subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> On Mon, 10 May 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >I think this depends on the exact card.  The one that we have says in
> >the manual that you can't do this, and James Day called the
> >manufacturer on the phone and they confirmed this.
>
> Bull.  If the card (i.e. driver) has placed a superblock on the drive,
> then setting up mirroring won't make any difference.  I've "upgraded"
> JBODs to RAID1 many times... I've even used the proceedure to clone
> drives.

Bull?  Well, as I say, I might be wrong, but I don't think that what
I've said is 'bull'.  James Day and I have read the manual, and as I
say, he called the manufacturer to confirm.

You write "If the card... has placed a superblock on the drive...".
Well, as of this very instant, it has not placed a superblock on the
drive for sure, because the card is not physically installed in the
machine.

> What card are we talking about?  If you're using the linux software raid
> (as I thought you were), this is certainly possible.

The card is a 3ware Escalade 7000 series controller.  This is a true
hardware RAID card.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selling books to increase funding

body:
Bod NotBod wrote:
> Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's funding
> by encouraging people to place more book references at the end of articles.
>
> I understand that there was a controversy about Amazon in the past, but
> according to...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources
>
> ...Wikipedia earns a commission on people who purchase through...
>
> http://www.priceowl.com/?site=wikipedia

Many of us only accepted the existence of Amazon's kickbacks because it
wouldn't change our editorial policy. I would certainly be more inclined
to terminate the Amazon agreement than to encourage readers to buy books.

If you think we need more books for informational purposes, write that
on the proposed policy and to-do pages. There's no need to mention the
funding issue.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikitech-l

from_name: piccola *

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: change wiki image

body:
Thanks Timwi,
i talking abaut Wikimedia...i go to the wikimedia news.

Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
Ingrid wrote:

> Vorrei tanto riuscire a cambiare il logo wiki con un logo mio personale,
> purtropop non ho ancora capito cosa devo modificare..qualcuno pu?? aiutarmi?
> Grazie mille.

(Translation: I would like to change the Wiki logo to a logo of my own,
but unfortunately I haven't quite understood what I need to do... can
someone help me?)

You should probably be more specific than that. What logo are you trying
to change? You certainly can't change Wikipedia's. If you are talking
about a MediaWiki installation of your own, this is the wrong mailing
list - try MediaWiki-L (or whatever it was called), or replace the file
$IP/upload/wiki.png.

Timwi

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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] old revisions on test.wikipedia.org

body:
On Mon, 2004-05-10 at 06:10 +0100, Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:

> It's not a bug, I told to Tim, I broke test history during
> my test to make a php script to uncompress old tables
> (needed if we want de, nl and others wikis to go to utf-8)

Sweet relief! Thanks Shai.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>We moved everything from the 80g drive to the 250g drive last week,
>but there is significant question as to whether it will now be
>possible to move everything to 2x250g.  My belief is that it is not
>possible.

Yes, it is.  That's how I build RAID1 systems.

--Ricky


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Sun, 9 May 2004, Brion Vibber wrote:
># hdparm -i /dev/hdc
...
> DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
> UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2
> AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
> Drive conforms to: (null):  1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ok.  There's your problem: your hdparm is too freakin' old.

[root:pts/5{9}]gir:/[11:41am]:hdparm -V
hdparm v5.2
[root:pts/5{9}]gir:/[11:41am]:hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

 Model=Maxtor 4G160J8, FwRev=GAK819K0, SerialNo=G8049L6E
 Config={ Fixed }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6
 AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 0:  1 2 3 4 5 6

[root:pts/5{9}]gir:/[11:41am]:hdparm -tT /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.54 seconds =237.95 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.89 seconds = 33.89 MB/sec

Also, it'll help to have a properly built kernel with support for the
specific IDE chipset(s) in the machine.  The generic IDE support is
crap and that's usually all distro's include in their kernels.

--Ricky


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Elections for the Board of Trustees of the
	Wikimedia Foundation

body:
--- Peter Jaros <rjaros at shaysnet.com> wrote:
> On May 4, 2004, at 10:51 PM, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> > This is not a popularity contest.
>
> While I don't dispute this statement, it does lead
> me to wonder: what
> *is*
> it?  Everyone keeps saying what the positions are
> *not*.  I started to
> read the bylaws, but I really don't understand such
> things.  What
> criteria
> should we use to judge candidates?

I do have an even more accurate question...
I hope that Jimbo will bring light on this :-)
What are the 2 elected people supposed to do...as part
of their mandatory work. And in particular, is there
really a difference between the two of them...which
mean what is the Contributing Active Member
Representative supposed to really do compared to the
other one ?

When I ask the question, I expect something a little
bit more detailed that the current answer which is
"The distinct responsibility and duties of each
represenative has yet to be determined", with a bit
more which says "Contributing Active Member
Representative" will have to care of setting up and
controlling member fee system.

If the current definition of the two posts does not
make any different *right now*, why should we make a
difference in the elections ?

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list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I think this depends on the exact card.  The one that we have says in
>the manual that you can't do this, and James Day called the
>manufacturer on the phone and they confirmed this.

Bull.  If the card (i.e. driver) has placed a superblock on the drive,
then setting up mirroring won't make any difference.  I've "upgraded"
JBODs to RAID1 many times... I've even used the proceedure to clone
drives.

>But, my current belief is that it is not possible with the card we
>have.  If I'm wrong, that's good news.

What card are we talking about?  If you're using the linux software raid
(as I thought you were), this is certainly possible.

--Ricky

PS: I've reformeted HW RAID5 arrays without destroying the contained
    filesystem.  Yeah, I was surprised by that.


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Explanations for bans (Usernames and sense of proportion)

body:
I agree, and am a little disturbed by a couple of
recent bans I have seen.
There may be good cause for them, but no explanation
has been given to users who have asked for it. I think
blocks and bans should be based solely on behavior
(except in cases of obscene, blasphemous or personal
attack names) and that there should be a forum where
users can ask for explanations of bans and blocks and
expect a reasonable response (ie more than 'Good - I
hope you get banned too).
Mark

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> >"Ray Saintonge" wrote
> >
> >>It's not about "troll-culture"; (whatever that
> is); it's about the right
> >>to choose a name.  The poisoned atmosphere comes
> the self-righteous
> >>crowd that goes around making all these petty
> complaints.
> >>
> >
> >If you don't _know_ troll-culture, that would be a
> bit of a
> >disqualification?
> >
> >No right to choose an in-your-face-name.  What has
> that to do with writing
> >an encyclopedia?
> >
> That last point is the important one.  If someone
> chooses an
> in-your-face name I am not likely to complain about
> the name, but I
> admit that I will look at his edits more critically
> than if he had
> chosen something less controversial.  If his edits
> are consistently fair
> and satisfactory I will eventually ignore the name,
> and no-one will have
> noticed how much scrutiny I have applied to those
> edits.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> Ok.  There's your problem: your hdparm is too freakin' old.
>
> [root:pts/5{9}]gir:/[11:41am]:hdparm -V
> hdparm v5.2

I guess my hdparm v5.2 is older than your hdparm v5.2. Perhaps, like
twins, one was born slightly earlier than the other?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary redirects (was Re: Wiktionaries for all!)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure that is such a good idea, performance-wise... ideally, it
>> should go straight to the correct URL. People would otherwise
>> constantly use "Copy link to clipboard" on these links and fill the
>> web with nonsense links like http://de.wiktionary.org/fi:Kukkala, and
>> we would forever have to keep the redirects working. They are starting
>> to become a little difficult to keep track of, and I'm afraid it's
>> only a matter of time until we will inadvertantly create an infinite
>> loop of redirects somewhere.
>
>
> One chief reason for making these links available is to allow interwiki
> linking from *non-wikimedia* wikis as well. By using a single
> established prefix (WikiPedia:) you can link to any of our languages
> without begging third party site admins to add three hundred prefixes to
> their interwiki maps.
>
> It would be nice to use the "real" URLs directly on our own wikis, of
> course, for the reasons you mention.

Brion is exactly right. The redirect mechanism was necessary for
supporting external wikis. In time we may code a more efficient solution
for local wikis. However there are glaring inefficiencies in MediaWiki
which may be addressed first.

