body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:58:30 +0000, Jim Higson <jh at 333.org> wrote:
>> Actually, where is the token on the edit page?
>> This sounds like a silly question, but I've just saved the HTML of an
>> edit page and greped for 'token' without any hits!
>>
>> According to the DOM inspector form#editform fields are:
>>
>>         "wpTextbox1"
>>         "wpSummary"
>>         "wpSave"
>>         "wpSection"
>>         "wpEdittime"
>>
>> Is the edit time used as the token?
>
> I believe wpEditToken was added in 1.4. wpEdittime is easily
> calculable if you know the server time. (Well, it *is* the server
> time.) Perhaps you could load a page with the server time on it when
> the client opens, then keep track. One second out won't hurt.

I'm pretty sure I can get server time from the http headers when I check the
raw text out. I'll just calculate the offset from that with the local
machine (a second eitherway won't hurt)

--
Jim


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The value of Pronunciation

body:
On Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:00 PM, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
wrote:

> This could be nightmarish in English - accents are widely variant and
> in Britain are used as markers of social status to a ridiculous
> degree. This is of course highly politicised. I confidently predict
> ten or more sound files per word.

Yes, but only /mine/ will be correct. ;-)

Actually, cataloguing them as "RP", "RRP", "Brummie", "Ilkely", &c. would
probably be beneficial for our article on said accents.

Swings and roundabouts. :-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jim Higson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Help needed using POST to submit
	changes to my wiki

body:
Tels wrote:

>> Let's see... I'm tesing Firefox 1.0 preview (not the latest version I
>> know). It sounds as if XMLHTTP is failing for some reason. Do services
>> such as Google complete work on your Firefox.
>
> I don't know. What is Google complete? (google so far works, AFAIK)

A little beta they run that uses some of the same technology as my project.
Very, very cool:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

>> Could you visit the site with ?debug=yes added to the URL and report
>> what (if anything) is printed on the right of the window? And also what
>> (again, if anything) is sent to the console. Remember to clear the
>> cache first to make sure you get the latest version (shift+click
>> refresh).
>
> Ah, ok. I *thought* I already did shift+click, but apparently not. The
> page looks _much_ more complete now.
>
>> There are still a few interface things that aren't implemented, but
>> they should be rendered struck-through.
>
> Yeah, the life preview works now - very slick! Sorry for the noise!
>
> The only thing that is a bit of a problem is the "pause" that you
> experience when you type - e.g. when it renders the preview (I like how
> it does this only when I stop typing :) it pauses shortly or freezes.
>
> There is probably not much you can do, but these pauses interrupt my
> typing too much - so I think I would disable the life preview - which is
> a shame because this is real cool.

I think it is mostly a matter now of optimising the parser and getting the
timings right - there's a variable called BUG_ME_NOT which is the minimum
time between the last keystroke and the preview being updated. Too low and
it interupts the typing, too high and the preview takes a long time to
appear.

At the moment it's 400ms, but I'll experiment with longer timings. I suppose
I could even make it something like 1500 - a second and a half isn't too
long to wait for the preview.

--
Jim


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,

More than 125 Italian politicians have now their own soundfile. They can
be found here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Italian_politician
More than 2500 words pronounced in Dutch can be found here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_pronunciation

The idea is that you cannot reliably pronounce a word as it it should be
pronounced just by seeing the characters when the word originated from
another language. By making these resources available, it is clear how
they should be pronounced in the original language. Having
pronunciations available is important because they help people study a
language and, the wikipedia articles are a great resource to learn a
language; they are short, cover a subject well and many of the related
words related to a subject can be found in the article.

We are thinking of what (sound) resources would be popular as well..
Soccer stars like Ruud Gullit ?? We have volunteers that may pronounce
them in Italian, German or Dutch.

We would REALLY like to have pronunciations for soccer stars because the pronunciations of these gentlemen is often really bad. It would be a fun project to have.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Communication Channels on for wiki-researchers

body:
Cathy (et al),
those links that Angela gave are good but what needs to be done is to
set up a research category in meta, which i am going to try to do. I'm
also doing full-time research on Wikipedia and have some links on my
user page [[:en:User:Cormaggio]]. I'd be interested in what your study
is about if you want to drop a note on the Wikidemia page, or directly
by email.
Cormac

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:23:35 +0800, Cathy Ma <cathyma at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As a researcher who is interested in the sociology of the wikipedia I
> am writing to see if you can suggest links or leads on information
> concerning research on wiki.  Is there any central hub for 'wiki
> analysts' whether academic or media-related?
>
> I have been looking for links within wikimedia but it seems that the
> information is quite scattered.  Has anyone tried compiling a
> wiki-page for wiki researchers that is similar to the MIT opensource
> research center (http://opensource.mit.edu/)?  Or is there any email
> list for wiki-related researchers?  I'll definitely appreciate any
> advice or suggestion as I am still at a very preliminary phase of
> research.  Thanks a lot for your attention in advance.
>
> Best,
> Cathy
>
> --
> MA, P.S. Cathy
> MPhil student,
> Department of Sociology
> The University of Hong Kong
> http://cathyma.blogspot.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Tels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Help needed using POST to submit changes to
	my wiki

references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503211455354edc0a@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1osgi$27a$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 22 March 2005 11:39, Jim Higson wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:23:28 +0000, Jim Higson <jh at 333.org> wrote:
> >> Jim Higson wrote:
> >> > Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> >> >> On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:07:50 +0000, Jim Higson <jh at 333.org> wrote:
[snip]
> > (my $wpEditToken) = $editpage =~
> > m#(?<=<input).*([\w\d]{32}).*(?=wpEditToken)#g;
>
> The problem here is I'm trying to build a low bandwidth interface. If
> the edit token is 32 bytes it seems a terrible waste to have to
> download 40k or more of HTML to get at it!
>
> If you goto http://81.5.150.113/wysi - it looks pretty much like the
> normal wikimedia, but NONE of the html you see was generated on the
> server. It's difficult to get this across sometimes because to the user
> it looks just the same.

Well, it may be because it doesnt work (for me :)

I can do some things at your site, but of the buttons are nonfunctional,
or I get wierd renderings etc. Firefox 1.01 (no privoxy this time) on
linux.

I DO have some problems with the new kernel, so maybe it is just me :)

Anyway, the life preview doesnt work, the "save" gives me an "error
uploading" msg box, and the "preview" button cannot be clicked. And then
there are 4 blue rectangles without any function I can see :)

> The other issue is creating pages that are never shown is a huge waste
> of server-side CPU time. My interface uses only static content on the
> presentation tier. Potentially an Apache machine could serve an order
> of magnitude more pages using this project.

I find this project faszinating, since it moves quite a few things
(rendering, upload of text/download of output) to the client - at least
while editing with multiple previews.

I like the idea that only the final version is uploaded to the DB server.
This his huge potential!

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Mar 22 17:53:33 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "...pornographic images stay in the brain forever." -- Mary Anne Layden;
 "That's a feature, not a bug." -- God

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Help needed using POST to submit changes
	to my wiki

references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org> <200503221758.16778@bloodgate.com>
	<d1pjv9$ler$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 22 March 2005 18:19, Jim Higson wrote:
> >> If you goto http://81.5.150.113/wysi - it looks pretty much like the
> >> normal wikimedia, but NONE of the html you see was generated on the
> >> server. It's difficult to get this across sometimes because to the
> >> user it looks just the same.
> >
> > Well, it may be because it doesnt work (for me :)
> >
> > I can do some things at your site, but of the buttons are
> > nonfunctional, or I get wierd renderings etc. Firefox 1.01 (no
> > privoxy this time) on linux.
> >
> > I DO have some problems with the new kernel, so maybe it is just me
> > :)
>
> This is very strange - not least because as far as I can remember the
> string "error uploading" is'nt in there!

> Let's see... I'm tesing Firefox 1.0 preview (not the latest version I
> know). It sounds as if XMLHTTP is failing for some reason. Do services
> such as Google complete work on your Firefox.

I don't know. What is Google complete? (google so far works, AFAIK)

> Could you visit the site with ?debug=yes added to the URL and report
> what (if anything) is printed on the right of the window? And also what
> (again, if anything) is sent to the console. Remember to clear the
> cache first to make sure you get the latest version (shift+click
> refresh).

Ah, ok. I *thought* I already did shift+click, but apparently not. The
page looks _much_ more complete now.

> There are still a few interface things that aren't implemented, but
> they should be rendered struck-through.

Yeah, the life preview works now - very slick! Sorry for the noise!

The only thing that is a bit of a problem is the "pause" that you
experience when you type - e.g. when it renders the preview (I like how
it does this only when I stop typing :) it pauses shortly or freezes.

There is probably not much you can do, but these pauses interrupt my
typing too much - so I think I would disable the life preview - which is
a shame because this is real cool.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Mar 22 18:18:12 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally
 established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white
 pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls." -- Terry Pratchett

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from_name: Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Help needed using POST to submit changes to my
	wiki

body:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 03:58:30PM +0000, Jim Higson wrote:
> Actually, where is the token on the edit page?
> This sounds like a silly question, but I've just saved the HTML of an edit
> page and greped for 'token' without any hits!
>
> According to the DOM inspector form#editform fields are:
>
>         "wpTextbox1"
>         "wpSummary"
>         "wpSave"
>         "wpSection"
>         "wpEdittime"
>
> Is the edit time used as the token?

