from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Free Software Magazine and Wikipedia

body:
Wikisource is the place you're looking for - it deals with documents,
where Commons deals with other media.

-- ambi

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:36:39 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP <merc at mobily.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> OK. However, in the page I read:
>
> "The Wikimedia Commons is a project that provides a central repository
> for free images, music, sound & video clips and, possibly, texts and
> spoken texts, used in pages of any Wikimedia project"
>
> It seems like a spot for Music and visual arts, more than computer
> articles...
> Please remember that we don't mind changing the license of the articles
> if we need to!
>
> Is Wikipedia Commons really the best spot for non-encyclopedia articles?
>
> Bye!
>
> Merc.
>
> On 29/03/2005, at 5:27 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> > Tony, you're right, it seems wikicommons is probably a better fit,
> > since it supports more than just GFDL, and has Creative Commons
> > licenses.
> >
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> >
> > -Andrew
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:45:29 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP <merc at mobily.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >>  From the Welcome page:
> >>
> >> Welcome to Wikisource. This site is a repository of source texts in
> >> any
> >> language which are either in the public domain, or are released under
> >> the GNU Free Documentation License. The site is part of the Wikimedia
> >> foundation and is a sister project of Wikipedia, which is a
> >> multilingual project to create a complete and accurate, free content
> >> encyclopedia.
> >>
> >> It only talks about GNU FDL, not Verbatim.
> >>
> >> Is the page not up-to-date?
> >>
> >> Merc.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 29/03/2005, at 2:01 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:
> >>
> >>> You might want to take a look at Wikisource, which is a repository
> >>> for
> >>> verbatim content.
> >>>
> >>> -Andrew
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:54:38 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP
> >>> <merc at mobily.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>>
> >>>> My name is Tony Mobily. I am the Editor In Chief of Free Software
> >>>> Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com).
> >>>>
> >>>> Our magazine has articles about free software and free culture in
> >>>> general. All our articles are released under a free license (Cretive
> >>>> Common, GFDL or Verbatim Only) 6 weeks after the magazine is out.
> >>>> I KNOW that a Verbatim Only license is hardly free, but it's our
> >>>> current option for "opinionated" articles about a specific subject.
> >>>>
> >>>> Some of my authors told me that some of the articles would be
> >>>> perfect
> >>>> as follow-up articles to wikipedia entries. The beauty of this is
> >>>> that
> >>>> the follow-up articles themselves would be editable, and would
> >>>> therefore stay "alive".
> >>>>
> >>>> For example he article "Format Wars"
> >>>> (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_01/
> >>>> focus_format_history/) would fit very neatly in Wikipedia's
> >>>> "File_format" entry.
> >>>>
> >>>> The requirement of course would be that these article are released
> >>>> under the GFDL. That will depend on the authors, but I have talked
> >>>> to
> >>>> some of them already and they said that they would be happy with
> >>>> that.
> >>>>
> >>>> The problem is: do you have a spot in Wikipedia (or in "Wikimedia"
> >>>> in
> >>>> general) for general articles such as the ones we publish? If the
> >>>> answer is "no", would it be worthwhile creating such a spot?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks a lot,
> >>>>
> >>>> Merc.
> >>>>
> >>>> Tony Mobily
> >>>> Editor-In-Chief
> >>>> Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> --
> >> ----
> >> Tony Mobily
> >> Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
> >> "...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine
> >> 05/2004
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> Tony Mobily
> Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
> "...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Syntax standardization effort

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:19:46 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> At ETech in San Francisco, I met with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, and
> we discussed the idea that there should be a central core set of
> standard wiki syntax.  Ross was quite keen on the concept.
>
> Standard syntax is important for the entire wiki world so that as
> people become more accustomed to using wikis for all kinds of things,
> they can feel comfortable on a variety of platforms.

How about fixing our own first? That is, template syntax:

Use image: [[Image:Name.jpg]]
Mention image: [[:Image:Name.jpg]]
Use category: [[Category:People]]
Mention category: [[:Category:People]]
Use template: {{Box}} (not [[Template:Box]] or {{Template:Box}})
-> I can understand {{Box}} as a shorthand for {{Template:Box}} as
people will rarely use namespace 0 stuff as templates, so why not
{{Template:Box}} but {{:Template:Box}} ?
Use template (substitution): {{subst:Box}} (no suggestions from me here, sorry)
Mention template: [[Template:Box]]

Tomer


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
Please perhaps you want to consider to visit the new page
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/FulltextSearchEngines
when you want to participate the discussion about a new full text search
engine ?

The page and its talk page is awaiting your discussions.

Tom


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> I propose that we set up a group of people either in a mailing list or
> a wiki or both, and invite representatives from all the major wiki
> software projects and companies to participate in a syntax standard.

http://www.freelists.org/list/wiki

There is already a group and a mailing list, but activity is rather low.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> http://www.freelists.org/list/wiki
>
> There is already a group and a mailing list, but activity is rather low.
>
Hmmm talking about wiki syntax standardization in a email list sounds
rather bizarre.

Nontheless, I remind that there are already projects comparing different
syntax aspects of different wiki engines.

http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:compare

this matrix, right. s12n would maybe start from there.

Mathias


list: wikien-l

from_name: Deathphoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Geoffrey Burling wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Seth Ilys wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 05:02:33 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
>> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Again, I have not seen a single example of a respected encyclopedia
>>> doing this.
>>> Give me one example and I'll stop complaining.
>>
>>
>> There are several examples of this in [[nihilartikel]].
>>
> Sheesh, if there is so much resistence over [[European toilet paper]],
> how about if we were to nominate a real topic, like [[Wankers Corner,
> Oregon]] for Friday's FAC?
>
> Unless none of you trust my word that it actually exists?

Or perhaps [[exploding whale]]. There are plenty of articles we could
use. The problem is, with an article like that posted on April Fool's,
we run the risk of people actually believing that the article is a fake,
when in fact, it's not.

Cheers,

DPh


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki redirects disabled

body:
Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050330 14:44]:

> Due to popular demand (I'm told consensus), I've disabled interwiki
> redirects on all projects. Also, redirects to special pages are
> disabled, which use the same mechanism and so are just as hard to revert.

Now loads the redirect, shows you what you're about to click on. Perfect.

(Of course, the vandals will upload an offending image under an inoffensive
name before adding their link. But anyway.)

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] interwikis redirects disabled

body:
Mark Williamson (node.ue at gmail.com) [050330 15:07]:

> I hope that this doesn't stop Brion from working on the feature in the
> hope that we can re-enable these redirects.

The current functionality shows you the link you're being directed to and
you have to click on it. It doesn't feel onerous to me, at least for the
moment. Let's see how it goes.

- d.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia
> servers to block open proxies.
>
> If someone is having troubles to edit now, here are the steps he can
> do to solve the problem:
> * he first has to determine the IP address wikipedia is blocking,
> that's not too hard, it's on the blocking page
> * then he has to get someone on another computer to check if it's an
> open proxy. the procedure is described here:
> http://www.sorbs.net/faq/proxy.shtml
> * if it is, then he should complain to whoever controls the server to
> fix the configuration
> * if not, he should request a retest
> (http://www.sorbs.net/faq/retest.shtml) to be taken out of the list.
> the status of the proxy might have changed since it was last scanned.
>
So we have to go to another project to get unblocked on wikipedia. This
is unbelievable and sickening

W


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia == Fox News (was: Friday's featured article)

body:
Participating in April fools and the phenomena you describe below
really couldn't be more divorced in my opinion.

Christiaan

On 30 Mar 2005, at 8:48 pm, Snowspinner wrote:

> I meant the suggestion in terms of reputability. I don't think we're
> seen as having a neo-conservative agenda. But I think we're about as
> trusted by a lot of people. In fact, I know we are. Five minutes ago,
> sitting in my office, I heard another TA tell a student not to use
> Wikipedia as a source because "anyone can edit it" so it must not be
> reliable. She looked to me for affirmation, and I said that, actually,
> it's very reliable and that false information gets removed quickly.
> She wasn't convinced, and told the student not to use it anyway.
>
> We can't afford to knowingly post false information. Too many people
> think we do it already.
>
> -Snowspinner


from_name: Axel

body:
Here's another pointer:
http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=RFCWiki

And if you look at the Internet-Draft you see the main problem.
Everyone thinks that the own wiki projects syntax should become the standard :-)

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: censorship

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050330 17:52]:

> We may only achieve the attention of some of that audience by reducing
> our level of rationality... which will ultimately cost us another
> audience.

Bingo. If this looks like becoming the Jesusland Extremely Abridged
Encyclopedia, I will be out of here.

> It is very easy for those that care to create censored subsets of the
> wikipedia. It is not easy to find censored wikipedia articles that
> don't exist.

Yes.

There's probably a good market in creating a censored Wikipedia - see
kids.net.au, which claims to do just that (except it doesn't do very well
at it, e.g. http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/sn/Snowballing ... how
unfortunate) - but pre-censoring the original strikes me as a bad idea for
the reason you state above.

- d.


from_name: Mihai Bocsaru

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Customize WikiPedia wiki installation to follow the
	look & feel of the Hosting site

body:
Dear Friends,

Is there a way to customize a WikiPedia wiki installation to follow the look
and fell of the main Web site?

I have noticed that in case I will edit:

- MonoBook.php;

- commonPrint.css;

I will be able to see some changes on the internal pages, not also the Main
page.