Note that this redirect feature was previously implemented in the apache
configuration files using rewrite rules. There were no rewrite rules for
Wiktionary, so instead of adding more, I generalised the mechanism by
moving it to MediaWiki, taking advantage of the existing interwiki table
to obtain URLs. Thus, it will now work on any wiki farm regardless of
apache configuration. It will even work on wiki farms where the prefixes
correspond to different directories under the same hostname.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Driven_off_by_trolls

body:
This is kind of different to the way the term 'troll'
has been used before isn't it? As far as I can see,
this is an attempt by an advocacy group to get their
point of view to dominate certain articles - my
understanding was that we were using the term 'troll'
to mean users who post to deliberately stir up
controversy.
This highlights the fine line between points of view
we disagree with (and how to integrate them into
articles while maintaining an NPOV) and users who have
nothing to add except conflict.
Mark

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/index.php/Driven_off_by_trolls
>
> > From: uninvited at nerstrand.net
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Fri,  7 May 2004 14:16:02 -0700
> > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Consumerium
> >
> > Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away
> if not fed should take some
> > time to review:
> >
> > http://develop.consumerium.org
> >
> > Among other features of the site are a number of
> articles that attempt to
> > organize leftist POV authors and get
> > them to edit at Wikipedia.
> >
> > UninvitedCompany
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Juho Heikkurinen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving towards transwiktionary, the first step

body:
What I propose that someone of you who has bots to command should
consider implementing the following

a) Let's look up what every language name is in every language
b) Look up what's ===Translations===  or similar expression that the
bot can spot the translations area in each language
c) map the language names and language codes
d) parametrise a bot to crawl the wiktionaries linking [[:en:Word]]
Translations to *Finnish: [[:fi:sana|sana]] and *Swedish:
[[:sv:ord|ord]] and so forth and vice versa from other languages to
English

So by locating "*Language" or *[[Language]] in section titled
Translations the bot would determine to look for the word "sana" in
http://fi.wiktionary.org and upon success (the target exists) links to
it and hides the namespace.

Could someone with knowledge on wikibots assess the feasibility of such
a scheme? Once a full round is done on all wiktionaries the bot should
focus looking at new entries and linking them as they appear.

I see no harm in this kind of automation, it would actually help weed
out stupid jokes and give more precision on nyances as the thesauri
could be surfed translanguage.

	-juxho


from_name: Peter Jaros

body:
On May 4, 2004, at 10:51 PM, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> This is not a popularity contest.

While I don't dispute this statement, it does lead me to wonder: what
*is*
it?  Everyone keeps saying what the positions are *not*.  I started to
read the bylaws, but I really don't understand such things.  What
criteria
should we use to judge candidates?

On a related note, could people who understand such things work on a
lay-
translation of the bylaws so the rest of us could understand them?  I
would
find that very useful.

Peter

                               -- ---<>--- --
                     A house without walls cannot fall.
        Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                               -- ---<>--- --


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> One chief reason for making these links available is to allow
>> interwiki linking from *non-wikimedia* wikis as well. By using a
>> single established prefix (WikiPedia:) you can link to any of our
>> languages without begging third party site admins to add three hundred
>> prefixes to their interwiki maps.
>
>
> This is a very benevolent approach. :-)   Still, the priority should be
> to make things work within the Wikimedia family.  Making it easier for
> outside should never be more than an incidental byproduct arising out of
> making things easier for ourselves.

Hardly benevolent; begging other site admins to get something I want is
a pain in the ass for me when *I* want to link things. If it helps other
people, great too. ;)

Anyway, it *already works right now* within the Wikimedia family. If
you'd like to go to extra effort to make it slightly prettier or "more
efficient", well, I expect to see your patches on wikitech-l.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Peter Jaros <rjaros at shaysnet.com> wrote:
> On May 10, 2004, at 2:42 PM, Anthere wrote:
>
> > And in particular, is there
> > really a difference between the two of them...which
> > mean what is the Contributing Active Member
> > Representative supposed to really do compared to the
> > other one ?

> Another question. :)  It's not really clear from what I've read
> whether the Volunteer Active Member on the board can be a
> Contributing Active Member.  From the bylaws, it sounds like all
> Contributing Active Members are Volunteer Active Members.

Chris Mahan scribbled:
The contributing active member rep. represents those who have
contributed financially to the foundation.
The volunteer member rep. represents those who are volunteers.

The active members are also volunteers, and they get to vote for
both.

It is possible that there are cases where financial contributors to
the foundation are not actually using the site and volunteering in
the projects. For those cases I suppose they would vote only for the
contributing active rep.

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

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subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> Interesting.  Odd that it will not report beyond udma2 and lists null
> for drive conformance.  Check your hdparm (strings -a hdparm) for
> udma strings beyond 2.

Oh, I assure you it's got them. We're just running a crappy kernel with
no driver support for our card; I thought that was pretty clear from
previous posts.

> Try "hdparm -I" to request data directly from the drive.
>
> Also, what kernel are you using? (do you have the .config?)

A dreadful Red Hat kernel, of course.

We should try upgrading to current 2.6 and compile in all the IDE
goodies, but that will require... DOWNTIME. yay

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain http://www.wiki.produkt-mix2.de/

body:
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
> The domain http://www.wiki.produkt-mix2.de/ obviously copies content from the
> german language Wikipedia and is not complying to the GNU FDL at all.

Please contact them and let them know your concerns:
http://www.ihsl.de/impressum.htm

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
> Am Montag, 10. Mai 2004 22:16 schrieb Brion Vibber:
> >>Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
>>>>>The domain http://www.wiki.produkt-mix2.de/ obviously copies content from
>>>the german language Wikipedia and is not complying to the GNU FDL at all.
>>
>>Please contact them and let them know your concerns:
>>http://www.ihsl.de/impressum.htm
>
>
> Contacting them because of not complying to the license could be a problem: I
> don't know how the legal situation is if they just tunnel our content and
> leave out the important bit - the content is not static; I cannot point them
> to an article and say: here is a copyright violation, you do not comply to
> the license, because the article is vanished.
>
> We have a standard text for mirros not in comply and that always worked fine
> whenever we had to use it. I'm not sure if we should use it in this case,
> therefore I was asking if we have an easy implementable solution to block
> their (and of course only their) access technically. In the end, what they're
> doing is stealing bandwidth (they tunnel the article HTML and the images are
> directly served by us) - apart from the copyright issues.

So, what, it's *simpler* to silently block them than to drop them a note
saying "hey, this seems a little unusual. It looks like you're tunneling
our side and adding advertisements to it, which isn't really cool.
You're welcome to mirror the content, of course, but you should serve
the pages from your own servers -- here's a link to the public database
dumps and the software we use to run it -- but make sure also to include
the appropriate information and backlinks to comply with the license.
Thanks!"

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Peter Jaros <rjaros at shaysnet.com> wrote:
> Anthere--
>
> Just wanted to make sure you knew that your
> responses are coming out
> quoted (at quote level 1).  I can usually figure out
> the line
> between your reply and the quote, but if you can fix
> it, it would be
> nice.
>
> Peter

Well, euh, no, not really.
It depends on the computer I am; And I have not found
how to fix that on the other one. I apology :-(

On top of it, gname is not working for me for
wikipedia-l and foundation-l mailing lists (while it
works for other lists), so I can't answer from gname
directly. This is very unfortunate.

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subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: similar pages

body:
Timwi wrote:
> No, it shouldn't. It is absolutely completely trivial for users of
> Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer to install a Turkish keyboard layout.

I don't know any details about what can be done in versions of various
operating systems, but I guess there are situations (e.g. library
computers) where users are not able to change the keyboard layout.

I'll change my statement to: "MediaWiki *could* ..." do this, and stay
neutral.  I think it would be a nice feature to have in MediaWiki.
It could be configured as a list of characters that are to be made
available as JavaScript buttons, and websites (or users) that don't
want to use this feature can leave the list blank.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> So, what, it's *simpler* to silently block them than to drop them a note
> saying "hey, this seems a little unusual. It looks like you're tunneling
> our side and adding advertisements to it, which isn't really cool.
> You're welcome to mirror the content, of course, but you should serve
> the pages from your own servers -- here's a link to the public database
> dumps and the software we use to run it -- but make sure also to include
> the appropriate information and backlinks to comply with the license.
> Thanks!"

I 100% agree with Brion about this friendly approach to problems like
this.  Maybe they just didn't think things through clearly; maybe they
thought this was fine.  Only if they decide to be mean to us, we can
use technical means to stop this.  Otherwise, we should try to keep
friendly with people who are trying to reuse our content.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Bull?  Well, as I say, I might be wrong, but I don't think that what
>I've said is 'bull'.  James Day and I have read the manual, and as I
>say, he called the manufacturer to confirm.

There's a difference between "not supported" and "won't work."  Most
manufactures label anything they don't test as "won't work."  But that
doesn't mean it actually won't.

