from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Fri, February 18, 2005 6:22 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
>
> That is why it has made Minnan Wikipedia a big joke. Extremely few
> Minnan speakers (even in Taiwan) can understand what the hack these
> guys are writing about in their Minnan Wikipedia. Because Minnan simply do
> not yet have a standardised writing system (despite Taiwanese government's
> effort to establish one, most grown-ups in Taiwan sitll cannot comprehend
> written Minnan, and there is no Minnan newspaper, only one TV channel)
>
Here, I invite people from zh-min-nan: to speak.

People who know written Chinese may read this nice article at zh:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%A9%B1%E5%AD%97

Of course, even that level of usage will not meet the popularity
requirement of Sheng Jiong, so actually I am inviting other people to
read and to judge if we can call that a standardized writing system.

> There are not standard. No one has formalised these "characters", not
> the Hong Kong government (both before and after 1997), not the Guangdong
> government, not any governments in the world. There is also not a standard
> developed by any influential non-government organizations.
>
Does the work of respected scholars count?  See the reference section
of the second link below.  The following pages are in Chinese.
http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary1.htm
http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary2.htm

I believe that does not count according to Sheng Jiong's standard, but I
invite other people to make a fair judgement.

> Your edit is reverted because you used these non-standard characters.
> But put characters aside, the grammar is the same for Cantonese and
> Chinese.
>
Sheng Jiong has ignored all the examples given in this list.  They are
not the same.  Cantonese speakers can testify that for a passage written
in Baihuawen, even if we replace all the non-cognate functional words with
their equivalent ones, e.g., dik1 with ge3, liu2 with zo2, zoi6 with hai2, etc.  The passage still does not sound like natural Cantonese.  The
statement that "the grammar is the same for Cantonese and Mandarin" is
plain wrong.

People who are interested to learn the facts may read this book:
Gao Huanian, /Guangzhou Fangyan Yanjiu/, Commerce Press, Hong Kong, 1984
ISBN: 962-07-4003-3  (In Chinese)

(Sorry, my email client does not process Unicode characters correctly,
so I will have to stick to Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, and Jyutping for
Cantonese.)

The stand point of that author was that "Chinese is one language" and
"Cantonese is a dialect", but he honestly said that "Guangzhou fangyan
he xiandai Hanyu yiji Hanyu de qita fangyan dou you hen da de chabie."
(The Cantonese dialect is very different from modern [standard] Chinese
and other Chinese dialects.)

That book go on to explain the sound system, grammar and vocabulary of
Cantonese.  He collected 2400 commonly used words and expressions that
are distinct from modern [standard] Chinese.  Distinct meant different
even when written.

He also acknowledges that most Cantonese specific words has customary
written forms in Cantonese communities.  Those forms are used in his
book.

That book is full of examples, and there are several prolonged passages
at the end.  The first one is a translation of the first chapter from Lu Xun's novel /Kong yiji/.

> We are now seeing a small portion of Cantonese speakers who believe
> that there should be something as a Cantonese Wikipedia. But for most
> Cantonese speakers (even if you just limit that to Hong Kongers), most
> people object such proposals because most people know that Cantonese is
> NOT a written language. Again I want you to show me evidence that
> Cantonese IS a written language (do not tell me X books are written in
> Cantonese, because these are just 1 or 2 exceptions. What I want to see
> is 1) has any school began teaching WRITTEN CANTONESE; 2) has any
> newspapers/magazines started writing in Cantonese)
>
I wonder how Sheng Jiong know that most people from Hong Kong will object
such proposals.  I believe there are some support and some opposition, but
most people are indifferent.  We never know unless we can do a scientific
poll.

I believe that earlier on Sheng Jiong claimed that there is not even one
book written entirely in Cantonese.  Now obviously he has raised the bar:
even if X books are written in Cantonese, those are exceptions.  I don't
know how many will be significant.

Even if we can find a school teaching written cantonese, I believe that
will be an exception.  He may require that it must happen in government
sponsored grade schools.

If we can many articles written in Cantonese, he may require a newspaper
or magazine written completely in Cantonese.  And if there is one, then
of course that on newspaper is an exception.

I understand that the main point of Sheng Jiong is that Cantonese has to
be widely accepted as a written language before we consider using it to
write Wikipedia.  However, we all understand that there are different
degrees of acceptance.  How much acceptance is enough?

Written Cantonese does not have an official status, but it surely exists
and is practiced by many.  It is not taught in grade schools, but every
literate Cantonese speakers can understand it without much training.
It is not a prestige written language, so there is always a risk that
someone will ridicule Wikimedia foundation if Cantonese Wikipedia is
allowed.

To avoid controversy, perhaps Wikimedia should disallow new Wikipedia
whenever there is opposition, and set that as a policy.  That may not
sound good, but that could be a prudent decision.  But if that is not
the goal, I will invite the board to read all the arguments, learn the
facts, weigh the pros and cons, and make the best decision.

Felix Wan


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jack Trecartin

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Adam Bishop block

body:
We were working on Wikipedia and received a series of strange messages on our talk page from User:Adam Bishop. Then, when I (Jack) tried to edit, the message below showed up:

Would somebody please explain what is happening as the reason for the block makes no sense. Thank you.

User:JillandJackUser is blocked
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

You have attempted to edit a page, either by clicking the "edit this page" tab or by following a red link.

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Angela.

The reason given is this:
reincarnation of banned user DW/BlackWidow/Angelique etc

You can email Angela or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. If you believe that our blocking policy was violated, you may discuss the block publicly on the WikiEN-L mailing list (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l). Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a Wikipedia account and a valid email address registered in your user preferences.

Your IP address is 24.139.28.56. Please include this address in any queries you make.

If you would like to know when the block will expire, please see the block list.

If you need to see the wiki text of an article, you may wish to use the Export pages feature.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nicholas Knight

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

"There are actions which are unacceptable in civilised society. Any
society that holds a given view/opinion to be unacceptable is not civilised."

Really. If I presented as my view that women are best presented with their legs
spread, and children should be seen and not heard, a civilized society should
accept my statement? Hmmm. ~~~~


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: V. Ivanov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ossetic Wikipedia: how will we know?

body:
?? ??? ???? ??!

How will we know, when the Ossetic Wikipedia is created? Will there be
any notification?

Is any data needed to start the Ossetic Wikipedia? I mean, the
language's self-name or similar things.

Thank you in advance,
Slavik Ivanov
http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/osetio

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Sheng Jiong

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
> "Baihuawen", based on Mandarin
> grammar, vocabulary, and suches. Is not like Wen Yan, which is more
> similar to Cantonese or Hakka's grammar and vocabulary, it takes many
> new characters and discards the widely accepted ones for example your
> Mandarin loving character ? which replaces perfectly good already used
> character with even less strokes by far, still used often in writing
> Minnan in Hanzi.

Is Baihuawen not the standard Chinese? It was created after the May
Fourth Movement in 1919, and has already been widely accepted in
Chinese society before 1949. Are not newspapers in Hong Kong write in
Baihuawen too?

You are deliberately associating the concept of "standard Chinese"
with classic Chinese (Wen Yan), which is actually not the standard
Chinese today (for it is neither taugt in schools as a way of writing,
and neither is it used in most publications).

> There IS SCHOOL TEACHING in WRITTEN CANTONESE. It is not primary
> school, no, but there is course at a Hong Kongs university about how
> to write in "colloquial cantonese", and expectation that when it
> finishes the courses series it can write long articles even books in
> colloquial cantonese and have some small experts knowledge about it.

So? You have missed my point entirely. The reason of my asking if
there is any school teaching Cantonese is to question if written
Cantonese has been widely accepted. Teaching in writing "colloquial
Cantonese" is irrelevent in this argument because only a handful have
ever attended the course and learnt to write. And just for my own
personal interest, please tell me which Hong Kong university has this
course.

> There IS NEWSPAPERS writing in Cantonese

Which newspaper? Which magazine? Do specify.

> (wait - you says that
> "Standard Chinese" is can be read as Cantonese? What are we talking
> here!!?).

Do you deny that most (if not all, as you insist) Hong Kong newspapers
are written in standard Chinese(baihuawen)? Then what do you call the
language they uses?

> I do'nt know about these dailys, but it is for sure tabloid
> newspaper and some teenager and womens magazine which writes
> completely or largely in the Cantonese colloquial writing.

Take a look at EasyFinder(http://easyfinder.atnext.com/template/ef/front.cfm),
one of the most read Hong Kong tabloids. Among the six headlines in
their main page, only one uses Cantonese characters; and if you read
the articles, all of them are written in baihuawen (if you prefer
using this term and purposely confusing it with classic Chinese).

> The Minnan Wikipedia has support on Livejournal from Taiwanese user
> who says they don't read Peh-oe-ji from school instead from readiong
> Wikipedia just, if ask you get a link to its post.

How many of them are there? Majority of the Taiwanese still cannot read.

And pray do reply my previous summary of my opinions as a whole. So
far you still chooses to avoid directly answering my central thesis:
1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article
entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns
encyclopediac topics; 2)Few people have written in Cantonese;
3)Wikipedia should not advocate the use of Cantonese written language.
Instead we should only allow it when it has already been accepted by
the society.