My goal is to be able to implement:

- top banner;

- left & right column;

- footer.

To absolutely the whole WikiPedia wiki installation I am hosting on my
server.

Are there any resources that I could read, or do you have any
suggestions/comments on how could I reach the above-mentioned goals?

Thank you very much!

Warm Regards,

Mihai Bocsaru


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] incidently, talking about big principles...

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:48:23 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I thought I was working for a project trying to gather
> free content so as to make free knowledge available ?
>
> So why are we using copyrighted pictures ?
>
> "This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder
> allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that
>  the copyright holder and image provider are credited.

This is compatible with the GFDL. There's an entire category of such
images on the Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Copyrighted_free_use_provided_that

Angela.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Deathphoenix wrote:

> Geoffrey Burling wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Seth Ilys wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 05:02:33 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
>>> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Again, I have not seen a single example of a respected encyclopedia
>>>> doing this.
>>>> Give me one example and I'll stop complaining.
>>>
>>> There are several examples of this in [[nihilartikel]].
>>
>> Sheesh, if there is so much resistence over [[European toilet
>> paper]], how about if we were to nominate a real topic, like
>> [[Wankers Corner, Oregon]] for Friday's FAC?
>>
>> Unless none of you trust my word that it actually exists?
>
> Or perhaps [[exploding whale]]. There are plenty of articles we could
> use. The problem is, with an article like that posted on April Fool's,
> we run the risk of people actually believing that the article is a
> fake, when in fact, it's not.

Sounds like some kind of reverse April Fools.  Something perfectly true
that nobody in his right mind would believe. I like that idea.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Deathphoenix wrote:
>
>> Or perhaps [[exploding whale]]. There are plenty of articles we could
>> use. The problem is, with an article like that posted on April
>> Fool's, we run the risk of people actually believing that the article
>> is a fake, when in fact, it's not.
>
>
> Yeah, the "did you know" section taken entirely from
> [[Wikipedia:Unusual_articles]] is a good idea along these lines
> (exploding whale was already a featured article in November 7, 2004 so
> we'd want to pick a new one anyway). People believing they're fake
> could almost be a sort of meta-hoax, even. Wonder if we could add a
> poll for new readers at the end of each - "do you believe this
> article?" - to gage our street cred. :)

That's an excellent point! Wikipedia could play an April Fool's joke on
the reader by presenting a particularly fine article from
[[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]], in the fashion of [[exploding whale]],
and having them believe the article is a joke. That should also satisfy
other people who believe that Wikipedia should not post hoaxes on the
main article space.

Cheers,

DPh


from_name: John Fader

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:17:44 -0500, Evan Prodromou <evan at bad.dynu.ca> wrote:

> Another possibility is using a WYSIWYG in-browser editor, so that Wiki
> syntax becomes more or less a moot point.

If you haven't tried it already, Jim Higson's client-side WYSIWYG
rendering stuff (http://81.5.150.113/wysi/) is most impressive.

--
John Fader


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Snowspinner"  wrote

>They would miss
> it. They would fall for the joke.

Yeah, yeah.  Also, some people get through life without any apparent sense
of humour.

There wouldn't be any point in the suggestion if there was no 'sense of
danger' attached.

Charles


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales schrieb:
> I don't know anything about how formal standards are proposed and
> decided, but just as with HTML, it seems that wiki syntax is a natural
> for some standardization.

There's another way:
* Agree on a XML standard for wikis
* Each wiki system writes a wiki-to-XML and XML-to-wiki function

Otherwise, with (n) wiki systems, *at least* (n-1) will have to make
changes, if not all of them. From what I can tell, "**" is used for
"bold", so any of you really want to change from "'''"? ;-)

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCSwSHCZKBJbEFcz0RAk5MAJ4g4Bk7XHyRYULm+QxF+AHRz5XdRQCdGw5y
M6GBO6/w3umeg/ZbN/iyM9A=
=QG35
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Store third party extensions in MediaWiki CVS?

body:
Hi all,

I have written an extension to give sysops the ability to change user
passwords as our intranet doesn't allow mails from other applications
than Lotus Notes, so password mailing is not possible.

I'd like to know if it is possible to have the source of such a "third
party" extension stored in the MediaWiki CVS if it is published under
GPL and/or contributed to the MediaWiki project. I could also make that
a sourceforge project but I guess that an extension is more easily found
and used by others if it is contained in the official CVS. If there are
additional conditions (like code reviews, certificate of no criminal
record :) I'd be happy to check if I can fulfill them.

Slightly other topic:

I'm also in the process of converting my external "wikifyer" script into
an extension. It makes suggestions which words on a page can be wikified
(based on which other page titles exist in the wiki) and edits pages
based on the users decision which links to add. The current script can
already be used from an external page for the German wikipedia. I'd like
to contribute that extension to the MediaWiki project too. Anybody
interested in such a thing?

Ciao, Michael.


body:
>compromising the mail server.  This is pretty serious stuff.  Web proxies
>*should not* be open.
>
>
>
In your rosy world yes. Now try real world Millions of people are in
countries were their providers do not care about this. Nor will they
care because they do not have to listen to normal people. Thailand is
such a country. Count the rest of SEA and China in there as well. Not
all will be using open proxies though. But fact is as opposed to Western
countries, in most Asian countries you cannot complain to companies as
they'll tell you to shove it. Even western companies like JW Marriott do
the same. They have double roomrate one if your Asian one if your white.
It is common practice here. People complained to JW Marriott in
Thailand. They told them to shove it. So people threatened lawsuit
against parentcompany than they bowed down. But JWM is foreign owned so
you can threaten with that. Most IP's in this region are not.

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

body:
Ray Saintonge said:
> Viajero wrote:
>>
>> I'm ...ah... speechless.
>
> Computer experts are very serious people.

Error.  Parse failure.  Braindump follows.


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:06:25 +0100, James D. Forrester
<james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> I, too, agree with Mav. "April Fools" is not particularly funny anyway and
> is exactly the problem that we're trying to fight.

This seems precisely at issue... in a community discussion touching on
levity and humor, when some of the conversants don't appreciate or get
the humor in question, how should we reach consensus?    A number of
people in this conversation seem to imply that anyone without a sense
of humor has a moral upper hand over others, because anything which is
not completely expected by some readers (which encompasses a great
deal of humor) is a Bad Thing.

Should people who find April Fools in general a terrible tradition, be
able to naysay anything that happens to commemorate that day?  I feel
pretty certain that a supermajority of our audience enjoys April Fools
and appreciates a good joke.

SJ


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy,

I think a combined approach is the most promising:

1) a single XML exchange format

2) multiple wikitext standards based on families of existing wiki
syntaxes sharing the largest similarities.

For example, several wikis use a "UseMod-like" syntax, and it would not
be very difficult to standardize within that group. It would be much
more difficult to get, say, both PhpWiki and MediaWiki to use a shared
syntax. The practical difficulties with switching an entire wiki engine
to a new syntax should not be underestimated.

Once we have these group standards sorted out, we could try to merge
them further.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] graphviz extension -- can we have this ?

body:
Dear Tels,

your extension script is very very nice, but graphviz/dot is the older
and an established program - since years ! - and comes already with a
powerful set of commands which leaves no room for further wishes.

Please have a first look to the gallery page with plenty of examples and
dot source codes[1] and the manual [2]. Please consider also to google
for "graph drawing" - this is not only one but _the_ generic term for
visualisation of dependencies and graphs.

I hereby asked the developers' community to consider the implementation
of Victor Farina's graphviz extension [0] in all wikis.

[0] Proposed for all Wikipedias http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension
[1] http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery.php
[2] http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation.php
[3] http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation/dotguide.pdf a concise manual for starters
[4] http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=graph+drawing&btnG=Suche&meta=


from_name: Arwel Parry

references:
<d2dape$d4u$1@sea.gmane.org> <424ABEDF.20507@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<20050330211154.GJ23009@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050331 00:59]:
>
>
>
>>Just in time! We had a massive page-move vandal attack on cy:wikipedia
>>between 0203 and 0232 UTC this morning, when users cy:Defnyddiwr:SPUI
>>and cy:Defnyddiwr:OldakQuill managed to screw up a considerable number
>>of pages - moving them, then deleting and recreating original  page
>>names with redirects to en:Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg
>>
>>
>
>
>By the way, I've put up what appears to be the first ever mirror site for
>cy: Wikipedia: http://factsite.co.uk/cy/ . I plan to mirror all the British
>native languages. Currently having fun wrestling with the en: SQL dump ...
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
Nice! :)  By the way, it's Wicipedia Cymraeg, not Cymraeg Wicipedia -
the subject comes before any qualifiers.

After spending five hours straightening out cy.wikipedia today, Deb and
I were wondering if it would be worthwhile / possible to remove the
#redirect command in English, so that potential non-Welsh-speaking
vandals would at least have to learn what the Welsh for "redirect"
actually is before they try to screw up the database.

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


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Autoblocking on all wikis now ?!?!?!

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Which I think shows that there is a PROBLEM here. Waerth is
> complaining, Montaia is asking, but who knows how many contributors
> and potential contributors are simply giving up, or have no idea where
> to ask?

Almost all of our bot-driven vandalism and spam comes from open proxies.
And the same open proxies are often used for email, IRC and IM spam. The
SORBS list only contains proxies which have been used for email spam, so
next time you see a complaint, think of all the spam you may have
received from that person. I'd rather encourage the people who run these
servers to secure them, and only unblock them as a last resort. It's in
Wikipedia's interests, as well as the interests of the general Internet
community.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...

body:
He is...