No, the field is called precisely "wpEditToken" and contains a MD5 sum.
Good time to tell us which version of MediaWiki you are using, maybe there
is a bug?..

--
X windows: A software disaster of Biblical proportions.


body:
On Tuesday, March 22, 2005 6:10 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> James D. Forrester wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:00 PM, David Gerard
> > <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> >
> > > This could be nightmarish in English - accents are widely variant
> > > and in Britain are used as markers of social status to a
> > > ridiculous degree. This is of course highly politicised. I
> > > confidently predict ten or more sound files per word.
> >
> > Yes, but only /mine/ will be correct. ;-)
> >
> > Actually, cataloguing them as "RP", "RRP", "Brummie", "Ilkely", &c.
> > would probably be beneficial for our article on said accents.
> >
> > Swings and roundabouts. :-)
>
> There is only one authorotive way of pronouncing a name and that
> is how it is pronounced by the person himself. In the mean time
> I would want a standard way of pronouncing a name. So I would go
> for a BBC kinda pronouniation for British football stars. The
> aim of this excercise is to have words pronounced for people who
> do not speak the language. The intention is not to have it in
> all dialects. There would be not much point to it.

Well, my voice when I'm speaking deliberately is probably as close to RP as
you are likely to get (slight North/East London twinge when I drop into the
vernacular, I suppose ;-). Maybe I should get a microphone...

Yes, the way someone pronounces their own name is probably definitive, and
place names for those that live there (hmm; not sure that we really want
people to learn to say "Nuu-ka-sel" ;-)), though that has issues, too
(*cough* Althrop *cough*), but what about other, general words?

> PS I am producing a list of Dutch socces starts.. Half of them I
> do not know, I just know how to pronounce it. :)

Sounds great. Keep up the good work. :-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Latest wikinews : Wikimania, Wax

body:
Are there arrangements where a presentation can be given without being
present, ie in the form of a brochure or other handout, or submitting
a presentation for somebody else to give (I think the former options
are more realistic)?

Obviously, not everybody who would possibly be interested in
presentation can afford the costs of travel to Frankfurt am Main
(from, say, Saarbrucken, that would be relatively cheap, but from Hong
Kong that would be expensive), or they may have a prior engagement.

Mark

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:50:01 -0500, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikimania is looking for speakers, workshop/tutorial proposals, and
> suggestions for discussion panels.  If you don't want to speak
> yourself, but there is someone you would really like to see speak or
> present at Wikimania, you can suggest this as well.
>       Send abstracts or suggestions to :  cfp at wikimedia.org
>
> Please distribute the call for papers widely :
>      http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers
>
>
> On a separate note, SurfWax, a metasearchenging, released a
> Wikipedia-index tool this week with some cute autocompletion features:
>      http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikiwax_released
>
> --
> +sj+
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
I believe he means for a translation of the Wikistats interface.

Mark

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:28:44 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> James R. Johnson wrote:
> > For :ang, I need to use the accented ash character "?" - how would I
> > encode that so it shows up?  Can I simply use the accented
> > characters, or must I use the html or numerical equivalents?
>
> "...onfind in ??re  [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|sandboxe]]..."
>
> Seems to be working fine.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>


from_name: Marc

subject: [Wikipedia-l] statistics for Wikisource

body:
Are there statistics for Wikisource ?

Marc


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again

body:
> On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 07:05:21 -0500, Mark Pellegrini
> <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again ---
> > http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0503200191mar20,1,26199.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
> > /
> > /*...*
> > / A similar hyperbole surrounds such projects as the Wikipedia, a free
> > online encyclopedia open to all. The Wikipedia's apologists emphasize
> > the great number of volunteers who have taken part in the project and
> > the number of entries they have contributed. They emphasize also the
> > communal nature of the undertaking, in which anyone with a better
> > understanding of a subject, or a bigger ax to grind, can edit what
> > someone else has created. Their prime article of faith is that this
> > openness will inevitably lead to a high level of accuracy and quality.
> > ...
> >  ----------
> > Robert McHenry is former editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and is
> > the author of "How to Know."
> >
> > /This is the same guy who called us the Faith-based encyclopedia and
> > compared us to a public toilet-
> > http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html
> >
> > --Mark
> >

That link that Mark posted didn't work for me but this one does:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0503200191mar20,1,26199.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

It seemed to me from reading the article that McHenry's answers to his
own concerns were inherent in Wikipedia's structure:

"There is no guarantee that truth will win out; there is only our
hard-won and too-seldom-employed knowledge of what gives us the best
chance: the free exchange and clash of ideas." (Is Wikipedia not an
obvious example of this?)

In his final recommendations, he advocates "clear thinking", a "genial
skepticism" to both one's own and others' opinions and "toleration"
(tolerance, surely?). Theoretically, this is covered in NPOV, [[assume
good faith]], and [[no personal attacks]] but as we all know these are
violated daily. My question is: how do you (I,we) work this in
practice from a personal perspective rather than looking at others?

Cormac
[[User:Cormaggio]] (en,m)


from_name: Cathy Ma

body:
Thanks Angela!

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:40:43 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:23:35 +0800, Cathy Ma <cathyma at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As a researcher who is interested in the sociology of the wikipedia I
> > am writing to see if you can suggest links or leads on information
> > concerning research on wiki.
>
> There isn't one central place for this, but the following links are
> some good places to start:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedistik
>
> Angela.
>

--
MA, P.S. Cathy
MPhil student,
Department of Sociology
The University of Hong Kong
http://cathyma.blogspot.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The value of Pronunciation

body:
There is no such thing as how a word "should be pronounced".

The word "hopilavayi" (a Hopi word meaning "hopi language") can be
pronounced an infinite number of ways. There is a relatively small
spectrum of what can be considered "authentic native-speaker
pronunciation", roughly /hopilavaji/, but it isn't how it "should be
pronounced": it is not nessecarily "wrong" to pronounce it
/hUp:aIlEvEjaI/ or /xaUbaIleIveIxi/ or even /xrpbvljblvkrknlbo/,
although those all most certainly fall outside of the spectrum of
"authentic native-speaker pronunciation".

Some languages have a wider spectrum of ANSP than others, for example
English would be much wider than Haida.

I don't dispute that recordings of pronunciations within the spectrum
of ANSP would be valuable, but I believe they should be labelled as
such - ie, "Native Hopi speaker pronouncing 'hopilavayi'" rather than
"correct pronunciation of 'hopilavayi'" or "how 'hopilavayi' should be
pronounced".

Mark

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:50:19 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
>
> More than 125 Italian politicians have now their own soundfile. They can
> be found here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Italian_politician
> More than 2500 words pronounced in Dutch can be found here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_pronunciation
>
> The idea is that you cannot reliably pronounce a word as it it should be
> pronounced just by seeing the characters when the word originated from
> another language. By making these resources available, it is clear how
> they should be pronounced in the original language. Having
> pronunciations available is important because they help people study a
> language and, the wikipedia articles are a great resource to learn a
> language; they are short, cover a subject well and many of the related
> words related to a subject can be found in the article.
>
> We are thinking of what (sound) resources would be popular as well..
> Soccer stars like Ruud Gullit ?? We have volunteers that may pronounce
> them in Italian, German or Dutch.
>
> We would REALLY like to have pronunciations for soccer stars because the
> pronunciations of these gentlemen is often really bad. It would be a fun
> project to have.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why checkable references and sources are more than just
	a good idea

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-14/Misinformation_on_Wikipedia

I really can't understand what some people have against even the
principle of putting sources and references in articles. The arguments
against have so far been long on analogies and short on real-life
examples. Above is an example going the other way.

- d.


body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>On Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:00 PM, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>wrote:
>
>
>
>>This could be nightmarish in English - accents are widely variant and
>>in Britain are used as markers of social status to a ridiculous
>>degree. This is of course highly politicised. I confidently predict
>>ten or more sound files per word.
>>
>>
>
>Yes, but only /mine/ will be correct. ;-)
>
>Actually, cataloguing them as "RP", "RRP", "Brummie", "Ilkely", &c. would
>probably be beneficial for our article on said accents.
>
>Swings and roundabouts. :-)
>
>Yours,
>
>
Hoi,
There is only one authorotive way of pronouncing a name and that is how
it is pronounced by the person himself. In the mean time I would want a
standard way of pronouncing a name. So I would go for a BBC kinda
pronouniation for British football stars. The aim of this excercise is
to have words pronounced for people who do not speak the language. The
intention is not to have it in all dialects. There would be not much
point to it.

PS I am producing a list of Dutch socces starts.. Half of them I do not
know, I just know how to pronounce it. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Half a million articles is rather big, eh?

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How many words are there in the English Wikipedia's article base?  And
> how many volumes (formatted like the Britannica or Americana) would it
> take to publish them all?
>
> Ed Poor

According to Erik Zachte's brilliant scripts, the en.Wikipedia had 166
Million Words on March 9.

According to Wikipedia, the 32-volume EB has 44 million words.

According to my calculator, that's 1.375 million words per volume.

So, we are talking about 120 volumes of an imaginary printed Wikipedia
March 05 edition. Plus minus 30, I might guess.

