list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

body:
Hello everyone,

I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly
theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to
contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm
looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up
with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.

There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:

1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,
so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and
which ones we cannot become involved in.

2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is
inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of
key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of
our projects.

There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We
don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"
Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to
virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we
shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new
projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they
also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.

In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an
issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new
one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.

I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future
survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are
creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not
just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,
which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense
political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most
traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.

We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change
society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need
to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases
to do that.

== What we can do ==

As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our
individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are
other options:
- press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
- the Wikimedia newsletter
- the Foundation website
- a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
- websites which we create for specific campaigns
- endorsement of a petition or initiative
- real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal-
oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
- legal action, defense funds

== Issues which concern us ==

The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:

* Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose
patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open
source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should
clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new
one.

* Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it
would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.
Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which
means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not
explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects
by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because
there's not yet a strong lobby against them.

The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia
are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction
books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant
reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented
cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free
sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.

I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be
about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing
initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the
software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing
this effectively.

* Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be
aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the
United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the
public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which
do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.

Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages
for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our
Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain
countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in
terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their
positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to
build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.

Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public
domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US
government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably
neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an
interest in counterbalancing this influence.

Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a
handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to
POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under
a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that
basis.

* Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of
reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts
have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are
interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy
alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a
proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you
to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some
museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're
currently on shaky legal ground.

Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One
example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the
Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this
art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on
photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous
to us, and we should fight them on every level.

* Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly
concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue
where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United
States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship
under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful
with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But
NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral
one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.

* The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
countries, solar or curb power would be good.

== How to proceed ==

With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I
believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just
mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and
can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse
their petitions, campaigns and open letters.

I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind
which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action

The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are
about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.
In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the
Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's
precedent.

Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative
on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on
the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on
it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching
our energy and resources.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] New lists for small languages and/or new projects
 (Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia)

body:
Ray Saintonge ti 2004/11/24 EP 12:30 sia-kong:
> Gerrit wrote:

>> How about a separate mailinglist for 'small language wikipedia's' and
>> 'new wikipedia-related projects'?
>>
> I doubt that that would work.  A significant portion of the people who
> are likely to work on these are newbies who are may not be familiar with
> the list.

They (we) are not too stupid to learn, are they?

>Each language that is considered will have a whole new set of
> newbies.

Great -- they could all learn together.

>Once a particular language wiki is implemented that group will
> lose interest in the mailing list because they will be too busy with
> their own pedia.

Possibly.  But I notice the larger WPs have been implemented some time
ago and some haven't lost interest in the mailing lists.

My point is NOT that we should have a list for smaller WPs.  It is that
there's no ground that I am aware of that would indicate a different set
of behaviors on the part of small-language Wikipedians, newbies or not.
  Indeed everyone started a newbie, including yourself. The way to find
out if "those" Wikipedians are interested is to _ask_ them, not imagine
(in a dismissive way) what they might or might not do or want, as if
they were strawmen or -women.

And please don't tell people to find their own "free" mailing list.
They've already been told (by you) to install their own wiki.

~~~~


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: New lists for small languages and/or new projects
 (Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia)

body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn ti 2004/11/25 ChS 02:59 sia-kong:
> Ray Saintonge ti 2004/11/24 EP 12:30 sia-kong:

> And please don't tell people to find their own "free" mailing list.
> They've already been told (by you) to install their own wiki.

Sorry, my apology.  It was not you.  It was Evan (ESP).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

body:
Elisabeth Bauer ti 2004/11/24 EP 02:22 sia-kong:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
>> I think the big thing to understand is that each wiki takes time,
>> effort, and money to maintain. Each wiki is a security risk, both
>> technically and legally; an active community can offset this risk as
>> well or better than fancy technological security measures.
>
> I fully agree with Evan here. But I want to add some other points which
> are largely neglected so far. Maintaining a wiki is not only about
> getting some people to work there, we also need to ensure that local
> communities get to know and share the fundamental values and principles
> of wikipedia: neutrality, openess, freedom of content.

Indeed, that is the struggle on every WP, isn't it.  i.e. Striving for
NPOV, fairness, content-centered open discussions, etc. is on-going on
numerous pages.  But a bit of context here would be useful:  what Evan
is talking about is the undesirability of leaving inactive wikis
unattended (what he calls security risk).  What Elizabeth is talking
about pertains to active WPs that may be deemed NPOV in a systemic way
because of demographics.  (For comparison, see en:Wikipedia:WikiProject
Countering systemic bias.)  I will controversially (and tentatively) say
that what is communally judged POV or NPOV is likely subject to the
values and experiences its members bring to the table.  This is a
situation likely present in all WPs -- even older, more mature ones --
albeit in different degrees and manifesting in different ways.  That
does not mean I don't see a problem with it, just that problem is
perhaps widespread.

> There's a lot of knowledge about wikipedia customs and processes needed
> to get a new wiki started. So far we let people find out on their own -
> or not.

I think the knowledge is acquired communally _as_ a wiki grows and
matures.  Knowing the principles of, say, the statement on NPOV still
requires lots of practice, and even then opinions differ.

> Yesterday a friend translated a sentence on the main page of the tatar
> wikipedia for me: "Tatarlar B?yek! Y???sen T?rki D?nya!" - "Die Tataren
> sind gro?! Es lebe die t?rkische Welt!" (in german, since I don't know
> how to translate this in english). But the equivalent would be the
> french putting "Vive la France" on their main page. All three sysops
> there edited the page later, noone removed the sentence.

I recall the Welsh WP (which I rather like) has a large Welsh flag with
its red dragon prominently and (I imagine) proudly displayed on the main
page.  This could be interpreted in NPOV and POV ways.  I would not
hazard a guess, but I personally am fine with it.  This is related to my
claim that we bring values and experiences to the table which influence
our judgement.

~~~~


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Simplebrain

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Please see [[User talk:Simplebrain#Please also
> respond to request from other editors to
> collaborate]].  User:Simplebrain is attempting to
> withdraw his edits from the [[Science of Value]]
> article, and when I suggested that he cannot do so,
> [[User:Dr Zen]] advised him to institute legal
> action.

When I read the discussion, it sure sounds like we're
dealing with the original founder of the modern study
of "Science of Value". As such, isn't this page either
vanity or original research? Isn't it therefore a ripe
candidate for VFD?

Aside from RickK's addition of {{cleanup}} and
{{wikify}}, only user:Hu and user:Gene Ward Smith have
made any changes to Simplebrain's work. Hu made a
single effort to remove POV while retaining the
essence of the entry. Gene Ward Smith's edits amount
to a negative critique of the concept.

Essentially, what we have is a simple "he said, she
said" between someone's original research and a single
critic.

Perhaps we can work for a true NPOV presentation of
the concepts, but can't we just do everyone a favor
and delete the current article?

-Rich Holton (en.wikipedia:user:rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Ever considered something like Wikiroll?

body:
Jakob wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Thinking about Blogrolls I wonder why "Wikirolls" aren't common yet.
> Here's the basic principle to include Wikirolls into MediaWiki.
>
<snip>

Hello,

Firstly what is a blogroll ? :o)

Is that a kind of list of other related wikis ? If so, I dont think
there is any wiki.encyclopedia-universalis.com we can link to ;o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Enotif and related work: an intermediate work progress
	report

body:
I have almost finished the work for Enotif (Email notification for page
changes) see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 .

I touched and solved the following other important issues (inter alia)
- the table user_newtalk is now dropped and no longer needed
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=581
  (user-talk pages are treated as any other page)
- only authenticated email addresses will be used for mailing to
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866
  (cycling through a dummy "I forgot my password" cycle)
- this can be later combined with LDAP or similar authentication methods
and single user login see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SUL and
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57 and others
... ... ...
- (rest of changes skipped for the sake of conciseness; you can read
them later this week on my pages http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif )

Scheduled date for Enotif 2.00 for CVS: 30.11.2004
Please mail me, if you have questions.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Implementing Editing Revision Summaries

body:
On Nov 25, 2004, at 5:29 AM, Nick Pisarro wrote:
> I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
> programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability to
> edit
> the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision.