>You write "If the card... has placed a superblock on the drive...".
>Well, as of this very instant, it has not placed a superblock on the
>drive for sure, because the card is not physically installed in the
>machine.
...
>The card is a 3ware Escalade 7000 series controller.  This is a true
>hardware RAID card.

Oh, well that's different then.  Yes, moving a naked drive to a hardware
raid card will very likely destroy what's on the drive.  THAT is what
3ware was warning you about.  Once the drive is on the controller, yes,
you can extend the mirror at will.

I was not aware the drive was not already on the controller.  I'm sure
you can figure out the drive swapping necessary to move to the 3ware
card.  Yes, it'll take a while.

--Ricky

PS: I wasn't saying your comments were bull.  Just the vendor claims that
    a JBOD cannot be converted to RAID-1 without loss of data is bull. Of
    course, you don't have a JBOD yet. :-)


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
Anthere--

Just wanted to make sure you knew that your responses are coming out
quoted (at quote level 1).  I can usually figure out the line
between your reply and the quote, but if you can fix it, it would be
nice.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> [root:pts/5{9}]gir:/[11:41am]:hdparm -V
>> hdparm v5.2
>
>I guess my hdparm v5.2 is older than your hdparm v5.2. Perhaps, like
>twins, one was born slightly earlier than the other?

*grin* one of them is a Redhat hdparm.  (and it's up to 5.5 now.)

Interesting.  Odd that it will not report beyond udma2 and lists null
for drive conformance.  Check your hdparm (strings -a hdparm) for
udma strings beyond 2.

Try "hdparm -I" to request data directly from the drive.

Also, what kernel are you using? (do you have the .config?)

--Ricky


subject: [WikiEN-l] Suggested implementation of Jimbo's quickpoll proposal

body:
I endorse this as a proposed experiment.  Should we proceed?  Are there
any major objections to giving it a try for a few weeks?

We can monitor it and bail out of the experiment quickly if we find
that it's out of control.  But it might help a lot.

Tim Starling wrote:

> Jimbo has suggested expanding the power of quickpolls to allow banning
> until such time as the arbitration committee makes a decision. Hence the
> arbitration committee becomes like a court of appeal.
>
> To date, there have been lots of criticisms of quickpolls, on the talk
> page and elsewhere. Most of them have been centred around the issue of
> frivolous use. Jimbo suggested allowing only sysops to start quickpolls.
>
> After some pondering, I've decided I like this proposal. It's reasonably
> democratic, since someone with a real complaint is very likely to find
> at least one sympathetic sysop. The sysop body is heterogeneous. And it
> gives the community a way to take decisive action.
>
> This could be implemented just by posting a policy statement at the top
> of [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls]], saying that only sysops may start polls.
> However, I'm of the opinion that simple technical barriers can be used
> to great effect in enforcing policies. Perhaps we could put each
> quickpoll in an unprotected MediaWiki: message, then have a list of
> {{msg:}} tags in [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls]] itself. The list would then be
> protected, preventing anyone except for sysops from adding items.
>
> Theoretically a user could add a new quickpoll to the bottom of one of
> the included messages. But if they do that, it is clear to all that they
> have understood the policy and attempted to evade it. Others may remove
> the quickpoll not only on the basis of policy, but also because the
> listing is in the wrong place, and is incorrectly formatted.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On May 10, 2004, at 2:42 PM, Anthere wrote:

> And in particular, is there
> really a difference between the two of them...which
> mean what is the Contributing Active Member
> Representative supposed to really do compared to the
> other one ?

Another question. :)  It's not really clear from what I've read
whether the Volunteer Active Member on the board can be a
Contributing Active Member.  From the bylaws, it sounds like all
Contributing Active Members are Volunteer Active Members.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] The fun never stops

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> I'd like to schedule a little downtime, about an hour (hopefully much
>> less) circa 0200 UTC Monday morning (7pm PDT Sunday night). Should be
>> reasonably low traffic and people will have plenty of warning if it's
>> announced ahead of time.
>
>
> The stunning lack of "yes, that sounds reasonable" or any movement
> towards putting up a notice 24 hours in advance (and also Mothers' Day
> scheduling mishaps ;) have lead to this downtime being CANCELED.
>
> How does the same time Tuesday night/Wednesday morning sound?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
Sounds fine to me. FWIW.

-- Neil


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
> We also need to be careful not to let too many people speak in the name of
> the Foundation whenever they feel like it.

What I believe to be more important is to not let the foundation speak in the
name of the people, whenever they feel like it, unless the Foundation is
properly democratically organized.

Uli


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Killing Language??.php

body:
Now that we have an object cache, I think we can move toward getting rid
toward Language??.php entirely, the $wgAllMessages arrays at first and the
rest that's in there later.

Here's a rough implementation strategy:
- Multilang support is maintained on Meta, but instead of Language??.php
pages, people edit MediaWiki pages
- The user can set in the preferences which language they want to use (as
per Nikola's patch). Bonus points: Detect language prefs from browser and
set default UI language accordingly.
- For the different languages we append a suffix to the title, e.g.
MediaWiki:Gnunote.en. The suffix is added automatically when no suffix is
provided, so MediaWiki:Gnunote would go to Gnunote.en if you have that set
in your prefs
- We get rid of the message arrays entirely. Instead, the installation
package contains a dump of the MediaWiki namespace from Meta. This is
loaded into the DB on install. $wgUseDatabaseMessages is required, not
optional.

Note that the language suffixes would only work for the MediaWiki:
namespace, not for the Template: namespace -- mixing languages here would
be a bad idea.

How does that sound? Have I forgotten something important?

Having done this, we could then think about throwing all languages into
one DB (with different tables like CUR.de, RECENTCHANGES.en etc.), as a
first step toward true multilang integration.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I endorse this as a proposed experiment.  Should we proceed?  Are there
>any major objections to giving it a try for a few weeks?
>
>We can monitor it and bail out of the experiment quickly if we find
>that it's out of control.  But it might help a lot.
>
>
I'm fine with it, though I think perhaps there should be more stringent
thresholds---a quick poll done with a handful of users and a moderate
threshold is fine for a 24-hour ban, but if it's going to be a longer
ban perhaps it should be a 2/3 or 3/4 threshold and some minimum number
of votes?

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] user style preview

body:
I've checked in some code that allows users to preview changes to their
user css or js. Example: to preview Angela's pinkish background try this
in your User:You/Monobook.css at http://test.wiipedia.org:
@import
url(/w/index.php?title=User:Angela/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css);

More examples at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_styles.

Cheers
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
Delirium wrote:
> >I endorse this as a proposed experiment.  Should we proceed?  Are there
> >any major objections to giving it a try for a few weeks?
> >
> >We can monitor it and bail out of the experiment quickly if we find
> >that it's out of control.  But it might help a lot.
> >
> >
> I'm fine with it, though I think perhaps there should be more stringent
> thresholds---a quick poll done with a handful of users and a moderate
> threshold is fine for a 24-hour ban, but if it's going to be a longer
> ban perhaps it should be a 2/3 or 3/4 threshold and some minimum number
> of votes?

The proposal was for an 80% threshold and a minimum of 8 votes.  So,
that's more stringent that what you mentioned already, right?

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] troubled.

body:
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State
Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their
importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being
taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even
thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too
creative?

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere9 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 23:15:54 +0200
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] troubled.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
>
> Sorry, this may sound just as censorship, but frankly, I am shocked at
> these pictures.
> And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
> At least, not now. That is too soon.
> Just my opinion.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I've already stated, several times in the past, that the roles of trustee and
> the roles of corporate officers should be divorced from one another. This is
> needed in order to provide proper checks and balances (the board oversees the
> officiers and the foundation membership oversees the board).
>
>
> Ant : I agree
>
> > I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
> > meta. People interested list themselves there. The
> > community then approve or does not approve to give
> > this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
> > not.
>
> I strongly feel that it should be the other way around; the board appoints
> officers and the foundation membership either approves or disapproves the
> appointees. This provides a check against merely popular people being
> appointed
> to positions they are not qualified to perform. The board members themselves
> are the ones that are directly elected. Thus they are the ones legally
> responsible for their appointees.
>
> Ant :
>
> I admit that the legal responsibility and qualification is a major issue.
>
> However, I must say I would be troubled that the management would be done in
> such a top down approach, as I feel it could raise issues of fairness and
> transparency. In particular if those ?coordinators? are a mandatory path for
> subsequent activities.