You have argued that Cantonese is a written language, using the
differences between Cantonese and Mandarin as evidence. But as I have
suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but
when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau
uses the same written language: Baihuawen.

formulax


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

>On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 19:16:44 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold beliefs that many
>>other people find abhorrent.
>>
>>
>So we should refrain from blocking such accounts even when neo-Nazi
>groups have threatened to foist their POV upon Wikipedia?
>
The question was about a coded user name, and a picture on a user page.
Jumping from that to blocking accounts for foisting a POV is illogical.

Ec


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] watch out out for a vandal whit the name "External
	Linkz"

body:
LOL... "I don't LIKE to TALK"... it's hilarious and sad at the same time.

"Cause I HATE Dutch and it is not my first language" - then why on
earth is he working at the Dutch Wikipedia? Why not go bug
en.wikipedia instead? If he likes Frisian or Limburgish or African
Dutch or even Platt better he can go bug them instead too (although
given the fact that Limburgish is a quickly growing young Wikipedia, I
don't think it could take the stress from a user like him)

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 02:42:45 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 02:53:44 +0100, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > "External Linkz" is bot changing external links and put them in a
> > template whitout authorization of WikipediaNL. And this very fast whit
> > many pages.
> >
> >  From his userpage;
> > "I will not ANSWER Questions or DISCUSS. So please do NOT give reactions
> > here. They will be DELETED"
> >
> > after blocking he use a other ipadress and keeps doing it.
> >
> > Look out for this imbecile on your wiki
>
> He has come back the next day, using various IP addresses when one
> after the other is getting blocked. His template might actually have
> gotten accepted if he had just proposed it, but putting it on tons of
> pages, and then making phrases like the following (in English, it
> seems English is his first language, why he's coming to nl: is not
> clear to me) when asked to discuss are not the way to get people's
> sympathy. This is just about the whole text that he has added to the
> discussion, although the order of the comments is somewhat changed.
>
> "I will not ANSWER Questions or DISCUSS. So please do NOT give
> reactions here. They will be DELETED"
>
> "I have been blocked withous consensus, for making positive changes. I
> ask the users of wikipedia.nl to judge me on my edits. Don't listen to
> your mods for their personal opinion on changes."
>
> "Let me work and NEVER talk to you all again. Whats wrong with that.
> It isnt against the rules when you are NOT willing to TALK."
>
> "I GOT forced to TALK to you. I dont Like that"
>
> "I dont like to talk Dutch as well but ik kan het wel lezen"
>
> "I have been blocked withous consensus, for making positive changes. I
> ask the users of wikipedia.nl to judge me on my edits. Don't listen to
> your mods for their personal opinion on changes."
>
> "Why are you guys reverting my work! Noobs."
>
> "You Dutch moderators are dictators. You dont accept any positive
> changes. Dont %$$ call this vandalism! Dont worry. Your system is
> totally @$%%%, and I will come back again. You guys should be happy
> that I am no 'bad' guy destroying your articles but Improving your
> $###$% wiki. Stop this discussuion, I dont LIKE to Talk. Is that a
> prerequisite? Its free encyclopdia god$$###"
>
> "Cause one of your highly respected moderators thinks its not OK and
> deleted it. Dictators"
>
> "POINT me at the rules which say I can not make positive changes?
> There is no such rule."
>
> "And dont call my edits Vandalism. Your reverts are vandalism and the
> oppsite of the anarchistic wikipedia goals."
>
> "POINT MY AT THOSE RULES OF THE COMMUNITY. YOU CANT. Cause they dont
> exist. As I am part of the community, I say my changes are desirable.
> Your turn."
>
> "I use Complete Anonymous software, its great cause you can enter
> sites after being blocked"
>
> "How long does this discussion take, I want to work without this bullshit"
>
> "Cause I HATE Dutch and it is not my first language."
>
> "182 hours You crazy? Why should I wait for so long to make the
> changes I want using the username I want. And where is the discusion
> about my changes? '''External Linkz''' ps. did you never heard of
> surfing with free proxies? Lots of good programms out there for free.
> I could make this night horrible for you if I want. Just let me add
> {{extern|site = template"
>
> "Dont talk about blocking me, talk about the template! In about 170 hr
> my user name is back on and I want to use it for adding 34.000
> external links"
>
> "noobs, emptying the template WHY? Do you like to have work?"
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Adam Bishop block

body:
I have no idea what you are talking about. Is it Wikipedia policy to ban someone because an Administrator suspects something? That seems a bit odd. Please provide the IP address for the banned user (is it DW or Angelique?) and I will notify my Internet company. Also, I would assume that my password is probably the same as several hundred others.

Please unban our account. Thank you.

User:JillandJack

Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:39:50 -0500 (EST), Jack Trecartin
wrote:
> Would somebody please explain what is happening as the reason for the block makes no sense.

You have been blocked by Adam Bishop (which was extended by myself
since he accidently used the default 24 hour block) under suspicion of
being the banned user DW () on
account that you have the same password, use an IP from a similar
location, and display exactly the same characteristics of DW and other
users believed to be DW, particularly "Angelique".

Angela.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Zoney stated for the record:

> There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.

Who, exactly, is going to publish the One True List of Unacceptable Views?

I personally think that the view that "there are views which are
unacceptable in civilised society" is unacceptable, and hereby call for
the banning of anyone expressing such a view.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
  sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                   | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Rick wrote:

>--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Rick wrote:
>>
>>
>>>So you think it's appropriate to have a User name with
>>>
>>>
>>>88 in it (coded for "Heil Hitler") and to post a photo
>>>
>>>
>>>allegedly of themself in a Nazi uniform?
>>>
>>>
>>Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold
>>beliefs that many other people find abhorrent.
>>
>>-Mark
>>
>>
>So if I created a Username of [[User:KillAllTheJews]]
>it would be accpetable to you?
>
>
There's a big difference between an overtly racist name and one which
uses a code that the majority will never recognize as such.  "Heil
Hitler" may very well be mapped into "88", but the reverse is not true.
Should the hypothetical [[User:Piano88]] be immediately condemned for
being a Nazi.  We can't hold the number system hostage in that way.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: NSK

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
"Wikimedia needs your help in its $75,000 (?57,500) fund drive."

It should be:

"Wikimedia needs your help in its US$75,000 (?57,500) fund drive."

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


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:

>The reasoning behind this is so that an admin cannot use their powers
>to win against an anon admin when they are in a revert war. This is
>not the case here. Although it would have probably been wiser for
>TBSDY to ask another admin to block SS-88 for making the above threat
>I cannot see how it could have been considered an abuse of admin
>powers.
>
>
Well, TBSDY *was* involved in a bit of a revert-war on User:NSM88's user
page, which TBSDY repeatedly vandalized.

-mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Rick wrote:

>So you think it's appropriate to have a User name with
>88 in it (coded for "Heil Hitler") and to post a photo
>allegedly of themself in a Nazi uniform?
>
>
Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold beliefs that many
other people find abhorrent.

-Mark


from_name: MilchFlasche瑋平

body:
Bonjour,

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:48:13 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have argued that Cantonese is a written language, using the
> differences between Cantonese and Mandarin as evidence. But as I have
> suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but
> when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau
> uses the same written language: Baihuawen.
>
> formulax
However, the fact is that you can't never make a clear cut between
spoken and written language
so simply --- although this could be fulfilled in the case of Classic
Chinese (Wenyan). Which tongue do you use to read Baihuawen out loud?
Do you use your Wu pronunciation to read them and communicate with
others? What would such utterance become? Nothing, I guess. We just
don't use vernacular way to read Baihuawen. So what's behind it? We
all use the same written language Baihuawen, because it came with the
same common spoken language: Mandarin. But this has nothing to do with
other spoken languages, and neither with the fact that there is
Cantonese in written forms on the web everywhere. In Taiwan forums,
opinions written in Cantonese are not so unfamiliar, and people are
often asked politely to translate them in Mandarin, or even such texts
are banned. Now, if there are only FEW people writing Cantonese, then
where do these people come from? Links of two major Taiwanese forums
are given below:
http://forum.moztw.org/viewtopic.php?t=4286
(the official Mozilla forum of Taiwan) discussing whether written
Cantonese should be banned.
http://forum.palmislife.com/viewthread.php?tid=9277&fpage=1
(the largest Palm PDA site in Taiwan) especially this
sentence:"?????????????????", asking HongKongers discussing in
Mandarin.

Examples are plenty and not hard to find.

--
2005, make signs happen!


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
NSK wrote:
> "Wikimedia needs your help in its $75,000 (?57,500) fund drive."
>
> It should be:
>
> "Wikimedia needs your help in its US$75,000 (?57,500) fund drive."
>

Why?  The $ symbol, as applied to units of capital called "dollars", was
developed for use with US currency.  I don't really think there's an
NPOV violation going on if the "US" is omitted when representing US
dollar amounts.  This would, I think, be one of those occasions where it
tends to work equally well either way without an implied bias, though
prepending "US" might help disambiguate the representation in cases
where the $ symbol is used for several different currencies.

--
Chad


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

>On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 19:16:44 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold beliefs that many
>>other people find abhorrent.
>>
>>
>So we should refrain from blocking such accounts even when neo-Nazi
>groups have threatened to foist their POV upon Wikipedia?
>
>
Yes.  There have been discussions on anti-circumcision mailing lists
about recruiting people to foist their POV upon Wikipedia, and yet we
don't ban anti-circumcision activists on sight.  That's just how things
work.