I would strongly, strongly recommend against this. The edit history is
an audit trail, and should as much as possible not be allowed to be
tampered with.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nick Pisarro

body:
Nick Pisarro here...after disappearing into the woodwork since the
Spring...

I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability to edit
the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision. Assuming I still
have the proper access rights to 'phase3' on SourceForge, I would like to
merge my feature into the head branch and upload it assuming enough of you
find the feature worthwhile.

The purpose of the feature is to allow people to correct errors they may
have made in a summary or to add one when the may have forgotten to--a
problem I have personally all the time. Sysops have the option to clean up
offensive language in summaries.

I have attached screen shots of the feature in action. I don't know if the
mailing list program will forward them.

Features.
* The feature is controlled by a flag in Default/LocalSettings.
* You may only edit the summaries of revisions you have made, except for
SysOps, who may edit any summary. (Summaries are referred to in the PHP
code as "comments".) Anonymous users, and hence users not logged in, may
not edit summaries.
* In the History listing and Contributions listings I have put a small
icon next to the summary on lines a user may edit the summary of.
* Clicking on the icon will bring up a page titled after the article being
edited and subtitled "Editing summary of revision...". The page has an
edit field and check box for adjusting the summary and/or changing the
Minor Edit flag. A user my click "Save" or "Cancel".
* A double check is done as part of making the database update, that the
user is still logged in and that they are the author of the revision, if
they are not a SysOp. This is done to thwart any evil robots spoofing a
submit of the edit page.
* The page is refreshed with a confirmation or cancellation message and a
link back into the History or Contributions page the user came from. After
ten seconds the user is flipped back automatically in a way that is
similar to Login/Logout.
* The edit page is implemented by a new file--EditComment.php. Internally
I modified the function OutputPage::returnToMain() to allow flipping back
to exactly where you came from, rather than always to a main article page.

Issues: Because there are no histories of summaries and hence no
'reversions' I thought there were too many security risks in letting
anonymous users edit their summaries (which may not actually be theirs),
or letting logged in users edit summaries other than there own.

Changing a summary will NOT change its listing in Recent changes. This is
because this is a log of past events and is a copy of the original
summary, not an actual reference to it. I thought it might cause too big
of a performance hit to try to fix up the Recent changes log, and perhaps,
philosophically not a good idea.

Future enhancement: Log changing the summary in Recent changes. This might
require a database format change, so I did not want to attempt it.

If desired, I could convert this message to an article on
meta.wikimedia.org.

User:Nick Pisarro, Jr.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Wed, 2004-24-11 at 20:22 +0100, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Maintaining a wiki is not only about
> getting some people to work there, we also need to ensure that local
> communities get to know and share the fundamental values and principles
> of wikipedia: neutrality, openess, freedom of content.

Excellent, excellent point.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO


from_name: Nick Triantos

body:
True, but the comment itself is not really part of that audit trail,
it's just a note that came along for the ride.  The majority of comments
in the wiki that I administer are blank, if people wanted to go and add
a comment, I'd be all for that...

cheers,
-Nick

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Nov 25, 2004, at 5:29 AM, Nick Pisarro wrote:
>
>> I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
>> programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability to
>> edit
>> the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision.
>
>
> I would strongly, strongly recommend against this. The edit history is
> an audit trail, and should as much as possible not be allowed to be
> tampered with.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

body:
> I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
> matters, such as copyrights and patents.

This has the potential to disqualify the Wikimedia Foundation from
501(c)3 status which would mean, not only, that we need to pay tax,
but also that we would then be severely restricted in the choice of
grant applications open to us.

According to http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=120703,00.html
: "no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a
substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence
legislation (commonly known as lobbying)."

If the Foundation were to have any such involvement, we would need to
be very careful that our activities were aimed at educating people
about these issues as opposed to encouraging people to lobby about
them.

> 2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
> context of our content-based projects.

Political activism will reflect on the projects even if it does occur
outside of the context of them. For many people, there will appear no
difference between the Wikimedia Foundation campaigning for something
and "Wikipedia" doing so.

> The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
> seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
> agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:

How is "agreeable to the largest number of people" to be defined? A
simple majority? Doing something like this which would deter even a
minority from wanting to be involved with Wikimedia projects is not
something we ought to be risking.

> * Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
> www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
> one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
> Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
> effectively illegal through them.

Considering many of the developers of MediaWiki do not regard it a
Wikimedia project, the relation between the Foundation and software
patents is not as close as it might seem.

> * Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
> for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous.

I personally feel this is an exaggeration. The GFDL is based around
the protection of copyright; it is not about removal of it.

> * The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
> directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
> Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
> Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
> decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
> machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
> print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
> which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
> countries, solar or curb power would be good.

I'd completely support this last point. I don't view this as a
political activity in the same way as the other examples you cite.
Encouraging the distribution of Wikireaders is absolutely part of the
Foundation's mission, and should have no negative effect on our
charitable status.

Angela
(my personal views, not necessarily those of the Foundation)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics


body:
Perhaps a useful compromise would be, if Nick P is willing, to add
another flag, which specifies whether users can edit their own edit
summaries, or whether this is reserved for SysOps only.  For my intranet
use of Mediawiki, I would leave it open to all, for something like
wikipedia, the wikipedia administrators could enforce that this be used
only by SysOps.

In any case, I'd like to see this merged back into the HEAD tree, even
if Wikipedia and family don't use it.

regards,
-Nick T

John Lee wrote:

> The problem is, users sometimes include violations of policy (i.e.
> personal attacks) in their edit summaries. Allowing them to edit them
> would render this audit trail worthless.
>
> John Lee
> ([[en:User:Johnleemk]])
>
> Nick Triantos wrote:
>
>> True, but the comment itself is not really part of that audit trail,
>> it's just a note that came along for the ride.  The majority of
>> comments in the wiki that I administer are blank, if people wanted to
>> go and add a comment, I'd be all for that...
>>
>> cheers,
>> -Nick
>>
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> On Nov 25, 2004, at 5:29 AM, Nick Pisarro wrote:
>>>
>>>> I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
>>>> programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability
>>>> to edit
>>>> the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would strongly, strongly recommend against this. The edit history
>>> is an audit trail, and should as much as possible not be allowed to
>>> be tampered with.
>>>
>>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>But, as noted by Henry, this is difficult even for established
>Wikipedias and community standards vary depending on the values of the
>community in question. Thus, what is NPOV to the Basque Wikipedia
>might seem very POV to the Chinese Wikipedia.
>
>
One conceivable problem would arise if Basque speakers were actively and
unanimously promoting an independent Basque state.  Who among those of
us who don't understand Basque would know the difference?

