another thing that needs to be fixed
>with the CologneBlue stylesheet:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004911.html
>
>
I'll handle the first & investigate the second tomorrow :)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
Op di 12-08-2003, om 18:35 schreef Karl Wick:
> We would ideally also have the option to limit searches to
> one textbook at a time.

Yes.

>
> About interchangeable modules (that is, using one module
> for multiple textbooks): this solution may be inideal
> because the goals of each textbook are different

Are the goals different? Or rather the background of the readers and the
level of the course?

If I want to learn something about DNA, I just want a part that is
suitable to me. The other 300 pages of the book might not interest me.

> and editing a module for one book will sometimes make it less
> suited to other books.

"Books" are a very paper-based concept, just like chapters and pages.
In E-learing one talks about "learning units" or "learning objects".
Creating a course is then selecting units from a respository.

Just take a look at the Connexions Project.
Their courses are made from distinct modules.

Books make a learning experience very linear.
By modules you can create different paths, according to the wishes of
the targeted audience and the level of learning they want.

Some learners want some very advanced modules if topic X, but just touch
slightly upon topic Y. And others vice versa.

> Even if I were to take my own
> organic chemistry book and rearrange it I would have to
> rewrite many parts of it to make sure that supporting ideas
> arent being thown out there before they have been properly
> covered.

If something is not covered why not just provide a link to a relevant
modules that does cover it?
Mozilla has a nice browser-addon called Dynamic Links:
by just control-clicking a word (yes, any word in a html-document), you
can sent that word the any search-engine you want, like Google of
Wikipedia. With this, you don't even have to provide a link.
http://dynamiclinks.mozdev.org/

>
> The advantage to reusing modules is that it saves a little
> bit of copying and pasting, right ?

David Wiley of Educommons.org wrote his PhD-tesis on reusability and
learning objects:
http://www.reusability.org/
http://www.reusability.org/read/

Wouter Vanden Hove
www.opencursus.be
www.open-education.org

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subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS Request

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>tarquin wrote:
>
>
>>The problem is getting from CVS to the test server & then to the live
>>server -- that is the bottleneck.
>>Jimbo said a while back that more people would be given access at this
>>level -- any news?
>>
>>
We did that bit about a month ago: you gave me & and a few others the
thumbs up IIRC. (yay!)
I promise to be cautious in any uploading -- in fact I plan on mainly
working with CSS and skins.

What next?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ambassadors needed for Wikimedia's first press release

body:
Unfortunately Jimbo doesn't speak every language that Wikipedia is in. What is
needed, are people who are fluent in both English and another language to act
as intermediaries between Jimbo and foreign language (to Jimbo) press
services.

It would be very unfortunate and embarrassing for all involved if Jimbo
answered his phone and couldn't understand the reporter at the other end and
they could not understand him. So please help by placing your name at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia's_first_press_release#Ambassadors_needed

We are also still looking for more translators. Polish, Swedish, Danish, and
Dutch are specifically mentioned and linked to in the press release, but so
far nobody has volunteered to translate the press release into those
languages. I think that doing so would be a great service to especially those
Wikipedia versions. Of course, this press release is mainly about the whole
project, so all versions are encouraged to translate the press release and
distribute it when the time comes.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> How much priority should I give to RAID versus RAM for the db server,
> if there's a tradeoff?  Does anyone really know the answer to that?

All what I heard of mysql it likes to use RAM. So, primary target is RAM
and secondary is RAID ( => 3 disks: 1 for root, logs etc. and 2 striping
disks for DB-Data). Thats the information some guys given, after some
discussion in a forum of a great german computer magazin (c't / heise).

So, if possible, the new to buy machine if it will be the new DB-Server, it
should have at least 3 HD slots.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 02:51:20PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > The main idea is to store as much rights information as possible in
> > machine-readable format. For me, I want to be able to put
> > automatically-generated copyright notices on the printable version of
> > a page.
>
> Just as a point of reference, machine-readable licensing is a big BIG
> deal to Larry Lessig.  He goes on about it every time I talk to him.
>
> I'm not sure I see his point, but I also don't see any harm in it.

There's a problem when software starts to enforce that.
At this point is changes from copyright owner having a few
rights described in law, to him having absolute control
not bound by any laws.

Anyway, it'd be much better to delete every image of dubious legal status
straight away.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
Tomasz-
> Anyway, it'd be much better to delete every image of dubious legal status
> straight away.

We already do that. Fair use, however, is in many cases entirely
applicable. Having images flagged in the database as such will allow us to
verify individual cases more thoroughly and systematically.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>>I miss at least one option here:
>>( ) The copyright holder is [textbox] and they have agreed to its
>>publication
>>    on the following conditions: [textbox and/or more radio buttons]
>>
>>
>>
>How is that an applicable box? Only public domain, images licensed under
>GFDL, or (maybe) fair use images are compatible with the GFDL and
>Wikipedia's purposes.
>

Something like that could be quite useful for other projects using the
software but not the FDL license, and should be available as an option,
which would be disabled on Wikipedia.

However the comment box is probably a better place for the info than yet
more textboxes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:
> One question to throw into the mix - If we cache static pages for anonymous
> (no skin preference)users (updating them when edited) rather than pulling
> them afresh from the database, on which mahine should the static pages

I tried a middle way for susning.nu.  The original UseModWiki source
code (0.92) has an option for HTML caching, but the way it is
implemented when any page is edited the entire cache is cleared, which
doesn't really scale beyond 1000 pages.

So in my case, in subroutine WikiToHTML, instead of calling
PageOrEditLink for every occurance of FreeLinkPattern, calls a new
subroutine PageOrBracketLink, that returns an HTML <a href> link if
the page exists but leavs the brackets in place if it doesn't exist.
This half-cooked format is stored in the cache.  The only wiki markup
that remains to be evaluated on every access is the bracket links to
pages that didn't exist when the page was last edited.

This assumes that pages are never deleted, which is true in my case.

This works fine, at least as fine as not using caching.  I cannot
really tell if it is any faster, but I don't think it's slower.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
Jimmy-
> But, imagine this: suppose I were shopping at
> http://www.penguincomputing.com/, as I always do, and I wanted to
> spend around $3000 on new hardware for wikipedia.

Thank you for continuing to support Wiki[mp]edia with substantial amounts
of your own money. I agree with Brion's proposal -- our current main
problems are the slowness of Larousse and the unreliability of Pliny (the
cause of the latter, however, remains unknown).

Beyond investments in hardware, I hope we will also consider hiring a
crack MySQL hacker if/when we can afford it, to whack our database
structure, DB server setup and SQL queries into shape. There's still room
for optimization, and it would be nice to get some of the Special Pages
back. On the PHP front, stuff like a new parser (much needed) or memcached
integration (huge potential benefits) would come to fruition faster if we
could compensate MediaWiki developers at least to a certain extent. This
should be part of the Wikimedia planning.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Herding

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:31:49 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Anyway, it'd be much better to delete every image of dubious legal status
>straight away.

The problem is that most people don't add information about source and
copyright status when they upload an image. That's why I think it
should be enforced.

In the Upload form, below the ''summary'' field, there should be
fields called ''source'' and ''copyright status''. ''summary'' should
be renamed to ''description''.
The Wikipedia software should refuse to accept the file unless all
fields are filled out. After that, it can create a nice image
description page from the entered information.

Best regards,

 Daniel


body:
tarquin wrote:
>isn't the use of the word "ambassador"  a bit
>confusing, since we have the interlanguage
>ambassadors asell? could we pick a different
>word, or just say "PR"?

Aren't they performing the same role? "Ambassador" seems perfectly fine and
appropriate to me. But if you can think of a more befitting title, then
please propose it (sorry, "PR" doesn't work).

-- mav


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Help me select hardware

body:
> There's still room for optimization, and it would be nice to get some
of the Special Pages back. (Erik Moeller)

Special pages like longest article, orphans etc could easily be
extracted from a SQL dump, I'll write a Perl script if there is capacity
to run it and daily dumps to feed into it.

All discussions so far center on speed, how about robustness? In the
current situation a disk crash is disastrous. Remember no dump was made
for 18 days just recently. So will this be cured when a replicated
server is introduced?  Also, Brion mentioned: "unless we lock the wiki
the cur and old databases will be inconsistent in the backup. (Which is
in fact the present state of the backups for the English wiki.)"

One of the advantages of RAID ('I' stands for inexpensive) is the
possibility to introduce redundancy, so that a crashed disk can be
replaced on the fly and the content rebuilt from the other disks.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:

>Before I go on to make a page caching proposal, I was wondering - what
>parts of articles are currently dynamic and, as such, can't be used for
>logged in users who have special preferences?  (Things such as whether
>to make a link red, or add a question mark).
>
>
>
In page text:

* show hoverbox over wiki links
   ???