Mathias


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<9a878c4405032109141827f904@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1n0jp$46m$1@sea.gmane.org> <d1ndse$kj2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503211455354edc0a@mail.gmail.com>
	<51dd1af805032115001cee8ab2@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1osu9$4gp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af805032205268d9349a@mail.gmail.com> <d1peav$b8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> Yes, I agree. However, it should not be assumed that the agent is a robot,
> it may be a thick client written (like mine) in AJAX, GTK or some other
> thing.

A robot in this context is widely defined as any program that parses
server responses and acts based on those responses, this would include
your script

> I'm not sure what you mean by an easy to parse format? Just sending the
> token as 32 plaintext chars seems as easy as it could possibly be.

As I said I'm thinking of a *general* interface for robots, not just
something to get one single attribute on edit pages, although getting
the token would be included it would only be a small part of it.

For example, I wrote a robot to upload files two days ago, what has to
be done to upload a file to wikipedia is:

1. Send a POST request with the following: (so far so good)

wpUpload => 'Upload file', # actually it seems like this only has to
be sent, not with these specific contents, the code that parses it is:
} else if ( 'submit' == $this->mAction || $this->mUpload ) { where
mUpload is this string.
wpUploadFile => [ $file ],
wpUploadDescription => encode($encoding, $description),
wpUploadAffirm => 1,

2. Process whatever SpecialUpload spits out which can be
* Error:
** The image page is protected, wfMsg( 'protectedpage' )
** The filetype is not accepted, wfMsg( 'badfiletype' )
** The name is not accepted, wfMsg( 'illegalfilename' )
* Warning:
** The filesize (too big)
** The name of the file (s/ /_/)
** The file is empty
** The file already exists
* [.. probably something missing here]

in the case of an error you'll find
 on the page,
and
 if you'll get a warning, however nothing
tells you *what kind of warning* so you'll have to resort to actually
looking up the warnings in question in Language.php (this is assuming
you're using english and not one of the ~80 other languages) to tell
what kind of warning you just recived, this of course ignores all the
excess html you just recived which you have no use for at all.

So, what I'd like for Special:Upload is to be able to submit a POST
request to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?action=robot
and have it return something like:

largefile,fileexists

It could even return all possible strings as boolean values:

largefile=0
fileexists=1
emptyfile=1
[...]

or, in the case of ?action=robot on an article:
token=1231asdfasdt....

The the format is something which can be agreed on, but the actualy
point is that there's alot more that needs a robot interface than just
your 32 character edit token.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Ticket#: 115103-FW] Just wondering

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> For some the recognition and ownership of their efforts is important.
> I've remarked how on some user pages there is a very long list of the
> articles on which they have worked.  They are often dilligent about
> keeping it up to date.  When they stop keeping it up the list it's a
> good sign that they have begun learning to submerge their ego.

I must say it never occurred to me until I saw others doing it. I might
put articles I got through FAC on such a list, because that *is* quite
a personal effort. Then I could list with it the ones I failed to get
through ...

- d.


references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<9a878c4405032109141827f904@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1n0jp$46m$1@sea.gmane.org> <d1ndse$kj2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503211455354edc0a@mail.gmail.com>
	<51dd1af805032115001cee8ab2@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1osu9$4gp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af805032205268d9349a@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1peav$b8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503221123bc33567@mail.gmail.com>

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>> Yes, I agree. However, it should not be assumed that the agent is a
>> robot, it may be a thick client written (like mine) in AJAX, GTK or some
>> other thing.
>
> A robot in this context is widely defined as any program that parses
> server responses and acts based on those responses, this would include
> your script
>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by an easy to parse format? Just sending the
>> token as 32 plaintext chars seems as easy as it could possibly be.
>
> As I said I'm thinking of a *general* interface for robots, not just
> something to get one single attribute on edit pages, although getting
> the token would be included it would only be a small part of it.
>
> For example, I wrote a robot to upload files two days ago, what has to
> be done to upload a file to wikipedia is:
>
> 1. Send a POST request with the following: (so far so good)
>
> wpUpload => 'Upload file', # actually it seems like this only has to
> be sent, not with these specific contents, the code that parses it is:
> } else if ( 'submit' == $this->mAction || $this->mUpload ) { where
> mUpload is this string.
> wpUploadFile => [ $file ],
> wpUploadDescription => encode($encoding, $description),
> wpUploadAffirm => 1,
>
> 2. Process whatever SpecialUpload spits out which can be
> * Error:
> ** The image page is protected, wfMsg( 'protectedpage' )
> ** The filetype is not accepted, wfMsg( 'badfiletype' )
> ** The name is not accepted, wfMsg( 'illegalfilename' )
> * Warning:
> ** The filesize (too big)
> ** The name of the file (s/ /_/)
> ** The file is empty
> ** The file already exists
> * [.. probably something missing here]
>
> in the case of an error you'll find
 on the page,
> and
 if you'll get a warning, however nothing
> tells you *what kind of warning* so you'll have to resort to actually
> looking up the warnings in question in Language.php (this is assuming
> you're using english and not one of the ~80 other languages) to tell
> what kind of warning you just recived, this of course ignores all the
> excess html you just recived which you have no use for at all.
>
> So, what I'd like for Special:Upload is to be able to submit a POST
> request to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?action=robot
> and have it return something like:
>
> largefile,fileexists
>
> It could even return all possible strings as boolean values:
>
> largefile=0
> fileexists=1
> emptyfile=1
> [...]
>
> or, in the case of ?action=robot on an article:
> token=1231asdfasdt....
>
> The the format is something which can be agreed on, but the actualy
> point is that there's alot more that needs a robot interface than just
> your 32 character edit token.

Ok, I agree here. Some kind of simple XML format might be a nice way to do
it because we'd get the parser for 'free'. XML'd also fit in well with the
XML from Special:Export

Even with the present mediawiki is it advisable for a robot to upload
article text using index.php?title=foo&action=submit or Special:Upload?
I've been trying the former so far.

--
Jim


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Stan Shebs wrote:

>It used to be said that an experts in English could get to within
>50 miles of a person's birthplace just by listening to the dialect.
>Dunno if that's still true in this more mobile age.

Sounds quite plausible. I can get down to less then 10km in my area, and
it's even more specific in southern italy.

Alfio


references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org> <d1n0jp$46m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d1ndse$kj2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503211455354edc0a@mail.gmail.com>
	<51dd1af805032115001cee8ab2@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1osu9$4gp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af805032205268d9349a@mail.gmail.com> <d1peav$b8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503221123bc33567@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1pu7n$qcd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:14:59 +0000, Jim Higson <jh at 333.org> wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
> >> Yes, I agree. However, it should not be assumed that the agent is a
> >> robot, it may be a thick client written (like mine) in AJAX, GTK or some
> >> other thing.
> >
> > A robot in this context is widely defined as any program that parses
> > server responses and acts based on those responses, this would include
> > your script
> >
> >> I'm not sure what you mean by an easy to parse format? Just sending the
> >> token as 32 plaintext chars seems as easy as it could possibly be.
> >
> > As I said I'm thinking of a *general* interface for robots, not just
> > something to get one single attribute on edit pages, although getting
> > the token would be included it would only be a small part of it.
> >
> > For example, I wrote a robot to upload files two days ago, what has to
> > be done to upload a file to wikipedia is:
> >
> > 1. Send a POST request with the following: (so far so good)
> >
> > wpUpload => 'Upload file', # actually it seems like this only has to
> > be sent, not with these specific contents, the code that parses it is:
> > } else if ( 'submit' == $this->mAction || $this->mUpload ) { where
> > mUpload is this string.
> > wpUploadFile => [ $file ],
> > wpUploadDescription => encode($encoding, $description),
> > wpUploadAffirm => 1,
> >
> > 2. Process whatever SpecialUpload spits out which can be
> > * Error:
> > ** The image page is protected, wfMsg( 'protectedpage' )
> > ** The filetype is not accepted, wfMsg( 'badfiletype' )
> > ** The name is not accepted, wfMsg( 'illegalfilename' )
> > * Warning:
> > ** The filesize (too big)
> > ** The name of the file (s/ /_/)
> > ** The file is empty
> > ** The file already exists
> > * [.. probably something missing here]
> >
> > in the case of an error you'll find
 on the page,
> > and
 if you'll get a warning, however nothing
> > tells you *what kind of warning* so you'll have to resort to actually
> > looking up the warnings in question in Language.php (this is assuming
> > you're using english and not one of the ~80 other languages) to tell
> > what kind of warning you just recived, this of course ignores all the
> > excess html you just recived which you have no use for at all.
> >
> > So, what I'd like for Special:Upload is to be able to submit a POST
> > request to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?action=robot
> > and have it return something like:
> >
> > largefile,fileexists
> >
> > It could even return all possible strings as boolean values:
> >
> > largefile=0
> > fileexists=1
> > emptyfile=1
> > [...]
> >
> > or, in the case of ?action=robot on an article:
> > token=1231asdfasdt....
> >
> > The the format is something which can be agreed on, but the actualy
> > point is that there's alot more that needs a robot interface than just
> > your 32 character edit token.
>
> Ok, I agree here. Some kind of simple XML format might be a nice way to do
> it because we'd get the parser for 'free'. XML'd also fit in well with the
> XML from Special:Export
>
> Even with the present mediawiki is it advisable for a robot to upload
> article text using index.php?title=foo&action=submit or Special:Upload?
> I've been trying the former so far.