Ec


from_name: byron gamildien

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 13:50:18 +1100
 Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to
> contribute but
> dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
>
> [[User:The bellman]]
> rjs
>
>
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun
> MacPherson
> <shaun_macpherson2001 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> >  --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Matt R wrote:
> > > >  --- Tim Starling wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
> > > Wikipedia would rather think
> > > >>of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
> > > and file bug reports.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
> > > suppose that if you identify a
> > > > problem that you can fix, then you have an
> > > obligation to fix it. Even if you
> > > > have the capability, there is no moral imperative
> > > for volunteers to do anything
> > > > at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
> > > already a positive
> > > > contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
> > > course, to grumble or whine
> > > > about a problem that you've identified is
> > > churlish, as you have no right to
> > > > expect that others fix things on your behalf.
> > > >
> > > > But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
> > > developers. I would quite
> > > > like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
> > > right now I prefer to spend my
> > > > time contributing to the content of articles --
> > > this is not an *excuse*; this
> > > > is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
> > > implication.
> > >
> > > I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to
> > > impress on everyone that
> > > Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever
> > > wondering why some
> > > feature hasn't been written yet, it's because
> > > there's been no-one around
> > > to write it. Most of the active developers seem to
> > > be more interested
> > > writing features for a general audience than for
> > > Wikimedia projects.
> > > There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia
> > > than there are
> > > developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help,
> > > and that's fine. I
> > > get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there
> > > anyone? Every second
> > > Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We
> > > just need, say, two
> > > or three developers willing to put in a few hours
> > > per week.
> > >
> > > -- Tim Starling
> >
> > I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to
> > be able to learn how to contribute.  What do you need
> > exactly, only people who know PHP?
> >
> > I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn
> > from scratch :).  Hopefully there are other people who
> > want to learn, we can form a little group and go
> > though a few tutorials.  This way people who know PHP
> > could help multiple people at once learn saving time.
> > How long would you guess it take before a person would
> > learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
> >
> > ShaunMacPherson
> >
> >
>
______________________________________________________________________
> > Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
> jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license,
> visit
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
> i agree with you and would also be willing to
learn._______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_____________________________________________________________________
For super low premiums, click here http://www.dialdirect.co.za/quote


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
But, as noted by Henry, this is difficult even for established
Wikipedias and community standards vary depending on the values of the
community in question. Thus, what is NPOV to the Basque Wikipedia
might seem very POV to the Chinese Wikipedia.

Mark

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 08:48:26 -0500, Evan Prodromou <evan at bad.dynu.ca> wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-24-11 at 20:22 +0100, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> > Maintaining a wiki is not only about
> > getting some people to work there, we also need to ensure that local
> > communities get to know and share the fundamental values and principles
> > of wikipedia: neutrality, openess, freedom of content.
>
> Excellent, excellent point.
>
> ~ESP
>
> --
> Evan Prodromou                  .O.
> http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
> evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Also, Evan, I would like you to take a little field trip.

ka.wikipedia has an interface fully in Georgian, a mainpage fully in
Georgian, etc. Two weeks ago, everything was in English with the
exception of a little bit of content on the mainpage.

scn.wikipedia has an interface fully in Sicilian, a rapidly growing
body of all-Sicilian content, and it exists because I requested it
(But it's successful because of the hard work of editors).

Now, check the Limburgish Wikipedia. Recently condemned to proposed
locking, it spontaneously picked up some activity and now there is
hope for its future.

See, this is the reason why Wikipedia has such a long list of
Wikipedias with user bases and content, but Wikitravel has 5. If we
adopt your Draconian policies for Wikipedia, such growth as that on
ka.wikipedia, scn.wikipedia, and li.wikipedia will be much wider
apart. Had we adopted them at the beginning, such major Wikipedias as
the Japanese, German, Welsh, and other Wikipedias would be a
significant bit behind where they are today.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia off-line

body:
What I think would be interesting is having private Wikipedias that
would be edited and displayed locally. So, basically like James' plan,
but minus the uploading part.

Mark

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 23:05:35 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Sounds infeasible to me; resolving the edit conflicts would be
> disastrous. If we get a genius on this, it's plausible, but until then,
> it seems unlikely. I'm CCing this to Wikitech-l to see if they can have
> a go at this, though.
>
> John Lee
> ([[en:User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
>
> James R. Johnson wrote:
>
> >I was thinking about how I could work on Wikipedia offline, and though it
> >would be great to have a stand-alone wikipedia client, which a wiki-user
> >could download that would allow him to download wikipedia content, edit it
> >while offline, then upload it when he gets to an internet connection.  The
> >user would set it to download either new, edited, or any other type of pages
> >changed since his last upload.
> >
> >
> >
> >What do you think?
> >
> >
> >
> >James
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
I'm up for it - though when I say I know nothing - I really do mean I
know absolutely nothing. ~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Shannon [mailto:robin.shannon at gmail.com]
Sent: 25 November 2004 02:50
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but
dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?

[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson
<shaun_macpherson2001 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>  --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> wrote:
>
>
> > Matt R wrote:
> > >  --- Tim Starling wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
> > Wikipedia would rather think
> > >>of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
> > and file bug reports.
> > >
> > >
> > > There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
> > suppose that if you identify a
> > > problem that you can fix, then you have an
> > obligation to fix it. Even if you
> > > have the capability, there is no moral imperative
> > for volunteers to do anything
> > > at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
> > already a positive
> > > contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
> > course, to grumble or whine
> > > about a problem that you've identified is
> > churlish, as you have no right to
> > > expect that others fix things on your behalf.
> > >
> > > But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
> > developers. I would quite
> > > like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
> > right now I prefer to spend my
> > > time contributing to the content of articles --
> > this is not an *excuse*; this
> > > is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
> > implication.
> >
> > I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to
> > impress on everyone that
> > Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever
> > wondering why some
> > feature hasn't been written yet, it's because
> > there's been no-one around
> > to write it. Most of the active developers seem to
> > be more interested
> > writing features for a general audience than for
> > Wikimedia projects.
> > There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia
> > than there are
> > developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help,
> > and that's fine. I
> > get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there
> > anyone? Every second
> > Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We
> > just need, say, two
> > or three developers willing to put in a few hours
> > per week.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
>
> I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to
> be able to learn how to contribute.  What do you need
> exactly, only people who know PHP?
>
> I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn
> from scratch :).  Hopefully there are other people who
> want to learn, we can form a little group and go
> though a few tutorials.  This way people who know PHP
> could help multiple people at once learn saving time.
> How long would you guess it take before a person would
> learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
>
> ShaunMacPherson
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: Strange watchlist items

body:
On Nov 25, 2004, at 7:21 AM, Troels Arvin wrote:
>>> Today, I reviewed my (complete) watchlist. I found some strange,
>>> non-existing pages on it:
>>>
>>> ClockWorkNigger
>>> George Wanker Bush
>>> Pinux
>>> Template:AAERGilbDFgoui
>>>
>>> I can't recall ever having encountered such pages. How could such
>>> items have been added to my watchlist?

Someone renamed a page you were watching, then it was renamed back and
someone deleted the redirect.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Nov 25, 2004, at 10:03 AM, Nick Triantos wrote:
> In any case, I'd like to see this merged back into the HEAD tree, even
> if Wikipedia and family don't use it.

I would not accept it in the tree.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Custom Namespaces

body:
On Nov 25, 2004, at 12:25 PM, Randy Becker wrote:
> Yup. This was it. I was running 1.3.2 ... in the process of upgrading,
> but having problems. Now the wikified stylesheet isn't being read due
> to the raw output redirecting too much (commenting out the new IE code
> fixes that) and also the page doesn't reference index.php, so the
> correct raw text isn't being generated. I'm still looking into it...

Most likely you need to set $wgScript to "/index.php" instead of "".

Sorry, but Microsoft has as usual spoiled the party for everyone: if
you go to a URL like this in IE: http://foobar/bizbax.html?action=raw
and its content _looks kind of like_ HTML it will interpret the page as
HTML despite the content-type header specifically saying otherwise. IE
thus happily will execute all kinds of JavaScript, load unsafe ActiveX
controls, etc with the permissions of a genuine HTML page at the
(possibly trusted) web site.

A malicious person may be able to trick your users into visiting this
link, whereupon JavaScript can steal their login cookies or an exploit
of an unpatched IE bug can be used install spywhere or whatever.

This is not desirable, so now we're a little pickier about action=raw;
the URL needs to be using the canonical script URL, which will
generally have an "extension" of .php and IE won't be quite so quick to
mis-detect it. This does mean that $wgScript needs to be set to point
at a real script URL, or you end up with some trouble.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to contribute but
dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?