* underline links
   this can be handled as an inserted CSS item

* red vs ? links
   these could be handled as CSS as in phase II, or could be
postprocessed for people with the rarer option

* justify paragraphs
   this can be handled as an inserted CSS item

* auto-number headings
   could always add them in, with default style hidden, and insert CSS
for those with the option enabled

* enable section editing via [edit] links
   could hide them by CSS

* enable section editing by right clicking on section titles
   hypothetically, the javascript handler could be inserted by
javascript code, we'd only have to insert a single script section which
calls it

* show table of contents
   could hide by inserting CSS

* edit pages on double-click
   a simple insertion of javascript code after retrieving the cached
copy would do

* timezone offset may affect display of pages with {{CURRENTTIME}} etc,
but that's another caching issue...

In the surrounding interface:
* user, user talk links vary per user
* 'watch this page' / 'stop watching' links vary per user
* various options are present for only certain groups of users
* skin option of course changes lots of stuff!
* quickbar

-- brion


subject: [Wikitech-l] test server gone blank

body:
tarquin wrote:

> the test server appears to have gone weird.
> it's producing completely blank pages

I'm messing around with memcached right at this moment. Expect it to be
a little weird as I get it set up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
> I miss at least one option here:
> ( ) The copyright holder is [textbox] and they have agreed to its
> publication
>     on the following conditions: [textbox and/or more radio buttons]
>
How is that an applicable box? Only public domain, images licensed under
GFDL, or (maybe) fair use images are compatible with the GFDL and
Wikipedia's purposes.


body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > The main idea is to store as much rights information as possible in
> > machine-readable format. For me, I want to be able to put
> > automatically-generated copyright notices on the printable version
of
> > a page.
>
> Just as a point of reference, machine-readable licensing is a big BIG
> deal to Larry Lessig.  He goes on about it every time I talk to him.
>
> I'm not sure I see his point, but I also don't see any harm in it.
>
It all has to with believing that the future will be one of DRM.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memcached

body:
I wrote:

> I've been playing about a bit with memcached, and have just checked
> into the unstable branch some initial experimental code to use it to
> cache user data (for logged in users) and individual lookups in the
> LinkCache. Not very efficient, not very complete, just trying things out.

Also now checks user_newtalk for anons from the cache.

This code is now running on test.wikipedia.org. It's far from complete,
and it's dumping gobs of debug info to the log, so don't expect it to be
super fast. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Karl Wick wrote:

>>The advantage to reusing modules is that
>>it saves a little bit of copying and pasting,
>>right ? This is a shortcut that I think sets
>>books up to be more on the generic side than
>>tailored to suit. And when I use a textbook
>>for myself Id rather have the whole thing
>>tailored to suit.

>Instructors do this already; they start a class on
>chapter 3, then go onto chapter 4.1, skip the rest of
>ch 4 and then do ch 2, then back to 5, then to
>7.3-7.6, 9.1, 8.3-4 etc. The beauty of modules is that
>the same content can be reorganized in many different
>ways without having to fork content. There should, of
>course, be one reference edition for each book that
>the community maintains, but I would like to give
>instructors the ability to create index pages in their
>own userspace (in a user index:namespace perhaps).

I don't see any conflict here -- I agree with both of you!

Notice that mav's instructor already uses a single book,
moving around within it, so each section should be modular.
They often aren't, but in /our/ book, they can indeed be.

However, this doesn't mean that Karl's OChem modules
are going to be the same as what appears in PChem texts.
I don't know enough chemistry to predict that, actually --
whether the goals and needs of the disciplines are similar enough.
So these could still be separated -- and if /not/ these,
then certainly the Chem modules from the French cooking.

More interesting to me, however, is that 2 OChem books may appear
that take differing pedagogical approaches and don't share modules!
The second book might start by copying the first but fork --
a legitimate fork if it represents differing approaches to the subject.
Again, I don't know enough chemistry to know if this happens in OChem,
but it would certainly happen with calculus vs graduate analysis.

-- Toby


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] [vmwiki@nashi.spb.ru: Re: I Suppose There Are  no Enough Reasons for Forking Anymore. | Re: Why the fork?]

body:
Hi, these need to be priority issues, because we're trying to
resolve a potential fork before it really gets underway!

----- Forwarded message from "Vladimir V. Medeiko" <vmwiki at nashi.spb.ru> -----

From: "Vladimir V. Medeiko" <vmwiki at nashi.spb.ru>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 19:08:11 +0400
To: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Re: I Suppose There Are  no Enough Reasons for Forking Anymore. | Re: Why the fork?

Dear Jimmi,

thank you very much for this (and for all you do!)

I've checked for langual problems in ru.wikipedia.org.  There are four
problems found - one is to be fixed by me soon, and other seem to have the
same root:

1. English text in LanguageRu.php - translation in progress, I will write to
Brion on completion.

2. "Database error" report as result of any search (including in latin
letters) in search box in ru.wikipedia.org
(A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database
query was: "SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM
cur,searchindex WHERE cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_title) AGAINST
('linux')) ) AND cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 100" from within function
"SearchEngine::showResults". MySQL returned error "1016: Can't open file:
'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".)

3. Error when moving files in ru.wikipedia.org

(A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database
query was: "UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY searchindex SET si_title='testtesttest'
WHERE si_page=811" from within function "SearchUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL
returned error "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".)

4. Error when uploading files in ru.wikipedia.org

(A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database
query was: "REPLACE DELAYED INTO searchindex (si_page,si_title,si_text)
VALUES (999,'saturn planet jpg',' u8d18du8d182u8d0be
u8d0bfu8d0beu8d0bbu8d0bdu8d0beu8d186u8d0b2u8d0b5u8d182u8d0bdu8d0beu8d0b5
u8d0b8u8d0b7u8d0beu8d0b1u8d180u8d0b0u8d0b6u8d0b5u8d0bdu8d0b8u8d0b5
u8d181u8d0b0u8d182u8d183u8d180u8d0bdu8d0b0
u8d0bfu8d0beu8d0bbu8d183u8d187u8d0b5u8d0bdu8d0be u8d181 u8d0bau8d0b0
u8d0b2u8d0beu8d18fu8d0b4u8d0b6u8d0b5u8d180-2 4
u8d0b0u8d0b2u8d0b3u8d183u8d181u8d182u8d0b0 u8d181
u8d180u8d0b0u8d181u8d181u8d182u8d0beu8d18fu8d0bdu8d0b8u8d18f 21
u8d0bcu8d0bbu8d0bd u8d0bau8d0bc from en wikipedia ')" from within function
"SearchUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned error "1016: Can't open file:
'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".)

However, file appear there, despite problems with uploading.

Also, Russian description text in Recent Changes seems to chopped in
middle - last character is invalid (maybe it's because UTF-8 strings are
longer than English, so the software chops text in middle of character).

I appreciate any help in solving this

--
  >/=\- Vladimir V. Medeiko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "Vladimir V. Medeiko" <vmwiki at nashi.spb.ru>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: I Suppose There Are no Enough Reasons for Forking Anymore. |
Re: Why the fork?

> Oh, I'm sorry about that!  I received a confusing report.
>
> The main thing I want to be known is that if there is a problem which
> led to the forking, I want the opportunity to address and solve that
> problem, so that everyone is happy.  There is no need for anyone to be
> enemies here.  :-)
>
> Vladimir V. Medeiko wrote:
>
> > Dear Jimmy,
> >
> > the only your mistake is that I was NOT one who forked the project, on
> > contrary, I became aware of this forking 3 days ago.
> >
> > I agree with every your other point! I will contact the forker, but even
if
> > he refuses to merge the two projects, I will manually copy all the
articles
> > from wikipedia.ru to ru.wikipedia.org. However, considering that forker
is
> > presumable responsible and clever person, I hope there won't be problem
for
> > wikipedia.ru to point to ru.wikipedia.org eventually.
> >
> > --
> >   >/=\- Vladimir V. Medeiko
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> > To: <vmwiki at nashi.spb.ru>
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 1:05 AM
> > Subject: Why the fork?
> >
> >
> > > I'm writing to ask why you registered wikipedia.ru and started a
> > > separate project there.  I'd like very much to offer you whatever you
> > > need to rejoin the main project immediately.
> > >
> > > If not, I'd like to ask you for the courtesy of not using our name.  I
> > > have heard it said that 'wikipedia' sounds strange in Russian language
> > > anyway, and if that's true, then perhaps a better name could be used
> > > for your project?
> > >
> > > But really, the existing Wikipedia project is a global effort, and we
> > > feel that it's really important to have a broad umbrella with a place
> > > for everyone in the world.  It'd be so much better if we just fixed it
> > > so www.wikipedia.ru points to ru.wikipedia.org.
> > >
> > > Interlanguage linking is only one of the reasons, there are many more.
> > > Wikipedia is a project focussed on learning and peace for everyone, of
> > > every nation, and splitting up into individual fiefdoms is not
> > > desirable for any of us.
> > >
> > > Let me know what you'd like me to do, and what you'd like to do.
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>

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


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing when the parsing is done?

body:
I've been working off and on on a blogging script (in Perl), and I implemented
some wikimarkup in it. Under stress tests, it became apparent that I was
going about it the wrong way, as every time a page was viewed, the markup had
to be parsed.