-Mark


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 13:07:02 -0600, Jack Lutz <jack-lutz at comcast.net> wrote:
> I think TBSDY should be desysoped for blocking a user (NSM88) with
> a justification of "Nazi. Literally", i.e. blocking for a user's political
> views.

If TBSDY had reblocked, after NSM88 had been unblocked then you might
have a point. We can't IMO go around desysopping someone because they
made one decision which we disagree with. If we did that we would have
no admins left! Everyone is entitled to make a mistake now and then,
even admins. A pattern of such blockings would be a different matter.
Dispute resolution requires that the first step should be talk. There
was plenty of talk  on WP:AN/I  at the time.

Theresa


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not
	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
[John]
> If you think an image will offend a substantial amount of
> people, link  it instead of inlining, or bring up the issue on the talk
> page.

Well, that's precisely what I am *not* seeing.  I'm seeing a substantial
minority, nearly 40%, who are in favor of inlining.  This tells me that
there is not a consensus that it's such an offensive image.>
> What I find difficult to accept is the argument that we should never
> ever link to images because it would inconvenience the group of people
> who desire to view the image with the article. I could understand this
> once we get a technical solution in place,

The technical solution is in place.  Nearly all modern browsers can
disable image downloads.  The most we could do with a site-based system
would be to emulate the capability that already exists in modern browsers.
> If you start thinking like the average internet user (i.e. those
> affluent middle class people who got so riled up about the Super Bowl
> last year)

Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its heads
and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs even carried
th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US news programs
showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume that the standards
of one country are universal.>
> I don't really buy the argument we should be forcing upon users our
> choice of web browser and/or our choice of software either.

This is not part of my argument.  IE is available to 95%+ of the web-using
population and it will download images or not at the user's option.
> the idea of the web is to
> make things  accessible to people easily.

A task that IE, Firefox, Opera and other browsers do very well indeed.
>
> It really sickens me to hear the kind of logic used to push the idea of
>  selling people on browsers other than IE via Wikipedia.

I have at no time mentioned IE; I mentioned Firefox solely in connection
with a claim by a Firefox user who didn't think his browser was capable of
being controlled in the manner that I described.  I could have said
precisely the same thing about IE (except that the capability in question
comes with IE, "out of the box", no additionaly downloads required).[...]
> caterpillars (while there are a few people out there disgusted by them,
>  again, objecting to the picture of a caterpillar displayed for
> educational purposes would have ridicule heaped on you. Objecting to a
> picture of a man fellating himself? That's a different case...).

I don't believe the above for one second.  Sorry, that's just silly.

> text. While perhaps there would be less laughter if you objected to it
> this time, there would still be quite a bit, simply because...? I don't
>  know. Probably a combination of the three factors I mentioned, but for
> a  lot of people, it's just not that offensive. Perverted, yes, but not
>  shockingly offensive like the autofellatio image.

*I* don't see anybody laughing, John.  Also I doubt that you would find
the average person to be more shocked by a man sucking his own penis than
an eroticised little girl holding a teddy with a huge dildo.
>>
> Of course. However, this group would be far larger if we made it a
> common practice of displaying shockingly offensive images _by default_.

Which we do.

>  By not doing so, we limit the number of our enemies; they are far more
>  likely to be right-wing wackos in a small number.

It's a little girl, John.  With a dildo.  And nobody has ever suggested
inlining it, much less deleting it.
[...]
>
>>It's not my concern so much which decisions are made, so much as that
>>the decision made should be made with open eyes.  Not by the editors,
>>but by Jimbo and the Board, who own and ultimately take responsibility
>>for this project.
>>
>>
> I'm not sure if I agree with you there. While I have a distaste for
> letting people other than the community of editors make editorial
> decisions, perhaps they could issue a "recommendation" we could elect
> to  follow?

My rationale for saying it's a board decision is that clearly the
membership is not about to vote for the removal of articles that will
render Wikipedia beyond the pale for educational use.  I mentioned the VfD
nomination of Donkey punch earlier; this is basically an extreme,
near-lethal physical and sexual assault described by Wikipedia as a "sex
move."  They were voting 2 to 1 to keep, last time I looked.
>
>>If Jimbo does not have an appetite for a fight with the religious right
>>of his country, now is the time to consider toning down Wikipedia
>>content.  Only the board could enforce such a decision.
>>
>>
> I'm not all too sure. If the sysops rebelled, the board couldn't
> enforce  the decision without forcibly closing down the website and
> destroying  the community.

I agree that it's a difficult decision.  For me, the path of least
resistance is to permit content as extreme as Lolicon and the like, but
use a technical fix for filtering for educational purposes and provide
on-site cat-based filtering (because it's easy to do) and then the people
who are really serious about filtering and who come up against how utterly
unmanageable cat-based filtering is, well we'll tell them to do what we
do, turn image downloads off and click "load" when we want to see a
picture.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Zoney wrote:

>There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.
>
>
And which, exactly, are those?  Which civilised society?  Is Wikipedia
going to be on the business of deciding which views are acceptable and
which aren't?

Neo-Nazis have a particular ideology, which happens to be extremely
unpopular.  They are hardly the only ideology I personally find
abhorrent; it's just the easiest to criticize.

What about any of the following:
-- Those who support attacks on Israeli civilians (e.g. terrorism) as a
legitimate means of warfare.  There are several tens of million people
int he world who hold this viewpoint; are they all to be banned on sight?
-- Those who support fascism as a political ideology, but do not support
Nazism in particular.
-- Those who support Maoism, Stalinism, or other "left-totalitarian"
ideologies.

If we're going to start banning certain ideologies on sight, someone
needs to come up with criteria for how we decide which are unacceptable.

-Mark


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Without explicitly entering into the question of de-sysopping, let me
once again voice my total support for what Mark is saying here.

What in the world is the meaning of NPOV if we're going to be banning
people based on their ideology, no matter how abhorrant? "We strive
for a neutral point of view, unless your point of view happens to be
X, in which case we are not at all neutral."

Absolutely not. Banning users only on the basis of their POV -- not
due to unacceptable behavior, but only due to their personal beliefs
or opinions -- this is exactly contrary to a bedrock principle of
Wikipedia.

Additionally, I would say that to ban any username containing"88" is
surrendering far too much to the Neo-Nazis. Why should the world in
general (or Wikipedia in specific) give up a perfectly good two digit
number simply because the Neo-Nazis adopt it as "theirs"? How much
power are we going to donate to the Neo-Nazi cause?

-Rich Holton

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:33:05 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Zoney wrote:
>
> >There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.
> >
> >
> And which, exactly, are those?  Which civilised society?  Is Wikipedia
> going to be on the business of deciding which views are acceptable and
> which aren't?
>
> Neo-Nazis have a particular ideology, which happens to be extremely
> unpopular.  They are hardly the only ideology I personally find
> abhorrent; it's just the easiest to criticize.
>
> What about any of the following:
> -- Those who support attacks on Israeli civilians (e.g. terrorism) as a
> legitimate means of warfare.  There are several tens of million people
> int he world who hold this viewpoint; are they all to be banned on sight?
> -- Those who support fascism as a political ideology, but do not support
> Nazism in particular.
> -- Those who support Maoism, Stalinism, or other "left-totalitarian"
> ideologies.
>
> If we're going to start banning certain ideologies on sight, someone
> needs to come up with criteria for how we decide which are unacceptable.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


subject: [WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presentlyclassroom-safe

body:
Charles Matthews said:
>
> [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]] is there; [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia
> is not]] mentions 'Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of
> minors'.

Declaration of interest: I wrote that section myself with reference to the
content disclaimer.>
> The operational WP criterion is 'adds to the encyclopedia', and on the
> whole this is fine for what we do; its opposite would be more like
> 'gratuitous', rather than 'could offend someone'.  It is obvious enough
> why we can't use 'could offend someone' and still write WP.  I'm not
> great myself at watching graphic bits of medical dramas on television;
> I would make that a reason for not clicking around pages on surgery,
> rather than any sort of criterion for what is there.

Yep.  That's not so far from my reading of the thing.  I've got no
hang-ups about linking--that's fine by me.  I think content that doesn't
add to Wikipedia should not be there, and that includes images.  The only
point of difference I think I have had with anybody here is where my
judgement of what adds to the encyclopedia collides with someone else's
judgement of what somebody (quite often somebody other than the speaker)
wouldn't like to see.
I hope we stay with (roughly) the same content guidelines and find a way
to filter content for school use, which would also make a site that could
be browsed unsupervised by children (though not necessarily by small
children).


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> The technical solution is in place.  Nearly all modern browsers can
> disable image downloads.  The most we could do with a site-based
> system would be to emulate the capability that already exists in
> modern browsers.

Disabling images using your browser is indiscriminate. A site-based
system would allow us to discriminate.

Christiaan


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie

body:
Puddl Duk said:
> Censorship and self-censorship
> are different words with different meanings.

Up to a point.  Self-censorship is an action that can be performed by a
single person or by a community.  When the community performs the
censorship, the end effect is that the community acts as an external
person censoring the behavior of the individual. Again I emphasize that I
have no problem with the word censorship.  Censorship is necessary,
especially if we are to comply with the law.  Every time someone deletes
those diaper pictures, they're censoring Wikipedia, and rightly so.


body:
Hi Felix,

You are right, I should've considered people whose clients does not
support Unicode.