[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:13:36 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson
<shaun_macpherson2001 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>  --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> wrote:
>
>
> > Matt R wrote:
> > >  --- Tim Starling wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Unfortunately it seems most programmers on
> > Wikipedia would rather think
> > >>of excuses, complain about the lack of progress
> > and file bug reports.
> > >
> > >
> > > There's an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to
> > suppose that if you identify a
> > > problem that you can fix, then you have an
> > obligation to fix it. Even if you
> > > have the capability, there is no moral imperative
> > for volunteers to do anything
> > > at all on Wikipedia, and documenting a problem is
> > already a positive
> > > contribution, albeit a comparatively minor one. Of
> > course, to grumble or whine
> > > about a problem that you've identified is
> > churlish, as you have no right to
> > > expect that others fix things on your behalf.
> > >
> > > But to get to the point: I'm very grateful to the
> > developers. I would quite
> > > like to hack on Mediawiki myself some day, but
> > right now I prefer to spend my
> > > time contributing to the content of articles --
> > this is not an *excuse*; this
> > > is a choice, and I (only mildly!) resent any such
> > implication.
> >
> > I'm sorry if I caused offence, I just wanted to
> > impress on everyone that
> > Wikipedia has barely any developers. If you're ever
> > wondering why some
> > feature hasn't been written yet, it's because
> > there's been no-one around
> > to write it. Most of the active developers seem to
> > be more interested
> > writing features for a general audience than for
> > Wikimedia projects.
> > There's more editors on the Old English Wikipedia
> > than there are
> > developers overall. Maybe Matt doesn't want to help,
> > and that's fine. I
> > get the feeling Gerrit doesn't either. But is there
> > anyone? Every second
> > Wikipedian seems to know a programming language. We
> > just need, say, two
> > or three developers willing to put in a few hours
> > per week.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
>
> I currently have some time on my hands and I'd love to
> be able to learn how to contribute.  What do you need
> exactly, only people who know PHP?
>
> I little about PHP but I would be willing to learn
> from scratch :).  Hopefully there are other people who
> want to learn, we can form a little group and go
> though a few tutorials.  This way people who know PHP
> could help multiple people at once learn saving time.
> How long would you guess it take before a person would
> learn enough PHP to be useful on MediaWiki?
>
> ShaunMacPherson
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia off-line

body:
I was thinking about how I could work on Wikipedia offline, and though it
would be great to have a stand-alone wikipedia client, which a wiki-user
could download that would allow him to download wikipedia content, edit it
while offline, then upload it when he gets to an internet connection.  The
user would set it to download either new, edited, or any other type of pages
changed since his last upload.

What do you think?

James


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Language names capitalization

body:
Hi

I?creayed this page on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Capitalization

To be classified:
* Basque
* Catalan
* Estonian
* Hungarian
* Icelandic
* Indonesian
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Malay
* Moksha
* Norwegian
* Occitan
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Sorbian
* Tatar
* Turkish
* Walloon
* Welsh

Please, complete this list.

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Hemanshu Desai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Language names

body:
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:53:52 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have some language names (ie, for interwiki) that aren't right.
>
> Among them are:
>
> bo (tibetan): bod skad (should be ???????)
> bn (bengali): should be ?????
> or (oriya): Oriya (should be ????)

I can't see Bengali, Oriya and Malayalam using my fonts. Do you know a
font which implements complete Unicode?

Regards,
Hemanshu


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Language names capitalization +++

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi
>
>I creayed this page on meta:
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
>
>To be classified:
>
>
>
....

>Please, complete this list.
>
>
>
>
Shouldn't we add even all the other languages where we already know how
capitalisation needs to be? maybe creating a similar table:

Language - Language names - Days - Months - Planets - etc.
German - Upper - Upper - Upper - Upper
Italian - lower - lower - lower - Upper
etc.

This could then become a general reference for all - in particular new
wiktionaries who just would "like to know". Or people having a doubt
that would like to check things out and maybe correct errors.

It's just an idea ... as I was wondering about the names of the days in
French - now I now the must be lower case, but whoever inserted the
French names on the Italian wiktionary just copied and pasted - so the
error is for sure multiplied also on other wiktionaries. This means I
need to correct this on the Italian one and then check on the Japanese
wiktionary where they seem to come from.

I have the same doubts for Spanish, Esperanto, Turkish and Galician.

Frequent errors are made when people create new words with multi
language translations taking a word from wikipedia and following the
links - since wikipedias don't make difference between upper and lower
case in their header - it seems as if some people just copy and paste
this without veryfying if the same word within the text is capitalised
or not. I noted this problem when searching for Christmas terminology on
different wikipedias to create a link-page with all contents available I
can find on wiktionary/wikipedia.

And I'd like to take this occasion to once again check out the project
with the Christmas wishes here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
Please don't forget that recordings of "Merry Christmas and a happy New
Year" in many different languages are very important to promote the use
of commons in order to allow us to make wiktionary a "speaking" wiktionary.

Ciao, Sabine


from_name: Randy Becker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Custom Namespaces

body:
Yup. This was it. I was running 1.3.2 ... in the process of upgrading,
but having problems. Now the wikified stylesheet isn't being read due
to the raw output redirecting too much (commenting out the new IE code
fixes that) and also the page doesn't reference index.php, so the
correct raw text isn't being generated. I'm still looking into it...

-Randy

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 15:18:15 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 2004, at 6:47 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:
> > Brion Vibber <brion <at> pobox.com> writes:
> >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces
> >
> > The directions may be incorrect.
>
> I followed the directions exactly to confirm that they worked before
> replying.
>
> If they didn't work for you, you may be running an outdated version of
> MediaWiki (1.3.2 or older) -- if so I'd strongly recommend that you
> upgrade to 1.3.8 immediately, as there are potentially exploitable
> security holes in the older versions.
>
>
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Erdal Ronahi

body:
>
>So the generic question is "which languages captialize their language and
>ethnic pronouns?"
>
>
Turkish does.

Greetings,
Erdal


from_name: Troels Arvin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange watchlist items

body:
Hello,

Today, I reviewed my (complete) watchlist. I found some strange,
non-existing pages on it:

ClockWorkNigger
George Wanker Bush
Pinux
Template:AAERGilbDFgoui

I can't recall ever having encountered such pages. How could such items
have been added to my watchlist?

--
Greetings from Troels Arvin, Copenhagen, Denmark


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange watchlist items

body:
Troels Arvin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Today, I reviewed my (complete) watchlist. I found some strange,
> non-existing pages on it:
>
> ClockWorkNigger
> George Wanker Bush
> Pinux
> Template:AAERGilbDFgoui
>
> I can't recall ever having encountered such pages. How could such items
> have been added to my watchlist?
>

As far as I understand Mediawiki, this could have happened this way:

you have [[George Walker Bush]] on your watchlist.
a troll moves the page to [[George Wanker Bush]].

Mediawiki is keeping the Watchlist entry and adds a new one for the new
page on the old name.

If this gets reverted, the lists could mess up. This is likely an issue
to discuss on the tech-list. I wonder if an developer could falsify my
speculations.

Mathias


from_name: Stuart Orford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange watchlist items

body:
 --- Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> As far as I understand Mediawiki, this could have
> happened this way:
>
> you have [[George Walker Bush]] on your watchlist.
> a troll moves the page to [[George Wanker Bush]].
>
> Mediawiki is keeping the Watchlist entry and adds a
> new one for the new
> page on the old name.
>
> If this gets reverted, the lists could mess up. This
> is likely an issue
> to discuss on the tech-list. I wonder if an
> developer could falsify my
> speculations.

That's exactly how it happens - the page gets moved
back to its original location and the redirect
[[George Wanker Bush]] is speedily deleted, usually
before most people notice. Deleted pages stay on your
watchlist, so they seem to just pop up with no
evidence of how they got there.