What do you mean "advisable"?, it's possible, but as I demonstrated
you somtimes run into parsing problems.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why can't they learn? (was [Ticket#: 115103-FW] Just
	wondering)

body:
Rick wrote:
>--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

[addiction model of wikipedia]

>> In the meantime, it gives
>>the
>>ArbCom considerable flexibility for more creative
>>remedies
>>for bad behaviour than a mere ban, which the real
>>addicts
>>tend to sockpuppet anyway. "You *really* want your
>>fix?
>>Write two 500-word essays on why NPOV and No
>>Personal Attacks
>>are good ideas. If we score each 9/10 or better, you
>>can
>>edit again." I think there's a lot of scope there
>>for really
>>*fixing* behaviour.

> That's a creative approach.  I can't wait to see what
> you come up with.  :)

The above is of course ridiculously elaborate. Ha! Ha! Though
we just handed down a requirement that an editor read through
the policies they broke and then post a note on their talk
page saying they'd done so, and are on a policy-violation parole
for a length of time. We'll see how that goes.

Given the best result of an arbcom case would be for everyone to
behave well afterwards, we are happily experimenting on our
HOPELESSLY ADDICTED lab rats to see what will work. It's fun!
And, we hope, lovingly productive in getting an encyclopedia
out the door. It's nice not being bound by precedent too.
Don't forget that anyone interested in a case is welcome to
suggest remedies on the proposed decision talk page!

- d.


from_name: Cesar Eduardo Barros

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange old revision links at en:

body:
Something odd seems to have happened to the old revisions at
[[en:Camp_Hero]].

Looking at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Camp_Hero&action=history , the
last diff is from 4 Jan 2005
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Camp_Hero&diff=9097678&oldid=11302087).
If you go there and click on the "Older edit" link, you go to a revision
from 7 Jan 2005 (in the middle of the history list). However, if you
cliked instead on "Newer edit" and then "Older edit", you would get the
real first revision, and then you can view all edits in the proper
sequence. Doing that you find in the middle of the sequence another
revision which is exactly the same as the one which created the article,
down to the date and time (i.e. it jumps from 7 Jan to 4 Jan).

This can be highly confusing; I got shouted at by someone who thought I
had changed the article for the worse ([[User_talk:CesarB#Camp_Hero]]),
when in fact I saw the article just at that revision identical to the
first one, and added a stub message.

Possibly the wrong date confused the history sorting, but it does not
explain how the original revision got duplicated.

Could someone please take a look and fix the history of that article?

--
Cesar Eduardo Barros
cesarb at cesarb.net
cesar.barros at gmail.com


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> The idea is that you cannot reliably pronounce a word as it it
>>> should be pronounced just by seeing the characters when the word
>>> originated from another language. By making these resources
>>> available, it is clear how they should be pronounced in the original
>>> language. Having pronunciations available is important because they
>>> help people study a language and, the wikipedia articles are a great
>>> resource to learn a language; they are short, cover a subject well
>>> and many of the related words related to a subject can be found in
>>> the article.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> This could be nightmarish in English - accents are widely variant and
>> in Britain are used as markers of social status to a ridiculous degree.
>> This is of course highly politicised. I confidently predict ten or more
>> sound files per word.
>
>
> It used to be said that an experts in English could get to within
> 50 miles of a person's birthplace just by listening to the dialect.
> Dunno if that's still true in this more mobile age. In any case,
> supplying the life background of the speaker is critical, just
> like identifying the location of a picture, and I hope everybody
> is doing that for uploaded pronunciations.

50 miles? Even in these more mobile days that's nothing. For some
communities, real experts could locate a persons' accent down to a few
streets.

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Help needed using POST to submit changes to my
	wiki

body:
>>> According to the DOM inspector form#editform fields are:
>>>
>>>         "wpTextbox1"
>>>         "wpSummary"
>>>         "wpSave"
>>>         "wpSection"
>>>         "wpEdittime"
>>>
>>> Is the edit time used as the token?
>>
>> No, the field is called precisely "wpEditToken" and contains a MD5 sum.
>> Good time to tell us which version of MediaWiki you are using, maybe
>> there is a bug?..
>
> Thanks for the help, I'm using 1.4beta6. There is definitely not any
> "wpEditToken" in the HTML. Maybe this is a known issue with beta6? When I
> get time I'll upgrade to 1.4rc1 and see if it persists.

I've just looked at meta.wikipedia (which runs 1.4rc1) and their edit pages
have no wpEditToken field either.

lynx -source "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=edit" | grep -i token
gives no output

Maybe edit tokens were removed in 1.4? If so there must be some other
reason my script's edits aren't being accepted.

--
Jim


from_name: Thomas Gries

references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d1n0jp$46m$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d1ndse$kj2$1@sea.gmane.org>	<51dd1af80503211455354edc0a@mail.gmail.com>	<51dd1af805032115001cee8ab2@mail.gmail.com>	<d1osu9$4gp$1@sea.gmane.org>	<51dd1af805032205268d9349a@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1peav$b8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<51dd1af80503221123bc33567@mail.gmail.com>	<d1pu7n$qcd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af805032212426e503404@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Last week's theme was: KISS = keep it short and simple, please you
re-apply it ?

?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:
[..many Kilobytes deleted ]


from_name: John Fader

body:
> lynx -source "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=edit" | grep -i token
> gives no output

The token isn't there unless you're logged in, it seems.

--
John Fader


body:
Arwel Parry wrote:

> 50 miles? Even in these more mobile days that's nothing. For some
> communities, real experts could locate a persons' accent down to a few
> streets.

I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17). I heard accents
from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON EARTH I'd
ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly homogeneous by
comparison.

- d.


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
For :ang, I need to use the accented ash character "?" - how would I encode that so it shows up?  Can I simply use the accented characters, or must I use the html or numerical equivalents?

Thanks,

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 10:18 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikistats

I am delighted the stats are back. Thanks a huge lot Erik. Ant

Erik Zachte a ?crit:
> Finally, new wikistats.
>
> It took a couple of weekends to get the scripts up to date for the new
> database format.
>
> You may have to refresh the page in your browser to see new stats (Ctrl-F5)
> Stats are generated from newest dump (March 9)
>
> The layout has been improved in some places (newest stats on top, language
> names in comparison tables).
>
> New features:
>
> Records counts per namespace:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#namespaces
>
> Percentage categorised articles (same url as above)
>
> Hierarchical category trees per Wikipedia (some are huge!):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/CategoryOverviewIndex.htm
>
> Not entirely new but not yet advertised here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TimeLinesIndex.htm
>
> EasyTimeline charts are collected per Wikipedia and listed together with the
> script code. This may serve as a source of inspiration and help to learn the
> syntax. Also this can help to find real gems on other Wikipedias that
> deserve to be translated. Although starting a timeline from scratch is not
> completely trivial, expanding, correcting or certainly translating an
> existing chart is really where the plug-in earns its name.
>
> Tech notes on script update:
>
> Decipering the serialized compressed info was not a major hurdle, although
> the Perl equivalent (http://hurring.com/code/perl/serialize/ )was unusable,
> way too slow (goes through a state machine for each character), so I had to
> cook something myself.
>
> Keeping everything within reasonable memory boundaries was more difficult,
> wherever possible data are written to disk in several bins (e.g. one
> intermediate file per month history), sorted per bin, then merged before
> readback.
>
> Erik Zachte

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


from_name: Jim Higson

body:
Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 10:15:58PM +0000, John Fader wrote:
>> > lynx -source
>> > "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=edit" |
>> > grep -i token gives no output
>>
>> The token isn't there unless you're logged in, it seems.
>>
>
> Well, exactly -- there is no point in verifying your login credentials
> if you are not logged in.
>
> But, it should not then bounce you to preview, as no token is required.
>
>Strange...

Ok, so since I'm not supporting logging in yet, it should work without
considering edit tokens.

Monitoring the http traffic, I notice the cookie PHPSESSID - would
this being set incorrectly cause an edit to fail?

I've pasted a captured session below. Hopefully someone might see from
this why the edit isn't checked in:

POST /wiki/index.php?title=Very_small_test&action=submit HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041003 Firefox/0.10
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Length: 884
Cookie: PHPSESSID=c55689cac6afedce4dfa9f3f290cf89c
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=wpTextbox1

this is a very small test.

[[オーバーク]]

 aaa ''' bbb ccc ''' ddd eee
 aaa ''' bbb '' ccc ''' ddd '' eee ''' ffff
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=wpSummary

type a summary of your edit here
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=wpSave

Save page
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=wpSection

sections!
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=wpEdittime

20050322224700
------------t4X4PnvyQFePUtyUn1guOoRIREp5XVvPZTTxEMvdcZ06RyaEzF8L1Xd--

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 23:01:37 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.51 (Fedora)
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.10
Content-language: en
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Expires: -1
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 3145
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

(html page with preview etc)


body:
Peter Lofting wrote:

> FWIW
> In England, within the first 30 seconds of someone opening their mouth,
> its still possible to place a person to within half a county or less
> purely from pronouciation.
> With longer listening that picks up key marker vowels its also possible
> identify what class of person they spend their time with - via either
> community, work or travel. That is particularly true of immigrants who
> learn their English from different classes of contact.
> e.g.  an Australian who lived in Canada and then moved to S. London
> bears the footprints in their accent.