My first thought was naturally to use some sort of caching system, but that
would take up an awful lot of space on my little server, and the speedup
wouldn't really justify it in my case.

What I did instead was parse it when it was saved, and then if I wanted to go
back and edit it, the script would simply "de-parse" it for presentation to
me in the editing form. A couple lines out of my script as an example:

$body =~ s/(.*?)<\/em><\/strong>/''''''$1'''''/g;

$body =~ s/(.*?)<\/a>/\[$1 $2\]/g;

By now, I was wondering how the Wikipedia software was handling this. Turns
out it's storing the wikimarkup, not the HTML, and parsing it in the viewing
code.

By now it's probably obvious where I'm going with this. Could one of these
methods (either storing a parsed and non-parsed version or the approach I
took with "de-parsing") be used for some performance gain on Wikipedia's
webserver?


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help me select hardware

body:
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:08:15 +0200, Thomas Corell
<corell at corell.dyndns.org> gave utterance to the following:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>
>> How much priority should I give to RAID versus RAM for the db server,
>> if there's a tradeoff?  Does anyone really know the answer to that?
>
> All what I heard of mysql it likes to use RAM. So, primary target is RAM
> and secondary is RAID ( => 3 disks: 1 for root, logs etc. and 2 striping
> disks for DB-Data). Thats the information some guys given, after some
> discussion in a forum of a great german computer magazin (c't / heise).
>
>
> So, if possible, the new to buy machine if it will be the new DB-Server,
> it should have at least 3 HD slots.
>
One question to throw into the mix - If we cache static pages for anonymous
(no skin preference)users (updating them when edited) rather than pulling
them afresh from the database, on which mahine should the static pages
reside - the web server, the db box or a dedicated box?

--
Richard Grevers
And on the eighth day God said 'OK Murphy you take over'.


body:
On Wednesday 13 August 2003 09:18, tarquin wrote:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
> >By now it's probably obvious where I'm going with this. Could one of these
> >methods (either storing a parsed and non-parsed version or the approach I
> >took with "de-parsing") be used for some performance gain on Wikipedia's
> >webserver?
>
> De-parsing strikes me as a rather odd way to do it.

It's odd, no doubt about that, just happens to be the best fit in my case. :)

> Furthermore, Jimbo has often remarked that disk space is not a problem. (he
> may come to regret that remark when we hit a million articles.... but hey!
> ;)

In general I wouldn't expect it to be a problem. It's just a concern on my
personal server, which I don't have much in the way of funds avalible for
upgrading. Thought I'd throw it out there anyway as it struck me as a rather
elegant solution for cases where disk space is a problem. :)

> I would suggest we consider semi-parsing.
> Save two versions of the article:
> a) wikitext
> b) the wikitext parsed into HTML, with wikilinks still as [[link]]. Note
> that this would not be a fully-formed HTML document, just a fragment
> since it would not have a head section or enclosing tags.
>
> upon page read, it's b) that is inserted into the delivered page. Links
> are parsed live, since their status as existing / stub / ghost depends
> on the state of the database at that moment.

Oops! Right, forgot about that since it's not applicable to my script ("all
the world's a blog" syndrome? ;)). The 'semi-parsing' solution seems perfect
to me.


from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
It seems to me that perhaps we are thinking a bit too aggressively on
page caching.  We're trying to cache the entire page, which makes things
unworkable for users with special preferences.

Instead, perhaps we could do a partially cached page with escape
sequences for areas that need special parsing because of preferences.
For example, things like '''bolding''', preformatted text, external
links, etc - those are unaffected by preferences, and so can be
completely cached as HTML.  Now, for things like links, the scanner can
change the code to a set sequence - for example:

[[Rabbit]]

Would be changed to:
<% make_link("Rabbit", 1) %> (or whatever the function is) - so, it just
looks up the user preference, and executes that function (with the one
indicating that it is an active link).

Or, it could be:
%%%%IHref|Rabbit|1%%%% - where the scanner searches for the special
token (in this case, %%%%), and looks up what to do based on the first
section of it (IHref - internal link, Rabbit - name of link, 1 - active
link).

This way, we could have three scanners, each of slightly different speed
and functionality:

1) Fully cached scanner for anonymous users (which basically just shoots
out the fully cached page)

2) Partially cached scanner for logged in users (which only has to scan
for the escape sequence and then act in the appropriate manner based on
user preference)

3) Full scanner - which produces both cached pages, in addition to
sending output to user.

If we do it this way, and cached user preferences, we could avoid having
to access the database at all in the case of 1 and 2.

Does this seem like it could work?

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

body:
On Sun, 10 Aug 2003, Evan Prodromou wrote:

>      I affirm that:
>
>      ( ) I am the copyright holder of this image and I agree to
>          license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
>      ( ) The copyright holder is [textbox here] and they have agreed
>          to license it according to $COPYRIGHT_PAGE.
>      ( ) This image is in the public domain because [textbox].
>      ( ) This image was created by [textbox here] and I am uploading
>          it here according to the principle of $FAIR_USE_PAGE|fair use
>          because [textbox].
>      (o) I left the default value of this radio button list checked
>          because I don't read fine print, especially about confusing
>          copyright info.

I miss at least one option here:
( ) The copyright holder is [textbox] and they have agreed to its publication
    on the following conditions: [textbox and/or more radio buttons]

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiNL-l] Ambassadors needed for Wikimedia's first press release

body:
Voor het ambassadeurschap heb ik me maar weer aangeboden. De vertaling moet
nog wel gebeuren.

Andre Engels

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Unfortunately Jimbo doesn't speak every language that Wikipedia is in. What is
> needed, are people who are fluent in both English and another language to act
> as intermediaries between Jimbo and foreign language (to Jimbo) press
> services.
>
> It would be very unfortunate and embarrassing for all involved if Jimbo
> answered his phone and couldn't understand the reporter at the other end and
> they could not understand him. So please help by placing your name at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia's_first_press_release#Ambassadors_needed
>
> We are also still looking for more translators. Polish, Swedish, Danish, and
> Dutch are specifically mentioned and linked to in the press release, but so
> far nobody has volunteered to translate the press release into those
> languages. I think that doing so would be a great service to especially those
> Wikipedia versions. Of course, this press release is mainly about the whole
> project, so all versions are encouraged to translate the press release and
> distribute it when the time comes.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

in_reply_to: Daniel Herding's message of "Wed, 13 Aug 2003 02:01:54 +0100"

body:
>>>>> "DH" == Daniel Herding <Daniel.Herding at rwth-aachen.de> writes:

    DH> In the Upload form, below the ''summary'' field, there should
    DH> be fields called ''source'' and ''copyright
    DH> status''. ''summary'' should be renamed to ''description''.

Har! So, the beginning of this thread, oh-so-many hours ago, was a
proposal for changing the interface of the upload form:

         http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-August/005581.html

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Ambassadors needed for Wikimedia's first press
 release

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>It would be very unfortunate and embarrassing for all involved if Jimbo
>answered his phone and couldn't understand the reporter at the other end and
>they could not understand him. So please help by placing your name at
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia's_first_press_release#Ambassadors_needed
>
>
>
isn't the use of the word "ambassador"  a bit confusing, since we have
the interlanguage ambassadors asell?
could we pick a different word, or just say "PR"?


body:
tarquin wrote:

>
> isn't the use of the word "ambassador"  a bit confusing, since we have
> the interlanguage ambassadors asell?
> could we pick a different word, or just say "PR"?

Got it: "press officers" :)


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>tarquin wrote:
>
>
>>isn't the use of the word "ambassador"  a bit
>>confusing, since we have the interlanguage
>>ambassadors asell? could we pick a different
>>word, or just say "PR"?
>>
>>
>
>Aren't they performing the same role? "Ambassador" seems perfectly fine and
>appropriate to me.
>
maybe I have misunderstood, but it doesn't seem to me that they are.

I am Ambassador of the fr: pedia -- that means I read the mailing lists
and report things of interest to the french pedia. I also raise issues
on their behalf to the mailing lists, and I should probably be tidying
up french pages on meta, and so on.

Being on hand to talk to reporters in french seems to be a different
thing. It's external instead of internal, for one thing.

Ambassadors are go-betweens for the different language branches of
Wikipedia. They have opposite counterparts. What you're talking about
here is press officers; representatives to the outside world -- the
press do not have ambassadors to Wikipedia!

sorry to nitpick, but there is a risk of confusion: I am French
ambassador, but I do not wish to be French press officer!


subject: [Wikitech-l] test server gone blank

body:
the test server appears to have gone weird.
it's producing completely blank pages


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Nick Reinking wrote:

>It seems to me that perhaps we are thinking a bit too aggressively on
>page caching.  We're trying to cache the entire page, which makes things
>unworkable for users with special preferences.
>

No, we're thinking to do the brain-dead simplest thing for the simplest,
most common case, which is anonymous page views of current revisions of
pages when there are no new messages.

This required few changes to the code to do, and was intended as a
stopgap measure. Caching just the rendered wikitext and then changing it
is more work for a smaller benefit, so it wasn't my first step.