DA LEADA !

(wonderful joke for french people, get exclusive : learn french)

for japanese folks : futon ga futonda !

Cordialement,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 30 mars 05, ? 23:16, David Gerard a ?crit :

> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050331 03:24]:
>
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468147969 at N01/7565188/
>
>
> Is Jimbo "Great Leader" or "Dear Leader" yet?
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 13:21:42 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> > alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> > our April Fool's Page."
>
> I think that is a great idea. :)
>
> -- mav

If this helps convince the critics, I'm all for it. :)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: incidently, talking about big principles...

body:
Henry Tan-Tenn a ?crit:
> Anthere ti 2005/3/29 EP 10:48 sia-kong:
>
>> incidently
>>
>> These days, when you navigate quietly on the smaller
>> wikipedias, this is what you see
>>
>> http://ia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AFrontispicio&diff=0&oldid=13653
>
>
> Ant,
>
> I navigate actively on a couple smaller Wikipedias, and I do not see
> such abuse, be it unreverted vandalism, tolerance for proven copyviol,
> or generally editing in bad faith.  So I would not imply such
> occurrences are a rule.

Well, it happened many many many times in the past weeks on several pedias.

>> I thought I was working for a project trying to gather
>> free content so as to make free knowledge available ?
>>
>> So why are we using copyrighted pictures ?
>
>
> en: has countless fair use images, which are copyrighted.
>
> Or have I misunderstood?  Do correct me if so.
>
> ~~~~

Well, so do many other projects, but does the english wikipedia not
mentions the image is kept because considered to be under fair use ?

When I worked with Alex756 on the policy of fair use images on fr (about
2 years ago ?), I remember we set a list of cases for which an image
could be said to be fair use.

I do not really see how this image could be said fair use in that sense.
It seems to belong to another category I do not know.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>All of the above is no reason for Wikipedia to permit compromisable
>proxies to post.  We'd be just spreading the problem outside Thailand and
>into the rest of the net.  Believe me, there's nothing rosy about my view,
>I'm just determined not to permit bad practises in one or two countries to
>degrade the whole internet.
>
>
>
Try most of Asia and most Africa and South America as well, probably
close to a 100 countries and a couple billion people. Let me guess you
life in a save country in Europe or US or OZ.

W


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
I regret not getting to this thread earlier.  This is not just about
one poll, or one joke.  It is important for us all *as editors* to
maintain a sense of humor and perspective when making editorial
decisions for the encyclopedia.  Both larger decisions like this one,
and the smaller choices we make every day.

Those of you who have not delved into the Britannica may not know this
(check out our Category of 1911 Britannica content for examples), but
it is peppered with subtle wit.  An April Fools' hoax is by its nature
something different -- a hoax!  an attempt to pull a fast one on the
very people we set out to inform!  -- and this too has a long and
noble tradition within the academic and scientific community.  The BBC
(both radio and TV), Nature, Discover,  and Scientific American have
all run regular April Fool's hoaxes (with, I might add, a straight
face -- never acknowledging it was a hoax until the following
day/issue).

And it is a tradition beyond just the English-speaking world.  When
the Soviet daily /Izvestia/, for the first time ever, ran an April
Fools' column in 1988 about Maradona being offered $6M to join Spartak
Moscow, do you think it was "for nothing more than some type of
thrill" ?   Do you think they were relying on their long tradition of
reliability and accuracy to tide them through the resulting
"misgivings about their reliability"?  Certainly not.  If anything,
they were suggesting to the rest of the world that they had a newfound
sense of perspective and balance, and could be expected to exercise
common sense and not blindly  adhere to their earlier biases.  We
could do worse than suggest the same.

A good joke makes readers smile, gives them reason to browse around,
hints that the rest of this fantastic work we are building contains
other gems worth searching out and savoring.  In this sense, it also
fulfills the role of a good FA.  The ability to fool around says
something subtle but important about the editors and their other work.
 I don't *want* to read articles edited by humorless geniuses, no
matter how factually complete they are.

The above are general comments on taking ourselves too seriously.  As
to the subject line: I voted for putting the disputed article up.  I
think the joke would be very well received.  The academic tradition of
April Fool's hoaxes is *not* to give them away by anything other than
the outlandishness of their content; but a nice "Featured Article for
April 1, 2005" banner at the top and bottom might be in order.

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:45:17 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I will not let any mob of people subvert our goal of creating an encyclopedia
> just because it it is popular in part of the community.

Luckily, that isn't at stake here.  Our community exists because it
wants to create the world's *greatest* encyclopedia, not just another
Britannica.  Every single person who voted to put this article on the
Main Page wants that.  They also recognize that this wouldn't detract
from that goal.  Not taking ourselves too seriously actually improves
the quality of the encyclopedia.  Taking oneself too seriously leads
to the Britannicas of the world, which are excellent... but limited.

--
+sj+


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050330 23:43]:
> Andre Engels wrote:

> > Which I think shows that there is a PROBLEM here. Waerth is
> > complaining, Montaia is asking, but who knows how many contributors
> > and potential contributors are simply giving up, or have no idea where
> > to ask?

> Almost all of our bot-driven vandalism and spam comes from open proxies.
> And the same open proxies are often used for email, IRC and IM spam. The
> SORBS list only contains proxies which have been used for email spam, so
> next time you see a complaint, think of all the spam you may have
> received from that person. I'd rather encourage the people who run these
> servers to secure them, and only unblock them as a last resort. It's in
> Wikipedia's interests, as well as the interests of the general Internet
> community.

Has anyone had a chance to look at bug 550? It's specifically so that this
sort of block will only hit anon users.

- d.


body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:21:32 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer said:
> > Given the controversial nature of our reliability, this stunt will likely harm us
> > more than it is worth.
>
> Nonsense. The European toilet paper holder article proposed is a
> transparent hoax and quite harmless.  That Wikipedia cannot ever be more
> reliable than its latest edit is intuitively understood by all readers, so
> let's not foster the false impression that the situation is otherwise.

Aside from the fact that our most strenuous critics will be among
those getting a good laugh out of this -- John Dvorak famously inked
an April Fool's column of his own ten years ago about Congress banning
drinking while 'driving' on the information superhighway -- what Tony
is saying is also right.  While Wikipedia *can* and will someday
become more reliable than that, it is vanity to imagine that any
negative results of such a harmless hoax would be even a drop in the
present bucket of inserted profanity, POV rants, and image vandalism
that plague WP.

SJ


from_name: Andy Roberts

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:40:46 +0200, Bishonen
<bishlist at ungoodthinkful.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote on 2005/03/30 23:21:
>
> > --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> > > alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> > > our April Fool's Page."
> >
> > I think that is a great idea. :)
> >
> > -- mav
>
> I think it's a really lame idea. :-( I just joined the mailing list, I hope
> I'm doing this right. May I ask a question? Do I get any say in whether or
> not [[User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder]] is moved out of my
> userspace into the article namespace for April 1?

Reading this thread reminds me of the fact that the american
dictionary doesn't have an entry for the word irony.   Very sad.

--
Andy Roberts


body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:59:09 +0100, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> May I remind people that the hoax must be done before midday otherwise
> "you become the fool".  That might lessen the impact of the hoax.

Good point  :-)   And I like the idea of linking "Today's" and
"featured article".

--
+sj+ , hoping the very powerful Japanese-built multi-lingual
Internet-crawling robots finish early this year


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] mediaWiki developer wanted

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:51:38 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Sj wrote:
> >   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_project_board
>
> I should warn you that probably nobody knows that page exists. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Well, I only created it yesterday.   I guess since I brought it to the
party,  I'd better go through the formalities.  Wikitech, Mediawiki
project board.  Project board, wikitech.

If you think this is a terrible idea, you can leave me a burnt cookie
or something.   SJ


from_name: Bishonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote on 2005/03/30 23:21:

> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> > alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> > our April Fool's Page."
>
> I think that is a great idea. :)
>
> -- mav

I think it's a really lame idea. :-( I just joined the mailing list, I hope
I'm doing this right. May I ask a question? Do I get any say in whether or
not [[User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder]] is moved out of my
userspace into the article namespace for April 1?

Bishonen


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> A few people have hoped that I would weigh in with an opinion.
>
> I'm torn.  I think it's really fun, but we're also a very serious
> project.  So I gave it some thought and I have this idea...
>
> Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> our April Fool's Page."

I appreciate the spirit of compromise, but it's unfortunate, because the sine
qua non of April Fool's Day is hoax, not just spoof. This would be like
explicitly inviting someone to their own surprise birthday party -- it's just
missing the point. I'd heartily support a hoax, but I would find a watered-down
"happy fun page" to be just embarrassing.

Anyway, one thing I've become convinced of: it's certainly not worth all this
debate!

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Tels

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

Moin Thomas,

On Wednesday 30 March 2005 23:21, Thomas Gries wrote:
> Dear Tels,
>
> your extension script is very very nice, but graphviz/dot is the older
> and an established program - since years !
> - and comes already with a
> powerful set of commands which leaves no room for further wishes.

Actually, it left me with quite a few wishes (not so awkward syntax, more
pretty output, alternatives to grafical output, etc), and that is why I
started to develop my own solution (which could use some more work, of
course).