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


body:
Hello,

On wikipedia-l, I asked a question, and Mathias Schindler stated that the
discussion was probably better suited for wikitech-l.

In wikipedia-l, Troels Arvin wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Today, I reviewed my (complete) watchlist. I found some strange,
>> non-existing pages on it:
>>
>> ClockWorkNigger
>> George Wanker Bush
>> Pinux
>> Template:AAERGilbDFgoui
>>
>> I can't recall ever having encountered such pages. How could such items
>> have been added to my watchlist?

- And Mathias Schindler replied:

> As far as I understand Mediawiki, this could have happened this way:
>
> you have [[George Walker Bush]] on your watchlist.
> a troll moves the page to [[George Wanker Bush]].
>
> Mediawiki is keeping the Watchlist entry and adds a new one for the
> new page on the old name.
>
> If this gets reverted, the lists could mess up. This is likely an
> issue to discuss on the tech-list. I wonder if an developer could
> falsify my speculations.
>
> Mathias

--
Greetings from Troels Arvin, Copenhagen, Denmark


from_name: cookfire

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

>
>
> Yann Forget wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I creayed this page on meta:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
>>
>> To be classified:
>>
>>
>>
> ....
>
>> Please, complete this list.
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Shouldn't we add even all the other languages where we already know
> how capitalisation needs to be? maybe creating a similar table:
>
> Language - Language names - Days - Months - Planets - etc.
> German - Upper - Upper - Upper - Upper
> Italian - lower - lower - lower - Upper
> etc.
>
> This could then become a general reference for all - in particular new
> wiktionaries who just would "like to know". Or people having a doubt
> that would like to check things out and maybe correct errors.
>
> It's just an idea ... as I was wondering about the names of the days
> in French - now I now the must be lower case, but whoever inserted the
> French names on the Italian wiktionary just copied and pasted - so the
> error is for sure multiplied also on other wiktionaries. This means I
> need to correct this on the Italian one and then check on the Japanese
> wiktionary where they seem to come from.
>
> I have the same doubts for Spanish, Esperanto, Turkish and Galician.
>
> Frequent errors are made when people create new words with multi
> language translations taking a word from wikipedia and following the
> links - since wikipedias don't make difference between upper and lower
> case in their header - it seems as if some people just copy and paste
> this without veryfying if the same word within the text is capitalised
> or not. I noted this problem when searching for Christmas terminology
> on different wikipedias to create a link-page with all contents
> available I can find on wiktionary/wikipedia.
>
> And I'd like to take this occasion to once again check out the project
> with the Christmas wishes here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
> Please don't forget that recordings of "Merry Christmas and a happy
> New Year" in many different languages are very important to promote
> the use of commons in order to allow us to make wiktionary a
> "speaking" wiktionary.

I totally agree, on my Google search to complete the list (which didn't
yield very much as a result for the language names) I did encounter
interesting info about the other kinds of words that may or not be
capitalized. At least I found which languages don't have the concept of
capitalization...

Polyglot


body:
Hi Erdal,

Le Thursday 25 November 2004 15:39, Erdal Ronahi a ?crit :
> >So the generic question is "which languages captialize their language and
> >ethnic pronouns?"
>
> Turkish does.

Since you know Turkish, could you confirm what is the translation for Hindi ?
I?believe it is "Hint?e", and "Hindu" is people following the hinduism faith.

> Greetings,
> Erdal

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
In message <co46ov$h7j$1 at sea.gmane.org>, Henry H. Tan-Tenn
<share2002nov at lomaji.com> writes
>I recall the Welsh WP (which I rather like) has a large Welsh flag with
>its red dragon prominently and (I imagine) proudly displayed on the
>main page. This could be interpreted in NPOV and POV ways.  I would not
>hazard a guess, but I personally am fine with it.  This is related to
>my claim that we bring values and experiences to the table which
>influence our judgement.

Well we do rather like our flag, but it's not all _that_ prominent -- it
doesn't show up until you scroll down a page on my display, anyway! It
does highlight a section of the home page where we explain in English,
Spanish and French what Welsh is and where it's spoken, and links to
another page where people have been kind enough to translate the same
into Arabic, Breton, Catalan, Dutch, German, Irish, Icelandic, Italian,
Japanese, Latvian, Letzeburgish, Lithuanian, Min-nan, Norwegian,
Romanian, Swedish and Vietnamese, most of which were beyond our
linguistic skills :)

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


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:03:39 -0800, Nick Triantos <nick at triantos.com> wrote:
> Perhaps a useful compromise would be, if Nick P is willing, to add
> another flag, which specifies whether users can edit their own edit
> summaries, or whether this is reserved for SysOps only.  For my intranet
> use of Mediawiki, I would leave it open to all, for something like
> wikipedia, the wikipedia administrators could enforce that this be used
> only by SysOps.

That sounds like a good compromise, and remember that with the new
User & Group Rights system [is that going live in 1.4?] it needn't
even be "all sysops", since there can be an edit_summaries right,
which could be granted only to a select few if that was felt relevant
and worth-while.

However, with the feature not updating the RC log [am I right in
thinking watchlists are also pulled from this, rather than the actual
histories?], the value of the feature seems limited anyway. But in
combination with other things like selective revision undeletion, I
can conceive of uses in some of the more unusual applications of the
software (they may not seem like a "true" wiki, but even the existence
of a Talk: namespace was pushing that envelope once, and in the end
it's up to each site-admin what they do with the software available).

Of course, the more things like this we add "in case someone wants
it", the more bloated the system becomes, but without a well-developed
extension mechanism [and where would the hooks that allowed this be?]
the alternative seems to be someone maintaining a patch so it
continues to apply cleanly...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia off-line

body:
> James R. Johnson wrote:
> >I was thinking about how I could work on Wikipedia offline, and though it
> >would be great to have a stand-alone wikipedia client, which a wiki-user
> >could download that would allow him to download wikipedia content, edit it
> >while offline, then upload it when he gets to an internet connection.

John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> replied:
> Sounds infeasible to me; resolving the edit conflicts would be
> disastrous.

Actually, a quick glance around pointed me to two discussions on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Client and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dedicated_Wikipedia_editor, "jEdit
plugin" http://www.djini.de/software/wikipedia/,  and a seemingly
fairly well-developed stand-alone editor:
http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net/ [for completeness, I should mention
the Mozilla/Firefox plugin, although this isn't AFAIK aimed at offline
editing]

To me, the 'WikiWriter'/'Diderot' project looks like, if developed
well enough, it could easily gain the kinds of features you were
after. I do agree that making an edit but not uploading it until you
get your connection back could lead to some rather major version merge
conflicts, but for significant rewrites and expansions, or indeed
totally new articles, this would seem less of a problem; perhaps the
software could recommend you leave a note on the Talk: page that a
rewrite was in progress to minimise duplicated effort.

[Now, who was it in that programming language war that said they'd
prefer Python... ;)]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Duplicate categories

body:
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:07:05 -0700, kelvSYC <kelvsyc at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Right now, if I have the same category link appear twice on one page,
> there are two category links to the same page.  Are there plans to make
> it so that a category appears only once, and perhaps a robot powered by
> an admin to eliminate duplicate categories?

This has been reported as a bug, and a preliminary fix appears to have
been written: see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=934

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Catherine Munro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
>  Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to
> > contribute but
> > dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
> >
> > [[User:The bellman]]
> > rjs

I'd be willing to learn PHP too; it has just seemed very daunting to take
on by myself.   A small group that can work together to learn the ropes
(and not take up too much of the developers' precious time with repeating
the same answers for a dozen different individual students) would be a
great thing.

BTW, I ran across an article about analyzing the development of large-scale
PHP projects, which might help for something like MediaWiki that's been
developed in so many small pieces.  A Development Infrastructure for PHP
(by Tony Marston) is
here:  http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/infrastructure.html   It's a
little over my head, I've only been skimming it to get some ideas on what
I'm getting into, but it looks like it *might* be of use to our heroic
development team.