I guess I would be OK with the board selecting a qualified group of people as
finalists and have the Wikimedia membership choose the winner. However, that
group of finalists will often be very small since the board has to assume that
any one could become the actual officer. That way the membership and the board
are responsible for the person who is eventually selected (but that would have
been the case in the appointee/confirmation schenario as well). This does have
a drawback:
*Until the membership votes, none of the board-selected candidates will be able
to perform the duties of the office. Appointees to the cabnint level in the
U.S. government (all the Secretaries of ..) work in their appointed role while
Congress is going through the confirmation process - if they are not confirmed
then they have to stop work and the process starts over.

But I don't think that the membership will ever not confirm a board-selected
officer. If that is done, then something is wrong with the board. The reason
why confirmation is needed is just to provide a check against the board making
bad decisions. So I still think that the appointee/confirmation process is the
most straightforward path and the one less likely to bog down the work of the
foundation. IMO, officers should not be too hindered by the political process -
they have work to do.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials"


subject: [Foundation-l] "officials" (ignore my last post)

body:
I sent my last post too early - please disregard that one and read this one
instead.

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I've already stated, several times in the past, that the roles of trustee and
> the roles of corporate officers should be divorced from one another. This is
> needed in order to provide proper checks and balances (the board oversees the
> officiers and the foundation membership oversees the board).
>
>
> Ant : I agree
>
> > I view this as fairly loose. Let's have a page on
> > meta. People interested list themselves there. The
> > community then approve or does not approve to give
> > this "official" title. Finally, the board approve or
> > not.
>
> I strongly feel that it should be the other way around; the board appoints
> officers and the foundation membership either approves or disapproves the
> appointees. This provides a check against merely popular people being
> appointed
> to positions they are not qualified to perform. The board members themselves
> are the ones that are directly elected. Thus they are the ones legally
> responsible for their appointees.
>
> Ant :
>
> I admit that the legal responsibility and qualification is a major issue.
>
> However, I must say I would be troubled that the management would be done in
> such a top down approach, as I feel it could raise issues of fairness and
> transparency. In particular if those ?coordinators? are a mandatory path for
> subsequent activities.

I guess I would be *OK* with the board selecting a qualified group of people as
finalists and have the Wikimedia membership choose the winner. However, that
group of finalists will often be very small since the board has to assume that
any one could become the actual officer. That way the membership and the board
are responsible for the person who is eventually selected (but that would have
been the case in the appointee/confirmation scenario as well). This does have a
drawback:
*Until the membership votes, none of the board-selected candidates will be able
to perform the duties of the office. Appointees to the cabinet level in the
U.S. government (all the Secretaries of ..) work in their appointed role while
Congress is going through the confirmation process - if they are not confirmed
then they have to stop work and the process starts over.

But I don't think that the membership will ever not confirm a board-selected
officer. If that is done, then something is wrong with the board. The reason
why confirmation is needed is just to provide a check against the board making
bad decisions. So I still think that the appointee/confirmation process is the
most straightforward path and the one less likely to bog down the work of the
foundation. IMO, officers should not be too hindered by the political process -
they have work to do.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sock puppet moves to Disinfopedia

body:
The user who posted a bunch of nonsense about Wikimedia Foundation on
the [[Fallujah]] article has now shown up on Disinfopedia. He's using
the name [[User:JustNews]]. I'm sure that this is the same person who
previously used various sock puppets including JillP, SaltyDog, and
TruthSeeker.

If anyone here participated in responding to this user's activities
on Wikipedia, I'd invite you to do the same on Disinfopedia
(www.disinfopedia.org).
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, May 2004)
--------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: user style preview

body:
Timwi wrote:
> There seems to be a bug in the feature, though. If I specify anything
> other than text/css, it returns text/x-wiki. In particular, I think
> text/plain really should work. It would make bot automations *so* much
> simpler to be able to retrieve the wiki code of any page like that.

Sorry, text/plain is unsafe. Several popular browsers (IE/Win and
Safari, at least) will interpret documents served as text/plain *as
HTML* if they *look like* HTML. This can lead to cross-site scripting
attacks; if you can get somebody to load up the page, you can use
embedded JavaScript to get their username, session cookie, and if used,
the saved password cookie.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: similar pages

body:
Timwi wrote:
<snip>
> Alternatively, we could come up with a Wiki syntax for special
> characters (e.g. {'s} for ?) that is replaced with the correct character
> upon save, but I think that would be pretty cumbersome to input.
>
> Timwi

Hello,
The spanish wikipedia added a line with special chars to be copied and
pasted. It's just under the "preview / submit" buttons:
http://es.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&action=edit

Maybe implementing the same thing on the Turkish wikipedia could help
their users ?

cheers,

--


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> 8 votes is far too few, 18 or 24 might be more reasonable for what is likely
> to turn into a ban of several weeks at best.

I'm open to this.  I merely chose 80% plus 8 votes because I found
that on the QuickPolls page as it existed before.  8, 18, 24, the
selection is more or less arbitrary but nonetheless important.

Without empirical testing, we won't really know what typical votes
will be like.  And even with empirical testing, different people will
have different opinions on what the threshold "ought" to be.

I'm willing to listen to more opinions on what the threshold ought to
be, but I also think that at some point, the proper solution will be
to do an experiment and then have a wiki-wide vote on how we like it.

--Jimbo


body:
On May 10, 2004, at 3:39 PM, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> The contributing active member rep. represents those who have
> contributed financially to the foundation.
> The volunteer member rep. represents those who are volunteers.
>
> The active members are also volunteers, and they get to vote for
> both.

So even if they are both contributing active members, they have
different jobs are representatives of different bodies?

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Anthere wrote:
> We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.

I don't agree that our handling of 'clitoris' can reasonably be called
'censorship'.  The picture(s) are right there for anyone to click on
and see.

On the other hand, I'm inclined to agree that the current handling is
perhaps not optimal.

Could we perhaps handle these pictures in the same way?  That is, make
them accessible in the same way, but not randomly plastered all over
the article?

Part of the issue here is that these pictures are of _extreme_ current
importance.  Many people visiting that page will be interested in
seeing the pictures, and rightfully so.

The article in its present state needs a lot of work, of course.  As
an example, there is a series of quotes from George W. Bush about war
crimes *committed by the Iraqis* with the droll suggestion that "These
statements may or may not represent the positions that his
administration will take regarding the Abu Ghraib prison situation."

That statement seems designed to be a swipe against the Bush
administration rather than a neutral assessment of the probabilities.
The reader is invited to imagine Bush plausibly saying "These are war
crimes, but we should excuse them."  It's just editorial.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy: bans

body:
Anthere wrote:
> So, if the community widely agree, the guy will be blocked, but a unique
> sysop trying to act will not be criticized too heavily for having
> blocked perhaps too quickly. I think "fear" of acting often paralyse our
> sysop :-)
>
> Which I understand...

I think Anthere is very wise here.

I think that one key is that any system under which a sysop is
supposed to make a *sole* judgment is going to necessarily involve
second-guessing afterwards as to whether that judgment was right.

The advantage of quickpolls (in some configuration) is that they allow
a fast method to *get something done* but which also allow for
*community oversight* and *legitimacy*.  Setting a high percentage
threshold is a good way to avoid "personality contests", at least I
hope so.

It's very easy to say "This sysop blocked me because of political
bias" or "This sysop blocked me because of a personal grudge".  And it
sounds plausible, because no matter how good we all are, we all know
that personal temptation to bonk someone can get pretty high
sometimes.  (One reason I decided to form the mediation/arbitration
system is that I was getting perilously close to a banning rampage
myself, but thought that some form of due process was critical.)

So single-person-deciding solutions are going to be very efficient in
one sense, but extremely divisive in another sense.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a preliminary idea on resolution of immediate disputes

body:
Alex Regh wrote:
> That sounds like a good idea, however, there is the potential
> problem of small groups of sysops acting togehter on everything,
> small cabals, if you like.  Happens inevitably, and can start quite
> innocently by people starting ask those with whom they get along,
> say in the chat, or a mailing list.

Alex is right.  If I were to want to ban someone for borderline
reasons, I'd know right off the bat where to turn for co-operation.
We all do.  If I were to want to unban someone for borderline reasons,
I'd also know right off the bat where to turn.

Of course with quickpolls, there is nothing to stop people from
campaigning for their desired result as well.  But at least *anyone*
can get involved, rather than a quiet-behind-the-scenes decision made
and implemented by a small group.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> ...there is such a strong history of people lying about torture that
> we would not want to part of suppression of evidence.