I am not saying that graphviz is bad or should not be used - I am just
saying that:

* maybe a different syntax should be used to write the graphs
* maybe different outputs of the final graphs than the (ugly in my
opionion) images/graphic should be used

> Please have a first look to the gallery page with plenty of examples
> and dot source codes[1] and the manual [2].

Actually, I looked at the gallery, and these graphs do not appeal to me
nor do I think the examples of the dot source code is self-explanatory,
or fully intuitiv (sp?) to understand.

> Please consider also to
> google for "graph drawing" - this is not only one but _the_ generic
> term for visualisation of dependencies and graphs.

I'll do that, one can only learn :)

In the meantime I did look at quite a lot of graphs in manuals, TV,
journals etc and quite a lot of them look completely different from the
typical dot examples. I am sure with many massaging you could use dot to
produce equal output, but from my POV dot looks like a tool from experts
for experts - and most people editing/adding stuff to a wiki don't want
to learn all the nitty-gritty details just to produce a 3-node pretty
graph :)

> I hereby asked the developers' community to consider the implementation
> of Victor Farina's graphviz extension [0] in all wikis.
>
> [0] Proposed for all Wikipedias
> http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension [1]
> http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery.php
> [2] http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation.php
> [3] http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation/dotguide.pdf a concise manual
> for starters [4]
> http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=graph+drawing&btnG=Suche&meta=

I really DO think that it would be a good idea to deploy such an extension
on a testwiki first and let people toy with it - preferable with both
extensions. After a while problems and shortcomings will emerge.

Somehow I think that enabling the graphviz extension without any
forethought or tests will end us up with a lot of (badly done) graphviz
graphs.

Finally, I think some more discussions from people actually wanting to add
graphs to wikis would be good. I know that I use graphs for some things
like networkplans, flowcharts etc and I have some plans to add features
that make support for these types of graphs more easily.

Hope that explains my POV a bit,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Mar 31 00:37:32 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Call me Justin, Justin Case."

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQksthXcLPEOTuEwVAQE2Sgf/Rr5U23hqkE20sHEsqPsIA8DlHCdNoMVc
YlGk6mu0ABlPi0CEy1IfqTKJ08840EkQZmJaFBRLQVWTdzdRo89BuOIxItE4fFmZ
KHD9AeY30W/C8VC7SK9eeY7gi34qsAj9xkWdzd+jnstwmN6BIjGbnNbDdlC7tcwt
iEhAB9hlxqnuLudzV+GfK9swMf/q+/MTJM/r3Wc/7ivb5N8PEFCG9/l4vd0FRjTz
j02Te5tRr5nPmJZgTvHE/+7nnUzeZuDE4sRIwiayi9pPWD7gbY1EIT38J4mE3kxE
RkNUp1SglsZLgYtM84nerkugwi1rM1wzmOtwzqUV6GJVxSZc7G6pYA==
=XDsg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect terms

references:
<d2dape$d4u$1@sea.gmane.org> <424ABEDF.20507@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<20050330211154.GJ23009@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<424B2AC3.9090100@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:40:03 +0100, Arwel Parry
<arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> After spending five hours straightening out cy.wikipedia today, Deb and
> I were wondering if it would be worthwhile / possible to remove the
> #redirect command in English, so that potential non-Welsh-speaking
> vandals would at least have to learn what the Welsh for "redirect"
> actually is before they try to screw up the database.

As we're talking about #redirect translations - could someone give me
the Icelandic, Rusian, Serbian and Tatar forms? And as I'm at it, the
{{PAGENAME}} for Bulgarian, Icelandic, Russian and Tatar too? I tried
to get them from CVS, but I don't get the Unicode en/decoded
correctly.

Andre Engels


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:48:23 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
> I've been watching this conversation with mounting disbelief.  Somebody
> please tell me that the seeming loss of sense of humor on the part of a
> number of Wikipedians is all part of a prolonged jape, to be brought to a
> hilarous conclusion this Friday.  No?
> April fools jokes are traditional.  People reading a joke article on April
> 1 will not feel unduly put out.  Most of them.  We can just laugh at those
> who are. That's the whole point of the exercise--to puncture pretensions,
> confound expectations and--dare I say it--have a laugh!

Mine was also a nice way of saying that the article is just not that
funny and not even close to being hilarious.

-Andrew


from_name: Violet/Riga

body:
May I remind people that the hoax must be done before midday otherwise
"you become the fool".  That might lessen the impact of the hoax.

One thing people seem to be missing is that there is some element of
truth behind the article (otherwise it would be too unbelievable).
Why don't we write a truthful entry on the main page but exagerate
their importance a little.  Link "Today's" to [[April fool's day]] and
"featured article" to [[Nihilartikel]] and have a banner warning at
the top of the main article noting that it's a hoax.

Surely all that should sate those wishing to stop this bit of fun.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 10:40 +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:

> 3. We change our wiki syntax, however slightly. Besides everyone
> using MediaWiki having to learn a new (altered) syntax, we'll have
> to change *every* page in our databases, including *all* old
> revisions. For that, we'll have to write a 100% perfect parser for
> the old syntax that can create 100% perfect new code. Good luck
> with that.

Yep, that's the only acceptable option.  You are correct that it
will be difficult, but that doesn't change the fact that we have
to do it that way.

It should be obvious, though, that we /don't/ want a "perfect"
parser for the current syntax--we want the existing parser just
as it is now, warts and all, which is what the current text is
written to.  That parser will have to be modified to output the
new syntax when we update, and that should be perfect (and
/can/ be , because it will be well-defined at that point).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
The Cunctator said:
> On 3/30/05 4:21 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>> Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
>>> alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
>>> our April Fool's Page."
>>
>> I think that is a great idea. :)
>>
> I think it's profoundly lame.
>
> An April Fool's joke that can't fool anybody is not an April Fool's
> joke.
>
> Thus the word "fool".
>

I think there is a definite failure to engage with the subject matter
here.  Whatever happened to the sweet old idea of just, for one day in the
whole year, doing something unexpected, out of character and insincere?
Not in a mean, vituperative way, but simply to spread the joy of life.
Can't we just put that lovely toilet roll holder on the front page.
*once*?  Has Wikipedia become so anal?>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Has anyone had a chance to look at bug 550? It's specifically so that this
> sort of block will only hit anon users.

I've told the list before that the spammers already have software to log
in to wikis, and the vandals log in whenever it's convenient for them.
In a previous post, I even gave details of vandalbot attacks by logged
in users. But I guess you won't believe me that it's useless until you
see it. I already had an exemption in place for non-newbies, I've
replaced this with an exemption for all logged-in users.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Alphax

body:
Richard Holton wrote:

>Like many, I would not object to having an April fool's article on the
>main page this Friday. I am against the idea of a contest that
>involves inserting fake articles into the main article space. Even
>with all good intentions, the potential for mistakes is just too
>great.
>
>However, I would also suggest some very obvious indicator of some
>sort, such as a banner at the top of the article reading: "This is
>Wikipedia's Featured Article for April 1, 2005" -- something that
>inherently identifies the article as special for April Fool's day.
>Remember that this may find its way into mirrors or onto printed page.
>
Agree with above. I think having a *very* obvious link to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer (with a
section "Anything you see on April 1st could be a joke", or similar")
would be a good idea.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia projects in Papiamentu en Sranang Tongo

body:
This is incorrect. It is not "the" language of Surinam. Only 120.000
are native speakers of this language. There are actually MORE native
speakers of Dutch (200.000) and Carribean Hindustani (150.000) than of
Sranan Tongo. There are also 60.000 native speakers of Carribean
Javanese, 50.000 of Guyanese Creole English, 23.000 of Saramaccan,
15.000 of Aukan (aka Ndjuka, written in some parts with its own unique
syllabary), 6.000 of Chinese (all Hakka), 2.400 of Carib, 1.000 of
Arawak, 1.000 of Tri?, 400 of Wayana, 100 of Kwinti, 50 of Akulyo, and
various others.

In short, Surinam is a very linguistically diverse place.

In the Antilles and Aruba, in addition to Papiamentu, there is Virgin
Islands Creole English which is spoken by 13.000 people (including the
entire population of 3 different islands).

Mark

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:47:26 +0200, Huikeshoven, A.H.
<AHuikeshoven at minszw.nl> wrote:
>
> The Dutch are progressing in creating a chapter of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. A Wiki-site to support the initiative is live for a week now
> at http://nl.wikimedia.org/ The domain wikimedia.nl has been squatted by
> Sam van Buuren on January 25th, 2005. We'll have to reclaim that.
>
> The Netherlands Antilles are still a country of the Kingdom of the
> Netherlands (as is Aruba). Their official language is Papiamentu,
> ISO-639 code is PAP. Surinam is a former colony of the Netherlands. Half
> their population is living in the Netherlands. Their tongue is Sranang
> Tongo, ISO-639 code presumed to be SRN. The Dutch Wikimedia chapter to
> be incorporated will have as mission to support all projects run by
> people in the Netherlands regardless of language. Frysian and Limurgian
> projects (fy and li) have already been started. There are no projects in
> Papiamentu or Sranang Tongo yet.
>
> We would like to establish an initial framework for these two languages
> to provide a head start to these communities. Waerth pushed me to take
> the first step.
>
> Dedalus
>
> _________________________________________________________
>
> Het ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid sluit elke aansprakelijkheid uit in verband met het niet juist, onvolledig of niet tijdig overkomen van de informatie in deze e-mail.
> Aan dit bericht kunnen geen rechten worden ontleend.
>
> Dit bericht is alleen bestemd voor de geadresseerde. Indien dit bericht niet voor u bestemd is, verzoeken wij u dit onmiddellijk aan ons te melden en de inhoud van dit bericht te vernietigen.
> _________________________________________________________
>
> The ministry of Social Affairs and Employment is not liable for any incorrect or incomplete transmission of the information in this e-mail or for any delay in its receipt.
> This message shall not constitute any obligations.
>
> This message is intended solely for the addressee.
> If you have received this message in error, please inform us immediately and delete its content.
> _________________________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: John Fader

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Use "unusual articles" for April Fools day - the fool is
	they're all (allegedly) true

body:
Web April Fools are very rarely funny, and now everyone does them.
With all respect to those who worked on ours, I'm not sure it is
either (it seems more like an "in joke" for us).