Also, we had a lot of trouble with phase 2's caching, which stored just
the HTML of the wiki text. One of many problems was that meta tags and
interlanguage links weren't being saved, since they were outside. We've
got to store these other things.

Of course, it would be easy enough to just dump an array into memcached
with the wikitext's HTML, the language list array, and anything else
necessary to avoid completely parsing the text, and then do either a
final replacement pass or skip caching for some non-standard options.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [vmwiki@nashi.spb.ru: Re: I Suppose There Are  no
 Enough Reasons for Forking Anymore. | Re: Why the fork?]

body:
Jeez, why don't people just _report_ these things immediately with the
big friendly "bug report" link?

Bah.

Search on ru.wikipedia.org should be running again.

Someone's actively working on the translation file, I'll get it
installed after I've tested it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Then we'd better start deleting - there's about 50 pictures on WikipediaEN
> that are only free for non-commercial use.

Well, we'd better start flagging them, at least, which is what this
option is going to do.

There's no question that Wikipedia.org, the website, can use such
images.  It's likely that in at least some cases, for-profit websites
using our data would also be able to use such images, under fair use
which MIGHT apply IN SOME USES regardless of the desires of the
copyright holder to restrict 'commercial' uses.

Images which aren't GNU FDL or public domain are controversial on
Wikipedia.  I think the things that everyone agrees on are:

1.  Whenever a "fair use" image can be replaced with a GNU FDL or
public domain image, we should do so as soon as we can.

2.  While it is likely legal for us to *use* some images under the
doctrine of fair use, it is a complicated doctrine and caselaw
provides only minimal guidance.

3.  In any event, if we distribute licenses under "fair use", this
does not imply in any way that *other people's uses* will qualify
similarly.  This makes distributing them problematic and non-free.

4.  Whatever we ultimately end up doing about fair use images, one
thing is sure: we need to keep track of them better for our own
purposes, but also so that we can appropriately assist people who are
re-using the content.

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

Sometimes people say things that amount to "heh heh, this is great,
we can use the images, but some commercial outfits can't, and so if
they want to make money off of our hard work, they'll have to spend
a lot of money going through the image data figuring out what it is,
which will tend to prevent them from doing it."

I don't think that attitude is consistent with the ideal of freedom
expressed in the GNU philosophy.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Time

body:
I see someone already got it on the Press Coverage page, so I'm not the only
one to notice, but here I am, flipping through the copy of Time I got
yesterday.. and what do I see, but a section of the 'Your Time' page on
Wikipedia! Says it 'currently has 150,000 entries', however... hmmm.

-- Jake


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] CologneBlue stylesheet

body:
Daniel Herding wrote:

>If you delete
>
>
>>padding: 0;
>>
>>
>everything looks fine.
>
Done. Uploaded to CVS.

>I also want to remind you about another thing that needs to be fixed
>with the CologneBlue stylesheet:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004911.html
>
>
>
I've taken a look at this.
There's probably a reason for not having a 100% width, though in my IE6
it was ok. could be a Netscape 4 or IE5 workaround?
Is it a major problem? It would be easier to fix this sort of thing if
we eventually switch to a template system. (in which case, we'd be
remaking the skins as templates, and we wouldn't be using tables at all,
if possible)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>3.  In any event, if we distribute licenses under "fair use", this
>does not imply in any way that *other people's uses* will qualify
>similarly.  This makes distributing them problematic and non-free.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Sometimes people say things that amount to "heh heh, this is great,
>we can use the images, but some commercial outfits can't, and so if
>they want to make money off of our hard work, they'll have to spend
>a lot of money going through the image data figuring out what it is,
>which will tend to prevent them from doing it."
>
Whatever happens here does not exempt the commercial user from
exercising due dilligence in deciding what he uses.

Ec


from_name: Steve Vertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slogan:Zionism_is_racism

body:
I just massively edited
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan%3A_Zionism_is_racism

I removed lengthy explations of Conspiracy theories
and other irrelevant materiale -- will link back to it
, in a minute though.

And (heres the best part) I actually added an
explanation of the *term!  (which is kinda nice to
have in an article about a term. )
Anyway for those interested -- I expect some silly
business  as usual.

-S-

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


body:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, The Cunctator wrote:

> > I miss at least one option here:
> > ( ) The copyright holder is [textbox] and they have agreed to its
> > publication
> >     on the following conditions: [textbox and/or more radio buttons]
> >
> How is that an applicable box? Only public domain, images licensed under
> GFDL, or (maybe) fair use images are compatible with the GFDL and
> Wikipedia's purposes.

Then we'd better start deleting - there's about 50 pictures on WikipediaEN
that are only free for non-commercial use.

Andre Engels


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page caching

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> * show hoverbox over wiki links
>   ???

This will show the "real" target of the link (like in [[real target|some
text]]) in a "tip" hoverbox when you put the mouse over the link.

Magnus


body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

>By now it's probably obvious where I'm going with this. Could one of these
>methods (either storing a parsed and non-parsed version or the approach I
>took with "de-parsing") be used for some performance gain on Wikipedia's
>webserver?
>
>
De-parsing strikes me as a rather odd way to do it. Furthermore, Jimbo
has often remarked that disk space is not a problem. (he may come to
regret that remark when we hit a million articles.... but hey! ;)

I would suggest we consider semi-parsing.
Save two versions of the article:
a) wikitext
b) the wikitext parsed into HTML, with wikilinks still as [[link]]. Note
that this would not be a fully-formed HTML document, just a fragment
since it would not have a head section or enclosing tags.

upon page read, it's b) that is inserted into the delivered page. Links
are parsed live, since their status as existing / stub / ghost depends
on the state of the database at that moment.

upon page edit, a) is sent to the edit box of the edit page


from_name: Alex R.

body:
"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> on Wednesday, August 13, 2003 4:12 PM
said:
<..snip..>
> 3.  In any event, if we distribute licenses under "fair use", this
> does not imply in any way that *other people's uses* will qualify
> similarly.  This makes distributing them problematic and non-free.

I have wondered the same thing when noting that some images are
fair use. I saw one image on the [[Stalin]] page and it clearly cannot
be reproduced as it features the image of a Russian woman whose
identity can clearly be surmised. While use of that image is probably
allowable under fair use (she is holding a photo of Stalin, while the
photo is probably in the public domain as the Soviet Union did not
recognize the Berne convention at the time of its publication) her
image is most likely copyrighted by someone, as well, her [[personality
rights]] are probably being violated.

> 4.  Whatever we ultimately end up doing about fair use images, one
> thing is sure: we need to keep track of them better for our own
> purposes, but also so that we can appropriately assist people who are
> re-using the content.
I have only posted fair use material on Wikipedia once on the [[Pretty
Woman]] page, the lyrics of the song that were published as an Appendix
to the [[Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music]] US Supreme Court case, and
I clearly stated that it was being posted as fair use material,
but I do not think that everyone follows this level of diligence on
Wikipedia, there should be a policy that everyone needs to post any
fair use origination information on the talk page, but how can that
policy ever been enforced?
 ------------------------------
> Sometimes people say things that amount to "heh heh, this is great,
> we can use the images, but some commercial outfits can't, and so if
> they want to make money off of our hard work, they'll have to spend
> a lot of money going through the image data figuring out what it is,
> which will tend to prevent them from doing it."
>
> I don't think that attitude is consistent with the ideal of freedom
> expressed in the GNU philosophy.

I find this whole issue confusing.  If anyone wants the encyclopedia
for free, then then can distribute it and allow it to be copied, but if
someone
is going to make those copies as a publication they have to deal with the
fact that
anyone who posts on Wikipedia could have posted infringing material
as there is an open posting policy, I can't see a way around that kind of
problem for anyone who might want to legally exploit Wikipedia's work.
Under the current posting policy, even if someone were to sign an
indemnification
clause and warranty as part of their copyright assignment to Wikimedia
how can Wikimedia guarantee any clear [[chain of title]] to third parties?
That would require proof from all authors that their work was original
and not merely reviewed by the many Wikipedia volunteers.  It would
bring into suspect all anonymous contributions as well.  A lot of due
dillegence would be required before anyone publishes Wikipedia in
any other form than an online repository.  For instance in an article that
is
a biography the author of such an article should have a list of all his or
her
biographical references, the person doing the due dilligence should then
independently check all those references to see if any of the material might
have been inadvertently copied. As well due dilligence would require that
someone check other sources that are not listed in the bibliographic
references
for the author or authors who have published a work. Only after such an
extensive search is done can someone assure an insurer that it is highly
unlikely that a copyright infringement suit would be filed against the
publisher.
I can't see how that can ever happen with Wikipedia information except its
use as an online research tool for other authors.  It is not a manual that
might be published by, let's say a dozen of individuals who want to make
the use of open source software available for public use. It is written by
thousands of people, many of whom are anonymous and who may be
posting content written by someone else who has not given them permission
to post on Wikipedia (remember even unpublished work is protected by
copyright).

 alex756


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server timezone.

body:
Tobin Richard wrote:

> I just upgraded a wiki down here in Oz and the timestamp for article
> edits is now wrong. I thought there was somewhere in the config files
> where the servers timezone could be set but I couldn't find it. If it
> cant be set then would it be possible to set the default timezone
> offset for all users (since just about all of them are east coast
> Australians?