While I strongly support the importance of our having the pictures on
the site in some form, I just wanted to say that this particular
argument didn't seem persuasive to me.  The chances of evidence being
suppressed here are close to zero, these pictures have been broadcast
worldwide in all sorts of media.

I do agree completely that the photos have high information value, of
course.

Just to make my position clear:

1.  I agree with Anthere that it is problematic for the photos to be
right there in the article, as they are quite disturbing.

2.  I think that they absolutely have to be accessible with ease,
beause they are highly informative.

3.  I'm not making any sort of proclamation about this.  If we have to
do so, we should have a vote or poll of some sort, and go with that.
Hopefully that won't be necessary, since perhaps some compromise could
be reached in which we directly show some of the photos, and put some
of the others behind a single-click with warning.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium and 142

body:
>Be absolutely clear: you are making real-world enemies here,
>Tim Starling. And many real-world enemies do in fact go so far
>as to kill to protect what they value.

Sigh. So far this guy has issued veiled death threats to Larry, Jimbo, me, and
now Tim (there are probably others I missed).

I've already filed a report to the FBI on 24/142/Craig Hubley's threat on me,
but have never heard back from them. Perhaps if others also file reports then
something may get done.

--mav

__________________________________
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Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


body:
8 votes is far too few, 18 or 24 might be more reasonable for what is likely
to turn into a ban of several weeks at best.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 16:11:17 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Suggested implementation of Jimbo's quickpoll proposal
>
> Delirium wrote:
>>> I endorse this as a proposed experiment.  Should we proceed?  Are there
>>> any major objections to giving it a try for a few weeks?
>>>
>>> We can monitor it and bail out of the experiment quickly if we find
>>> that it's out of control.  But it might help a lot.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm fine with it, though I think perhaps there should be more stringent
>> thresholds---a quick poll done with a handful of users and a moderate
>> threshold is fine for a 24-hour ban, but if it's going to be a longer
>> ban perhaps it should be a 2/3 or 3/4 threshold and some minimum number
>> of votes?
>
> The proposal was for an 80% threshold and a minimum of 8 votes.  So,
> that's more stringent that what you mentioned already, right?
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York, New York, a hell of a town...

body:
If someone comes to Wikipedia for information on the city that O. Henry
called "Bagdad-on-the-Hudson," and they type in something reasonable...
like "New York" or "New York City" or "New York, New York" or "NY" or
"Manhattan" or "The Big Apple" or even "Gotham," are they going to find
what they seek?

The answer to this rhetorical question is that "Bagdad-on-the-Hudson"
comes up blank, but all the others either take one immediately to a
page with a pretty picture of the Manhattan Skyline and the Statue of
Liberty, or present it as a clearly explained link less than an inch
from the top of the page.

So, even though I personally think that putting it under "City of New
York" is a) pedantic and b) inconsistent, let me coin a motto,
"Wikipedia is not thumb-indexed" and, Emerson, you know, foolish
consistency, hobgoblin etc. etc.

I am not, however, volunteering to update the 501 pages that link to
"New York, New York" to remove double redirects. Somebody _was_
planning to do that, right?  :-)

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Pictures of the clitoris are not displayed to avoid pandering to purient
interests which apparently (I have not followed this debate) outweighs the
information value.

While there may be a few readers who might enjoy pictures of torture and
putting many of them on Wikipedia would be wrong there is such a strong
history of people lying about torture that we would not want to part of
suppression of evidence. Thus there is a very high information value. (We
finally caught a few of these sonsabitches). There is a point of view
problem as 99.9% of torture is not photographed thus displaying pictures of
American torture only (as pictures of Saudi Arabian or Israeli or Turkish or
Tibetan or [put in your own despotic regime] torture are not available)
gives a somewhat false impression. It takes a pretty dumb criminal to take
pictures (or let others take pictures) of themselves while they are
committing a crime.

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere9 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 02:51:44 +0200
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
>
> We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
> We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a
> clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.
>
> We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.
>
> However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive
> me, but I am troubled.
>
> No, I do not think everything should be shown, especially soon after
> they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII horors were recorded,
> but the records preserved for several years before being shown publicly.
> This in memory of the deads. Even though we know what happened.
>
> So, explain to me why we show shocking images of human humiliation,
> while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?
>
>
> Fred Bauder a ?crit:
>> They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State
>> Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their
>> importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being
>> taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even
>> thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too
>> creative?
>>
>> Fred
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] The fun never stops

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004 07:52:11 -0700
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> A general question about mysql replication...
>
> Is this a valid summary of how this works?

It's replicating :) More seriously, the slave request the master, the master read the binlogs and send info to slave. We can stop slave everytime and restart it without pb, it will resync. If we think to do a downtime, we can swap master and slave. Last time it wasn't working because I think I forgot something.

> 1.  To go from a single db server to a db+slave, downtime is required.

Because we had some problems. And actually, Curly is out of sync. We think that happen when Suda rebooted April the 30th

> 2.  To go from a db+slave to db+2 slaves, downtime is not required.

As 1 slave I presume

> 3.  For a variety of reasons, slaves are prone to sometimes fall out of sync.

Some reasons could cause the out of sync, reboot of Suda or there's missing a file on Suda, a binlogs index file. We think it was deleted during the move of the binlogs (cause the few space we have on Suda)

> If that's more or less right, then it seems that although db+slave
> helps guard against catastrophic failure (loss of a ton of edits since
> the last db dump), it ironically leads to more total downtime.

We should think to call an exorcist :)

> And so it also seems that once we have our new big db machine, we
> ought to plan to have something like this:
>
> 'new geoffrin' - primary db server

What will be his name, Geoffrin II ? :)

> 'suda' - secondary db server

Suda upgraded with a 64 bits kernel and a faster system disk

> 'machine x' - slave not really used except to help maintain/re-establish sync.

Could be only a P4 with a 250G ide drive

Shaihulud


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: similar pages

body:
On Mon, 2004-05-10 at 13:58 +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> I'll change my statement to: "MediaWiki *could* ..." do this, and stay
> neutral.  I think it would be a nice feature to have in MediaWiki.
> It could be configured as a list of characters that are to be made
> available as JavaScript buttons, and websites (or users) that don't
> want to use this feature can leave the list blank.

You can develop something like this (and possibly other nice edit
tools/shortcuts) using the new user javascript function in 1.3, see
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_styles. Angela has something like
this in her toolbox already (see
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/monobook.js, the last link).
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
On Wikipedia, there is a giant conspiracy attempting to have articles agree
with reality.

Fred

> From: "Arno M" <redgum46 at lycos.com>
> Organization: Lycos Mail  (http://www.mail.lycos.com:80)
> Reply-To: redgum46 at lycos.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 08:16:10 +0600
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Old Friend Plautus Satire
>
> Plautus Satire apprently moved onto another site,
> www.badastronomy.com, and began stirrign up anohter
> storm there.
>
> A discussion of him, and Wikipedia, can be found
>
> on http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=245449
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
> http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?S
> RC=lycos10
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: localization

body:
In message <20040510035205.29035.qmail at web13426.mail.yahoo.com>, Volkan
HATEM <volkanh-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>I'm not sure if this is the right list to ask a localization related
>question but I guess it is not totally irrelevant.
>
>On MediaWiki:All_Messages there are no strings related to date and
>time.
>How can we localize date/time?
>
>-volkan

It's done in your LanguageXX.php file.

For example, here's the Welsh (cy) equivalent:

 /* private */ $wgWeekdayNamesCy = array(
        "Dydd Sul", "Dydd Llun", "Dydd Mawrth", "Dydd Mercher", "Dydd
             Iau", "Dydd Gwener", "Dydd Sadwrn"
 );

 /* private */ $wgMonthNamesCy = array(
        "Ionawr", "Chwefror", "Mawrth", "Ebrill", "Mai", "Mehefin",
        "Gorffenaf", "Awst", "Medi", "Hydref", "Tachwedd",
        "Rhagfyr"
 );

 /* private */ $wgMonthAbbreviationsCy = array(
        "Ion", "Chwe", "Maw", "Ebr", "Mai", "Meh", "Gor", "Aws",
        "Med", "Hyd", "Tach", "Rhag"
 );

We've also introduced synonyms for the "magic names" variables so we
don't have to have English words in our articles when we're redirecting,
etc.