I will post the differences here:
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Node_ue/Tiong-h%C3%B4a_hong-gi%C3%A2n_g%C3%BA-hoat-cho%CC%8Dah

As for not having controversial Wikipedias, I object strongly. The
Platt and Nynorsk Wikipedias both currently have over 1k articles and
are growing quickly. Both raised objections, the Nynorsk Wikipedia was
originally created "by accident" even!!

Mark

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:39:32 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Fri, February 18, 2005 6:22 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
> >
> > That is why it has made Minnan Wikipedia a big joke. Extremely few
> > Minnan speakers (even in Taiwan) can understand what the hack these
> > guys are writing about in their Minnan Wikipedia. Because Minnan simply do
> > not yet have a standardised writing system (despite Taiwanese government's
> > effort to establish one, most grown-ups in Taiwan sitll cannot comprehend
> > written Minnan, and there is no Minnan newspaper, only one TV channel)
> >
> Here, I invite people from zh-min-nan: to speak.
>
> People who know written Chinese may read this nice article at zh:
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%A9%B1%E5%AD%97
>
> Of course, even that level of usage will not meet the popularity
> requirement of Sheng Jiong, so actually I am inviting other people to
> read and to judge if we can call that a standardized writing system.
>
> > There are not standard. No one has formalised these "characters", not
> > the Hong Kong government (both before and after 1997), not the Guangdong
> > government, not any governments in the world. There is also not a standard
> > developed by any influential non-government organizations.
> >
> Does the work of respected scholars count?  See the reference section
> of the second link below.  The following pages are in Chinese.
> http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary1.htm
> http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary2.htm
>
> I believe that does not count according to Sheng Jiong's standard, but I
> invite other people to make a fair judgement.
>
> > Your edit is reverted because you used these non-standard characters.
> > But put characters aside, the grammar is the same for Cantonese and
> > Chinese.
> >
> Sheng Jiong has ignored all the examples given in this list.  They are
> not the same.  Cantonese speakers can testify that for a passage written
> in Baihuawen, even if we replace all the non-cognate functional words with
> their equivalent ones, e.g., dik1 with ge3, liu2 with zo2, zoi6 with hai2, etc.  The passage still does not sound like natural Cantonese.  The
> statement that "the grammar is the same for Cantonese and Mandarin" is
> plain wrong.
>
> People who are interested to learn the facts may read this book:
> Gao Huanian, /Guangzhou Fangyan Yanjiu/, Commerce Press, Hong Kong, 1984
> ISBN: 962-07-4003-3  (In Chinese)
>
> (Sorry, my email client does not process Unicode characters correctly,
> so I will have to stick to Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, and Jyutping for
> Cantonese.)
>
> The stand point of that author was that "Chinese is one language" and
> "Cantonese is a dialect", but he honestly said that "Guangzhou fangyan
> he xiandai Hanyu yiji Hanyu de qita fangyan dou you hen da de chabie."
> (The Cantonese dialect is very different from modern [standard] Chinese
> and other Chinese dialects.)
>
> That book go on to explain the sound system, grammar and vocabulary of
> Cantonese.  He collected 2400 commonly used words and expressions that
> are distinct from modern [standard] Chinese.  Distinct meant different
> even when written.
>
> He also acknowledges that most Cantonese specific words has customary
> written forms in Cantonese communities.  Those forms are used in his
> book.
>
> That book is full of examples, and there are several prolonged passages
> at the end.  The first one is a translation of the first chapter from Lu Xun's novel /Kong yiji/.
>
> > We are now seeing a small portion of Cantonese speakers who believe
> > that there should be something as a Cantonese Wikipedia. But for most
> > Cantonese speakers (even if you just limit that to Hong Kongers), most
> > people object such proposals because most people know that Cantonese is
> > NOT a written language. Again I want you to show me evidence that
> > Cantonese IS a written language (do not tell me X books are written in
> > Cantonese, because these are just 1 or 2 exceptions. What I want to see
> > is 1) has any school began teaching WRITTEN CANTONESE; 2) has any
> > newspapers/magazines started writing in Cantonese)
> >
> I wonder how Sheng Jiong know that most people from Hong Kong will object
> such proposals.  I believe there are some support and some opposition, but
> most people are indifferent.  We never know unless we can do a scientific
> poll.
>
> I believe that earlier on Sheng Jiong claimed that there is not even one
> book written entirely in Cantonese.  Now obviously he has raised the bar:
> even if X books are written in Cantonese, those are exceptions.  I don't
> know how many will be significant.
>
> Even if we can find a school teaching written cantonese, I believe that
> will be an exception.  He may require that it must happen in government
> sponsored grade schools.
>
> If we can many articles written in Cantonese, he may require a newspaper
> or magazine written completely in Cantonese.  And if there is one, then
> of course that on newspaper is an exception.
>
> I understand that the main point of Sheng Jiong is that Cantonese has to
> be widely accepted as a written language before we consider using it to
> write Wikipedia.  However, we all understand that there are different
> degrees of acceptance.  How much acceptance is enough?
>
> Written Cantonese does not have an official status, but it surely exists
> and is practiced by many.  It is not taught in grade schools, but every
> literate Cantonese speakers can understand it without much training.
> It is not a prestige written language, so there is always a risk that
> someone will ridicule Wikimedia foundation if Cantonese Wikipedia is
> allowed.
>
> To avoid controversy, perhaps Wikimedia should disallow new Wikipedia
> whenever there is opposition, and set that as a policy.  That may not
> sound good, but that could be a prudent decision.  But if that is not
> the goal, I will invite the board to read all the arguments, learn the
> facts, weigh the pros and cons, and make the best decision.
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> The technical solution is in place.  Nearly all modern browsers can
>> disable image downloads.  The most we could do with a site-based
>> system would be to emulate the capability that already exists in
>> modern browsers.
>
> Disabling images using your browser is indiscriminate. A site-based
> system would allow us to discriminate.

Up to a point.  With cat-based disabling you're at the mercy of
cat-vandalism (possible solution: the cats in question are permanently
protected and a VfD-style process is used to allocate images to those
cats).  However it's incorrect to say that disabling images is
indiscriminate.  It effectively provides the same facility as linking (you
click on the picture you want to see) with the difference that the picture
appears alongside the text instead of in a separate window or tab.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Censorship is necessary, especially if we are to comply with the law.

This is a good example. I have no problem with censorship in this
regard, contrary to what some "pissed off" people will have you
believe.

Christiaan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently
	classroom-safe

body:
Rick said:
>
>
> And people say the slippery slope argument is a
> fallacy.  Now that it appears that we've bowdlerized
> the autofellatio article, it's fair game to go after
> every other article with a sexual content?

I chose it because there's a pretty good argument for deletion under
"Wikipedia is not a dictionary" and little likelihood of the article being
expanded beyond what it is now (unless the donkey punch becomes an actual
act rather than just a Howard Stern-type joke) but also because if the
editors felt that this article was beyond the pale they'd go for deletion.
 Very few did.
Of course its presence also illustrates that we're not classroom safe or
childsafe.  Not by a long way.
This is not a problem for me, but it may be a problem for Wikipedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie

body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Censorship is necessary, especially if we are to comply with the law.
>
> This is a good example. I have no problem with censorship in this
> regard, contrary to what some "pissed off" people will have you
> believe.

I figured as much.  We should be honest about censorship. We do it and we
should admit that we're doing it.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> However it's incorrect to say that disabling images is indiscriminate.

It's indiscriminate in that it stops all images from loading. There is
no discrimination involved. All images are initially blocked. A
site-based system would allow us to discriminate.

Christiaan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Axel

subject: [Wikitech-l] [ANN] New Eclipse Wikipedia Plugin version

body:
Hi

I released a new version of the Eclipse Wikipedia Plugin [1].

Changes:
* a new context-menu item in the editor for creating all files for a
given category [2].
* a first Export Wizard to convert Wikipedia articles into a single
PDF file [3].

The PDF creation depends on rendering the wikipedia article into a
complete xml compliant file in the first step.
In the next step, the internal iText PDF library [4] uses a SAX parser
to convert the HTML to PDF.
As this is not always possible for the plugins current Wikipedia to
HTML parser,
sometimes articles are not included in the pdf file.

Therefore the next step for a "better PDF output" is IMHO to improve
the internal parser
to handle all special cases for the Wikipedia tags.
I created some JUnit tests [5] which I would like to use to improve the parser.
Does someone has a list of typical "evil" Wikipedia syntax constructs
and how they should
be rendered in (x)html?
Is there someone on the list who knows the iText library and could
give some general hints
how to improve the PDF output
(i.e. best design for Chapters, Sections and internal links between the pages)?

[1] http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/phpeclipse/phpeclipse.community_tools_1.1.4.bin.zip?download
[2] http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor:Download_a_Wikipedia_Article#Grabbing_a_Category
[3] http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor:Export_to_PDF_File
[4] http://www.lowagie.com/iText
[5] http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/phpeclipse/org.plog4u.wiki.test/src/org/plog4u/wiki/test/filter/

--
Axel Kramer
http://www.plog4u.org - Wikipedia Eclipse Plugin


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> However it's incorrect to say that disabling images is indiscriminate.
>
> It's indiscriminate in that it stops all images from loading. There is
> no discrimination involved. All images are initially blocked. A
> site-based system would allow us to discriminate.