If we post a fake story, we'll be just the same as Slashdot and the
rest.  But we can do better.  We have a limitless supply of *real
crap* to draw upon.  We can be lighthearted and play with the reader's
credulity just as well by using stuff from [[Wikipedia:Unusual
articles]].  I think all the featured articles in there have all been
on the main page fairly recently, so instead I propose a special
variant of Did You Know to take the place of the featured article on
the main page.  For example:

==Things you'll wish you never knew==
''From wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles|stupidest articles]]:''

* A 1919 '''[[Boston molasses disaster|molasses explosion]]''' killed 21 people.
* [[Afrikaans language|Afrikaans]] pigs say '''''[[Oink|snork]]'''''
and [[Korean language|Korean]] pigs say '''''[[Oink|kkool]]'''''. And
we can prove it.
* [[John F. Kennedy]] was almost certainly not a '''[[Ich bin ein
Berliner|a jelly donut]]'''.
* '''[[Belly button fluff]]''' is usually blue.  Check yours.
* '''[[History of perpetual motion machines|Perpetual motion]]''' is
impossible.  Probably.
* [[El Salvador]] and [[Honduras]] fought a '''[[Football War|war]]'''
over the result of a [[Football (soccer)|Football]] match.  Don't ask
who won the war.
* The happy [[Ewok]]s won't be happy '''[[Endorian Holocaust|for
long]]'''. Serves 'em right.
* '''[[Le P?tomane|French culture]]''' blows the competition away.

And use [[Image:Shark big.jpg]] as the image.

--
John Fader


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Alphax said:
>
>
>>Agree with above. I think having a *very* obvious link to
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer (with a
>>section "Anything you see on April 1st could be a joke", or similar")
>>would be a good idea.
>>
>>
>
>Too broad.  Just pop a datestamp at the top of the article and protect it
>from editing.  The nonstandard appearance may also help to distinguish it
>from real articles.
>
>
Good point. I'm late and it's tired.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Arwel: It's a good idea. Do you already have it enabled in Welsh
>though (ie bilingual), or are they all in English currently?
>
>
It's been bilingual almost since we were converted to MediaWiki.

>I think that would massively cut down on the amount of redirect vandalism.
>
>Similarly, if the interface of aa.wikipedia were actually in Afar,
>people would stop using it for their stupid tests.
>
>Speaking of which, a lot of people who make new pages on inactive
>Wikipedias seem to have typed the URL wrong. For example, if somebody
>meant to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa, they might
>accidentally go to http://dz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa and then not
>realise they're actually at the Druk Yul (dragon language) Wikipedia.
>
>Mark
>
>On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:40:03 +0100, Arwel Parry
><arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>After spending five hours straightening out cy.wikipedia today, Deb and
>>I were wondering if it would be worthwhile / possible to remove the
>>#redirect command in English, so that potential non-Welsh-speaking
>>vandals would at least have to learn what the Welsh for "redirect"
>>actually is before they try to screw up the database.
>>
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> The FAQ URL that someone cited seems to demonstrate a technique that can
> be used by a spammer to use an open http proxy to get trusted access to an
> email server on the same system, bypassing the relay rules and
> compromising the mail server.  This is pretty serious stuff.  Web proxies
> *should not* be open.

Right, the CONNECT method. Here's a session showing me connecting to
mail.wikipedia.org via Walter von Kalken's proxy:

[1553][tstarling at zwinger:~]$ telnet 203.144.143.6 80
Trying 203.144.143.6...
Connected to 203.144.143.6.
Escape character is '^]'.
CONNECT mail.wikipedia.org:25 HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 Connection established
Proxy-agent: BlueCoat-Security-Appliance

220 mail.wikimedia.org ESMTP Postfix

(end quote)

At this point I could have sent a couple of thousand spam messages and
vanished into the night. This is the reason SORBS, who work on
preventing email spam, and Blitzed, who work on preventing IRC spam,
both list HTTP proxies. Note that we're not blocking other kinds of spam
relay, SORBS gives a means to distinguish between the various types.

Although at the moment, we're not effectively blocking anything at all,
see my foundation-l post on this subject.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
Andy Roberts wrote on 2005/03/31 01:25:

> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:40:46 +0200, Bishonen
> <bishlist at ungoodthinkful.com> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer wrote on 2005/03/30 23:21:
> >
> > > --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> > > > alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to
> see
> > > > our April Fool's Page."
> > >
> > > I think that is a great idea. :)
> > >
> > > -- mav
> >
> > I think it's a really lame idea. :-( I just joined the mailing list, I
> hope
> > I'm doing this right. May I ask a question? Do I get any say in whether
> or
> > not [[User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder]] is moved out of my
> > userspace into the article namespace for April 1?
>
> Reading this thread reminds me of the fact that the american
> dictionary doesn't have an entry for the word irony.   Very sad.
>
> --
> Andy Roberts

Not getting it, sorry. I know my question came late in the game, but that's
because Jimbo's suggestion also came late. I was all for having "European
toilet paper holder" featured directly on the Main page on April
1, but I'm all against the page being used in such a poor jape as "Click
here to see our April Fool's Page." Please note that this is not a protest
against that use, though. It's a *question*, as to whether anybody will
care if I do protest.  I will only actually do it if the other contributors
want me to.

(Sorry if this arrives twice, I'm still getting the hang of posting to the
list.)

Bishonen


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> 3. We change our wiki syntax, however slightly. Besides everyone using
> MediaWiki having to learn a new (altered) syntax, we'll have to change
> *every* page in our databases, including *all* old revisions.

There'd be no need to alter old revisions. If there's a relevant change,
have a converter save a new converted copy of the _current_ version, and
allow old revisions to look slightly "off".

This is for instance how upgrading from UseMod was handled; new
converted revisions were saved with a few bits shuffled around, and
older revisions may have a few little quirks if you load them up.

It's not likely that we'd be making major changes to the basic syntax;
minor issues of interpretation, bug fixes, and changes to features have
from time to time slightly changed how a given bit of wikitext will
actually be rendered. That's life; the pages get cleaned up, and life
goes on.

-- biron vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050331/02654a3c/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Small schema change in CVS

body:
I've added a rev_deleted field to the revision table in CVS HEAD. If
running a wiki on 1.5 CVS currently, run update.php or manually source
maintenance/archives/patch-rev_deleted.sql to update the table.

This will be part of changes to the deletion system, not yet fully
implemented:

* Deleted revisions will remain listed in the contributions history
(though greyed out and in strike-through), making it easier to track
serial offenders.

* Deleted revisions will be listed in the regular page history (again,
grayed out and in strike-through). In cases where individual revisions
have been struck from a page for eg copyright reasons this will make it
easier to see where portions were removed.

* The actual text won't have to be shuffled into an archive table;
simply updating a 1-byte field in the revision records ought to be
faster, and this will allow deletion again on pages which have been
block-compressed. (Block compression combines multiple revisions' text
into a single compressed record; since this interacts poorly with the
current deletion/undeletion system, deletion is currently disabled for
any page which has been block-compressed.) Deleted text could be pruned
at leisure by a batch or background process if necessary.

* For admins, the diff and view source tools will remain available on
deleted pages, which the current Special:Undelete viewer doesn't
provide. This can aid in analysis of a vandalism spree.

The deletion/undeletion system has not yet been updated to actually use
this field, nor has limitation of viewing of such revisions to admins
been implemented. (Remember the purpose of _deletion_ is to make
materials inaccessible to the public, especially if for legal reasons,
so non-admins will still not be able to look at the actual deleted
revision text.)

Once finished there will probably be a slight change to the page table
as well, to mark pages which have no non-deleted revisions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050331/e4fd5cf1/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Those of you who have not delved into the Britannica may not know this
> (check out our Category of 1911 Britannica content for examples), but
> it is peppered with subtle wit.  An April Fools' hoax is by its nature
> something different -- a hoax!  an attempt to pull a fast one on the
> very people we set out to inform!  -- and this too has a long and
> noble tradition within the academic and scientific community.  The BBC
> (both radio and TV), Nature, Discover,  and Scientific American have
> all run regular April Fool's hoaxes (with, I might add, a straight
> face -- never acknowledging it was a hoax until the following
> day/issue).

EB 1911 is also famous for being very POV. Those publications you cited also do
not have to be extra careful about their perception - we do. Any hoax that I
find in the main namespace will either be moved or deleted as all vandalism
should.

I like the idea of having a separate hoax Main Page at [[Wikipedia:April 1,
2005]] and having any hoax "article" at [[Wikipedia:April 1, 2005/Foo]] with
'Foo' being the 'article' name. A large banner could be on the regular Main
Page pointing this the 'new and improved Main Page.'