  /* private */ $wgMagicWordsCy = array(
  #   ID                          CASE  SYNONYMS
     MAG_REDIRECT       => array( 0, "#redirect", "#ail-cyfeirio" ),
     MAG_NOTOC          => array( 0, "__NOTOC__",
 "__DIMTAFLENCYNNWYS__" ),
     MAG_NOEDITSECTION  => array( 0, "__NOEDITSECTION__",
 "__DIMADRANGOLYGU__" ),
     MAG_START          => array( 0, "__START__", "__DECHRAU__" ),
     MAG_CURRENTMONTH   => array( 1, "{{CURRENTMONTH}}",
 "{{MISCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_CURRENTMONTHNAME => array( 1,
 "{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}", "{{ENWMISCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_CURRENTDAY     => array( 1, "{{CURRENTDAY}}",
 "{{DYDDIADCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_CURRENTDAYNAME => array( 1, "{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}",
 "{{ENWDYDDCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_CURRENTYEAR    => array( 1, "{{CURRENTYEAR}}",
 "{{FLWYDDYNCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_CURRENTTIME    => array( 1, "{{CURRENTTIME}}",
 "{{AMSERCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_NUMBEROFARTICLES => array( 1,"{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}",
 "{{NIFEROERTHYGLAU}}"),
     MAG_CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN  => array( 1,"{{CURRENTMONTH
 NAMEGEN}}", "{{GENENWMISCYFOES}}" ),
     MAG_MSG           => array( 0,    "{{MSG:$1}}"             ),
     MAG_SUBST         => array( 0,    "{{SUBST:$1}}"           ),
     MAG_MSGNW         => array( 0,    "{{MSGNW:$1}}"           ),
     MAG_END           => array( 0,    "__END__", "DIWEDD_"     ),
     MAG_IMG_THUMBNAIL => array( 1,    "bawd", "thumb"          ),
     MAG_IMG_RIGHT     => array( 1,    "de", "right"            ),
     MAG_IMG_LEFT      => array( 1,    "chwith", "left"         ),
     MAG_IMG_NONE      => array( 1,    "dim", "none"            ),
     MAG_IMG_WIDTH     => array( 1,    "$1px"                   ),
     MAG_IMG_CENTER    => array( 1,    "canol", "centre"        )
  );

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Weighing in on this issue, I think the pictures are on the borderline of
what we should put inline, but should probably stay.  The sexually
explicit parts have been blurred out anyway, so they're not problematic
on that account.

I like the way [[clitoris]] has been handled generally (no pun
intended), though perhaps there's a better way of doing it.  Having it a
simple link makes it so that anyone can easily find it (an on-site link,
so it doesn't depend on an external server), but so that people who are
reading the article don't have to have it in their peripheral vision the
whole time if they find it uncomfortable for whatever reason.

Conceptually disturbing images are somewhat different than graphic
ones.  People might be disturbed by pictures of concetration camps, but
these are more conceptually disturbing than graphic, and are fairly
integral to an article on, say, the [[Holocaust]].  On the other hand,
if there were gruesome pictures of medical experiments being performed,
we might want to put those on as linked instead of inline.

The main reason I'd favor that approach is that otherwise there'll be
whole sections of Wikipedia that people are somewhat afraid to visit,
especially in public areas.  Someone should be able to read [[torture]]
without seeing graphic images of torture; they should be able to read
[[automobile accident]] without seeing bloody corpses plastered on the
roadway, and so on.  If the picture might be useful, they ought to be
able to see it, but that should be up to them.

But back to the point, I think the [[Abu Graith]] images in particular
are okay, though perhaps some better placement is possible.  Although
I've wrangled on that page a bit myself, I do think they currently come
across in a moderately documentary tone, rather than a pursuasive tone
intended to shock the reader into a particular action.

-Mark


from_name: Ray Kiddy

subject: [Wikitech-l] UUIDs: help transwiki, unifying user tables, etc...

body:
I wanted to make a suggestion. It may be a bit obvious, but I have not
seen it mentioned.

Can we have a UUID column on the tables? There are many ways of
generating these. Essentially, it is a host identifier, a time stamp
and some randomness thrown on top. Do a google search for a more exact
definition, or for code to generate UUIDs in whatever programming
language you desire.

If we did that, then the eventual consolidation of different languages'
wikipedias would be possible. Users would be transferrable, since every
user would have an unique id created on the host onto which they first
logged in. Any edit could have a separate UUID. Archiving of past edits
could be safely accomplished. Any wiki-page could cite another without
worry.

There are still many issues to be dealt with as the data in various
wiki-entities gets moved around, but if we start establishing a
standard that all things known about in the wiki-universe have a UUID,
then we would know when some different corpora of data were
transferrable. It would be when they have valid UUIDs.

- ray


subject: [Wikitech-l] not database for download, but schema...

body:
Could I make a request of whoever generates the weekly download page?
Could you also do the following:

	mysqldump --nodata wiki

... and put the output from that up on some web page or another?

It would help to know if the data schema has changed before one
downloads the data. And some people may be interested in just the
schema, and not the data, so why make them download the entire file
just for the create statements?

thanx - ray


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Old Friend Plautus Satire

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Fred Bauder wrote:

> On Wikipedia, there is a giant conspiracy attempting to have articles agree
> with reality.
>
Yes, I saw that comment on Badastronomy.com. I think it ought to be the
motto for all of us Wikipedians. ;-)

Geoff


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Ray Kiddy wrote:
> It would help to know if the data schema has changed before one
> downloads the data. And some people may be interested in just the
> schema, and not the data, so why make them download the entire file just
> for the create statements?

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_layout

For current development version:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/maintenance/tables.sql?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

For current release version at the moment (doesn't list all indexes):
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/maintenance/tables.sql?rev=1.11.2.2&only_with_tag=REL1_2&view=markup

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Selling books to increase funding

body:
On Sun, 9 May 2004, Martin Harper wrote:

> > Books which are useful to our readers are always welcome, IMO.
>
> Yes. It will also counteract the impression some viewers may get that Wikipedia
> is constructed entirely from webpage research. Ideally, I'd like us to get to a
> stage where if I'm interested in reading about Darwin, I go to [[Charles Darwin]]
> on Wikipedia, and browse down to "Further reading". You know: *eventually*.
>
ISTR a criticism many professors have levelled against encyclopedias that
was repeated in this maillist, namely that encyclopedia articles do a lousy
job quoting their sources. Some of us have been responding constructively to
that criticism.

I seem to be involved in a rivalry with a new Wikipedian concerning the
content of some of the articles relating to King Arthur, & if I manage to turn
over a new leaf, & we manage to engage in a productive rivalry, it may
result in the creation of useful bibliographies.

Well, one can always dream; not every conflict should lead to one school
of thought calling the other a bunch of trolls & morons. ;-)

Geoff


body:
The user who posted a bunch of nonsense about Wikimedia Foundation on
the [[Fallujah]] article has now shown up on Disinfopedia. He's using
the name [[User:JustNews]]. I'm sure that this is the same person who
previously used various sock puppets including JillP, SaltyDog, and
TruthSeeker.

If anyone here participated in responding to this user's activities
on Wikipedia, I'd invite you to do the same on Disinfopedia
(www.disinfopedia.org).
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, May 2004)
--------------------------------


body:
The domain http://www.wiki.produkt-mix2.de/ obviously copies content from the
german language Wikipedia and is not complying to the GNU FDL at all.

What is more, they do not even mirror our content, they draw all content
online and directly from our servers. Can we block them from accessing our
servers somehow?

Uli


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: zwinger raid 1

body:
On Tue, 11 May 2004, Tim Starling wrote:
>Ricky Beam wrote:
>> Ok.  There's your problem: your hdparm is too freakin' old.
>
>Shaihulud suggested that this might be the problem, so I upgraded it to
>5.5 on curly. It didn't help.

(edit)
s/hdparm/kernel/ :-)

I've obviously missed more than one memo... Rule #1: Never run the vendor's
kernel.  Those things are compiled to be generic "it'll work on anything"
kernels.  Rule #2: NEVER run a redhat kernel. *grin*  They have a history
of doing very odd things.  They really should stop using the Linus kernel
version numbers.  Their tree is "highly diverged."

(Exception #1: if you don't care about performance, ignore rule #1.)

It just occurs to me... it if doesn't have proper UDMA support, how
is it reading beyond 128GB? (i.e. lba48 mode)

--Ricky


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming policy for places

body:
In the wake of the recent naming policy poll, which was sparked by the
debate on [[Talk:Kiev]] as well as the poll on the New York City talk
page, it cannot be denied that a firm policy needs to be adopted
regarding the naming of articles about places.

The current policy at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(city_names)
is neither supported by consensus nor complete enough to handle the
variety of problems with these articles' names.