Not really.  It would place the discrimination in the hands of someone
else, whereas if we disable image downloads *we* make the decision which
images we want to see.  It only takes a click.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie

body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

> When did I ever 'have you believe' that you don't want to censor
> illegal material. I never said this. Don't put words in my mouth.

You said I was labeling the idea of censorship pejoratively. This
exchange doesn't seem to be going anywhere, we should probably let it
rest.

Christiaan


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs said:
>> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>> However it's incorrect to say that disabling images is
>>> indiscriminate.
>>
>> It's indiscriminate in that it stops all images from loading. There
>> is no discrimination involved. All images are initially blocked. A
>> site-based system would allow us to discriminate.
>
> Not really.  It would place the discrimination in the hands of someone
> else, whereas if we disable image downloads *we* make the decision
> which images we want to see.  It only takes a click.

A user is not always going to know what is going to offend them until
they have looked at the content. By then it's too late. Yes the idea
relies on Wikipedia editors to decide what is going to be potentially
offensive. I don't think this would be half as difficult as some have
implied and I would find it far more acceptable than asking users to
disable images completely. Getting users to disable images in their web
browser is like using a sledge hammer to do the job of a spanner.

Christiaan


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
--- BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Of course.  There are plenty of people here who
> hold
> > > beliefs that many
> > > other people find abhorrent.
> > >
> > > -Mark
> >
> > So if I created a Username of
> [[User:KillAllTheJews]]
> > it would be accpetable to you?
>
> Who has created such an account?

NSM88, SS-88 and SS88.

> And no it would not be acceptable to me because
> inciting hatred is a
> crime and because "trollish" usernames are not
> allowed. However, this
> guys nick was MSN88 which I think few would have
> noticed unless
> someone had told people that 88 in nazi speak means
> Heil Hitler. If I
> hadn't knew, I would have guessed it meant that he
> was 16 years old.
> (insert famous quote from voltaire about freedom of
> speech here) etc.

And so then you go to his User page, you see that he
has a picture of himself in full Nazi regalia, you
read that he's an officer in a Nazi organization, but
yet that's all perfeclty acceptable because you,
personally, don't understand the meaning of the name?

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] UK Foundation (was Day 1 Fund Drive Report)

body:
--- Scott Keir <scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> (On a related note, has consideration been given to providing a
> "proper" facility for people to donate via credit or debit card (Visa,
> Mastercard, Diners etc)? Not everyone has Paypal, and their fees are
> quite high. If there's going to be this quantity of donations received
> on a regular basis, the investment in a WorldPay type system might pay
> off. [I've investigated this for a small UK charity I'm a trustee of,
> so the issue is fresh in my mind - apologies if this has been discussed
> before])

Yep - This is going to happen, likely before the next fund drive. But we will
keep PayPal as alternate payment option.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
NSK wrote:
> On Sunday 20 February 2005 02:34, Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>>where the $ symbol is used for several different currencies.
>
>
> There are Canadian dollars and Australian dollars. I think there are other
> states using dollars, too.
>

Uh, yeah.  Did you read what I sent?

--
Chad


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Shrug.

You can all be as ivory-towerish as you want.  But the
Nazis are here, and they will return.  And there is a
policy about unacceptable user names.  And the names
I've listed are unacceptable, and other names of their
ilk will be blocked.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
>
> A user is not always going to know what is going to offend them until
> they have looked at the content. By then it's too late.

Disabling image downloads (which I do all the time if I browse a site from
work) enables the user to read the alt tag and/or filename in the context
of the descriptive content in the article.  With a site like Wikipedia we
can enforce labeling standards to ensure that nobody gets a nasty surprise
when they click "load".  It really is the ideal solution.  I've used it
for years.


from_name: John Lee

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Yes.  I think we should tackle this question face-on.
>
Well said.

>  I won't lose any
>sleep, or leave the project, or have a hissy fit, if Wikipedia excludes
>objectionable material, because Wikipedia isn't a vehicle for advancing my
>point of view.
>
>
Neither would I if the opposite occurred, but I'd be quite disappointed
and skeptical of Wikipedia's future prospects.

>But at present I think I'm seeing a bifurcation--one which I've tried to
>illustrate in recent emails.  Wikipedia at present does not exclude
>encyclopedic descriptions of, even legally permissible illustrations of,
>objectionable material, including Autofellatio
>
It's not the nudity I'm objecting to; it's that the image used seemed
far too shocking and more fitting for a site like Goatse or Tubgirl; we
need to have some editorial standards, and they need to be applied to
images like this too. I don't buy the argument that "it demonstrates
autofellatio is possible"; why is text so unworthy of readers' trust?
Photos are just as easily susceptible to manipulation. Otherwise I could
upload a picture of "Julia Roberts" blowjobbing a (presumably) black
man, and use it as evidence of her sexual activities on [[Julia
Roberts]]. After all, it's a picture, so it must be true, no?

Of course, I understand that is not necessarily Tony's or Christiaan's
position, but it is quite close to what they seem to be pointing out.
The image adds to the article of course, but I don't think the benefits
of inlining it outweigh the costs.

As I've said before, the rationale doesn't have to make sense. People
will see it and start muttering about Wikipedia. Images strike the mind
much stronger than text, more so lifelike depictions. We don't need any
black-and-white guidelines for this, IMO; it's just bloody common sense.
If you think an image will offend a substantial amount of people, link
it instead of inlining, or bring up the issue on the talk page.

What I find difficult to accept is the argument that we should never
ever link to images because it would inconvenience the group of people
who desire to view the image with the article. I could understand this
once we get a technical solution in place, but for now, shock images
like the one formerly at [[Autofellatio]] greatly disturb me, because
it's just...disconcerting to have it flashed into your face in the
middle of the article. I wasn't offended, but I was distracted from the
article.

If you start thinking like the average internet user (i.e. those
affluent middle class people who got so riled up about the Super Bowl
last year), it's a no-brainer to realise that if *I* was distracted,
they would be infuriated. It doesn't matter that the text was even more
graphic and disturbing; a picture speaks a thousand words, and they can
go either way.

I don't really buy the argument we should be forcing upon users our
choice of web browser and/or our choice of software either. I don't care
how bloody good Firefox is, we're not supposed to respond to a complaint
about offensive images with, "Well, if you don't want to be offended,
you will need Mozilla Firefox, this web browser, to replace Internet
Explorer, and an add-on to it called AdBlock. Come, I'll walk you
through it". Why not? First of all, POV pushing; about a year ago, the
idea of promoting Firefox with a small logo on the main page was vetoed
by community discussion. Secondly, the idea of the web is to make things
accessible to people easily.

It really sickens me to hear the kind of logic used to push the idea of
selling people on browsers other than IE via Wikipedia. That kind of
logic is exactly the same webmasters and companies who ignore web
standards use when Firefox or Opera users complain to them. Until all
major browsers (perhaps defined as those with more than 5% market share)
support the filtering of images on a per individual (not server) basis,
it is our responsibility for ensuring users don't get too pissed off by
our site.

Of course I don't really favour linking either; I'm really pushing
strongly for a technical solution akin to the ones I proposed earlier.
But until we get that sort of capability, we *MUST* err on the side of
caution. This is not the issue of an image like a Swastika (if you
objected to displaying it for educational purposes, most people would
laugh at you; the reason, I know not. People are strange.) or
caterpillars (while there are a few people out there disgusted by them,
again, objecting to the picture of a caterpillar displayed for
educational purposes would have ridicule heaped on you. Objecting to a
picture of a man fellating himself? That's a different case...).

> and Lolicon, and at present
>we inline even extremely objectionable images such as a picture of an
>abused child holding a teddy bear with a dildo.
>
Firstly, it's an illustration. Secondly, it's not really immediately
obvious. Thirdly, it does not distract my eyes from the body of the
text. While perhaps there would be less laughter if you objected to it
this time, there would still be quite a bit, simply because...? I don't
know. Probably a combination of the three factors I mentioned, but for a
lot of people, it's just not that offensive. Perverted, yes, but not
shockingly offensive like the autofellatio image.

>We're entering the mainstream, newspapers are starting to cite Wikipedia
>articles as background in their stories.  The question of what content is
>acceptable on Wikipedia is very important.  Whatever we choose will affect
>the way in which our project is perceived by the public.
>
100% agreement with you there.

>  In its present
>form Wikipedia will very soon gain some powerful enemies--this is
>unavoidable even if we remove or severely restrict the display of all
>objectionable images, because on present form it appears that there is no
>consensus to delete articles that will make Wikipedia unacceptable for use
>by children.
>
>
Of course. However, this group would be far larger if we made it a
common practice of displaying shockingly offensive images _by default_.
By not doing so, we limit the number of our enemies; they are far more
likely to be right-wing wackos in a small number. If we commonly threw
in pictures resembling porno left and right, on the other hand, our
enemies would begin drawing members from the centre-right, and that is
quite a sizeable group.

>It's not my concern so much which decisions are made, so much as that the
>decision made should be made with open eyes.  Not by the editors, but by
>Jimbo and the Board, who own and ultimately take responsibility for this
>project.
>
>
I'm not sure if I agree with you there. While I have a distaste for
letting people other than the community of editors make editorial
decisions, perhaps they could issue a "recommendation" we could elect to
follow?