Anyway, count me in.

Catherine
[[User:CatherineMunro]]


body:
Yann Forget schrieb:

>Hi Erdal,
>
>Le Thursday 25 November 2004 15:39, Erdal Ronahi a ?crit :
>
>
>>>So the generic question is "which languages captialize their language and
>>>ethnic pronouns?"
>>>
>>>
>>Turkish does.
>>
>>
>
>Since you know Turkish, could you confirm what is the translation for Hindi ?
>I believe it is "Hint?e", and "Hindu" is people following the hinduism faith.
>
>
I agree. That's correct. Hindu is one person, though. Not a plural.
Plural is "Hindular"

You're welcome


from_name: Rob Hooft

subject: [Wikitech-l] Requst for a wikibot mailing lists

body:
Gerrit wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
>>Would it be possible to get a bot mailing list at wikipedia?
>>wikibot-l at wikimedia.org perhaps, the only such mailing list at the
>>moment is the pywikipediabot mailing list, however that one is used
>>for CVS commits and discussions about the code in general.
>>
>>The list would be used for bot discussion and coordination specific to
>>wikipedia projects, the posting of warnfiles and so on.
>
>
> I second that.

We can also split the existing list into a users and a developers list,
both hosted at sourceforge. Just let me know.

Rob

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Survey of why wikipedians edit

body:
John Collison wrote:

> <snip>
> Q1: How long have you been editing wikipedia?
> A:

Since September 2003.

>
> Q2: How many hours per week do you spend on wikipedia?
> A:

Let's see...during my school holidays, I spend about 8 to 14 hours
online; during ordinary days, I guess it's about eight hours. Of my
online time, I'd say about 60% is devoted to Wikipedia.

>
> Q3: Do you write professionally?
> A:

No, but that sounds like fun.

>
> Q4: What is your current employement?
> A:

Student.

>
> Q5: Why do you work on wikipedia for nothing when you could be paid to
> write elsewhere?
> A:

For the fun of it.

>
> Q6: If people were paid to work on Wikipedia, would you stay or would
> you devote your time to something else?
> A:

Why wouldn't I stay?

>
> Q7: Do you think people should be paid to work on wikipedia?
> A:

Well, we can all dream, but...no. At least not till Bill Gates starts
financing the Wikimedia Foundation.

>
> Q8: Do you think developers should be paid?
> A:

See above.

>
> Q9: Do you think reward schemes and competitions (like Danny's
> contest) on a small scale to get people to write more, better etc.
> should be used on wikipedia?
> A:

Hell yes.

>
> Note: You can answer yes to as many of the following questions as you
> like.
>
> Q10: Do you work on wikipedia for the enjoyement of seeing your work
> online?
> A:

Yes.

>
> Q11: Do you work on wikipedia for the satisfaction that you have
> created something good and it can be used by others?
> A:

Yes.

>
>
> Q12:Do you work on wikipedia because it you enjoy interacting with
> others?
> A:

If you mean interacting in general, no. If you mean interacting as in
interacting online, to a certain extent, yes.

>
>
> Q13: Do you edit wikipedia for any reasons other than the ones
> mentioned above also?
> A:

I just find writing fun.

>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> John Collison
> (Ludraman)
>
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia off-line

body:
Sounds infeasible to me; resolving the edit conflicts would be
disastrous. If we get a genius on this, it's plausible, but until then,
it seems unlikely. I'm CCing this to Wikitech-l to see if they can have
a go at this, though.

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])

James R. Johnson wrote:

>I was thinking about how I could work on Wikipedia offline, and though it
>would be great to have a stand-alone wikipedia client, which a wiki-user
>could download that would allow him to download wikipedia content, edit it
>while offline, then upload it when he gets to an internet connection.  The
>user would set it to download either new, edited, or any other type of pages
>changed since his last upload.
>
>
>
>What do you think?
>
>
>
>James
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Abu Graib prisoner abuse (no pictures)]] on VfD

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:
> I think people are going to have to come to a better solution than this,
> or the software will need some modification (for instance, flagging
> images as potentially offensive and giving users a setting to see/not
> see these images).

Perhaps we could use transclusion? There would be an [[Abu Ghraib
prisoner abuse (text only)]] article, which could be transcluded to the
[[Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (with images)]] article. Or vice-versa.
[[Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse]] could be used as a dismbig that would ask
if you wanted to see the article with photos.

This would keep both articles in sync, and would allow users to decide
whether they want to view the images beforehand (for students etc.).

This is also similar to what the [[Main Page]] offers, with its link to
[[Main Page (table free)|Text only]]. Except that tables are being
omitted in this case, not images.

> I really hope that other articles won't take up this, for instance
> [[clitoris]] might decide to fork over disputes over the image of a
> women's vagina on the page (I personally think that these people need to
> just get over it, but I'm not everyone). My concern, however, is how to
> keep the articles in sync once they have been duplicated.

There are children who use Wikipedia regularly, though. They probably
wouldn't have any business reading articles like [[clitoris]], but they
might accidentally stumble upon these articles. Keeping a text-only version

> Further: it's a slipperyly slope when we start allowing dupes: we have a
> similar situation where we had [[Zionist revisionism]] and
> [[Israeli-Palestinian history denial]]. Two seperate articles, yet both
> talking about very similar things. Perhaps not quite the same, but you
> can see how messy things get when we allow duplication of articles!

I would draw a distinction between 1) an imageless version of an article
  and 2) two separate yet very similar *topics*.

Ideally, enough people would be monitoring these articles on their
watchlists (that's likely with controversial topics anyhow), so it
wouldn't be necessary to have automatic synchronization.

> Ta bu shi da yu

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: R E Broadley

subject:
[WikiEN-l] A user seems to have spent the day reverting articles
 which appeared to be legitamite edits

body:
Hi,

I am concerned. I don't often do this, but I had a look at the change
logs earlier this evening, just to get an idea of the kind of activity
that was going on. I noticed that a user, RickK, had reverted an article
without giving a reason. When I looked at the diff, it was not obvious
vandalism, and from what I could tell, it didn't look like something
that should have been reverted, especially as it was by a registered user.

As I wanted to understand better the policy being user, I asked the user
on their talk page if they would be willing to explain.

As I was waiting for a reply, I continued through the change log, and
noticed many other reverts by the same person, all with no reasons
given. A lot of these reverts were things such as reverting formatting
improvements, and I started to get quite shocked how out of control it
appeared to be.

When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted
their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given

I am quite concerned about this, as putting myself in the shoes of the
people who are having their work reverted, I can imagine it is enough to
put anyone off wanting to revisit Wikipedia, or continue providing any
useful input.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Many thanks,
Ed Broadley


body:
The problem is, users sometimes include violations of policy (i.e.
personal attacks) in their edit summaries. Allowing them to edit them
would render this audit trail worthless.

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])

Nick Triantos wrote:

> True, but the comment itself is not really part of that audit trail,
> it's just a note that came along for the ride.  The majority of
> comments in the wiki that I administer are blank, if people wanted to
> go and add a comment, I'd be all for that...
>
> cheers,
> -Nick
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> On Nov 25, 2004, at 5:29 AM, Nick Pisarro wrote:
>>
>>> I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
>>> programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability to
>>> edit
>>> the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision.
>>
>>
>>
>> I would strongly, strongly recommend against this. The edit history
>> is an audit trail, and should as much as possible not be allowed to
>> be tampered with.
>>
>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
Except that, you know, everyone who has ever supported cutting down on
small language Wikipedias has noted that they would never object to a
Wikipedia like German, Japanese, or  another major world language
that's used for business, that the great works of civilization have
been written in, and that has several million people who use it as
their primary language.

The idea that these policies would restrict any of those Wikipedias is
a straw man, plain and simple.