I have drafted a proposed policy on the naming of articles about
geographical places. I expect that there are some aspects of it which
will be controversial, and some aspects which will be changed, but I
have tried to justify the particulars of the policy. It is formulated as
a set of principles and rejected principles.

It includes a proposed policy for dealing with disputes about article
names, which would work for any kind of article, not just articles about
places.

The draft proposal is at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geographical_names_naming_policy_(proposed)

I propose a 4-week discussion and revision period followed by a two week
binding voting period with a 70% majority rule. There will be separate
votes for each section: "Multiple names", "Ambiguous names", and
"Exceptions and naming polls". There will also be a separate vote about
whether the naming polls policy shall apply to all articles or just to
geographical place articles if it is adopted.

Unless there is strong objection to this voting proposal, the voting
period will begin at midnight UTC June 11 and end at midnight UTC June 25.

For discussions about the details of the policy, please discuss on the
relevant talk page. You can voice your objections to the voting proposal
either here on the list or on the wiki.

I strongly urge that we have congenial discussion and make compromises
in the proposed policy so that the vote will succeed, because I believe
having a firm policy on naming will go a long way towards reducing the
amount of energy expended on naming debates.

- David


body:
Am Montag, 10. Mai 2004 22:16 schrieb Brion Vibber:
> Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
> > The domain http://www.wiki.produkt-mix2.de/ obviously copies content from
> > the german language Wikipedia and is not complying to the GNU FDL at all.
>
> Please contact them and let them know your concerns:
> http://www.ihsl.de/impressum.htm

Contacting them because of not complying to the license could be a problem: I
don't know how the legal situation is if they just tunnel our content and
leave out the important bit - the content is not static; I cannot point them
to an article and say: here is a copyright violation, you do not comply to
the license, because the article is vanished.

We have a standard text for mirros not in comply and that always worked fine
whenever we had to use it. I'm not sure if we should use it in this case,
therefore I was asking if we have an easy implementable solution to block
their (and of course only their) access technically. In the end, what they're
doing is stealing bandwidth (they tunnel the article HTML and the images are
directly served by us) - apart from the copyright issues.

Uli


subject: [Wikitech-l] Multilingual interface

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Yes. One can use all languages in same encoding (all Latin-1, all Latin-2,
> all UTF-8...) but can not mix encodings. It is trivial to convert any language
> to UTF-8, except for the linktrail which is not used anyway. Wikisource,
> Wikibooks and Wiktionary are in UTF-8 already, so I don't think it will be a
> problem for them.

All the remaining latin-1 language files will have to be upgraded to do
that, or appropriate run-time upconversion added.

> I don't think that language-specific sorting will be a
> problem when introduced; an user will simply see text sorted in his language.

The sorting will have to be hard-coded into the index fields in the
tables, so it must be uniform for all saved data. Everything displayed
will use the same uniform sorting method, as it's impractical to add
dozens of sort indexes for every conceivable language to a table with
hundreds of thousands of pages.

> But good luck to one who is going to implement it in UTF-8 for all languages!
> As for Chinese and Japanese, you were referring to stripForSearch? I don't
> think that it is a problem, Chinese and Japanese users will be able to search
> properly, other users will not, but they are not now anyway.

Yes, that's one of the problem functions. It's about saving the index
data consistently, and reading it back properly. The data must always be
stored and interpreted in a consistent way.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming policy for places (Mav and Ed, please confirm)

body:
In a message dated 5/10/2004 9:24:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
david at nohat.net writes:
In the wake of the recent naming policy poll, which was sparked by the
debate on [[Talk:Kiev]] as well as the poll on the New York City talk
page, it cannot be denied that a firm policy needs to be adopted
regarding the naming of articles about places.
Okay, I have a problem with this. The problem is that this is an old debate
that is being rehashed. A long time ago, before Nohat or RickK were active on
Wikipedia, there was serious discussion and debate about this. I am sure that
Mav, Ed Poor, and a few others remember. I wish I could find the debates, but
right now I can't.

Now, it could be that the wrong choice won the vote (and there was a vote).
On the other hand, we are opening up an old can of worms where consensus had
been reached. This in itself is not a problem, so much as the implications are.
In 2 years from now, when the current users are mostly gone, a new generation
of users might well challenge the new naming convention we decide on now and
come up with a new one--or perhaps the old one. It can happen again and again.

When we decided on the naming convention, there may not have been even 50,000
articles on Wikipedia. It happened before Zoe added capitals for all the
countries, because she had to redo many of them manually to meet the new standards
of the naming convention. Wikipedia is much larger now. Bots aside, we have
many times more articles, and we will continue to grow. Reopening this can of
worms will only impede real progress. We have a system. Let's stick to it, and
we can discuss particular instances of potential exceptions on a case by case
basis.

BTW, another example of a convention that was broken and which has exploded
again is the East Prussia series of articles. We had worked out (twice) a
naming standard (with teh help of JHK), which was ignored by new users who knew
nothing about the bitter debates that led to an acceptable compromise.

Essentially, what I am saying is that what newer users might not realize is
that certain conventions that they take for granted were decided after a long
grueling process. Let's not keep redoing that again and again, any time someone
who is not aware of that history joins Wikipedia.

Danny
Wikipedia Historian
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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] zwinger raid 1

body:
Philippe Elie wrote:
 > ....
> As a general note, maintainer of these box would do something sensible
> about HW description, it must be always available (mobo model/chipset etc.)
> also someone should setup a script which at each boot do a: date >> logfile;
> dmesg >> logfile; cat /proc/interrupt >> logfile; lspci -vv >> logfile; etc.
> logfile must be copied to another box after boot completed.
> Looxix, am I missing some usefull information ?

Well, the output of some of the /proc/ide/ files should also be usefull.
But since the kernel that is used have no support for the controller ...

> btw, are these disks SATA or PATA ?
>
> regards,
> Phil

Looxix


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] troubled.

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)

Sorry, this may sound just as censorship, but frankly, I am shocked at
these pictures.
And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
At least, not now. That is too soon.
Just my opinion.


subject: [Wikitech-l] The fun never stops

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> A general question about mysql replication...
>
> Is this a valid summary of how this works?
>
> 1.  To go from a single db server to a db+slave, downtime is required.

Not if you're set up right. Unfortunately it seems we never are. ;) You
need to have a *complete*, self-consistent snapshot of the database, and
the master server needs to have binary logs going back as far as the
snapshot.

If you don't have those, then you have to make a new snapshot, which
tends to involve shutting everything down.

The problem in this case is that we were too aggressive in moving log
files around, and destroyed an index file. It's an easily replaced text
file, but to replace it we'll have to shut down MySQL briefly to restart
it. We pretty much have to shut down MySQL anyway in order to move the
databases to relieve space on the primary drive, so it's not adding any
downtime on its own.

> 2.  To go from a db+slave to db+2 slaves, downtime is not required.

That's correct. You can use an existing snapshot if you've got one, or
shut off the first slave and snapshot from it, then sync up both slaves.
Assuming, of course, that all is well.

> 3.  For a variety of reasons, slaves are prone to sometimes fall out of sync.

Unfortunately yes. Mostly "user error" such as discarding necessary
files, as in the log-moving fiasco above.

> If that's more or less right, then it seems that although db+slave
> helps guard against catastrophic failure (loss of a ton of edits since
> the last db dump), it ironically leads to more total downtime.

Ever had a flight delayed due to maintenance? Frustrating, sure, but
would you rather they took off anyway? :)

Side note: the second drive on suda seems to be nice and speedy:

[root at suda brion]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.17 seconds =752.94 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  0.87 seconds = 73.56 MB/sec

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Imran Ghory

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Anthere wrote:

> I do have an even more accurate question...
> I hope that Jimbo will bring light on this :-)
> What are the 2 elected people supposed to do...as part
> of their mandatory work. And in particular, is there
> really a difference between the two of them...which
> mean what is the Contributing Active Member
> Representative supposed to really do compared to the
> other one ?

Well at a basic level they represent the group that elected them, at a
practical level their exact duties has yet to be decided and will probably
remain undecided until after we have a full board (i.e. post-elections)

> If the current definition of the two posts does not
> make any different *right now*, why should we make a
> difference in the elections ?

One important point is that whoever is elected as CAMR will know that come
re-election they will have a different electorate to the one that elected
them in.