>If Jimbo does not have an appetite for a fight with the religious right of
>his country, now is the time to consider toning down Wikipedia content.
>Only the board could enforce such a decision.
>
>
I'm not all too sure. If the sysops rebelled, the board couldn't enforce
the decision without forcibly closing down the website and destroying
the community. No, the community has to have some measure of influence,
even if it doesn't have a full say in the final decision.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs said:
>> A user is not always going to know what is going to offend them until
>> they have looked at the content. By then it's too late.
>
> Disabling image downloads (which I do all the time if I browse a site
> from work) enables the user to read the alt tag and/or filename in the
> context of the descriptive content in the article.  With a site like
> Wikipedia we can enforce labeling standards to ensure that nobody gets
> a nasty surprise when they click "load".  It really is the ideal
> solution.  I've used it for years.

It's hardly ideal, the user needs to click on every single image before
they can see them. I've tried it myself a few times and found it a
awful way to experience the internet. And because it's indiscriminate
it doesn't allow for downstream targeted filtering.

Christiaan


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
>
> It's hardly ideal, the user needs to click on every single image before
>  they can see them.

Only when you actually have the feature set that way.  If you don't feel
like it you just go ahead and download the whole lot.
I like this, because it leaves me as the user in total control.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs said:
>>
>> It's hardly ideal, the user needs to click on every single image
>> before they can see them.
>
> Only when you actually have the feature set that way. If you don't
> feel like it you just go ahead and download the whole lot.
> I like this, because it leaves me as the user in total control.

And with a site-based system you would have this same ability, and more.

Christiaan


from_name: Hans Wilhelm

subject: [Wikitech-l] PDF view for articles

body:
i integrated HTML2FPDF into mediawiki and it seems to work...
now my question is if there's a better methode...

class OutputPage got an new member called $pdfText.. I duplicated  the
Output and out function... then i fill the body in $pdfText.. then i used
HTML2FPDF (www.fpdf.org, http://html2fpdf.sourceforge.net/) to create a nice
PDF... for example http://www.mikrocontroller.net/wiki/PSoC gets
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/wikifiles/d/d3/Test.pdf  so this is more or
less what i want (copyright,... will be added if the rest is ok ;) btw this
is not my wiki... the changes are running on my local machine but there is a
discussion on this wiki where this issue came up)

this should be right but now to my real problem..how to get a PDF-button in
the bar where edit,watch...

my changes are:

in SkinTemplate.php
wfProfileIn( "$fname-pdf" );
...
wfProfileOut( "$fname-pdf" );

index.php
gets a pdf action

languages/Language.php
+ta[\'ca-pdf\'] = new Array(\'p\',\'Make a PDF file from this Article.\');

languages/LanguageDe.php
+'tooltip-pdf' => 'Sie k?nnen aus diesem Artikel eine PDF-File erstellen.
[alt-p]',
+'pdf' => 'PDF',

are these the right places to add this functinality ?? or will this bring
translation problems or something like this on the plan ??

i hope sb can help me... if it's ok i'll look over my code once again and
make it a bit more nice looking...

73 de oe6jwf / hans wilhelm


body:
Without poll of hundreds of native speakers of Minnan, it is rubbish
for you to make accusations based on this "common sense".

If you knows Minnan, and Tongyong pinyin as most Taiwanese do, it is
not much a strech to read Peh-oe-ji writing.

Despite that the Luxemburgish language is taught in no schools and all
newspapers in Luxemburg use German or French, do you have explanation
for the Luxemburgish Wikipedia with over 1000 articles???

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 12:28:18 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > After not replying to most of the things you have said for obvious
> > reason that you ignore my truths, I have still some question for you.
>
> I cannot make sense of your strange logic.
>
> > It is: How do you know majority of Chinese cannot read Minnan
> > Wikipedia? I invite your evidences.
>
> I guess you mean why the majority of Taiwanese cannot read Minnan
> Wikipedia, for it is obvious that all mainland Chinese cannot read,
> even if he speaks Minnan.
>
> The reason that most Taiwanese cannot read Minnan Wikipedia is:
> 1) they don't teach this strange Romanization in school (although they
> do teach students how to speak Minnan)
> 2) there is no newspaper or publication in Taiwan that publishes in
> such romanization
>
> Then the rest is common sense, I hope?
>
> formulax
>


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Christiaan Briggs said:
>>>
>>> It's hardly ideal, the user needs to click on every single image
>>> before they can see them.
>>
>> Only when you actually have the feature set that way. If you don't
>> feel like it you just go ahead and download the whole lot.
>> I like this, because it leaves me as the user in total control.
>
> And with a site-based system you would have this same ability, and
> more.

Not more, and probably nothing like as easy to use.  If we've got people
now moaning about clicking their browser menus once or twice every now and
then, the complexities of navigating a form interface will bring us a
string of moaners (and they'll moan to us instead of their browser
designers), and the clerical task of sorting images into (and out of)
categories will absord energy.
Although I don't want to emphasize this too much because it ain't
necessarily going to happen that way, it could also provide an impetus for
cat wars, image edit vandalism and whatnot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing username

body:
NSK wrote:

> On Sunday 20 February 2005 00:25, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>> where users can ask to rename there account to a other name.
>
> I wonder why somebody would bother to rename his account, since it is
> so easy
> just to open a new account.

Contribution history maybe?

Christiaan


body:
Fred Bauder said:
> Not exactly, the articles in
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sex_moves
>
> are not "every other article with a sexual content".

I was tempted to recat that as "sexual assaults" or "dangerous sexual
practises", because "sex moves" isn't really descriptive.
I thought it could be seen as provocative at the moment, so I've deferred
the decision for a few weeks.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blue line through images

body:
Would anyone care to comment on this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:
Village_pump#Blue_line_through_images_when_viewing_with_Safari_web_brows
er
or: http://snipurl.com/cwqt

Christiaan


from_name: Charles Podles

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 05:50:47 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> Wikipedia is international, not a US site. Canadians expect to read Canadian
> values when they see $. It should be US$ to maintain NPOV.
>
> --
> NSK

[[en:MediaWiki:Sitenotice]]  specifies US dollars.
[[Wikimedia:Wikimedia needs your help]] and [[Wikimedia:Fundraising]]
both specify US dollars, while the donation report ([[Wikimedia:Fund
drives/2005/Q1/Day 1]]) breaks the amounts down by national currency.
Does it need to be changed anywhere else? If not, why is it still
being argued about?

--
Charles Podles


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing username

body:
There is a page on Meta;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Changing_username

where users can ask to rename there account to a other name.

It looks like this is not done since of august.

It whould be nice if those users can get there rename.

I have tried to clean out the page. I noticed there are requests from
users have have good reason to ask for a change. But also from users who
have made extreemly few edits or do a request of a name change that does
not make sence, at least to me. Like "OTTo" to "OTTO" or
"Sound::jacking"  to "Sound::Jacking".

If the reason, or part of the reason why the rename is not done anymore
because it is a lot of work ruels can be created to reduse the number of
requests.

So that when a good long time editor who used in the beginning a
nickname but now whould like to use his real name can get a renaming done.

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> the clerical task of sorting images into (and out of) categories will
> absord energy.

Indeed writing an encyclopedia is energy intensive! Sorting images is
quite an important task even in isolation from this issue.

I'm sure you'll be interested in an anonymous users comment on
meta:Talk:End-user_content_suppression:

>> Might we be able to use PICS? http://www.w3.org/PICS/ This has the
>> advantage that browsers and proxies already support it for content
>> filtering. This would involve setting up our own PICS Labeling
>> Service, which could get information from special tags in the
>> articles themselves, or on a special page. It is also a W3C standard,
>> which are always good to follow where appropriate.

So, if this person is correct, I owe you an apology. Browser-based
content filtering may well be the way to go.

Christiaan


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
While I hate to interrupt the usual bickering,  recriminations, and
complaining
that I've come to expect from this mailing list, I just wanted to point out
this little
gem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music

It's the current Collaboration of the Week and, if the trend continues, will
probably be a featured
article soon enough.

The reason I single this particular article out is because I think this
article *really* highlights
how good Wikipedia can be. I really do like the clickable graph of the
lifespans of
major classical composers (in other words, you click on the name and you go
to that composer's
article). It also has almost a dozen full length songs (Many of them put
there by Raulbot in last
week's classical music grab-and-dump binge)

Britannica, eat your heart out.

--Mark (Raul654)


body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
>
> So, if this person is correct, I owe you an apology. Browser-based
> content filtering may well be the way to go.
>
PICS?  This was discussed on en-wikipedia in December.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images#Proposition_A
As developer David Monniaux said on December 3:

"A tagging scheme such as PICS, while standard, does not specify a
taxonomy of ratings: that is, it specifies how the server tells the client
that such or such content may be categorized as X, but does not specify a
list of categories or guidelines according to which content should be
classified. Presumably, to be of any interest to real end-users, the
system would have to implement categories understood by major end-user
software. Who determines these categories? Are there standards for them?
Do they reflect the point of view of certain groups? Etc."
So PICS itself is just a mechanism.  You have to use PICS alongside some
end-user taxonomy (content classification system) that is recognisable by
some popular net nanny software, and ask the user to download and program
the net nanny software.
All sounds a bit complex for people who, I'm repeatedly told, can't even
be bothered to learn how to turn image downloads on and off.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Adam Bishop block

body:
Jack Trecartin said:
> We were working on Wikipedia and received a series of strange messages
> on our talk page from User:Adam Bishop. Then, when I (Jack) tried to
> edit, the message below showed up:
>
> Would somebody please explain what is happening as the reason for the
> block makes no sense. Thank you.
>
> User:JillandJackUser is blocked
>>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Very odd.  I cannot find the page [[User talk:JillandJackUser]].