My accent nowadays varies wildly with who I'm talking to ...

- d.


from_name: Andrew Archibald

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
Hi,

After participating in several discussions about SVG on the wikis, it
appears that SVG uploading is currently impossible by design.  As I
understand it, the uploading of SVG is disabled because of concerns about
SVG containing malware.

I have written an SVG sanitizer that detects (and removes, although this
may not be useful) the presence of script tags in SVG.  It still requires
some fine-tuning to match the requirements of the wikis, so I am inquiring
to find out what those requirements actually are.

Some background: SVG is a form of XML.  The SVG specification describes a
number of features, including vector art, animation, inclusion of external
resources, and scripting.  It is also possible (and not difficult) to
incorporate non-SVG XML inside an SVG file; individual SVG viewers may
ignore or interpret this XML.  Some examples include metadata tags (in RDF)
and program-specific SVG extensions.

In Wikipedia, there are a few diferent things we might wish to do with SVG:

* Simply store it for upload/download to provide diagrams (such as
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Thermal_reactor_diagram.png ) with
  accompanying source, so that they can be modified (the text translated,
for example).

* Render it on the server to generate PNGs at any desired resolution (as is
done, badly, with  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bi-flag.svg )

* Serve it up as an image so that it can be rendered in a browser (such as
  the non-free Adobe SVG plugin, konqueror, or the SVG-enabled version of
Mozilla).  (This is the only option that would make any use of the
(poorly-supported) animation and scripting capabilities of SVG).

I am suggesting only the first: simply serve it up for download.  There are
software issues with the second (no entirely satisfactory rendering
software exists; librsvg, batik, and inkscape are the leading free
contenders).  The third would require more extensive software modifications
and would only really be useful if the second worked.

The concern with this application is that the files may contain hostile
scripts which will be run by users who download the files and attempt to
edit them (akin to Word macro viruses).  (I know of no current SVG editor
that implements any form of scripting).

The questions that need to be answered before SVG upload could be
re-enabled are:

* What non-SVG content may an SVG file contain?  Metadata is common (for
example in the openclipart library of PD SVG files), as are
program-specific extensions.  If undesired non-SVG content is found, should
it be removed, or should the file be rejected? (Users of CorelDraw (for
example) may find it difficult to persuade CorelDraw to produce a pure SVG
file).

* Is it sufficient to remove all scripting elements from an SVG file?  (are
external resources a concern? animations?)  Should files containing
scripting elements have them removed, or should the files be rejected?

It would also be necessary for someone with experience with the Mediawiki
software to figure out how to integrate an SVG sanitizer with the software.

Discussions of SVG support and its desirability:

The original post to this mailing list in which Brion VIBBER announced that
he had disabled SVG:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-September/025467.html

I asked about SVG support; a bad workaround was suggested; vague allusions
to security problems were made; a workaround was suggested:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump_archive-11#SVG

[[en:User:KrisK]] asked about SVG support; I noted it was disabled; Brion
VIBBER gave a partial answer about why it was disabled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#raster_vs_vector_graphics

A recent version of my SVG sanitizer script:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aarchiba/SVG_sanitizer

In summary: What are the criteria for re-enabling SVG support?  There is
increasing demand for it, and it can be effectively sanitized.

Thanks,
Andrew


body:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 10:15:58PM +0000, John Fader wrote:
> > lynx -source "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=edit" | grep -i token
> > gives no output
>
> The token isn't there unless you're logged in, it seems.
>

Well, exactly -- there is no point in verifying your login credentials
if you are not logged in.

But, it should not then bounce you to preview, as no token is required.

Strange...

--
X windows: It's not how slow you make it.  It's how you make it slow.


from_name: Sj

subject:
[Wikimania-planning-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Latest wikinews :
	Wikimania, Wax

body:
I have been asking some potential paper-authors, who often write about
wikis and collaborative environments but are popular and usually busy,
whether they would be willing to submit papers for publication and
public discussion.  It wouldn't be a very official-sounding
publication cite, but then it's a rather new field.  It might be nice
to produce a proper proceedings for libraries that are interested,
which would be incentive to submit papers.  What do you think?

SJ

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 05:26:06 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:38:48 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are there arrangements where a presentation can be given without being
> > present, ie in the form of a brochure or other handout, or submitting
> > a presentation for somebody else to give (I think the former options
> > are more realistic)?
>
> Yes. We're going to have posters up. Usually the person presenting the
> poster would be available to talk about it at a specific time, but I
> don't see why we couldn't also allow presenterless posters to be up as
> well. Perhaps they could be discussed on IRC rather than live?
>
> There will be a package of stuff given to attendees, including the
> schedule, maps, and details on the sponsors. This could also include
> presentations etc from people not able to be present, as long as the
> printing costs aren't too prohibitive. A paid-for print on demand
> solution would be an alternative if we got too many of these.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimania-planning-l mailing list
> Wikimania-planning-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-planning-l
>

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> Unfourtenately the csv-download is still disabled (not your fault).
> Could *please* someone provide a way to download the raw data generated
> by Wikistat?

If Erik uploaded the files, they should be there and accessible. Can you
be more specific about the problem?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: El C

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWax

body:
Wow, nice, TBSDY!
And hi! :)

/little song n' dance

El_C

>I found this the other day: it's an index for Wikipedia!

>See http://www.wikiwax.com/

>TBSDY


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l] Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again

body:
The answer and key to that revolves around an unremitting application
of the No Original Reserach and Cite Sources policies. So long as an
item is empirically-grounded (for my own purposes as an editor, at
least, in the critical scholarship), there's good likelihood for a
reliable, verifiable NPOV content/exposition.

It's easy to give editorial advice through innuendo; yes, everyone's
for clear, critical thinking, including and not limited to people who
are far from clear or critical thinkers.

With all their money-bought and tradition of expertise, Britanica
simply cannot produce as much quality content as Wikipedia: they don't
have the (intellectual) labour power for it. The more the
abovementioned content policies are adhered to, the more Wikipedia's
credibility, as an authoritative source (compared to its Print
counterparts) will continue to rise.

I want to make another point, about Wikipedia as an 'immediately
reliable' and 'scholarly' resource, a point that I think the Print
Encyclopedia critiques are consistently neglecting and, perhaps, even
misrepresenting (this might even strike a few editors here as
peculiar, but I do think it makes a lot of sense). Example:

Let say, upon reading the article [[Snuh?]], which I find articulates
this or that well and is well-referenced, I wish to cite a passage
from it on a Peer Review publication; but let's also consider that
[[Snuh?]] is a contencious topic which, for much of the time,
undergoes POV wars/vandalism which, at times, dramatically alter its
'reliable' from, including perhaps the specific passage I intend to
cite.

I am, however, not under any obligation to merely have [[Snuh?]] per
se. in a footnote, rather, I can easily use [[Snuh? -- that specific
revision]]. That, then, easily solves the problem of 'immediate
reliability and stability.'

But, again, and to sum up, the key is to have that reliable,
verifiable element in a given article from the outset; not only that,
but as the predominant component (the aim for noting a specific
revision history in that way, after all, should be limited to serving
as a contingency measure, in case of drastic distortions due to POV
wars/vandalism at any given time). Thus, to ensure that that basis
exists, we arrive back full-circle to that dimension of NPOV: the
I'd-rather-not-just-take-your-word-for-it NOR and CS policies.

El_C

>It seemed to me from reading the article that McHenry's answers to his
>own concerns were inherent in Wikipedia's structure:

>"There is no guarantee that truth will win out; there is only our
>hard-won and too-seldom-employed knowledge of what gives us the best
>chance: the free exchange and clash of ideas." (Is Wikipedia not an
>obvious example of this?)

>In his final recommendations, he advocates "clear thinking", a "genial
>skepticism" to both one's own and others' opinions and "toleration"
>(tolerance, surely?). Theoretically, this is covered in NPOV, [[assume
>good faith]], and [[no personal attacks]] but as we all know these are
>violated daily. My question is: how do you (I,we) work this in
>practice from a personal perspective rather than looking at others?

>Cormac
>[[User:Cormaggio]] (en,m)


from_name: Angela

body:
On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:38:48 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there arrangements where a presentation can be given without being
> present, ie in the form of a brochure or other handout, or submitting
> a presentation for somebody else to give (I think the former options
> are more realistic)?

Yes. We're going to have posters up. Usually the person presenting the
poster would be available to talk about it at a specific time, but I
don't see why we couldn't also allow presenterless posters to be up as
well. Perhaps they could be discussed on IRC rather than live?

There will be a package of stuff given to attendees, including the
schedule, maps, and details on the sponsors. This could also include
presentations etc from people not able to be present, as long as the
printing costs aren't too prohibitive. A paid-for print on demand
solution would be an alternative if we got too many of these.

Angela.


body:
Will do. Good, that approach sounds like it's very much on the right
track to further standardize that practice, by making it as
inteligable as possible. It makes sense to expect ongoing development
(and progress) there. And yet, it still seems to elude the Print
Encyclopedia's critics in terms of some of its claims regarding an
allegedly 'inherent' unreliability and instability.