As some  people only want to stand for one position or the other, and also
as we want the two positions treated distinctly we decided to have two
seperate elections.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004, Peter Jaros wrote:

> On May 10, 2004, at 2:42 PM, Anthere wrote:
>
> > And in particular, is there
> > really a difference between the two of them...which
> > mean what is the Contributing Active Member
> > Representative supposed to really do compared to the
> > other one ?
>
> Another question. :)  It's not really clear from what I've read
> whether the Volunteer Active Member on the board can be a
> Contributing Active Member.

Yes.

>  From the bylaws, it sounds like all
> Contributing Active Members are Volunteer Active Members.

Broadly yes, if you ignore some minor technicallities such as VAM having
to have contributed under a username.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: change wiki image

body:
piccola * wrote:

> Thanks Timwi,
> i talking abaut Wikimedia...i go to the wikimedia news.

I'm lost. I would probably understand Italian better than this.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: user style preview

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> /w/index.php?title=User:Angela/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css

Interesting.

There seems to be a bug in the feature, though. If I specify anything
other than text/css, it returns text/x-wiki. In particular, I think
text/plain really should work. It would make bot automations *so* much
simpler to be able to retrieve the wiki code of any page like that.

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] troubled.

body:
Anthere-

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
> Sorry, this may sound just as censorship,

Yes.

> but frankly, I am shocked at
> these pictures.

They are shocking.

> And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.

Why not?

> At least, not now. That is too soon.

Why?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: user style preview

body:
On Tue, 2004-05-11 at 00:56 +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>
> > /w/index.php?title=User:Angela/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css
>
> Interesting.
>
> There seems to be a bug in the feature, though. If I specify anything
> other than text/css, it returns text/x-wiki. In particular, I think
> text/plain really should work. It would make bot automations *so* much
> simpler to be able to retrieve the wiki code of any page like that.

That would open the door for simple script attacks on any user's cookies
as IE (incorrectly) treats text/plain content as html if anything
htmlish is in the page. A script tag would be enough.
The content type doesn't matter to bots anyway, and the text/css version
is usually shown as plain text anyway (IE making the exception again).
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>> It would be nice to use the "real" URLs directly on our own wikis, of
>> course, for the reasons you mention.
>
> We already have noticeable opposition to using any kind of HTML;

All websites use HTML.

> I don't see that these people would be made any happier by the need to
> write out full URLs. :-)

Why would such a need arise?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a
clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.

We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.

However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive
me, but I am troubled.

No, I do not think everything should be shown, especially soon after
they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII horors were recorded,
but the records preserved for several years before being shown publicly.
This in memory of the deads. Even though we know what happened.

So, explain to me why we show shocking images of human humiliation,
while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State
> Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their
> importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being
> taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even
> thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too
> creative?
>
> Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
I go restore the clitoris pictures.

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
>>Sorry, this may sound just as censorship,
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>>but frankly, I am shocked at
>>these pictures.
>
>
> They are shocking.
>
>
>>And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
>
>
> Why not?
>
>
>>At least, not now. That is too soon.
>
>
> Why?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik


from_name: zero 0000

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Alex Regh wrote:
>> That sounds like a good idea, however, there is the potential
>> problem of small groups of sysops acting togehter on everything,
>> small cabals, if you like.  Happens inevitably, and can start quite
>> innocently by people starting ask those with whom they get along,
>> say in the chat, or a mailing list.
>
>Alex is right.  If I were to want to ban someone for borderline
>reasons, I'd know right off the bat where to turn for co-operation.
>We all do.  If I were to want to unban someone for borderline reasons,
>I'd also know right off the bat where to turn.

I expect many banning proposals will arise directly from edit wars.
I'd like to see the active participants in the war not able to vote
on the banning of their opponents.  If the case for banning is good
enough, there ought to be enough support from others.

Zero.

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subject:
[Wikitech-l]  Re: UUIDs: help transwiki, unifying user tables,
	etc...

body:
On May 10, 2004, at 11:20 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> Ray Kiddy wrote:
>> I wanted to make a suggestion. It may be a bit obvious, but I have
>> not seen it mentioned.
>> Can we have a UUID column on the tables? There are many ways of
>> generating these. Essentially, it is a host identifier, a time stamp
>> and some randomness thrown on top. Do a google search for a more
>> exact definition, or for code to generate UUIDs in whatever
>> programming language you desire.
>> <snip>
> You don't need a large random number to get an ID which is unique
> Wikimedia-wide. You just need to concatenate the database name and the
> local user ID.

>> There are still many issues to be dealt with as the data in various
>> wiki-entities gets moved around, but if we start establishing a
>> standard that all things known about in the wiki-universe have a
>> UUID, then we would know when some different corpora of data were
>> transferrable. It would be when they have valid UUIDs.
>
> There are many ways to implement the merging of user databases. This
> is just one of them. You are being distracted by a technical concept
> instead of considering the optimal user experience.
>

No, I am suggesting a tool to help make the solutions easier. You seem
to think I am saying that UUIDs are the solution. They are not. They
are just a tool to ensure that as time goes on, after you re-assign
your DNS names, after you rename your databases, after you are using
the data in ways you never could have imagined, you do not need to
re-verify the integrity of your primary keys.

I am not seeing what you mean by "concatenating the database name". One
of the MySQL databases I have on my machine is named "wiki". Is that
unique? Are you going to use host names? DNS names can be re-assigned.
Network card numbers are just a form of host identifier that cannot be
re-mapped. Each network card has one unique identification number. The
manufacturers ensure that.

> In terms of what the user sees, here is what you seem to be suggesting:
>
> * Users can log on to any wiki
> * Two different people may have the same name (this is implied in the
> fact that you don't use the username for the unique ID)

I did not say that. If you take the experimental schema proposal:

CREATE TABLE users ( userid int NOT NULL auto_increment, username
char(50) NOT NULL, pwhash char(16) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (userid),
UNIQUE KEY (username) );

and turn it into:

CREATE TABLE users ( userid uuid NOT NULL auto_increment, username
char(50) NOT NULL, pwhash char(16) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (userid),
UNIQUE KEY (username) );

... then one has provided an automatic guarantee that as users get
created, their primary keys are unique across all wiki-entities. I did
not say that you do not have to do the normal checking for duplicate
human-readable names. You have to do the exact same check you do now.

> * Hence, usernames are no longer sufficient to specify the editor of a
> given article
> * To work around this, we make UUIDs visible to the users. But they
> are so long and ugly that we must obscure them

I have been using wikipedia for a while and I have yet to see a primary
key in a link I have to click on to find something. Primary keys are
hidden. That is true in my proposal as well.

> * Imposters with the same name but a different UUID are free to operate
> * In order to ban such users, or view their contributions, users must
> quote the UUID

I did not say that UUIDs would be the only thing tracking users. I said
nothing about throwing away IP numbers, or any other information that
identifies a user for a certain purpose. The challenges there are still
exactly the same.

> * Citing an edit is possible using its UUID

> * Edit UUIDs are made visible so that users can do this

Citing an edit using its UUID is possible, but I did not say it is
required.  Just because people working with the back-end data can
uniquely identify edits does not mean this needs to be made visible to
users.

> * One wiki page cites another using the edit UUID
> * The cited page is updated to correct an error, but this is not fixed
> in the citation URL, which is linked to a static version
>
> There are two basic schemes which have previously been suggested for
> user tables. I think I would prefer either of them over the
> user-visible UUIDs you suggest.
>
> 1. Merged accounts, project-wide namespace. Multiple accounts with the
> same name are merged into one. Conflicts where two people have the
> same name are fixed by asking the users to change their names, or by
> deleting inactive accounts. Editors can be specified by name
> project-wide.
>

This merging would still have to occur in the same way with UUIDs. It
would just be easier to maintain the integrity of the merged data. For
example, two people could add UUIDs to two different article tables
without anyone agreeing on any number partitioning scheme, and they
would then be able to combine the tables without worry.

Again, I am just proposing a tool to help with the solutions. UUIDs by
themselves are not the solution.

> Problems: UTF-8 names on ISO 8859-1 wikis, administrative overhead in
> the conversion and conflict resolution stage
>
> <snip>

> In terms of unique IDs for edits, the introduction of a revision ID is
> planned for MediaWiki 2.0. This will be an auto-increment ID local to
> the wiki not a global random ID, but again, it can be made unique by
> adding the database name if desired.
>

Or you can just use UUIDs from the beginning and then you do not have
to worry about databases or hosts changing their names.

> -- Tim Starling
>

I think you are arguing against someone else's proposal. You have
pulled several concepts into this that I did not mention. I am not
proposing anything radical. I am just proposing that the primary keys
of the table become a UUID. The rest of the schema would be exactly the
same.

- ray