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Adam Bishop block

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:39:50 -0500 (EST), Jack Trecartin
<jjtrecartin at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Would somebody please explain what is happening as the reason for the block makes no sense.

You have been blocked by Adam Bishop (which was extended by myself
since he accidently used the default 24 hour block) under suspicion of
being the banned user DW (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DW>) on
account that you have the same password, use an IP from a similar
location, and display exactly the same characteristics of DW and other
users believed to be DW, particularly "Angelique".

Angela.


body:
Bummer, thought it sounded too easy.

But following this theme, as long as we get down to the task of tagging
images then targeted filtering, whether it be site-based or browser
based, is always going to be an option. One day web browsers may well
support some kind of image/content filter system, in which case all
we'd need to do is hook our tagging system into it, at which point we
could dispense with a site-based preference option.

Christiaan

On 19 Feb 2005, at 11:38 pm, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs said:
>>
>> So, if this person is correct, I owe you an apology. Browser-based
>> content filtering may well be the way to go.
>>
> PICS?  This was discussed on en-wikipedia in December.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
> Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images#Proposition_A
> As developer David Monniaux said on December 3:
>
> "A tagging scheme such as PICS, while standard, does not specify a
> taxonomy of ratings: that is, it specifies how the server tells the
> client
> that such or such content may be categorized as X, but does not
> specify a
> list of categories or guidelines according to which content should be
> classified. Presumably, to be of any interest to real end-users, the
> system would have to implement categories understood by major end-user
> software. Who determines these categories? Are there standards for
> them?
> Do they reflect the point of view of certain groups? Etc."
> So PICS itself is just a mechanism.  You have to use PICS alongside
> some
> end-user taxonomy (content classification system) that is recognisable
> by
> some popular net nanny software, and ask the user to download and
> program
> the net nanny software.
> All sounds a bit complex for people who, I'm repeatedly told, can't
> even
> be bothered to learn how to turn image downloads on and off.


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
Oooh, aahhhhh.  I like it!    EasyTimeline is a pretty useful little plugin.
That Erik Zachte really knows where his towel is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Timeline_Classical_Composers_Famous
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EasyTimeline.

Thanks for lightening the mood... though I feel compelled to point out
that our multimedia and "hey, cool!" offerings still pale in
comparison to those of Encarta and BO.

SJ

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 23:31:43 -0500, Mark Pellegrini
<mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> While I hate to interrupt the usual bickering,  recriminations, and
> complaining
> that I've come to expect from this mailing list, I just wanted to point out
> this little
> gem:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music
>
> It's the current Collaboration of the Week and, if the trend continues, will
> probably be a featured
> article soon enough.
>
> The reason I single this particular article out is because I think this
> article *really* highlights
> how good Wikipedia can be. I really do like the clickable graph of the
> lifespans of
> major classical composers (in other words, you click on the name and you go
> to that composer's
> article). It also has almost a dozen full length songs (Many of them put
> there by Raulbot in last
> week's classical music grab-and-dump binge)
>
> Britannica, eat your heart out.
>
> --Mark (Raul654)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Jeff Warnica

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: rel="nofollow"

body:
On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 18:04 +0000, Arne Heizmann wrote:
> Ben Brockert wrote:
> > nofollow only affects the rank Google gives to the site that is linked
> > to; it  does not have the same function as a bots.txt or <meta
> > name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive" />. The spider
> > will still spider the links.
>
> Can someone explain to me why they called it 'nofollow' and not 'norank'?

Google ranks pages based not just on their content, but on the content
of pages that link to them. So in the above scenario, the source page
would not be marked as one pointing to the destination, and thus the
content on the source would not effect the destinations rank.


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> If that ten-minute delay mechanism can be implemented (anon readers
> don't see an edit for ten minutes), that would also help a *lot*.

That's a nice idea!

Christiaan


from_name: Kate Turner

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki with
	E-mail notification ?

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 22:26:41 +0100, Thomas Gries <mail at tgries.de> wrote:
>> Brion, help.
>> There are too many mails around - I cannot track them any longer.

> Same. I was reading everything for a day or two, decided which topics
> I was interested in, found I couldn't even read those, and basically
> gave up. I don't understand why things can't go on the talk pages or
> meta: and since gmail doesn't thread conversations, it would even be
> easier to read.

have you tried reading the lists through gmane (http://www.gmane.org/)?
it's a mail-to-news gateway which lets you read (and post to) mailing lists
from a news reader.  as news readers are rather more suited to the threaded
discussion style that occurs on newsgroups and mailing lists, it's a fair
bit easier.

kate.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 12:16:53 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sheng Jiong, you have lied about speaking Shanghainese as your native
> > language. I know this because there are large grammatical differences
> > between Shanghainese and Baihuawen that you seem to overlook,
> > suggesting you don't know it at all.
>
> Well, it is extremely impertient of you accusing others of lying when
> you do not have any proof. I am a native Shanghainese, I was born in
> Shanghai, both of my parents are Shanghainese, we speak Shanghainese
> at home.
>
> > One example is the existance in Wu of the particle "teuq7" meaning
> > "with", that doesn't exist in Mandarin. There is a character to write
> > it, I have seen it before, but I cannot remember it.
>
> Yes, but that is not a "grammatical difference". It is only a
> different use of a word. Grammatical difference means there is an
> entirely different sentence structure. But Shanghainese has almost the
> same sentence structure as written Chinese. If you take out a book
> written in Chinese, it is perfectly possible for one to read it out in
> Shanghainese and be understood by another person who can speak
> Shanghainese.
>
> Interesting example would be a story I heard: one Taiwan-born
> Shanghainese(who obviously speak only Shanghainese at home, as
> Shanghainese always find it more natural to speak Shanghainese than
> Mandarin with someone close to them) only use Shanghainese to read the
> novellas by Zhang Ailing, a popular writer who writes a lot about
> Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s.

And what is your point? Just because it can be understood, doesn't
mean it's natural.

> > Some examples of Cantonese grammar differences:
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ??????.
> > Cantonese: ??????. (notice position of "?")
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ???????.
> > Cantonese: ??????. (notice position of "?" and use of ? vs ?, and
> > vocabulary difference of monosyllabic Cantonese word for "things" vs
> > disyllabic Mandarin word)
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ????.
> > Cantonese: ????. (notice use of "?" vs "?", entirely different sentence order)
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ????
> > Cantonese: ???.
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ?????.
> > Cantonese: ????.
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ???.
> > Cantonese: ????.
> >
> > Mandarin/Baihua: ??????
> > Cantonese: ??????
>
> Yes, I know that Cantonese has slight differences in the order of
> words compared with Mandarin. But again you are mixing Mandarin with
> Baihuawen. Hong Kongers speak only Cantonese, but they write in
> Baihuawen. So whatever the difference there are between Baihuawen and
> Cantonese, that's the difference between spoken and written language.
> Many colloquial English is also different from standard, formal
> English (Take Singapore English as a best example: "Would you be able
> to attend?" in English would become "You can go or not?" in Singlish.
> Totally different grammar, but is Singlish a written language? No. It
> is still a dialect in English). Does that mean we need to have an
> Colloquial English Wikipedia?

Now, you are just being an octopus. Baihuawen IS Mandarin. It is
colloquial written form of Mandarin. Its grammar and sentence
structure is 100% identical to Mandarin but differs from other
dialects/languages. I wonder why... MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE BAIHUAWEN WAS
STRUCTURED AFTER MANDARIN COLLOQUIAL SPEECH!?!?!?!!!!!!!? That's why I
don't distinction between them. There is same grammar and same
vocabulary between Putonghua/Mandarin and Baihuawen, for the obvious
reason, but there is differences elsewhere.

You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
differences ie pronouncing "children" as if it were Mandarin "qiu-ren"
(not exact, but similar) which your English-based orthography doesn't
convey. It's similar to people who used to advocate a non-phonetic
French-based orthography for Haitian Creole, it was good
intelligibility with French but difficult for schoolchildren to learn.
Similarly if you use an English-based orthography for Tok Pisin it
looks similar somewhat to English and at one time its detractors
called it "bad english" or "colloquial English of New guinea" but now
it is widely recognised as own language and has its own Wikipedia
even. The richness of the Singlish idiom is definitely not adequately
expressed by the English-based orthography as it doesn't make
distinctions between minimal pairs in some cases - Singlish particles
are tonal, but in the English-based orthography it is ambiguous, like
Tibetan writing, except the difference that it conveys entire feeling
of a phrase.

I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
Baihuawen - they are one and the same.

> > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > maybe type some examples later.
>
> Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.

I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
Very much.

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: E-mail address change at MediaZilla?

body:
Richard Holton wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> I'm not sure how MediaZilla interacts with wikibugs-l at wikipedia.org,
> but I'm still receiving bug change notifications at
> rich_holton at yahoo.com, instead of richholton at gmail.com.

wikibugs-l is a normal mailman mailing list; it's not part of Bugzilla, bz
just sends mails to it.  you can change your subscription address at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/options/wikibugs-l.

> -Rich

kate.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] This is becoming relatively urgent.

body:
Can somebody PLEASE create the Ossetic and Voro Wikipedias and the
Amis Wiktionary? Ossetic -> os:, Voro -> fiu-vro:, Amis -> i-ami:.