To my knowledge, there is no major language Wikipedia we currently
lack. There are no major language Wikipedias in danger of being locked.
The question only applies to Wikipedias that are unlikely to have more
than a handful of users in the next five years.

The Japanese Wikipedia always had an obvious and large population to
draw from. But Limburgish? Not so much.

Personally, I increasingly advocate a moratorium on new language
Wikipedias. Instead, we should start one "small language" Wikipedia to
be run like Wikibooks, with various subsections. So articles would be
in the form of [[Limburgish//Article title]]. And, should one of the
small languages suddenly take off to have a real and sustainable
community on it, it could be moved to being its own independent
Wikipedia.

But I can see no plausible reason to waste limited developer resources
on creation and support of projects that will have no lasting userbase
except for occasional surges when someone threatens to take them down.
And since no one is actually suggesting any of the strawmen you're
bringing up, I have to ask, with all due respect, that you stop
trolling this listserv.

-Snowspinner

On Nov 25, 2004, at 12:29 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> See, this is the reason why Wikipedia has such a long list of
> Wikipedias with user bases and content, but Wikitravel has 5. If we
> adopt your Draconian policies for Wikipedia, such growth as that on
> ka.wikipedia, scn.wikipedia, and li.wikipedia will be much wider
> apart. Had we adopted them at the beginning, such major Wikipedias as
> the Japanese, German, Welsh, and other Wikipedias would be a
> significant bit behind where they are today.
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

body:
Hi...

     I would like to learn PHP, too. I think a PHP Learning Group would be great.

              As Ever,

                 Ruth Ifcher

                 [[User:RoseParks]]
--

-------------- Original message from Catherine Munro <artslave at usa.net>: --------------

>
> > Robin Shannon wrote:
> > > Count me in for learning PHP in a group. I'd love to
> > > contribute but
> > > dont have the skills... yet. Anyone else?
> > >
> > > [[User:The bellman]]
> > > rjs
>
> I'd be willing to learn PHP too; it has just seemed very daunting to take
> on by myself. A small group that can work together to learn the ropes
> (and not take up too much of the developers' precious time with repeating
> the same answers for a dozen different individual students) would be a
> great thing.
>
> BTW, I ran across an article about analyzing the development of large-scale
> PHP projects, which might help for something like MediaWiki that's been
> developed in so many small pieces. A Development Infrastructure for PHP
> (by Tony Marston) is
> here: http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/infrastructure.html It's a
> little over my head, I've only been skimming it to get some ideas on what
> I'm getting into, but it looks like it *might* be of use to our heroic
> development team.
>
> Anyway, count me in.
>
> Catherine
> [[User:CatherineMunro]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject:
[Wiktionary-l] gu.wiktionary is now off first
	character	capitalisation

body:
Yann Forget schrieb:

>Hi,
>
>So is the Gujarati Wiktionary (http://gu.wiktionary.org/).
>
>Thanks to Hashar for doing it.
>
>Yann
>
>Le Thursday 4 November 2004 21:29, Yann Forget a ?crit :
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>So is also the Kannada Wiktionary : http://kn.wiktionary.org
>>So that makes 3 today.
>>
>>
Could you do the same for Kurdish (ku) ? I mean, turn the capitalization
off.

Thanks,
Erdal


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] We've been verbed

body:
No, but we are rapidly gaining ground on NewYorkTimes.com and should pass
them early next year, breaking into the top 100 websites. We are becoming an
institution...

Fred

> From: Stuart Orford <sjorford at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:49:17 +0000 (GMT)
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] We've been verbed
>
> Well, it had to happen eventually:
>
> "You can Wikipedia them on the Web, open
> source-style."
>
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.html?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_2
>
> Does this make us as big as Google? ;P
>
> --sjorford
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] gu.wiktionary is now off firstcharacter	capitalisation

body:
Le Friday 26 November 2004 05:05, Erdal Ronahi a ?crit :
> Yann Forget schrieb:
> >Hi,
> >
> >So is the Gujarati Wiktionary (http://gu.wiktionary.org/).
> >
> >Thanks to Hashar for doing it.
> >
> >Yann
> >
> >Le Thursday 4 November 2004 21:29, Yann Forget a ?crit :
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>So is also the Kannada Wiktionary : http://kn.wiktionary.org
> >>So that makes 3 today.
>
> Could you do the same for Kurdish (ku) ? I mean, turn the capitalization
> off.

I?will ask Shaihulud (developer) when he comes on IRC.

> Thanks,
> Erdal

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Kurdish wiktionary is off capitalisation

body:
Hoi,
I read the first message from Erdal, and asked on the mediawiki channel
if someone could oblige me.. And they did :) the Kurdish wiktionary is
now off article capitalisation :) jeronim was so good as to do the deed :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 02:33:35 -0600, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Except that, you know, everyone who has ever supported cutting down on
> small language Wikipedias has noted that they would never object to a
> Wikipedia like German, Japanese, or  another major world language
> that's used for business, that the great works of civilization have
> been written in, and that has several million people who use it as
> their primary language.

That's not really true, not many people said that.

In addition, languages that have been proposed for cutting, such as
Pashto, Yi, Lingala, etc., all have several million speakers and are
used for "business".

As far as "the great works of civilisation", "civilisation" is POV,
and I really don't think it matters much anyways. If somebody speaks a
language, it's as good as any other language.

> The idea that these policies would restrict any of those Wikipedias is
> a straw man, plain and simple.

No, not really.

> To my knowledge, there is no major language Wikipedia we currently
> lack. There are no major language Wikipedias in danger of being locked.
> The question only applies to Wikipedias that are unlikely to have more
> than a handful of users in the next five years.

And what is your definition of "major language"? And as I noted
before, the Limburgish Wikipedia was proposed for deletion, yet the
number of Limburgish people with the internet would suggest that in
the next 5 years, there will very likely be a relatively large
community there.

> The Japanese Wikipedia always had an obvious and large population to
> draw from. But Limburgish? Not so much.

Apparently your sociolinguistic knowledge is a bit lacking.

> Personally, I increasingly advocate a moratorium on new language
> Wikipedias. Instead, we should start one "small language" Wikipedia to
> be run like Wikibooks, with various subsections. So articles would be
> in the form of [[Limburgish//Article title]]. And, should one of the
> small languages suddenly take off to have a real and sustainable
> community on it, it could be moved to being its own independent
> Wikipedia.

I'm sorry, but that's a really, really crappy idea. And what is so
wrong with having all these Wikipedias anyways?

> But I can see no plausible reason to waste limited developer resources
> on creation and support of projects that will have no lasting userbase
> except for occasional surges when someone threatens to take them down.
> And since no one is actually suggesting any of the strawmen you're
> bringing up, I have to ask, with all due respect, that you stop
> trolling this listserv.

It has been noted by more than one developer that, as long as a
language is a natural language with native speakers, they do not mind
using some time on it. And really, honestly, how long does it take to
create a new Wikipedia, for a developer? And I have to ask, with all
due respect, why on earth you hate minority languages?

Mark


from_name: Roy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fatal Error on start page

body:
Any ideas about this message:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
c:\apache\htdocs\mediawiki\includes\Parser.php on line 1532

I get it right away when I try to go to the main wiki page.

Roy.


from_name: Gerrit

body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
> Indeed, that is the struggle on every WP, isn't it.  i.e. Striving for
> NPOV, fairness, content-centered open discussions, etc. is on-going on
> numerous pages.

Not a single Wikipedia is NPOV. At first, all support the creation of a
free, open encyclop?dia. I'm sure there are many other systemic biases
as well.

> I recall the Welsh WP (which I rather like) has a large Welsh flag with
> its red dragon prominently and (I imagine) proudly displayed on the main
> page.  This could be interpreted in NPOV and POV ways.  I would not
> hazard a guess, but I personally am fine with it.  This is related to my
> claim that we bring values and experiences to the table which influence
> our judgement.