There was some inconsistent treatment of timezones, where sometimes
server time was assumed to be UTC and sometimes not. A while ago I went
through and fixed it all to use the gmdate() function to be consistent.

You can set the default timezone exposed to users who haven't set a
custom tz offset like this (extract from LocalSettings.php for the
German wikipedia, which exposes European timezone by default, since the
entire target audience is there):

  # Ugly hack warning! This needs smoothing out.
  $wgLocaltimezone = "Europe/Berlin";
  $oldtz = getenv("TZ");
  putenv("TZ=$wgLocaltimezone");
  $wgLocalTZoffset = date("Z") / 3600;
  putenv("TZ=$oldtz");

This timezone will be used to mark ~~~~ signatures for everyone, and
times in recentchanges, history etc etc for people who enter nothing in
the timezone offset options.

Upload & deletion logs will probably still be listed in UTC if I recall
the system correctly.

Your system may or may not vary, but on our machine the available
timezone settings for Oz are:

Australia/ACT
Australia/Adelaide
Australia/Brisbane
Australia/Broken_Hill
Australia/Canberra
Australia/Darwin
Australia/Hobart
Australia/LHI
Australia/Lindeman
Australia/Lord_Howe
Australia/Melbourne
Australia/North
Australia/NSW
Australia/Perth
Australia/Queensland
Australia/South
Australia/Sydney
Australia/Tasmania
Australia/Victoria
Australia/West
Australia/Yancowinna

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
> This is all good stuff. The way it works in
> California is as follows (I
> would assume it's similar in most of the other large
> states):
>
> 1) after a publisher readies a book, it has to pass
> a textbook committee
> review to make sure that it conforms to the
> frameworks.
>
> 2) Once a book has been approved, it's available for
> any district to adopt.
> The districts have their various curriculum experts,
> teachers, interested
> parents, etc. determine what's the best fit for the
> district. btw, it's more
> complex at K-5 [elementary school], where amorphous
> 'topics' like 'language
> development' take on the flavor of entire integrated
> programs, and are more
> complex, (but ideally suited to open content
> development).
>
> So, this is one way it gets interesting is with open
> content developed in
> modular format via Wikipedia. It turns out that
> many, many excellent
> teachers have developed very good materials on their
> own over the years.
> Often, this material is published by a district, and
> distributed to all the
> schools in that district.
>
> If a specific book is published via Wikipedia to
> adhere to standards, once
> the content is approved at state level, various
> districts could either
> self-publish, or request that a commercial publisher
> include those teacher
> materials specific to the district that had been
> published by Wikipedia.
> This would save time, money, and other resources -
> not to mention the
> benefit that(again, I would start with one
> (recommending California), and
> migrate to many...in fact, eventually, one could tag
> various modules within
> a 'book' as specific to one or another state, and go
> from there).
>
> This is just one advantage of the modular approach,
> from a practical
> 'on-the-ground' approach. There are many others.
>
> Sanford

That's not how I heard it. After reading ''The
Language Police'' by Diane Ravitch, I have a clear
view of why my textbooks (as in at school, not at
wikibooks) are so dull.

First, the textbook companies self-censor for the PC
left and religious right in order to get the big
contracts with the state and to not get sales hurt by
a big lawsuit, initiated by a disgruntled pastor or
feminist who doesn't like the fantasy in Aesop's
fables or the imbalance in the roles of women as
compared to men in history. These lawsuits are
consistantly lost by the parents who want to censor
the books, but it is enough for the textbook to stop
selling almost completely. The textbook companies
don't like this, so they self-censor.

Often three, two, or even only one textbook is
approved in a state as big as California, and they're
not forced to accept every textbook that just meets
standards. They want to accept only textbooks that
will prevent big public outrage. And they do have
standards mandating gender-neutral language and such,
but those aren't as harsh as the censorship the
textbook companies themselves use.

Then, even if the book is approved by the state, it
still needs to get through the school board, which
isn't always that good on allowing objectionable
material through (eg. not perfect race balance
compared to recent US Census or something talking
about the advantages of the UN in extreme cases).

Then, parents complain anyway, even after all of this
censorship, not about the censorship, but about the
lack of more of it.

I'm sorry if this letter sounded like a
conspiricy-theory rant and I'm paranoid, but that's
just what it seems like. So I don't think we should be
aiming at schools. Maybe colleges or homeschoolers? In
colleges, the professors pick out the textbooks, and
they look around for the best one, unlike gradeschool
teachers who have no power over the issue whatsoever.
Homeschoolers tend to dislike textbooks, but that's
probably because they're so terribly written. Or we
could go for a place where this censorship isn't so
bad, possible Europe or Canada?
-LDan

__________________________________
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body:
Erik,

If it was originally a AP photo then perhaps they have copyright. Wikipedia
does not have any personality right release for that women. If AP acquired
that photo they might not have a release because it was taken during
a pro-Stalin demonstration that was a public newsworthy event, now
however, long after that event she has privacy rights to be respected.
News gathering standards are not the same for photos that are used
for other purposes.

Of course getting sued in a California (or Federal court in any federal
district as the plaintiff would be a foreign national) by a Russian citizen
is highly unlikely, but this is exactly the kind of thing that due
dilligence
is designed to prevent, these nagging questions that are hard to resolve.
That is why the chain of title is so important in any work that is released
for public distribution outside of the open source, on line Wikipedia
environment.  For photos of individuals you need to get a release from
that person, the personality rights thing is independent of any copyright
issue.
Alex756

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RE: [Wikitech-l] Copyright Schmopyright

> Alex-
>
> > I have wondered the same thing when noting that some images are
> > fair use. I saw one image on the [[Stalin]] page and it clearly cannot
> > be reproduced as it features the image of a Russian woman whose
> > identity can clearly be surmised.
>
> How is our use different from that by the original source (looks like an
> AP or Reuters photo to me)? I would vote for its deletion on the grounds
> that it provides no source credit and was uploaded by a known troll, but
> the personal rights issue seems questionable to me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] propose changes to Interwiki.php

body:
Under special cases in the  ov interwiki array

 "w"		=> "http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1", #
DEPRECATED
 "m"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
 "meta"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
 "sep11"		=> "http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
 "simple"        =>
"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1", #DEPRICATE
 "s"             =>
"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1",  #SIMPLER
 "wiktionary"	=> "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
 #DEPRICATE
 "d"	        => "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
#EASIER

-Stevertigo 03:15, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

__________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slogan:Zionism_is_racism

body:
Steve-
> I just massively edited
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan%3A_Zionism_is_racism

This belongs on wikien-l, if it belongs on a mailing list at all.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Alex-

> I have wondered the same thing when noting that some images are
> fair use. I saw one image on the [[Stalin]] page and it clearly cannot
> be reproduced as it features the image of a Russian woman whose
> identity can clearly be surmised.

How is our use different from that by the original source (looks like an
AP or Reuters photo to me)? I would vote for its deletion on the grounds
that it provides no source credit and was uploaded by a known troll, but
the personal rights issue seems questionable to me.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Server timezone.

body:
Tobin Richard wrote:

> Thanks Brion, I'll buy you a beer if you're ever in Melbourne.

Well, I don't drink but thanks for the offer. :)

Of course, you can feel free to make a donation to my notebook computer
fund or other worthy causes: http://leuksman.com/misc/donate

Do speak up if any other recent changes have broken your site! :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 6:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] distinct books

> > This is all good stuff. The way it works in
> > California is as follows (I
> > would assume it's similar in most of the other large
> > states):
> >
> > 1) after a publisher readies a book, it has to pass
> > a textbook committee
> > review to make sure that it conforms to the
> > frameworks.
> >
> > 2) Once a book has been approved, it's available for
> > any district to adopt.
> > The districts have their various curriculum experts,
> > teachers, interested
> > parents, etc. determine what's the best fit for the
> > district. btw, it's more
> > complex at K-5 [elementary school], where amorphous
> > 'topics' like 'language
> > development' take on the flavor of entire integrated
> > programs, and are more
> > complex, (but ideally suited to open content
> > development).
> >
> > So, this is one way it gets interesting is with open
> > content developed in
> > modular format via Wikipedia. It turns out that
> > many, many excellent
> > teachers have developed very good materials on their
> > own over the years.
> > Often, this material is published by a district, and
> > distributed to all the
> > schools in that district.
> >
> > If a specific book is published via Wikipedia to
> > adhere to standards, once
> > the content is approved at state level, various
> > districts could either
> > self-publish, or request that a commercial publisher
> > include those teacher
> > materials specific to the district that had been
> > published by Wikipedia.
> > This would save time, money, and other resources -
> > not to mention the
> > benefit that(again, I would start with one
> > (recommending California), and
> > migrate to many...in fact, eventually, one could tag
> > various modules within
> > a 'book' as specific to one or another state, and go
> > from there).
> >
> > This is just one advantage of the modular approach,
> > from a practical
> > 'on-the-ground' approach. There are many others.
> >
> > Sanford
>
> That's not how I heard it. After reading ''The
> Language Police'' by Diane Ravitch, I have a clear
> view of why my textbooks (as in at school, not at
> wikibooks) are so dull.
>
> First, the textbook companies self-censor for the PC
> left and religious right in order to get the big
> contracts with the state and to not get sales hurt by
> a big lawsuit, initiated by a disgruntled pastor or
> feminist who doesn't like the fantasy in Aesop's
> fables or the imbalance in the roles of women as
> compared to men in history. These lawsuits are
> consistantly lost by the parents who want to censor
> the books, but it is enough for the textbook to stop
> selling almost completely. The textbook companies
> don't like this, so they self-censor.
------------
The publishers self-censor for lots of reasons. One of them is for the
reason you mention. Others have to do with 1) an obsessive preoccupation
with lowest-common-denominator grammar; 2) lowest-common-denominator content
[somewhat related to your point]; 3) the fear that not pleasing everyone
[which is impossible] will lose the 'big' state textbook adoptions, which
the publishers need to break even (the gravy in made in the smaller states)