I mean, seriously!!! The Voro people already even have the entire
language file translated! They are clearly very eager to get started.
Why are we holding them back like this?? The other groups are also
very clearly eager to get started. We created a chiTumbuka Wikipedia
with many less supporters, and almost as soon as it was requested, but
developers have practically turned a blind eye to these
widely-supported requests with next to no detractors.

Mark


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing username

body:
On Sunday 20 February 2005 00:25, Walter Vermeir wrote:
> where users can ask to rename there account to a other name.

I wonder why somebody would bother to rename his account, since it is so easy
just to open a new account.

Wouldn't it be easier to change the new user registration screen and add a
check "I want to rename my account". Then the user would add the new desired
user name, the new password, the old user name, and the old password. The
system would then authenticate him and change the user name in the data base.

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


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 19:16:44 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Rick wrote:
>
> >So you think it's appropriate to have a User name with
> >88 in it (coded for "Heil Hitler") and to post a photo
> >allegedly of themself in a Nazi uniform?
> >
> >
> Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold beliefs that many
> other people find abhorrent.
>
> -Mark
>

There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.

This whole debate is a nonsense (it damn well should be acceptable to
block someone on sight for being a Nazist) and only serving to further
disillusion me as to the complete lack of any controls which many
Wikipedians' are advocating.

I do not want to be associated with something that has no standards whatsoever.

But we'll see how things go - either Wikipedia will get its act
together or we will get bad publicity from some of the awful stuff
allowed on at the moment, and people will stop coming here.

I mean really - if someone was to trawl through wiki right now for the
stuff not palatable to the mainstream - mail it all to a bunch of
magazines - would Wikipedia EVER be respected by anyone but a small
group of liberals?

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:32:57 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:

> > If you start thinking like the average internet user (i.e. those
> > affluent middle class people who got so riled up about the Super Bowl
> > last year)
>
> Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its heads
> and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs even carried
> th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US news programs
> showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume that the standards
> of one country are universal.>

Yeah - pity about you ignoring the entire Islamic world, and much of
the rest of the world too that would have standards clashing with such
an occurance.

Is Wikipedia just going to ignore the mainstream because a majority
(if it is) of editors don't agree with their standards.

Wikipedia should be an encyclopaedia for all, not its editors amusing
themselves and setting up things the way *they* want.

Zoney


body:
I am cross. You have said I am of the opinion that these codes are irrelevant.

1. I have been unable to find a list of these codes,
2. It was not me but rather a developer who told me that these codes
are unusable because there is not yet an official final release. I
have told you once and again that there is no use - again, NO USE -
arguing this with me.
3. The codes I gave are supported fully by the respective communities
and comply with combined ISO 639-3 and RFC standards (or was it W3C?
or something) for representing unlisted languages - use six letters,
the general ISO code and then the Ethnologue code, and where there is
no Ethnologue code you can make one up if it doesn't conflict with
others (I believe?), and for languages for which there is no
appropriate general ISO code they should be prefixed with an i-, as in
i-ami (the closest ISO 639-3 comes is "Malayo-Polynesian languages";
however that is a sister subfamily to the Formosan subfamily to which
Amis belongs of the Austronesian languages and is thus unsuitable).

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:17:21 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Can somebody PLEASE create the Ossetic and Voro Wikipedias and the
> >Amis Wiktionary? Ossetic -> os:, Voro -> fiu-vro:, Amis -> i-ami:.
> >
> >I mean, seriously!!! The Voro people already even have the entire
> >language file translated! They are clearly very eager to get started.
> >Why are we holding them back like this?? The other groups are also
> >very clearly eager to get started. We created a chiTumbuka Wikipedia
> >with many less supporters, and almost as soon as it was requested, but
> >developers have practically turned a blind eye to these
> >widely-supported requests with next to no detractors.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> The Ossetic is not problematic the other two are. These do not have
> ISO-639 codes and we use these for our codes. Ask the board if they
> support the startup of these wikipedia.
>
> There are the new ISO-639 codes, they would be a better choice if these
> languages are on there. If they are not, you can ask them to be included
> in this list. Then again you are of the opinion that these codes are not
> relevant..
>
> Pity,
>     GerardM
>


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia
	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>http://runawaynet.com/~nknight/dsblimgs.png
>>
>>Show me where to click.
>
>
> There is no html at that URL.

I'm sorry? It's a screenshot of Firefox with images disabled looking at
[[Mount St. Helens]]. I'm asking you to show me where I click to load
the image that should be there and is not. I see no link or button to do
so. Do you?


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050220 00:18]:

> If Jimbo does not have an appetite for a fight with the religious right of
> his country, now is the time to consider toning down Wikipedia content.

At which point the project would promptly fork. This would be unfortunate.
To a large extent, Wikipedia is "The Enlightenment Fights Back." (NPOV.
Inclusion of all significant views on a topic.)

(This does include the disgusting articles - much as the problem with free
speech is that someone's else's right to say bad things is actually the
same thing as your right to say good things; free speech being the right to
say things some or lots of people object to.)

- d.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>>Up to a point.  With cat-based disabling you're at the mercy of
>>>cat-vandalism (possible solution: the cats in question are permanently
>>
>>Vandalism is not and _HAS NEVER BEEN_ at issue here.
>
>
> The teacher's supervisor walks into the class and finds a child staring at
> a picture of a male penis where a picture of the Vice President should be.

Which has _NOTHING_ to do with our editorial choices.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Not really.  It would place the discrimination in the hands of someone
>>
>>No, it allows you to CHOOSE what categories you want to automatically
>>load, and if an image falls in one of the cats you don't want to load,
>>you're presented with a mechanism to load it right where it should be
>>in  the article.
>
>
> That would be good.  The proposal I've seen suggested only a link, however.

The tagging mechanism with users setting their preferences was proposed
very early by me and others, The Cunctator noted that the cat system
could be used for tagging, John Lee pointed out that Javascript can be
used to load the image directly, and I gave a slightly more detailed
design outline a couple days ago that brought this all together along
with a mechanism that has the same final effect as the Javascript
mechanism at the cost of a page reload for users that don't have support
for or have disabled support for Javascript in their browsers.

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-February/019849.html


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why
	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>>There is no html at that URL.
>>
>>I'm sorry? It's a screenshot of Firefox with images disabled looking at
>> [[Mount St. Helens]].
>
>
> Jolly nice.  Now please stop spamming your demands.

Please address the issue. Where do I click?


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason
	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>Please address the issue.
>
>
> Please learn how to use your browser.

Teach me. Where do I click?


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
> > Of course.  There are plenty of people here who hold
> > beliefs that many
> > other people find abhorrent.
> >
> > -Mark
>
> So if I created a Username of [[User:KillAllTheJews]]
> it would be accpetable to you?

Who has created such an account?

And no it would not be acceptable to me because inciting hatred is a
crime and because "trollish" usernames are not allowed. However, this
guys nick was MSN88 which I think few would have noticed unless
someone had told people that 88 in nazi speak means Heil Hitler. If I
hadn't knew, I would have guessed it meant that he was 16 years old.
(insert famous quote from voltaire about freedom of speech here) etc.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One
	reason	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Please learn how to use your browser *off this list*.

You're avoiding addressing the issue that YOU are responsible for
bringing up.


body:
No, we have shown you examples of schools and newspapers, of books and
musics, and every single one you just label as an exception.

Even if the whole world wrote in colloquial Cantonese, I'm shore you
will call them all exceptions.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:18:29 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would appreciate it if you can argue using facts and not simply call
> > other people's proposals trash. It's highly disrespectful.
>
> I have been called talking "crap". I would appreciate if you can argue
> using facts and not simply call other people's opinions "crap" too.
>
> > The HK government has a page explaining and giving links to a code that
> > has all the Cantonese/Hong Kong-specific characters that the standard
> > Big5 code might not have. I don't know what is formalising if this isn't.
> >
> > Here, you can see for yourself:
> > http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/chi/structure/cli_main.html
>
> > All languages can be written down in one way or another, if the language
> > speakers want to.
>
> Maybe you can. But has majority of the Hong Kongers start writing
> Cantonese down?
>
> > And there's no evidence that most Cantonese speakers would object such a
> >   proposal. The three Cantonese speakers who had said anything here are
> > Felix, Cathy, and I. I doubt we three are the only Cantonese speakers on
> > this list or on zh.wikipedia.org.
>
> Well, that I should ask you people. I find myself engaged in a flame
> war with three persons whose total number of contributions to
> Wikipedia are less than that of mine alone.
>
> And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
> Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
> And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia into
> Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
> script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
> Wikipedian.
>
> Chinese Wikipedian community is relatively small(if you count active
> contributors, I think there are less than 100), and to have 2 very
> active users from Hong Kong is already an achievement, considering the
> percentage of Chinese users in Hong Kong in comparison with mainland
> China.
>
> > I'm now beginning to think that showing you the evidence when we find it
> > is pointless, since you seem to be holding onto your stance based on
> > emotions rather than facts. Any time Felix or I try (tries?) to show you
> > something, your reply is the same: oh, that doesn't count, that's just
> > an exception.
>
> Because you are showing me exceptions. I am sure your being able to
> sit here and write means you should be able to understand what is
> "widely accepted".
>
> formulax
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