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] 4/1 FA: Nintendo Entertainment System :(

body:
--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> So now his eminent worthiness Mark a.k.a. Raul has decreed that
> [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] will be the Featured Article tomorrow,
> despite the overwhelming support for UTPH at
> [[Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#European_toilet_paper_holder]].

ETPH is not an article  - let alone featured. That "article" can and should be
on the alternate Main Page at [[Wikipedia:April 1, 2005]]. A huge banner on the
real Main Page could point to the alternate Main Page.

>   It seems to me a spectacularly lame and unimaginative choice. If
> running a genuinely ersatz text was too daring, at least we could have
> run an oddball article that looked like a hoax, but I guess even that
> was too much for the timid souls at the steering wheel.

Sadly [[exploding whale]] was already on the Main Page. As was Emperor Norton
of the United States. Either Main Page summary could have been written with a
bit more wit to work. I wouldn't mind if we recycled one or the other for just
this day though.

> I am disappointed by the process by which this decision was reached and
>   I especially disappointed by the outcome, but I guess it reflects the
> fact that Wikipedia EN is overpopulated by geeky teenagers who probably
> prefer Red Bull to red wine and Game Boys to sex.

I for one prefer sex above all those other things you mentioned. :)

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Sounds like some kind of reverse April Fools.  Something perfectly true
> that nobody in his right mind would believe. I like that idea.

I also very much like this idea. But finding such oddball topics to write about
is hard enough. Finding enough to make them feature worthy is even harder. Then
there is the time and effort it takes to put the article through FAC.

So having an alternate Main Page at [[Wikipedia:April 1, 2005]] seems to be a
good thing to do as well. All the real hoaxes would go there and the stuff that
just looks like a hoax but is real content goes on the real Main Page.

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day Lame-O-Rama

body:
--- Bishonen <bishlist at ungoodthinkful.com> wrote:
> So, again: anybody? Can/will my userpage be from my userspace untimely
> ripp'd and used in a way I protest against? Or not? What do you think?
> Should I hurry up and try to get it speedied?

Legally you don?t have a leg to stand on since the text on that page in under
the GNU FDL. But morally it would be very rude for somebody to use the text in
a way you didn?t want since it is clearly marked as being in your userspace.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Store third party extensions in MediaWiki CVS?

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

>> I'm also in the process of converting my external "wikifyer" script into
>> an extension. It makes suggestions

[...]

> [[I]] don't [[know]] [[about]] [[that]]; [[we]] [[have]] [[so]] [[many]]
> [[pages]] [[in]] [[our]] [[Wikis]]. :)

Yes ;) The problem is not to add more [[link]]s (sic!) but to get rid of
many a lot of them :-( Thanks to this "nice" edit buttons you can easily
add all this markup.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Richard Holton (richholton at gmail.com) [050331 01:37]:

> When I first saw the article, as a result of Viajero's original post,
> I was not thinking about April Fool's. I *glanced* at the article, and
> saw what appeared to be a very detailed, well-documented article about
> a very obscure subject -- just the sort of thing we want Wikipedia to
> have. Had I known someone with an interest in this arcane topic, I
> might have pointed them to the page, or printed a copy and handed it
> to them. Would they have immediately known this to be an April Fool's
> joke? On reading it, they would conclude that it was not a serious
> article, but would they know it was intentionally included in
> Wikipedia as a joke for all to see? Or would they assume that some
> knucklehead had added the article and no one had yet discovered it to
> remove it?

Some say we have this problem with some of our [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]]
already. When [[Xenu]] was featured (Feb 19th), there were quite a few
people who thought it was a particularly creative piece of vandalism,
rather than the painstakingly referenced and fact-checked article on an
... unusual ... subject that it is.

(For Xenuphiles: http://static.rocknerd.org/david/xenu-2pp.pdf - how's that
for reuse of Wikipedia content. We handed out 500 of those in front of the
Church of Scientology, Tottenham Court Road, London on Saturday, just
before the London meetup. The police found it quite acceptable. After all
it's a proper objective neutral encyclopedia article, with references!)

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki redirects disabled

body:
Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050331 00:59]:

> Just in time! We had a massive page-move vandal attack on cy:wikipedia
> between 0203 and 0232 UTC this morning, when users cy:Defnyddiwr:SPUI
> and cy:Defnyddiwr:OldakQuill managed to screw up a considerable number
> of pages - moving them, then deleting and recreating original  page
> names with redirects to en:Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg

By the way, I've put up what appears to be the first ever mirror site for
cy: Wikipedia: http://factsite.co.uk/cy/ . I plan to mirror all the British
native languages. Currently having fun wrestling with the en: SQL dump ...

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050331 03:24]:

> http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468147969 at N01/7565188/

Is Jimbo "Great Leader" or "Dear Leader" yet?

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...


body:
Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [050331 04:37]:

> Did Wikinews plan to run a story about such a merger for April 1? :-)

Presumably also merging with the Guardian for appropriate transatlantic and
political balance. And fairness!

- d.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 01:10:53 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator said:
> > On 3/30/05 4:21 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >>> Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> >>> alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> >>> our April Fool's Page."
> >>
> >> I think that is a great idea. :)
> >>
> > I think it's profoundly lame.
> >
> > An April Fool's joke that can't fool anybody is not an April Fool's
> > joke.
> >
> > Thus the word "fool".
> >
>
> I think there is a definite failure to engage with the subject matter
> here.  Whatever happened to the sweet old idea of just, for one day in the
> whole year, doing something unexpected, out of character and insincere?

you mean like bucking a trend on the net? Everyone will be doing
April Fool's for various values of april the first. It is so last
century.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050331 07:10]:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:23:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
> <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> > Is every editorial disagreement a test of "moral rightness"?  I really
> > don't see it that way.  Maybe the communication difficulty we are
> > having surrounds your use of that phrase?

> No, it's only a test of moral rightness if that is the basis behind an
> editors decisions.. We can't always tell from the outside, but we can
> ask.  If there is no justification from the large set that we consider
> valid reasons for changes to the article that can be discussed, then
> we must assume that the reasoning is based on good/evil judgements.

Indeed. I really, really doubt that all the people claiming the
autofellatio pic MUST be a copyright violation therefore MUST be deleted
NOW would get away with that level of copyright paranoia about *anything*
else on Wikipedia, and oddly enough I suspect them of other motivations.
Particularly since, as I understand it, despite much searching no-one has
actually found anything it's actually a copy of.

- d.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Our beloved leader...

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050331 03:24]:
>
>
>>http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468147969 at N01/7565188/
>
>
>
> Is Jimbo "Great Leader" or "Dear Leader" yet?
>
>
> - d.

well, for me both, but I am perhaps biaised.

There is also a great one (and very clean one) with Jimbo in front of
the Taj Mahal, which could replace the current one on Quarto. I put it
in my signs on my browser and *of course* netscape messed again.

SJ, could you ask Jimbo to provide again the link to a picture in front
of the TM and see if we could not make a good use of it ?

PS : for those who did not understand the previous picture, Jimbo was in
Delhi for the day of Holi (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi).


from_name: Sj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Use "unusual articles" for April Fools day - the fool
	is they're all (allegedly) true

body:
Yes, there is a lot of this going on.  The list of unusual articles is
thoroughly delightful...

SJ

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:57:30 +0200, MacGyverMagic/Mgm
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> So come over to [[Wikipedia talk:Did you know]].
> I'm ready for suggestions on what to include tomorrow. :)
>
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:31:34 +1000, David Gerard
> <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > John Fader (jfader at gmail.com) [050331 10:48]:
> >
> > > ==Things you'll wish you never knew==
> > > ''From wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles|stupidest articles]]:''
> >
> > "All true and verified." Perfect :-)
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:21:43 +0200, MacGyverMagic/Mgm
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, let's get things going then. We need to get this thing up before midnight.

Having an alternate main page full of hoaxes, as many people have
noted, is a poor joke at best.  If we tried next year, we could
produce an Onion-quality collection of silliness.  But that's not a
hoax; we could do that on any day at all.

Raul, you should have posted to this list about your decision about
the FA tomorrow: that is, to ignore the recent poll...

The only reason I can see not to run the hoax article is that its
writing and humor wasn't tight enough.  But it has certainly made a
lot of people I know laugh.

SJ


body:
Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050331 08:40]:

> Nice! :)  By the way, it's Wicipedia Cymraeg, not Cymraeg Wicipedia -
> the subject comes before any qualifiers.

Will be fixed next upload! Currently experimenting with formats ...

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Syntax for texts in verse

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>There is a need for a special syntax for texts in verse, as
>: creates an indentation and <br/> is quite ugly.
>
>Could it be possible to have a code <verse>
>which would produce carriage return at the end of each line ?
>
>
That would be especially useful in Wikisource where we receive a lot of
verse material.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo Wales de-sysopped

body:
Updates for the Community Portal, Ed?  ;-)

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 13:02:47 -0800, Poor, Edmund W
<Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> For immediate release:
>
> Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was de-sysopped today by a coalition
> of rogue admins (the Troll League) and his account blocked indefinitely.
> The new GodKing, Rickk, immediately reinstated
>
> RK weds Helga! The long-awaited wedding will feature mav147 wearing the
> traditional Muslim headscraf (click here for picture).
>
> Kim Jong-Il brings peace to Palestine. The leader of the world's
> remaining Hermit Kingdom outlawed both Judaism and Islam throughout the
> Middle East, replacing all forms of religious worship with the playing
> of old Beatles records.
>
> (I was saving these, but ... )
>
> Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Autoblocking on all wikis now ?!?!?!

body:
Waerth, what is the name and contact email of your ISP? There are
quite a few ppl on this list, and it certainly wouldnt hurt for your
ISP to recieve a bunch of emails complaining about thier open proxy.
Sure maybe it will do nothing, but then again, maybe it might just
yeild good results. Maybe an officialish letter from the foundation
could also be sent. And anyway, telling ppl that they are on the SORBS
list and urging them to clean up thier act, has to be better than just
blocking them.