El_C

> Yep. Please have a glance over [[Category:Wikipedia 1.0]] and
> [[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]] .
>
> I understand the next version of MediaWiki will include a constant
> revision ID for the *current* version of an article as well as past
> versions, so you won't need to do an add-a-space edit to generate
> a version number.
>
>
> - d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Andrew Archibald wrote:
>
>> In Wikipedia, there are a few diferent things we might wish to do with
>> SVG:
>> * Simply store it for upload/download to provide diagrams (such as
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Thermal_reactor_diagram.png )
>> with  accompanying source, so that they can be modified (the text
>> translated, for example).
>
>
>
> Yep. Uploading a PNG is not actually providing the editable form per GFDL.
> When I've uploaded a PNG I've included my email for the SVG itself should
> anyone want the editable version.
>
> (Inkscape: coolest thing ever!)

We discussed possibilities for providing the original SVG (of course these
by their nature subvert wikipedia's "security"), including: post the SVG to
the image description page (fine for handwritten SVG, but when a few
circles and rectangles come out to 30K it's not so nice), sneak the SVG
into PNG comments (can even be zipped!), or find somewhere else to post the
stuff.  None were very satisfactory.  Neither is providing contact
information; users have a tendency to disappear.

My diagrams are not exactly the Mona Lisa, but I can easily imagine wanting
to translate the text...

Unfortunately, it really is possible to put scripts in SVG (it was designed
to replace Flash) and someone may someday write a viewer that executes such
  scripts in a trusted context, so it has been Decided that SVG uploads
should be disabled.

I'm trying to solve that problem.

Andrew


from_name: Anthere

body:
Just an opinion Angela.

While it is a good idea to try to redirect people asking questions to
irc meetings, one would also realise that not everyone is available for
these irc meetings.

Most of the discussions about wikimania are done essentially privately
(semi privacy), on a specific irc channel, at specific times, on
specific wiki, with specific mailing list.

The result of it is that it is essentially organised by a small group of
  people, who (it seems to me) regret a bit that there are no more
people to help.

I think that in communication, it is important to maintain a link with
mainstream channels of discussion, and welcome off-site chat on
wikimania, so that people staying in the main stream channel are made
aware of wikimania and the work around it. If they read something which
raise their attention, they are more likely to follow you in the semi
private areas. While if each time they try to raise the discussion in
the main stream channel of communication, one tell them to keep these
question for the semi-private area.... chance is that they NEVER go to
the semi-private areas.

This is true for wikimania.

This is true for any work on grants which is conveniently secured on a
closed wiki.

This could be true to a certain extent for local association work, if
you keep it entirely off wiki.

And so on.

Just my opinion.

Multiplication of discussion place is cleaner, but less productive
sometimes. Imho.

PS: never being available at irc times for wikimania discussions, I do
not participate to its organisation, but for reminding people from time
to time it exists.

Angela a ?crit:
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:38:48 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Are there arrangements where a presentation can be given without being
>>present, ie in the form of a brochure or other handout, or submitting
>>a presentation for somebody else to give (I think the former options
>>are more realistic)?
>
>
> Yes. We're going to have posters up. Usually the person presenting the
> poster would be available to talk about it at a specific time, but I
> don't see why we couldn't also allow presenterless posters to be up as
> well. Perhaps they could be discussed on IRC rather than live?
>
> There will be a package of stuff given to attendees, including the
> schedule, maps, and details on the sponsors. This could also include
> presentations etc from people not able to be present, as long as the
> printing costs aren't too prohibitive. A paid-for print on demand
> solution would be an alternative if we got too many of these.
>
> Angela.


body:
Angela wrote:
>> We're going to have posters up. Usually the person presenting the
>> poster would be available to talk about it at a specific time, but I
>> don't see why we couldn't also allow presenterless posters to be up as
>> well. Perhaps they could be discussed on IRC rather than live?

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> While it is a good idea to try to redirect people asking questions to
> irc meetings, one would also realise that not everyone is available for
> these irc meetings.
> Most of the discussions about wikimania are done essentially privately
> (semi privacy), on a specific irc channel, at specific times, on
> specific wiki, with specific mailing list.....

I wasn't talking about Wikimania meetings. I was talking about how
posters could be discussed if the creator of a poster was not present
at Wikimania. This is about how people not attending the conference
could be involved *during* the conference, not about the organsiation
of the conference before it happens.

Angela.


from_name: Blair P. Houghton

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWax

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> I found this the other day: it's an index for Wikipedia!
>
> See http://www.wikiwax.com/

That's got to be a total blast over a third-world dialup connection...

--Blair


body:
Angela a ?crit:
> Angela wrote:
>
>>>We're going to have posters up. Usually the person presenting the
>>>poster would be available to talk about it at a specific time, but I
>>>don't see why we couldn't also allow presenterless posters to be up as
>>>well. Perhaps they could be discussed on IRC rather than live?
>>
>
> Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>While it is a good idea to try to redirect people asking questions to
>>irc meetings, one would also realise that not everyone is available for
>>these irc meetings.
>>Most of the discussions about wikimania are done essentially privately
>>(semi privacy), on a specific irc channel, at specific times, on
>>specific wiki, with specific mailing list.....
>
>
> I wasn't talking about Wikimania meetings. I was talking about how
> posters could be discussed if the creator of a poster was not present
> at Wikimania. This is about how people not attending the conference
> could be involved *during* the conference, not about the organsiation
> of the conference before it happens.
>
> Angela.

Hmmm, ah, okay. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Ant


subject: [Wikitech-l] Downtime Error messages translation

body:
On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:31:29 +0200, Andreas Kasenides <ank at cs.ucy.ac.cy> wrote:
> Would a kind soul direct me to the procedure in translating
> the error messages which appear when the Wikipedia servers
> have problems.

I think the best way to get this done would be to create a request
within bugzilla at <http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/>, and then attach
the translations to that request.

If you want to encourage other people to add translations for their
own languages, you could create pages for this to happen on meta. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests and the
translators' mailing list at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translators-l

Angela.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
Note : Brief howto SVG-enable Firefox on Windows at [1].

Magnus

[1] http://magnusmanske.de/wikimaps/index.php/How_to_SVG-enable_Firefox

Andrew Archibald schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> After participating in several discussions about SVG on the wikis, it
> appears that SVG uploading is currently impossible by design.  As I
> understand it, the uploading of SVG is disabled because of concerns
> about SVG containing malware.
>
> I have written an SVG sanitizer that detects (and removes, although this
> may not be useful) the presence of script tags in SVG.  It still
> requires some fine-tuning to match the requirements of the wikis, so I
> am inquiring to find out what those requirements actually are.
>
>
> Some background: SVG is a form of XML.  The SVG specification describes
> a number of features, including vector art, animation, inclusion of
> external resources, and scripting.  It is also possible (and not
> difficult) to incorporate non-SVG XML inside an SVG file; individual SVG
> viewers may ignore or interpret this XML.  Some examples include
> metadata tags (in RDF) and program-specific SVG extensions.
>
> In Wikipedia, there are a few diferent things we might wish to do with SVG:
>
> * Simply store it for upload/download to provide diagrams (such as
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Thermal_reactor_diagram.png )
> with  accompanying source, so that they can be modified (the text
> translated, for example).
>
> * Render it on the server to generate PNGs at any desired resolution (as
> is done, badly, with  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bi-flag.svg )
>
> * Serve it up as an image so that it can be rendered in a browser (such
> as  the non-free Adobe SVG plugin, konqueror, or the SVG-enabled version
> of Mozilla).  (This is the only option that would make any use of the
> (poorly-supported) animation and scripting capabilities of SVG).
>
>
> I am suggesting only the first: simply serve it up for download.  There
> are software issues with the second (no entirely satisfactory rendering
> software exists; librsvg, batik, and inkscape are the leading free
> contenders).  The third would require more extensive software
> modifications and would only really be useful if the second worked.
>
> The concern with this application is that the files may contain hostile
> scripts which will be run by users who download the files and attempt to
> edit them (akin to Word macro viruses).  (I know of no current SVG
> editor that implements any form of scripting).
>
>
>
> The questions that need to be answered before SVG upload could be
> re-enabled are:
>
> * What non-SVG content may an SVG file contain?  Metadata is common (for
> example in the openclipart library of PD SVG files), as are
> program-specific extensions.  If undesired non-SVG content is found,
> should it be removed, or should the file be rejected? (Users of
> CorelDraw (for example) may find it difficult to persuade CorelDraw to
> produce a pure SVG file).
>
> * Is it sufficient to remove all scripting elements from an SVG file?
> (are external resources a concern? animations?)  Should files containing
> scripting elements have them removed, or should the files be rejected?
>
>
> It would also be necessary for someone with experience with the
> Mediawiki software to figure out how to integrate an SVG sanitizer with
> the software.
>
>
>
> Discussions of SVG support and its desirability:
>
> The original post to this mailing list in which Brion VIBBER announced
> that he had disabled SVG:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-September/025467.html
>
> I asked about SVG support; a bad workaround was suggested; vague
> allusions to security problems were made; a workaround was suggested:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump_archive-11#SVG
>
> [[en:User:KrisK]] asked about SVG support; I noted it was disabled;
> Brion VIBBER gave a partial answer about why it was disabled.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#raster_vs_vector_graphics
>
>
>
>
> A recent version of my SVG sanitizer script:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aarchiba/SVG_sanitizer
>
>
>
> In summary: What are the criteria for re-enabling SVG support?  There is
> increasing demand for it, and it can be effectively sanitized.
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: David Gerard

body:
El C wrote:

> I want to make another point, about Wikipedia as an 'immediately
> reliable' and 'scholarly' resource, a point that I think the Print
> Encyclopedia critiques are consistently neglecting and, perhaps, even
> misrepresenting (this might even strike a few editors here as
> peculiar, but I do think it makes a lot of sense). Example:
> Let say, upon reading the article [[Snuh?]], which I find articulates
> this or that well and is well-referenced, I wish to cite a passage
> from it on a Peer Review publication; but let's also consider that
> [[Snuh?]] is a contencious topic which, for much of the time,
> undergoes POV wars/vandalism which, at times, dramatically alter its
> 'reliable' from, including perhaps the specific passage I intend to
> cite.
> I am, however, not under any obligation to merely have [[Snuh?]] per
> se. in a footnote, rather, I can easily use [[Snuh? -- that specific
> revision]]. That, then, easily solves the problem of 'immediate
> reliability and stability.'