> Often three, two, or even only one textbook is
> approved in a state as big as California, and they're
> not forced to accept every textbook that just meets
> standards. They want to accept only textbooks that
> will prevent big public outrage. And they do have
> standards mandating gender-neutral language and such,
> but those aren't as harsh as the censorship the
> textbook companies themselves use.
------------------------
Yes, it's true that that sometimes only one book passes peer review at the
state level, but that's not often the case. Usually, there is a fairly large
choice. (but not large enough, as far as I'm concerned).

> Then, even if the book is approved by the state, it
> still needs to get through the school board, which
> isn't always that good on allowing objectionable
> material through (eg. not perfect race balance
> compared to recent US Census or something talking
> about the advantages of the UN in extreme cases).
------------------
Correct. But that's not something that an open content textbook policy can
change. That's a community issue, having to do with 'community moral
standards'.

> Then, parents complain anyway, even after all of this
> censorship, not about the censorship, but about the
> lack of more of it.
-----------------
Sometime true, sometimes not. Again, this is something that open source has
no control over.

>
> I'm sorry if this letter sounded like a
> conspiricy-theory rant and I'm paranoid, but that's
> just what it seems like. So I don't think we should be
> aiming at schools. Maybe colleges or homeschoolers? In
> colleges, the professors pick out the textbooks, and
> they look around for the best one, unlike gradeschool
> teachers who have no power over the issue whatsoever.
> Homeschoolers tend to dislike textbooks, but that's
> probably because they're so terribly written. Or we
> could go for a place where this censorship isn't so
> bad, possible Europe or Canada?
> -LDan
--------------
It's not a conspiracy-theory rant; it's a well-considered opinion. There is
some truth to what you say. I don't think you're paranoid (unless you were
writing this with your door quadruple-bolted and a loaded scrapnel grenade
on your lap after your seventh Red Bull in the last 30 minutes)  ;)

Here are some reasons why we *should* be aiming at schools.

1) States waste - cumulatively - *Billions* on inferior book products. The
K-12 publishing business is essentially a commercial, price-controlling
oligarchy that is virtually void of innovation - whether it be process, or
content. The money could go to better use. Also, many nations on earth are
in desperate need of good K-12 textbooks written in English (China and
India, for example). Imagine how much open source K-12 books would mean to
those billions of people. Further, imagine how open source K-12 texts are
potentially extendable into other information resources, like open source
encyclopedias. Wow.

2) Open source books, as long as they meet state frameworks, *will* pass
state textbook selection committees.

3) Open source textbooks can - as suggested, and is advised - be modular, so
that districts can choose those parts of a book that they want (that are in
addition to the approved core. So, if you have a district that believes that
the idea evoluton is the devil's work, they can add a module about how we
didn't evolve from apes. They'll do it anyway. In fact, someone may very
well contribute such a module to an open source text project. Wouldn't it be
better to see the part of the book that is approved for general use in place
(cheaper, better content, more flexible, etc.), than not? There's no way
that open source content can legislate community morality.

Now, about colleges and homeschoolers. Open source college books are already
being done. They will continue to be done. This is happening. And, it's a
no-brainer. College instructors are largely an independent lot when it comes
to book material.

Homeschoolers have almost infinite choice already when it comes to learning
materials. Why even bother with a textbook?. And if you want to, why not
customize your own form the best of open source, supplemented by other
materials?

Sanford

> __________________________________
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> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 06:47:22PM -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I'm sorry if this letter sounded like a
> conspiricy-theory rant and I'm paranoid, but that's
> just what it seems like. So I don't think we should be
> aiming at schools. Maybe colleges or homeschoolers? In
> colleges, the professors pick out the textbooks, and
> they look around for the best one, unlike gradeschool
> teachers who have no power over the issue whatsoever.
> Homeschoolers tend to dislike textbooks, but that's
> probably because they're so terribly written. Or we
> could go for a place where this censorship isn't so
> bad, possible Europe or Canada?

In Poland getting recommendation from Ministry of Education
is quite easy, and you can find textbooks that fit
almost any bias you like (it's harder to get npov one),
as long as it more or less (usually less) fits frame curriculum.

Ministry only makes frame curriculum for public schools,
and doesn't even seriously enforce that. Recently they started
publishing much more detailed requirements ("syllabus") for state exam
taken after high school ("matura"), but it's only indirectly
related to textbooks.

In all schools it's the teacher who selects the textbook,
whether it has Ministry's recommendation or not. Very often it doesn't,
especially with imported textbooks for foreign language classes.


subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
> Correct. But that's not something that an open
> content textbook policy can
> change. That's a community issue, having to do with
> 'community moral
> standards'.
But sometimes, court cases are filed, making it a
national issue by the time it gets to the supreme
court. And you can bet FOX will have a field day over
the lawsuit if our book gives any reference to
religions other than christianity without giving equal
(but out of place) refrences to christianity.
> Sometime true, sometimes not. Again, this is
> something that open source has
> no control over.
It's something every textbook, open or closed, must do
to be used.
> It's not a conspiracy-theory rant; it's a
> well-considered opinion. There is
> some truth to what you say. I don't think you're
> paranoid (unless you were
> writing this with your door quadruple-bolted and a
> loaded scrapnel grenade
> on your lap after your seventh Red Bull in the last
> 30 minutes)  ;)
>
> Here are some reasons why we *should* be aiming at
> schools.
>
>3) Open source textbooks can - as suggested, and is
>advised - be
>modular, so
>that districts can choose those parts of a book that
>they want (that
>are in
>addition to the approved core. So, if you have a
>district that believes
>that
>the idea evoluton is the devil's work, they can add a
>module about how
>we
>didn't evolve from apes. They'll do it anyway. In
>fact, someone may
>very
>well contribute such a module to an open source text
>project. Wouldn't
>it be
>better to see the part of the book that is approved
>for general use in
>place
>(cheaper, better content, more flexible, etc.), than
>not? There's no
>way
>that open source content can legislate community
>morality
Good idea. Kinda like letting them use the Wiki at
their end. But that would probably be to cunbersome
for them. They want a ready-made textbook. Not to
mention that this modularity, although it is in theory
good, would be a nightmare to print.

I came up with a new idea for what we can use our
textbooks as without risk of censorship:
idiot's-guide-type books!  We could make a series
called something like "World History: By Anyone, For
Anyone"
LDan

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from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I the only one who suspects that this Kenneth is Lir?

body:
Am I the only one who suspects that this Kenneth is Lir? First, he made his debut after Lir's latest persona, Pizza Puzzle, left the scene. Second, Kenneth seems to know his way around the site too well for a new user. Third and moreover, his crusade seems to coincide with Lir's over-arching battle against the "totalitarian cabal" that runs this website. Kenneth's edit description "no more vigilante dictatorship of a free website" (see his user contributions) stuck out right away as a possible clue linking this vandal, more overtly hostile and angry than one we have ever dealt with before (most vandals, such as Michael, are more or less good-natured immature pranksters), to a user with a professed desire to overthrow the Wiki "cabal." I think that perhaps the fall of the latest Lir identity pushed Adam off the edge. [[User:172|172]]

---------------------------------
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
For what it's worth, Adam has assured me that he is not Pizza Puzzle,
and that he has moved on to other interests.  He and I have had a
reasonably pleasant ongoing conversation about politics in which he
joked that maybe Pizza Puzzle is Ann Coulter and I responded that
maybe Pizza Puzzle is Michael Moore -- or that they are sharing the
account.

(If you know who Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are, that's a hysterical
thought.)

It is possible, of course, that he's violated by trust by lying to me
point blank.  Certainly, considerable evidence suggests at least that
Pizza Puzzle is located in the same geographical area as Adam, and the
coinciding of interests is therefore remarkable.