Also, would it be possible to ban all users (logged-in included) on
the SORBS list, then make a white list which any admin would be able
to edit? (And obviously put a note on the "You are blocked cause you
are on the SORBS list page" of how to apply to get onto the
whitelist.)

~~~~

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:55:48 +0700, Walter van Kalken
<walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> On 3 wikis I got today the message
>
> You are autoblocked because your IP is on a list named SORB ..... who
> did that ???? Whose idea was that ???? I got blocked on ia, li and lo
> whose brilliant idea was this. Am I deliberately being chased away on
> all wikis now????
>
> Waerth
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

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


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Syntax standardization effort

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales schrieb:
> Ok, I see your point.  But the right thing to do, I think, is to point
> out that PhpWiki syntax is wrong and outdated and nonstandard.

Concering MediaWiki, this inevitably leads to one of the following
scenarios:

1. We declare MediaWiki the standard, based on the total number of pages
using this standard. Call me "Bill" ;-)

2. We make our parser understand other wiki syntax *in addition* to our
own. If you think our current "parser" is a mess, wait for this to
happen. It won't be a standard, but a syntax swamp.

3. We change our wiki syntax, however slightly. Besides everyone using
MediaWiki having to learn a new (altered) syntax, we'll have to change
*every* page in our databases, including *all* old revisions. For that,
we'll have to write a 100% perfect parser for the old syntax that can
create 100% perfect new code. Good luck with that.

*However*, if every (major) wiki would have a wiki-to-XML and a
XML-to-wiki parser (which we'll have to do anyway, in a way, for #3),
*then* we could
- - read our wiki text from the database for editing
- - convert it on-the-fly to XML
- - convert the XML to any syntax the user wants, including a yet-to-be
written standard
- - convert the user's input to XML on saving
- - convert the XML to MediaWiki syntax for storing in the database

A nice side effect would be "wiki beautification", so no matter what
mess the last newbie made with the source, it always looks nice and
clean :-)

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCS7eNCZKBJbEFcz0RAuu5AJ44cyvcjZKKmOumU0GHtPMyskEGiQCfVnNF
Tv8Mkf2mtV04/hJ2ijFVkaA=
=ALYj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

> Can't we just put that lovely toilet roll holder on the front page.
> *once*?  Has Wikipedia become so anal?

Wipe the thought from your mind.  And then paper over the cracks.

Thought: just make [[April Fool's Day]] the featured article.

Charles


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Dedalus wrote

>We would like to establish an initial framework for these two languages
>to provide a head start to these communities. Waerth pushed me to take
>the first step.
>
>
>
I  asked you for support and to wait untill we could get a list of about
5 people supporting this. So I could make a comprehensive proposal.
Thanks for not waiting

grmbl

Waerth / Walter


from_name: Bishonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day Lame-O-Rama

body:
I sent the message below to the list yesterday, trying to learn if I have
any jurisdiction (morally, and by courtesy--I know I haven't legally) over
a page in my userspace, namely the ETPH article that has been discussed
such a lot on this this list. After all, it's name isn't "European toilet
paper holder", it's "User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder".

I'm disappointed that none of the experienced wikipedians reading this list
has addressed my question, but I suppose it was a difficult one. Anybody?
See, if the community goes with Jimbo's 1 April Lame-O-Rama" suggestion, I
really would like to be able to stop ETPH from being used  for it. Input so
far on "User talk:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder" shows that other
contributors feel the same way.

So, again: anybody? Can/will my userpage be from my userspace untimely
ripp'd and used in a way I protest against? Or not? What do you think?
Should I hurry up and try to get it speedied?

Bishonen

Daniel Mayer wrote on 2005/03/30 23:21:

> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> > alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> > our April Fool's Page."
>
> I think that is a great idea. :)
>
> -- mav

> I think it's a really lame idea. :-( I just joined the mailing list, I
hope I'm doing this right. May I ask a question? > Do I get any say in
whether or not [[User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder]] is moved out
of my
> userspace into the article namespace for April 1?

>Bishonen


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Foundation-l] Development tasks and project needs

body:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 12:22:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Sj-
> > Nonsense.  Money is an excellent resource when properly applied, but
> > there is no fundamental reason why we should have fewer volunteer
> > developers than Linux has, for instance.  After all, what are we
> > writing but the kernel for our collective intelligence?
>
> An interesting comparison. However, it is worth noting that there is a
> billion dollar industry behind the Linux kernel, and many of its most
> active developers are directly employed by corporations like IBM, Novell
> and Red Hat. Hence, development tends to be driven by corporate interests.

On the other hand, there's a much lower bar for entry into working on
projects like Wikipedia developing content, which is in plain English
(or whatever language you're using), and even for entry into working on
the MediaWiki software (PHP web application design is considerably less
hairy than hacking kernel code).  Your points stand, basically, except
that you might be underestimating the effectiveness of pure volunteerism
in many (not all, but many) aspects of the entire Wikimedia family of
projects.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
You mow the grass away before my feet, as a Dutch expression says, but I
fully support you. I was planning to learn Papiamentu/o as soon as my study
and social life would allow me to do so and then request a Wikipedia in it.
So you already have my support, though I hardly know any native speakers.

However, AFAIK Piapiamentu is just one of the official languages of Aruba
(where it is spelt /Papiament*o*/ but pronounced the same way) and is
nothing but the vernacular language on Aruba and Bonaire, where Dutch is
still the only official language. This due to a generally negative regard on
Papiamentu's abilities as a language for anything else than ordinary daily
speech (for anything about non-ordinary topics is has to borrow from Dutch,
sometimes from Spanish), not in the least by its native speakers. But maybe
they made it official in the last few months?

Node ue is right to say that there are many more languages than Sranantongo
only in Surinam. In this case, consider creating a Sarnami wikipedia as
well.

Thanks,

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Spreek vrienden en familie met MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:
> On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 10:40 +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>3. We change our wiki syntax, however slightly. Besides everyone
>>using MediaWiki having to learn a new (altered) syntax, we'll have
>>to change *every* page in our databases, including *all* old
>>revisions. For that, we'll have to write a 100% perfect parser for
>>the old syntax that can create 100% perfect new code. Good luck
>>with that.
>
>
> Yep, that's the only acceptable option.  You are correct that it
> will be difficult, but that doesn't change the fact that we have
> to do it that way.

In that case, maybe we should hurry getting that standard set, so we can
do this when we change to MediaWiki 1.5 - it will need downtime for
database conversion anyway.

> It should be obvious, though, that we /don't/ want a "perfect"
> parser for the current syntax--we want the existing parser just
> as it is now, warts and all, which is what the current text is
> written to.  That parser will have to be modified to output the
> new syntax when we update, and that should be perfect (and
> /can/ be , because it will be well-defined at that point).

Which raises another question: By converting the source, we actually
edit all old and current versions of all articles. So, when I look at an
old edit of mine, it willk show something different from what I wrote at
the time.
I know that this is *supposed* to only affect syntax, but is retrospect
changing of user submissions OK with the GFDL? (After all, we're not
making a new version based on an old one, like editing; we'll be
changing the sumbission itself.)

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCS8DyCZKBJbEFcz0RAgbXAJ0RK0BPXQ8RSybefy1lUeIxwHinjwCfT5jm
wvqxq2ivKpDl0JOlVNwKtGs=
=6Iy9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Axel

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:40:45 +0200, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> *However*, if every (major) wiki would have a wiki-to-XML and a
> XML-to-wiki parser (which we'll have to do anyway, in a way, for #3),
> *then* we could
> - - read our wiki text from the database for editing
> - - convert it on-the-fly to XML
> - - convert the XML to any syntax the user wants, including a yet-to-be
> written standard
> - - convert the user's input to XML on saving
> - - convert the XML to MediaWiki syntax for storing in the database
Well I think you already mentioned a link to your xml format, but
I didn't found it it my archives.
Could you please post it again.

There are other projects like James Gosling's and Henry Story's
Bloged - blog editor which are also interested in using Wiki syntax
for their tool:
http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javadesktop/BlogEd

A wiki-to-xml and xml-to-wiki could really help for this task.

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


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day Lame-O-Rama

body:
Bishonen would love to have his European Toilet Paper Holder article use
as a robust April Fools trick.  He just doesn't want it wasted on a
feeble substitute gesture. (In case you didn't catch that because it was
at the end of his message).

Hence the current subject "Lame-O-Rama".

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I don't agree with all the suggestions mentioned, but I'd be happy to
feature unusual and extremely odd facts from unusual articles for one
day under the heading "Things you wish you never knew".

(And yes, I know I'm not in charge of DYK)

-- GyverMagic

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 01:48:15 +0100, John Fader <jfader at gmail.com> wrote:
> Web April Fools are very rarely funny, and now everyone does them.