Yep. Please have a glance over [[Category:Wikipedia 1.0]] and
[[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]] .

I understand the next version of MediaWiki will include a constant
revision ID for the *current* version of an article as well as past
versions, so you won't need to do an add-a-space edit to generate
a version number.

- d.


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Finally, new wikistats.
>
> It took a couple of weekends to get the scripts up to date for the new
> database format.

Thanks a lot!

Unfourtenately the csv-download is still disabled (not your fault).
Could *please* someone provide a way to download the raw data generated
by Wikistat?

Thanks a lot!
Jakob


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
Andrew Archibald wrote:

> In Wikipedia, there are a few diferent things we might wish to do with SVG:
> * Simply store it for upload/download to provide diagrams (such as
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Thermal_reactor_diagram.png )
> with  accompanying source, so that they can be modified (the text
> translated, for example).

Yep. Uploading a PNG is not actually providing the editable form per GFDL.
When I've uploaded a PNG I've included my email for the SVG itself should
anyone want the editable version.

(Inkscape: coolest thing ever!)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:

>>Yep. Uploading a PNG is not actually providing the editable form per GFDL.
>>When I've uploaded a PNG I've included my email for the SVG itself should
>>anyone want the editable version.

> Strictly speaking, that's not a problem whith the GFDL: you are uploading
> and distributing a PNG, and the license applies to that image, not to the
> SVG. If instead you are redistributing someone else's SVG, then the GFDL
> requires you to put the SVG itself for download.

Yeah. My real objection is that it lacks *elegance*. Oh well.

- d.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:

>Yep. Uploading a PNG is not actually providing the editable form per GFDL.
>When I've uploaded a PNG I've included my email for the SVG itself should
>anyone want the editable version.

Strictly speaking, that's not a problem whith the GFDL: you are uploading
and distributing a PNG, and the license applies to that image, not to the
SVG. If instead you are redistributing someone else's SVG, then the GFDL
requires you to put the SVG itself for download.

Alfio


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Putting Wikipedia on a CD or DVD

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

> I have some experience at the YMCA Kampala (Uganda) - which has its
> own computer room; and my mother is just back from a secondary school
> in the coffee-growing area of Tanzania.  The latter has no working
> computers, and is not likely to be able to get technician-level help.
>
> Those are relatively typical, I suppose, of the capital
> city/up-country constrasts in Africa, where things are relatively
> hopeful (for example, high uptakes of primary education).
>
> Any donated software is likely to find its way to institutions, rather
> than individuals - that's one point.

Of course we have to get Wikipedia ready with a working Wiki
rating/tagging/validation system.  That is really our whole job.

I work with a help-Africa charity called Care For Life that is based in
Mozambique, and I think if Wikipedia could provide reliable, selectable
content, that humanitarian organizations like Care For Life could
creatively solve the problem of distribution.  I could ask the board of
Care For Life, but it seems it would be a small matter to create a
Wikipedia Appliance that was optimized for price and utility in a given
area.  For example, Care For Life could purchase or receive donations of
cheap computers and provide them with Wikipedia 1.0 loaded at their
Literacy Centers.

Tom Haws
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
-Jimmy Wales, July 2004


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWax

body:
I found this the other day: it's an index for Wikipedia!

See http://www.wikiwax.com/

TBSDY


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
>> Can I simply use the accented
>> characters, or must I use the html or numerical equivalents?

> I believe he means for a translation of the Wikistats interface.

Html characters are acceptable in α or Ӓ format,
but you can also use utf-8 encoded texts, no problem.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New Wikistats

body:
>> Unfourtenately the csv-download is still disabled (not your fault).
>> Could *please* someone provide a way to download the raw data generated
>> by Wikistat

> Can you be more specific about the problem?

Public access to http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/ has been switched
off some months ago.
Reason given was that the files are too large for download (20 Mb now)

I will add a last step to the counts job, to zip csv files, and make those
accessable.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG uploading

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>>Yep. Uploading a PNG is not actually providing the editable form per GFDL.
>>When I've uploaded a PNG I've included my email for the SVG itself should
>>anyone want the editable version.
>
>
> Strictly speaking, that's not a problem whith the GFDL: you are uploading
> and distributing a PNG, and the license applies to that image, not to the
> SVG. If instead you are redistributing someone else's SVG, then the GFDL
> requires you to put the SVG itself for download.

Well, it does mean that if you have a GFDL SVG file, you can't put a PNG of
it on Wikipedia.  There do not seem to be many of those yet, but with the
wide distribution of Inkscape, I expect them to start appearing rapidly.

This is easily remedied by allowing SVG upload, which is why I am asking
what would be needed for it to be re-enabled.

Andrew


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Will Wikipedia fit on a CD or DVD?

How big is the "current article" database? (Excluding the text
of all previous versions, because some articles have been
modified over 500 times!)

What are Wikipedia's plans to move toward 1.0 and issue a Disk,
Book, or Multi-volume set?

How far has anyone looked into delivering copies of Wikipedia
(in any medium) to third-world schools, as in Africa or
Indonesia? (To show my level of ignorance: Are there even any
public libraries in Africa?)

If Wikipedia received a donation of $100,000 - specifically earmarked
for CD distribution to Africa, COULD it do anything?

Uncle Ed


from_name: Reinhardt Wiewe

subject:
[Wikitech-l]
	http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_server_overload_2005-03

body:
Hall?!

Is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_server_overload_2005-03
solved or is this still a problem?

Kve?ja / Gru? / Salutas / Best regards / Salutari cordiale

Reinhardt [[User:Gangleri]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.5/HEAD schema finalised?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I understand the 1.5 database schema is considerably changed from that
> of 1.4. Is it finalised? Still susceptible to minor tweaks? Still
> susceptible to complete revision?

Some additional minor tweaks will be made.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.5/HEAD schema finalised?

body:
Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> There are some schema changes I'd still like to see happen.  One
> thing I had in mind was changing some tables who have a namespace
> and title now and change it into a page_id.  For instance
> watchlist now has has:
>   wl_namespace tinyint(2) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
>   wl_title varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default '',
>
> That to could be changed to:
>   wl_page int(8) unsigned NOT NULL,
>
> Same goes for archive, recentchanges, querycache, logging.

None of these can use page_id as they may refer to pages that don't exist.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:
> I have enabled editing user CSS/JS, and it doesn't work at all (preview
> shows garbled stuff -- it is based on static version of CSS, and not, say,
> Mediawiki:Monobook.css (which is used in rendering the site), and after saving
> there is no effect). Moreover, I have removed my user CSS and cannot get rid
> of it... It appears from nowhere. Adding new stuff does not work, either.
> This is both in 1.3.11 and 1.4.0.

Cleared browser cache?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
Tels wrote:
> It would have been usefull for me to have a more detailed UPGRADE file
> which mentions some of these issues, so maybe this info can be
> incorporated by someone :)

"If you hacked up your source code you may have to change it."? :)

> PS: Is somebody working on a project to make the Mediawiki interface more
> easily customizable, e.g. removing the logo, adding/renaming menu entries
> etc by editing a local settings file or even via GUI?

There was some partial work on this at some point but I don't think it's
anywhere near ready, if it works at all.

MediaWiki is primarily aimed at Wikimedia's wikis, where we're running
several hundred wikis off of a single central source set with a complex
centralized configuration.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>If Wikipedia received a donation of $100,000 - specifically earmarked
>for CD distribution to Africa, COULD it do anything?
>
A possible problem -
    1. What good are CDs when you don't have a computer?
    2. What good are computers when you don't have electricity?

Ec


body:
Tom Haws wrote:

> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>> I have some experience at the YMCA Kampala (Uganda) - which has its
>> own computer room; and my mother is just back from a secondary school
>> in the coffee-growing area of Tanzania.  The latter has no working
>> computers, and is not likely to be able to get technician-level help.
>>
>> Those are relatively typical, I suppose, of the capital
>> city/up-country constrasts in Africa, where things are relatively
>> hopeful (for example, high uptakes of primary education).
>>
>> Any donated software is likely to find its way to institutions,
>> rather than individuals - that's one point.
>
> Of course we have to get Wikipedia ready with a working Wiki
> rating/tagging/validation system.  That is really our whole job.
> I work with a help-Africa charity called Care For Life that is based
> in Mozambique, and I think if Wikipedia could provide reliable,
> selectable content, that humanitarian organizations like Care For Life
> could creatively solve the problem of distribution.  I could ask the
> board of Care For Life, but it seems it would be a small matter to
> create a Wikipedia Appliance that was optimized for price and utility
> in a given area.  For example, Care For Life could purchase or receive
> donations of cheap computers and provide them with Wikipedia 1.0
> loaded at their Literacy Centers.