--Jimbo


body:
I only have a slight suspicion that Kenneth is Adam, but I'm absolutely certain that PP is Lir, due to evidence of PP?s physical location, the fact that he continued Vera Cruz's edit war on New Imperialism, and everything else. Moreover, I can easily recognize his style and views, perhaps having corresponded with his identities more than all but a handful of other contributors. Perhaps if Adam is violating Mr. Wales' trust by confiding in him that he's not PP, his claims that he no longer has a vendetta against the "Wiki cabal" aren't trustworthy either. We all know that Lir's personas often targeted Mr. Wales' user page with tirades against his "totalitarian dictatorship." Kenneth, who is persistently vandalizing Mr. Wales' user page, seems to be following in Adam?s footsteps, but with a greater intensity and viciousness. We must question why a new user, assuming that Kenneth is a new user, would make similar proclamations against the cabal? How would a new user know to target Jimbo
 right away? It took me about a month of active usage to even find out who Jimmy Wales is! I think that  a developer should trace Kenneth's physical location. If that clears Adam, I will personally apologize to him on the mailing list for my stated suspicions. [[User:172|172]]

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from_name: Tobin Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server timezone.

body:
I just upgraded a wiki down here in Oz and the timestamp for article
edits is now wrong. I thought there was somewhere in the config files
where the servers timezone could be set but I couldn't find it. If it
cant be set then would it be possible to set the default timezone offset
for all users (since just about all of them are east coast Australians?

Sorry to bother everyone with a non-wikipedia question.

Tobin Richard
http://www.sca.org.au/cunnan/


body:
Lir or not, this Kenneth character has to be a past vandal with a grudge. Once again, he knew to target Mr. Wales; he knew his way around the site very well; and he described one of his edits as ?no more vigilante dictatorship of a free website." It could be another user with a grudge, but what other banned user, aside from Lir, targeted what he saw as an unjust ?cabal? or ?dictatorship?? His location should be determined, whether he?s Lir, Michael, DW, or anyone else. This will give us key insights when we deal with these reappearing trouble-makers in the future.

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body:
Steve Vertigo wrote:

>Under special cases in the  ov interwiki array
>
> "w"		=> "http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1", #
>DEPRECATED
> "m"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> "meta"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> "sep11"		=> "http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> "simple"        =>
>"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1", #DEPRICATE
> "s"             =>
>"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1",  #SIMPLER
> "wiktionary"	=> "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
> #DEPRICATE
> "d"	        => "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
>#EASIER
>
>
>
I have an additional suggestion.
It would sometimes be useful to be able to make a link to another
language, without it being 'magic'.
For example, on the Wikipedia:Embassy page, we have to resort of full
URLS hidden with pipes.

Perhaps the syntax [[:fr:pagename]] could be used?


body:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Andre Engels wrote:
> > Then we'd better start deleting - there's about 50 pictures on WikipediaEN
> > that are only free for non-commercial use.
>
> Well, we'd better start flagging them, at least, which is what this
> option is going to do.

Which was exactly my proposal, adding an extra flag for this so we can
distinguish them both from material we can spread under GNU/FDL without
problems and material that is only acceptable because of 'Fair Use'.
But then I got the remark back that that was not necessary because we
were not supposed to have such images.

Apart from 'non-commercial use' images, I have also in this way uploaded
(to nl:) images which fell under the GPL (adding in both cases a note on
the using page that it does not fall under the GNU/FDL, and on the
description page giving the actual copyright status).

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I the only one...

body:
Ah agreed. Im just wondering if we're not being too
hard on the kid -- after all, we might be taking his
comments out of context.

 ;)
-S-

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Abe-
>
> > Lir or not, this Kenneth character has to be a
> past vandal with a grudge.
> > Once again, he knew to target Mr. Wales; he knew
> his way around the site
> > very well; and he described one of his edits as
> ?no more vigilante
> > dictatorship of a free website." It could be
> another user with a grudge, but
> > what other banned user, aside from Lir, targeted
> what he saw as an unjust
> > ?cabal? or ?dictatorship?? His location should be
> determined, whether he?s
> > Lir, Michael, DW, or anyone else. This will give
> us key insights when we
> > deal with these reappearing trouble-makers in the
> future.
>
> I'm still not sure what it matters -- just revert
> the vandal and carry on
> with more important things. Do not feed the trolls.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> Steve Vertigo wrote:
> >Under special cases in the  ov interwiki array
> > "w"		=> "http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1", #
> >DEPRECATED
> > "m"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> > "meta"		=> "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> > "sep11"		=> "http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1",
> > "simple"        =>
> >"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1",
> #DEPRICATE
> > "s"             =>
> >"http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?$1",
> #SIMPLER
> > "wiktionary"	=> "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
>
> > #DEPRICATE
> > "d"	        => "http://wiktionary.org/wiki/$1",
> >#EASIER
> >

>TARQ:  I have an additional suggestion.
> It would sometimes be useful to be able to make a
> link to another
> language, without it being 'magic'.
> For example, on the Wikipedia:Embassy page, we have
> to resort of full
> URLS hidden with pipes.
>
> Perhaps the syntax [[:fr:pagename]] could be used?

So you want language articles in the body... I have
thought about that recently.  That would mean, (if we
wanted to continue in the trend treating language
links as separate from the article body ) The answer
would be either to make language tags different,
depending on where they want to go -- so for the body,
only [[ru:article]], and in the header [[rus:article]]
-- the other idea would go along with what people have
been thinking for a while -- which would be to deal
with inter-language tags in the headers as metadata --
a separate dataspace separate from the article ( but
attached to it). It would then be editable in a
separate field from the article body (with an [edit
meta] link on a page (for sysops only?). And then of
course It would be nice to have a common user space
and combined recent changes. And jeez after all my
blabberin I find that this is old hat =
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_language_integration

:)
-S-

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in_reply_to: <8rqAHjRSpVB@erik_moeller>; from erik_moeller@gmx.de on Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 05:02:00PM +0200

body:
It's probably worth noting that comments like these are not
particularly bothersome to me.  I put a lot of thought and heart into
Wikipedia, and the things that bother me most are when good people are
getting upset with each other when I'd like to see us respect each
other and treasure our similarities and differences.

Idiots like this do serve one very valid purpose: they unite us in
understanding what it _really_ means to be a nit or troll.  :-)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> # 12:54, Aug 14, 2003 User talk:Kennet ( == BUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALES ==
> BUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO
> WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO
> WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALESBUTTFUCKER JIMB)
> # 12:48, Aug 14, 2003 User talk:Kennet (BUTTFUCKER JIMBO WALES)
> # 12:40, Aug 14, 2003 User talk:Kennet (JIMBO WALES IS SHIT)
> # 12:37, Aug 14, 2003 User talk:Kennet (BUTTFUCKER)


subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

in_reply_to: <20030814014722.81900.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com>; from littledanehren@yahoo.com on Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 06:47:22PM -0700

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> First, the textbook companies self-censor for the PC
> left and religious right in order to get the big
> contracts with the state and to not get sales hurt by
> a big lawsuit, initiated by a disgruntled pastor or
> feminist who doesn't like the fantasy in Aesop's
> fables or the imbalance in the roles of women as
> compared to men in history. These lawsuits are
> consistantly lost by the parents who want to censor
> the books, but it is enough for the textbook to stop
> selling almost completely. The textbook companies
> don't like this, so they self-censor.

My own view is that NPOV itself provides a sort of self-censorship
that is hopefully not as heavy handed as what a proprietary
development process comes up with.

NPOV is designed to be maximally acceptable to a wide range of people.
A feminist and a pastor of very different political and ethical
frameworks ought to be able to read any NPOV article or book and agree
that it's fair.

With a proprietary development process, the only way to achieve
consensus is to simply omit or water down material that might offend.
With the many-minds creativity of the wiki process, there's usually a
way to present the material in such a way that everyone can agree on
it.

> I'm sorry if this letter sounded like a conspiricy-theory rant and
> I'm paranoid, but that's just what it seems like.

No, I don't think that.  These are legitimate issues and we do have to
consider them.

> Or we could go for a place where this censorship isn't so bad,
> possible Europe or Canada?

I think you'll find that things are generally *much* worse elsewhere,
and especially in Canada.

In Canada, a man was fined for placing an ad in the newspaper quoting
from Leviticus and condemning homosexuality.  This was upheld on
appeal.

This website is worth reviewing, too:
http://www.bcla.bc.ca/ifc/censorshipbc/intro.html


subject: [Wikipedia-l] on major languages -- interesting

body:
http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/major.htm

Languages by percentage of population
thought this was interesting enough to use as a
comparison to how wikipedia is spread around.
We all know the figures there-- Eng-150k articles,
etc...
(Rough figures:)

1  Mandarin Chinese   15.0%
2  English                       5.5%
3  Spanish                      5.0%
4  Arabic                         3.3%
5  Hindi                           3.2%
6  Bengali                       3.0%
7  Russian                      2.8%
8  Portuguese                2.5%
9  Japanese                   2.0%
10 German                     1.6%
11 Javanese                  1.25%
12 Korean                      1.25%
13 French                      1.25%

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body:
Alex R. wrote:
>If anyone wants the encyclopedia for free, then then can distribute
>it and allow it to be copied, but if someone is going to make those
>copies as a publication they have to deal with the fact that anyone
>who posts on Wikipedia could have posted infringing material as there
>is an open posting policy, I can't see a way around that kind of
>problem for anyone who might want to legally exploit Wikipedia's
>work.