> With all respect to those who worked on ours, I'm not sure it is
> either (it seems more like an "in joke" for us).
>
> If we post a fake story, we'll be just the same as Slashdot and the
> rest.  But we can do better.  We have a limitless supply of *real
> crap* to draw upon.  We can be lighthearted and play with the reader's
> credulity just as well by using stuff from [[Wikipedia:Unusual
> articles]].  I think all the featured articles in there have all been
> on the main page fairly recently, so instead I propose a special
> variant of Did You Know to take the place of the featured article on
> the main page.  For example:
>
> ==Things you'll wish you never knew==
> ''From wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles|stupidest articles]]:''
>
> * A 1919 '''[[Boston molasses disaster|molasses explosion]]''' killed 21 people.
> * [[Afrikaans language|Afrikaans]] pigs say '''''[[Oink|snork]]'''''
> and [[Korean language|Korean]] pigs say '''''[[Oink|kkool]]'''''. And
> we can prove it.
> * [[John F. Kennedy]] was almost certainly not a '''[[Ich bin ein
> Berliner|a jelly donut]]'''.
> * '''[[Belly button fluff]]''' is usually blue.  Check yours.
> * '''[[History of perpetual motion machines|Perpetual motion]]''' is
> impossible.  Probably.
> * [[El Salvador]] and [[Honduras]] fought a '''[[Football War|war]]'''
> over the result of a [[Football (soccer)|Football]] match.  Don't ask
> who won the war.
> * The happy [[Ewok]]s won't be happy '''[[Endorian Holocaust|for
> long]]'''. Serves 'em right.
> * '''[[Le P?tomane|French culture]]''' blows the competition away.
>
> And use [[Image:Shark big.jpg]] as the image.
>
> --
> John Fader
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alexander Sigachov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect terms

references:
<d2dape$d4u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<424ABEDF.20507@cartref.demon.co.uk>	<20050330211154.GJ23009@thingy.apana.org.au>	<424B2AC3.9090100@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<6faf39c905033014565c05e7ab@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Andre Engels ?????:
> As we're talking about #redirect translations - could someone give me
> the Icelandic, Rusian, Serbian and Tatar forms? And as I'm at it, the
> {{PAGENAME}} for Bulgarian, Icelandic, Russian and Tatar too? I tried
> to get them from CVS, but I don't get the Unicode en/decoded
> correctly.

Russian forms you can get from HEAD revision in CVS:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/languages/LanguageRu.php?rev=1.35&view=markup

#redirect - #??????????????? (or short #????????)

PAGENAME - ????????????????
(???????? - "name", ???????? - "page" in genetive)

--
Cxion la plej helan,
ajvol


subject:
April Fool contest idea (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Friday's
	featuredarticle)

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:52:09 -0500, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> I think it would be fun to redirect people to the wrong languages. it would
> be both maddening and it would also promote Wikipedia's cross-language
> reach.

That's just plain evil! Yes it's funny, but unfortunately I don't
think new visitors will appreciate that.

-- MacGyverMagic


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day Lame-O-Rama

body:
Wasn't it originally written for April Fools Day? Why are you suddenly
objecting against it being used?

-- MacGyverMagic


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:April Fool

body:
Maybe we should have a cat to tag hoax articles with. And just delete
all the untagged hoaxes that come by.

-- MacGyverMagic


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
A good alternative, now Bishonen seems to object to the article from
his user page to be used.

-- MacGyverMagic

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:37:49 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Deathphoenix wrote:
>
> > Geoffrey Burling wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Seth Ilys wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 05:02:33 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
> >>> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Again, I have not seen a single example of a respected encyclopedia
> >>>> doing this.
> >>>> Give me one example and I'll stop complaining.
> >>>
> >>> There are several examples of this in [[nihilartikel]].
> >>
> >> Sheesh, if there is so much resistence over [[European toilet
> >> paper]], how about if we were to nominate a real topic, like
> >> [[Wankers Corner, Oregon]] for Friday's FAC?
> >>
> >> Unless none of you trust my word that it actually exists?
> >
> > Or perhaps [[exploding whale]]. There are plenty of articles we could
> > use. The problem is, with an article like that posted on April Fool's,
> > we run the risk of people actually believing that the article is a
> > fake, when in fact, it's not.
>
> Sounds like some kind of reverse April Fools.  Something perfectly true
> that nobody in his right mind would believe. I like that idea.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
So come over to [[Wikipedia talk:Did you know]].
I'm ready for suggestions on what to include tomorrow. :)

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:31:34 +1000, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> John Fader (jfader at gmail.com) [050331 10:48]:
>
> > ==Things you'll wish you never knew==
> > ''From wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles|stupidest articles]]:''
>
> "All true and verified." Perfect :-)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ben Brockert

body:
On Thursday, March 31, 2005, at 10:57  AM, Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> Such as what? I cannot see the disadvantage to putting these pages in
> the Template namespace. Also, a secondary syntax could be made, like
> that old {{msg:}} syntax. {{msg:Box}} would include [[Box]], not
> [[Template:Box]].

It's quite common to include all kinds of pages using the template
mechanism that aren't in the template namespace. For example, look at
[[en:Wkipedia:Votes for deletion]]. Everything is included via the
template mechanism, but it's all stuff that shouldn't be kept in the
template space.

There are numerous other examples of interesting hacks using the
template thing.

Ben


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki redirects disabled

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> Arwel: It's a good idea. Do you already have it enabled in Welsh
>> though (ie bilingual), or are they all in English currently?
>>
>>
> It's been bilingual almost since we were converted to MediaWiki.
>
>> I think that would massively cut down on the amount of redirect
>> vandalism.

I'm afraid I don't think it's such a good idea now - later last night
the vandal returned (though he limited his vandalism to redirecting my
talk page to "fr:en:Image:autofellatio_2.jpg") and he has already found
out what the Welsh for "redirect" is! :(

Looking at the debate on [[en:WP:IFD]] on deleting that image, I'm
rather discouraged that the majority seems to be adopting an
ultraliberal permissive view of the desirability of this type of image,
regardless of its' being a vandal magnet with deleterious effects on
minor language wikipedias, and not being particularly necessary to
illustrate an article.

>>
>> Similarly, if the interface of aa.wikipedia were actually in Afar,
>> people would stop using it for their stupid tests.
>>
>> Speaking of which, a lot of people who make new pages on inactive
>> Wikipedias seem to have typed the URL wrong. For example, if somebody
>> meant to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa, they might
>> accidentally go to http://dz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa and then not
>> realise they're actually at the Druk Yul (dragon language) Wikipedia.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:40:03 +0100, Arwel Parry
>> <arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> After spending five hours straightening out cy.wikipedia today, Deb and
>>> I were wondering if it would be worthwhile / possible to remove the
>>> #redirect command in English, so that potential non-Welsh-speaking
>>> vandals would at least have to learn what the Welsh for "redirect"
>>> actually is before they try to screw up the database.

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


body:
Robin Shannon wrote:

>Waerth, what is the name and contact email of your ISP? There are
>quite a few ppl on this list, and it certainly wouldnt hurt for your
>ISP to recieve a bunch of emails complaining about thier open proxy.
>Sure maybe it will do nothing, but then again, maybe it might just
>yeild good results. Maybe an officialish letter from the foundation
>could also be sent. And anyway, telling ppl that they are on the SORBS
>list and urging them to clean up thier act, has to be better than just
>blocking them.
>
>Also, would it be possible to ban all users (logged-in included) on
>the SORBS list, then make a white list which any admin would be able
>to edit? (And obviously put a note on the "You are blocked cause you
>are on the SORBS list page" of how to apply to get onto the
>whitelist.)
>
>
>
Here are the names as listed on the APnic database:
It is Asia infonet. If writing please leave any references to my name
out of there. I might find myself disconnected otherwise.

*person*:       Wongchai Piyakavarnich
address:      17 th floor ,Fortune House
address:      1 Ratchadaphisek Road, Din Daeng
address:      Bangkok 10320
country:      TH
phone:        +662-6411800 ext 4794
fax-no:       +662-6411831
e-mail:       cmsv at asianet.co.th

*person*:       Supachai Kitwongpak
address:      17 th floor, Fortune House
address:      1 Ratchadaphisek Road, Din Daeng
address:      Bangkok 10320
country:      TH
phone:        +66-2-641-1800
fax-no:       +66-2-642-1540
e-mail:       kitwongp at asianet.co.th
e-mail:       kitwongp at asianet.co.th

e-mail:       cmsv at asianet.co.th

Walter


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Axel schrieb:
> Well I think you already mentioned a link to your xml format, but
> I didn't found it it my archives.
> Could you please post it again.

I don't think there's a DTD or something, but you can look at the
"flexbisonparse" module in the CVS. It already conatins a
mostly-finished Bison-based wiki-to-XML parser.

The development is currently halted. Any help would be appreciated :-)

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD4DBQFCS9C1CZKBJbEFcz0RAoljAJ40zYEoJm3miW7fqshjUF+h+Wt+rACY7x7H
1LVx1hG39OXnHTq5FJLhNA==
=IZ9I
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Today is the LAST DAY to nominate articles for the
	International Writing contest

body:
If you've seen a wonderful new article this past month, which should
be more widely recognized, please submit it to the writing contest.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:International_writing_contest

This contest is being held in parallel with the German, Japanese,
Dutch, and Ukranian wikipedias.  Please contribute to this bit of
peaceful international collaboration :-)

Cheers,
   SJ