One needs to consider what requirements should be a part of a "cheap
computer".  CD drives are relatively recent in the technological
history, and the older slower drives may be made available for these
machines.  On the other hand, it may not be cost effective to upgrade
these machines to have great graphics.  This would suggest that there
should be a 1.0 version with all pictures stripped out so that the
recipients can at least benefit from the text.

Ec


from_name: Joseph Reagle

body:
On Wednesday 23 March 2005 12:54, Nathan Wong wrote:
> It would fit on a DVD - well, the sQL database would anyway.

What about using a compressed file system, like Linux Live CDs?


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiWax

body:
Blair P. Houghton wrote:
> csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

>> I found this the other day: it's an index for Wikipedia!
>> See http://www.wikiwax.com/

> That's got to be a total blast over a third-world dialup connection...

I'm stuck on dialup this week - not third world, but distinctly crappy
(starts at 40kbps but drops out quite a bit) - and it had a time-delay
effect but was quite usable.

- d.


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> The English current text ....

Hang on.  Let me make sure I understand this.  We are not ready for 1.0
right now, but we are talking about starting making early distributions
so we can get the mechanics down right?  So now we are saying, Toward
0.1?  There's not much downside to that, anyone who mocks a version 0.1
distribution for vandalism won't get much sympathy.  But will there be
any real demand for a 0.1 version from the people we are hoping to
serve, and does it serve our reputation to foist early versions on
unsuspecting customers?


from_name: Frank Niedermann

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Warning: arg2 must be passed an array in
	LanguageUtf8.php(53): regexp code

body:
Hallo,

I'm getting the following warning on top of all MediaWiki pages:

Warning:  arg2 must be passed an array in
/srv/www/htdocs/wiki/languages/LanguageUtf8.php(53) : regexp code on line 1

It's the MediaWiki version 1.4.0 (the new stable version) on SuSE Linux
Enterprise Server 8 with PHP 4.2.2.

How can I solve that issue?

Regards,
  Frank


from_name: Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help needed using POST to submit changes to my wiki

body:
On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 01:27:29PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:
> >Yes, but why in mediawiki-1.3.11, I have the same result when I'm using the
> >canonical edit form? Tokens just fail to match. As well as some users get
> >logged out right when they try to edit anything (cookies are ok on both
> >server and clients), but I cannot reproduce this.
>
> Sounds like a failure of PHP's session data. Make sure this is set up
> correctly; if you're on a server farm (such as SourceForge's project web
> space) PHP may be incorrectly configured to save session data onto the
> local hard drive where it won't be picked up by subsequent hits on other
> servers.
>
Well, well... It seems to pass wsEditToken for some articles, while for others
it just fails to (I wrote a quick'n'dirty script which dumps the session).

I just don't know what can be reason for that. When you're calling editToken()
for the first time it generates the token and saves it in the session, while
upon subsequent calls it doesn't touch it. Truly, it is a mystery.

By the way, the script dumping the session does not use $_SESSION. It goes
directly where PHP puts session files and reads the one for current session.

Could it be so that session data is silently destroyed and some values restored
from cookies (I mean user login/password hash which stay there)?

--
X windows:  Never had it.  Never will.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Nathan Wong wrote:

>> How big is the "current article" database? (Excluding the text of all
>> previous versions, because some articles have been modified over 500
>> times!)
>>
>>
> 1460 MB according to http://download.wikimedia.org/

That's for the current article databases for all languages combined,
though. English is 585MB, which should fit onto a CD with a little room
to spare. If one were frugal with the markup, I wonder if perhaps an
HTML version would fit. There'd be no images, though; you'd need to do a
DVD version (or multi-CD, maybe split up alphabetically like a
traditional encyclopedia :) for that.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Recent changes - Hide minor edits | Show bots | Hide
	logged in users

body:
Hall?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
includes
Hide minor edits | Show bots | Hide logged in users

http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges and
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges does not.

How this can be changed?

Kve?ja / Gru? / Salutas / Best regards / Salutari cordiale

Reinhardt [[User:Gangleri]]


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:13:52 +0100, Reinhardt Wiewe
<reinhardt.wiewe at lenauschule.de> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
> includes
> Hide minor edits | Show bots | Hide logged in users
>
> http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges and
> http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges does not.
>
> How this can be changed?

You have to fix the translation of [[MediaWiki:Rclinks]] (or
LanguageXx.php for a generic solution), see
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-February/027406.html

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Tels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Help needed using POST to submit
	changes to my wiki

references:
<d1mns7$20b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80503221123bc33567@mail.gmail.com>
	<d1pu7n$qcd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 22 March 2005 21:14, Jim Higson wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> >> Yes, I agree. However, it should not be assumed that the agent is a
> >> robot, it may be a thick client written (like mine) in AJAX, GTK or
> >> some other thing.
> > The the format is something which can be agreed on, but the actualy
> > point is that there's alot more that needs a robot interface than
> > just your 32 character edit token.
>
> Ok, I agree here. Some kind of simple XML format might be a nice way to
> do it because we'd get the parser for 'free'. XML'd also fit in well
> with the XML from Special:Export

XML and simple is an oxymoron :) While I agree on the robot-api, I think
XML is overkill. It would, for instance, make necc. that every robot
includes the whole XML libs just to parse the response, which throws
simple libwwwget Perl robots out of the window.

KISS :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Mar 23 17:37:20 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~hstamm/beweis.html - N?tzliche
 Beweismethoden f?r jeden Tag

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

i just updated an 1.3.x installation to v1.4 and run into a couple issues:

* my <graph> extension (see http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/) stopped
working. It turns out that I had the "include(..)" line at the top of
Localsettings, but for v1.4 some of the settings (defaulst?) are nec. to
come _before_ including the extension. That took a while to figure out
because there were no errors/warnings...
* I did add an extra menu point in the toolbox in
"templates/xhtml_skin.php" (or whatever it was called). It turns out now
that the menu is generated in Monobook so I had to hack it in there
(which also probably means my extra menu point only shows up when the
user uses Monobook :/
* I had some additional buttons on the edit form, these were gone and I
had to re-add them, but the file location changed, they are now in
"includes/EditPage.php" (I think) instead of "includes/somefile".
* if you unpack v1.4 over v1.3, you have a couple unused files lying
around. I haven't made an exact list, but it seems at least "templates/"
and "stylesheets/images" are now no longer nec.

It would have been usefull for me to have a more detailed UPGRADE file
which mentions some of these issues, so maybe this info can be
incorporated by someone :)

Hope this is usefull for someone,

Tels

PS: Is somebody working on a project to make the Mediawiki interface more
easily customizable, e.g. removing the logo, adding/renaming menu entries
etc by editing a local settings file or even via GUI? The current way in
either changing the equivalent of "Special::AllMessages" or hacking the
source is not very nice and it breaks with each revision of Mediawiki
again - causing me work on updates :)

- --
 Signed on Wed Mar 23 17:40:22 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "We have problems like this all of the time," Kirk said, trying to
 reassure me.  "Sometimes its really hard to get things burning." --
 http://tinyurl.com/qmg5

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from_name: Nathan Wong

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Will Wikipedia fit on a CD or DVD?
>
>
It would fit on a DVD - well, the sQL database would anyway.

>How big is the "current article" database? (Excluding the text
>of all previous versions, because some articles have been
>modified over 500 times!)
>
>
>
1460 MB according to http://download.wikimedia.org/


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>If Wikipedia received a donation of $100,000 - specifically earmarked
for CD distribution to Africa, COULD it do anything?

I have some experience at the YMCA Kampala (Uganda) - which has its own
computer room; and my mother is just back from a secondary school in the
coffee-growing area of Tanzania.  The latter has no working computers, and
is not likely to be able to get technician-level help.

Those are relatively typical, I suppose, of the capital city/up-country
constrasts in Africa, where things are relatively hopeful (for example, high
uptakes of primary education).

Any donated software is likely to find its way to institutions, rather than
individuals - that's one point.

Charles


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary Search Link

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:
> I think this isn't the right list, but the only one I'm subscribed to:
> the http://www.wiktionary.org search field links to wikipedia.org
> entries, not to the wiktionary.org ones.

Fixed.

(You might or might not have to reload the portal page to make sure it
has the updated form.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary Search Link

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:
> I think this isn't the right list, but the only one I'm subscribed to:
> the http://www.wiktionary.org search field links to wikipedia.org
> entries, not to the wiktionary.org ones.

Fixed.

(You might or might not have to reload the portal page to make sure it
has the updated form.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionary Search Link

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:
> I think this isn't the right list, but the only one I'm subscribed to:
> the http://www.wiktionary.org search field links to wikipedia.org
> entries, not to the wiktionary.org ones.

Fixed.

(You might or might not have to reload the portal page to make sure it
has the updated form.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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