That's right, but our internal policies can make it easier or harder
for them.  I think we should lean strongly towards making it easier
for them.

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
> > Correct. But that's not something that an open
> > content textbook policy can
> > change. That's a community issue, having to do with
> > 'community moral
> > standards'.
> But sometimes, court cases are filed, making it a
> national issue by the time it gets to the supreme
> court. And you can bet FOX will have a field day over
> the lawsuit if our book gives any reference to
> religions other than christianity without giving equal
-------------------------
Who cares about FOX, or any other media outlet that one agrees, or disagrees
with? I may not agree with certain points of view, or community standards,
but whether FOX (or someone else) complains is of no concern to me.

Wiki is about open source content, not moral guarianship. In fact, moral
guardianship is anethema to open source content.

> (but out of place) refrences to christianity.
> > Sometime true, sometimes not. Again, this is
> > something that open source has
> > no control over.
> It's something every textbook, open or closed, must do
> to be used.
> > It's not a conspiracy-theory rant; it's a
> > well-considered opinion. There is
> > some truth to what you say. I don't think you're
> > paranoid (unless you were
> > writing this with your door quadruple-bolted and a
> > loaded scrapnel grenade
> > on your lap after your seventh Red Bull in the last
> > 30 minutes)  ;)
> >
> > Here are some reasons why we *should* be aiming at
> > schools.
> >
> >3) Open source textbooks can - as suggested, and is
> >advised - be
> >modular, so
> >that districts can choose those parts of a book that
> >they want (that
> >are in
> >addition to the approved core. So, if you have a
> >district that believes
> >that
> >the idea evoluton is the devil's work, they can add a
> >module about how
> >we
> >didn't evolve from apes. They'll do it anyway. In
> >fact, someone may
> >very
> >well contribute such a module to an open source text
> >project. Wouldn't
> >it be
> >better to see the part of the book that is approved
> >for general use in
> >place
> >(cheaper, better content, more flexible, etc.), than
> >not? There's no
> >way
> >that open source content can legislate community
> >morality
> Good idea. Kinda like letting them use the Wiki at
> their end. But that would probably be to cunbersome
> for them. They want a ready-made textbook. Not to
> mention that this modularity, although it is in theory
> good, would be a nightmare to print.
----------------
I envision a situation where modules could be selected, bundeled, and
printed as a whole (or as individual modules, if one so chose).

The pilot that Wiki is going to work on may not be modular (or may be).

> I came up with a new idea for what we can use our
> textbooks as without risk of censorship:
> idiot's-guide-type books!  We could make a series
> called something like "World History: By Anyone, For
> Anyone"
-----------------
That's what the situation is today, believe it or not. Historical
perspectives abound. Are you familiar with Howard Zinn's books? He writes
about history from the perspective of 'the people'. They're very
interesting. Then again, one can find almost any perspective present in
history books. History is both written, *and* made. ;)

Again, the project that we're going to take on can itself make history. We
have a chance, together, to create a beginning model for open source K-12
that will save schools and students billions of dollars, provide more
variety of content, help create an ethic of  sharing content for the public
good, permit the contribution of informed citzens who have something to
offer the community of scholars (and citizens), and so on.

Your earlier points about some of the reasons why textbooks are so bad are
well taken. This is oru chance to change that. It's a big challenge; I think
we're up to it.

Sanford
>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I the only one...

body:
A sense of humor can justify nearly anything.

-S-

--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> At 10:13 AM 8/14/03 -0700, Steve wrote:
> >Ah agreed. Im just wondering if we're not being too
> >hard on the kid -- after all, we might be taking
> his
> >comments out of context.
> >
> >  ;)
>
> Either that smiley means to ignore the whole
> message--in which
> case, why bother posting?--or I'd like to know what
> plausible
> context justifies a series of obscene insults to
> someone the
> vandal in question has never met.
> --
> Vicki Rosenzweig
> vr at redbird.org
> http://www.redbird.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I the only one...

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> At 10:13 AM 8/14/03 -0700, Steve wrote:
> >Ah agreed. Im just wondering if we're not being too
> >hard on the kid -- after all, we might be taking his
> >comments out of context.
> >
> >  ;)
>
> Either that smiley means to ignore the whole message--in which
> case, why bother posting?--or I'd like to know what plausible
> context justifies a series of obscene insults to someone the
> vandal in question has never met.

Satire, humor... a little break in the monotony... It helps
sometimes.
Besides, it's a wink ;)

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [Textbook-l] easy readers (was: distinct books)

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
> Ministry only makes frame curriculum for public
> schools,
> and doesn't even seriously enforce that. Recently
> they started
> publishing much more detailed requirements
> ("syllabus") for state exam
> taken after high school ("matura"), but it's only
> indirectly
> related to textbooks.
>
> In all schools it's the teacher who selects the
> textbook,
> whether it has Ministry's recommendation or not.
> Very often it doesn't,
> especially with imported textbooks for foreign
> language classes.
>
Too bad we don't know Polish (except for you). But we
could write easy readers in English for people
learning it from other languages. Were you hinting at
that?

In America, easy readers for 4-7 year olds are among
the most censored of all. There must be a 1:1 ratio of
boys to girls, the races must be in perfect proportion
to the recent US census, and there must be no fantasy,
ethics that disagrees with christianity or disrespect
of authority. So, I guess this should only be for
peole in foreign countries, but that's still a
gigantic market.
LDan

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subject: [Textbook-l] distinct books

body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think that the textbook site would be better
> organized
> with each book falling into its own place on the
> site. This
> is what I mean:
>
> http://wikibooks.org/Spanish/
>
> http://wikibooks.org/French_4_Kids/
>
> etc.
>
> That way a page within the Spanish textbook could be
> named
> "Infinitives" and a page within any other language
> textbook
> could be named the same without conflict. I think
> that in
> the long run this will make naming simpler.
>
> We would ideally also have the option to limit
> searches to
> one textbook at a time.
>
> About interchangeable modules (that is, using one
> module
> for multiple textbooks): this solution may be
> inideal
> because the goals of each textbook are different and
> editing a module for one book will sometimes make it
> less
> suited to other books. Even if I were to take my own
> organic chemistry book and rearrange it I would have
> to
> rewrite many parts of it to make sure that
> supporting ideas
> arent being thown out there before they have been
> properly
> covered.
>
> The advantage to reusing modules is that it saves a
> little
> bit of copying and pasting, right ? This is a
> shortcut that
> I think sets books up to be more on the generic side
> than
> tailored to suit. And when I use a textbook for
> myself Id
> rather have the whole thing tailored to suit.
>
> Discuss amongst yourselves.

If this is implimented, it would also be convienent to
have certain names shortened, for example
wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Foo could change to
wikipedia.org/Wikipedia/Foo. It could be the same way
with images and talk pages. I think that would look a
lot better when writing down URLs, which does happen a
lot.
LDan

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] differential watchlist

body:
I read a complaint on the German mailing list about the watchlist search
giving only changes in the last hour. And I think it's indeed a bad thing
on the smaller Wikipedias.

Could this 'shortened watchlist time' for people with many watchlist entries
perhaps be made variable through the Wikipedias?

Using the limit that in the checked period there should be less than 250 edits
on average, I get to the following division, using
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics/EN/TablesDatabaseEdits.htm

1 hour (75k-150k edits per month): en:
2 hours (25k-75k): de:
6 hours (12k-25k): fr:, nl:
12 hours (6k-12k): meta, pl:, sv:, ja:
1 day (2k-6k): eo:, es:, zh:
3 days (1k-2k): -
7 days: (<1k): cs:, ru:, other languages

Of course, it would be good to first check how many people are affected by
this, that is, how many people have an overly large watchlist on a Wikipedia
other than en:. If that are only 2 or 3 people, I guess our reaction should
be "why bother?"

Andre Engels


from_name: Fernanda Viegas

subject: [Wikipedia-l] academic research on Wikis

body:
Hello,

I am a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab and this summer I'm working on a Wiki related project that uses visualization to understand how Wiki pages evolve over time.

Because Wikipedia seems like such an interesting and thriving community, I would like to know whether any of you would be available to chat with me about how the community works and how consensus is achieved?

Also, I would be very appreciative of any pointers you might have to other academic work being done on Wikipedia.

thanks a lot,
Fernanda Viegas

http://web.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/
sociable media group
mit media laboratory
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subject: [Wikitech-l] differential watchlist

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>I read a complaint on the German mailing list about the watchlist search
>giving only changes in the last hour. And I think it's indeed a bad thing
>on the smaller Wikipedias.
>
>Could this 'shortened watchlist time' for people with many watchlist entries
>perhaps be made variable through the Wikipedias?
>

I had started on code to set the cutoff time by the number of recent
edits instead of vice versa, but I haven't finished it yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)