I don't think it is such a terrible disaster if some small language
Wikipedia has NPOV on the frontpage. If the alternative is locking, I
would support the former. If a user comes across the wiki, knowing the
language and seeing that there is a bit of content, he/she may become
enthousiastic and edit the content. However, if it's locked, he/she may
become disappointed at the whole concept of a wiki, discriminating small
languages, and "quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi". The major languages
have wiki's, the small ones have not.

Let small languages be.

> ~~~~

:-)

regards,
Gerrit Holl.

--
Weather in Lulea / Kallax, Sweden 26/11 10:50:
	-7.0?C   wind 6.3 m/s NW (34 m above NAP)
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
    -Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: A user seems to have spent the day reverting
	articles which appeared to be legitamite edits

body:
Tim,

One of us is interpreting the diff displays backwards. I thought it was
RickK doing the deleting, (including the deletion of the asterisk).

I shall double-check.

Apologies in advance if it was me reading it wrong, although from one of
the comments RickK said to me, he did actually confirm that he was
removing stuff, which reinforced my belief that I was interpreting the
diff logs correctly.

Regards,
Edmund

Tim Starling wrote:

> R E Broadley wrote:
>
>> When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted
>> their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
>> thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
>> where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given
>
>
>
> The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
>
> * Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
> from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine
> the Great", rolled back
> * Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
> * Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
>
> This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad
> characterised these edits as follows:
>
> "I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you,
> but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some
> effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was
> biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
>
> RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he
> was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to
> remove this  complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the
> complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


references:
<41A67C17.5080506@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>
	<co64fs$lc0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41A714B8.8060609@stardate.freeserve.co.uk>

body:
And the fact that he deleted the contents of his talk page as soon as
I'd started this discussion with him also seemed suspicious to me. Why
would he delete our discussion unless he had something to hide?

R E Broadley wrote:

> Tim,
>
> One of us is interpreting the diff displays backwards. I thought it
> was RickK doing the deleting, (including the deletion of the asterisk).
>
> I shall double-check.
>
> Apologies in advance if it was me reading it wrong, although from one
> of the comments RickK said to me, he did actually confirm that he was
> removing stuff, which reinforced my belief that I was interpreting the
> diff logs correctly.
>
> Regards,
> Edmund
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> R E Broadley wrote:
>>
>>> When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had
>>> deleted
>>> their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
>>> thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
>>> where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
>>
>> * Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
>> from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of
>> Constantine the Great", rolled back
>> * Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
>> * Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
>>
>> This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad
>> characterised these edits as follows:
>>
>> "I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you,
>> but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some
>> effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was
>> biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
>>
>> RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he
>> was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to
>> remove this  complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the
>> complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>


body:
Tim,

I have double checked (you had me wondering!), and I stand by what I
said in the email yesterday. I've included my replies below.

>> R E Broadley wrote:
>>
>>> When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had
>>> deleted
>>> their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
>>> thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
>>> where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given
>>
>>
>> The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
>>
>> * Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
>> from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of
>> Constantine the Great", rolled back
>
^ Why was this rolled back? Was it factually incorrect? If so, why
doesn't RickK say this and how he knows it to be incorrect? It looked
like a good-faith edit to me.

>> * Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
>
^ Someone else added the asterisk, fixing a bullet list. RickK rolled
back the fix!

>> * Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
>
^ Again, the other way around. RickK's revert causes the unexplained
deletion.

>> RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he
>> was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to
>> remove this  complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the
>> complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
>
^ I hope you'll permit other people to validate which of us in correct
first.

>> -- Tim Starling
>
Thanks,
Edmund


from_name: Stuart Orford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] We've been verbed

body:
Well, it had to happen eventually:

"You can Wikipedia them on the Web, open
source-style."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.html?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_2

Does this make us as big as Google? ;P

--sjorford

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


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 21:54:53 +0100, Rob Hooft <rob at hooft.net> wrote:
> Gerrit wrote:
>
>
> > ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> >
> >>Would it be possible to get a bot mailing list at wikipedia?
> >>wikibot-l at wikimedia.org perhaps, the only such mailing list at the
> >>moment is the pywikipediabot mailing list, however that one is used
> >>for CVS commits and discussions about the code in general.
> >>
> >>The list would be used for bot discussion and coordination specific to
> >>wikipedia projects, the posting of warnfiles and so on.
> >
> >
> > I second that.
>
> We can also split the existing list into a users and a developers list,
> both hosted at sourceforge. Just let me know.
>
> Rob

I think it would be much more desirable to host it at Wikimedia, after
all the topic of this list would be the operation of pywikipediabot
AND other bots on wikimedia projects while the pywikipediabot project
makes a bot that interfaces with MediaWiki, wikimedia sites among
them.

>
> --
> Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
Some admins watch recent changes, and have vandalism in progress on
their watchlists. Other don't. Rick is one of the former. In fact, he
deals with vandalism a lot! His user page regularly gets vandalised, and
his talk page regularly gets messages from vandals that he has blocked
(Who are trying to troll him, or merely expressing an opinion about his
sexuality, or his mothers sexuality etc ;-). He probably mistook you for
one.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: R E Broadley [mailto:20041111 at stardate.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: 26 November 2004 11:37
Cc: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: A user seems to have spent the day
revertingarticles which appeared to be legitamite edits

And the fact that he deleted the contents of his talk page as soon as
I'd started this discussion with him also seemed suspicious to me. Why
would he delete our discussion unless he had something to hide?

R E Broadley wrote:

> Tim,
>
> One of us is interpreting the diff displays backwards. I thought it
> was RickK doing the deleting, (including the deletion of the
asterisk).
>
> I shall double-check.
>
> Apologies in advance if it was me reading it wrong, although from one
> of the comments RickK said to me, he did actually confirm that he was
> removing stuff, which reinforced my belief that I was interpreting the

> diff logs correctly.
>
> Regards,
> Edmund
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> R E Broadley wrote:
>>
>>> When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had
>>> deleted
>>> their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts,
but
>>> thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a
version
>>> where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
>>>
>>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165
#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:
>>
>> * Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
>> from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of
>> Constantine the Great", rolled back
>> * Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled
back
>> * Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back
>>
>> This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad
>> characterised these edits as follows:
>>
>> "I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you,
>> but I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some
>> effort into adding the additional information. And if you felt it was

>> biased, couldn't you have let them know this also?"
>>
>> RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he
>> was reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to
>> remove this  complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the
>> complainant was removed from this mailing list either.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>

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


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: A user seems to have spent the day reverting
 articles which appeared to be legitamite edits

body:
R E Broadley wrote:
> When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted
> their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
> thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
> where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given

The reverts in question look fine to me. The edits were:

* Unexplained removal of text saying that the gospels were "compiled
from a much larger literature in 327AD under the orders of Constantine
the Great", rolled back
* Sneaky removal of an asterisk, breaking a bulleted list, rolled back
* Unexplained deletion of a paragraph, rolled back

This isn't a violation of policy. I think it's odd that Rebroad
characterised these edits as follows:

"I appreciate there were spelling mistakes that were obvious to you, but
I'm guessing they weren't obvious to the person who put some effort into
adding the additional information. And if you felt it was biased,
couldn't you have let them know this also?"

RickK was not correcting spelling or removing biased information, he was
reverting deletion. I think he was well within his rights to remove this
  complaint from his talk page. I wouldn't mind if the complainant was
removed from this mailing list either.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wiktionary-l] List of all present wiktionaries

body:
Hi, is this the list of all present wiktionaries?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary

Or is there a better place to find them all?

Grazie!!!

Ciao, Sabine

--
Sabine Cretella
s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
Phone: +39-340-18098278
Skype: callto://sabinecretella

Meetingplace for translators
www.wesolveitnet.com