from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 05/01/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be very
> offensive towards those who mean well.

I thought the smiley in Ray's original post was a fairly strong and
obvious hint that he wasn't trolling. Maybe we should start using
humor warnings in addition to spoiler warnings.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The currently proposed mission & vision statement of WMF are at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=485535

I think the retreat draft was much better.

In particular, I wonder why the "on the Internet free of charge" bit
was added to the mission statement.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


list: wikien-l

from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia jumps _into_ the top 10.

body:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote

> > Short answer: it's a good indicator of trend.
>
> It's a good indicator of trend within a small subset of internet
> users. How do you know they are representative of everyone? I doubt
> they are.

You can't _know_. You can look at it daily for a while, and decide it tells you things in real time that are apparent afterwards.

Go to http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=en.wikipedia.org, try 5y, Page Views, maximum smoothing. I think if you knew where to look for it you could see the bot articles based on US census data; a year ago it was more prominent. You can see the post-Siegenthaler boom very well. Apart from the trend growth, the other main feature was December 2006, and a big slowdown.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote

> The offending party can't move on, they can say "move on", but if the
> person that is accusing them doesn't want to move on, there is nothing
> the offending party can do about it.

Mmmm, think that is what apologies are for, though.

Charles

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Hi Erik,

I've previously given something along these lines some thought, and rapidly came to the conclusion that it's a huge amount of work,
but yet potentially exceedingly useful (assuming it scales up to something that can handle book-sized documents).

Essentially, something that exports a list of articles you give it into PDF format, and then you can print the PDF file, or have
someone else professionally print the PDF for you into a nicely-bound book format, or you can just read the PDF electronically.

So why would anyone do this? To see why, imagine a world in which:
* All teachers have complete control over their textbooks, instead of having them handed down from on high.
* Where the content in those books is build by clicking together prefabricated blocks of text (namely articles, or sections in
articles), like bits of Lego.
* Where the content that makes up those articles is (hopefully) free and public (such as the Wikipedia), such that any corrections
or updates or expansions are available to all (including other teachers).
* Where improvised high-school or uni students no longer have to pay $50 for a textbook that they're only going to read bits of (and
only probably then right before their exam) - instead they can get the PDF and read it electronically, or they can just print out
the bits they want, or if they really want the book they can presumably get a better price than $50 for getting it printed because
there can be competition for printing/binding in a way that there isn't currently for textbooks.

In practical terms, a use-case something along these lines was what I had in mind:
* User logs into MediaWiki, and goes to a new extension page, possibly called [[Special:MakeMyBook]], which allows tagging multiple
articles for PDF export.
* The user can create a new document, which allows ordering / reordering the articles as desired.
* Ideally, it would also allow including excerpts from articles (e.g. Labelled Section Transclusion).
* Ideally, it would also allow using particular versions of articles, or maybe even better, the latest stable version of the
article.
* Ideally, it would also allow including content from other remote wikis too, not just the local wiki, and it would respect the
copyright terms of those wikis. For example, suppose that Wikitravel or Wikia or Wikisource had some great material that
complemented some GFDL material in the Wikipedia. It would be really powerful to be able to have those bits of content side-by-side
(assuming the licenses were compatible), and have it automatically include all the necessary license-term legalese in an appendix in
5-point font. Yuri's API already includes a mechanism for getting the content license from a wiki (assuming the remote wiki is
running a recent SVN revision).
* Once happy with the structure, the user would then click a "make my book" or "Engage!" button.
* Some server-side job would then go off and do the processing, and email the user when it's done and/or leave them a message on
their talk page.
* The user could then download the resulting PDF file from an FTP or web site, and presumably after a while the file would be
deleted to free up disk space.
* The document structure / index should be saved and public, so that it can be viewed by others (who are interested in the same
topic), or worked on by others (when collaboratively making a document), or modified by the original author (if they want to update
or expand the document at a later date).

The "PDF link" in the sidebar for exporting just the current article is a great idea that I hadn't even considered, but building
books I think is probably the most strategically important application. Along the same vein though, you could maybe have an "Add to
book" link, which tacks the currently active article onto the end of the currently active PDF document / book (so that people could
browse around pages related to a topic, and tag the stuff they found relevant).

The three main issues that come to mind though are:
* CPU power + disk space requirements: If it gets used in the way I would hope it would be used, it's going to get used a lot, and
creating/optimizing large PDF files is not a computationally cheap operation. Multiply that by many users, making multiple revisions
of each book, and you have the potential for a huge backlog of tasks, each producing some very large files. So even if it was
super-efficient, it'd I expect need some serious CPU power, plus have large disk space requirements.
* How to do the actual conversion to PDF (discussed below).
* Coming up with a decent user-interface for allowing the user to add / move / delete / rearrange content (or maybe just start out
with an unordered list in text format, to start simple), and working out where to store that information (e.g. Should it get its own
namespace, rather than cluttering up the current namespaces?)

... And then of course, there's the small issue of actually building the damn thing, once it's determined what's being built, and
that it can theoretically be built ;-)

> - Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
> utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
> wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
> its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?

Well, I was wondering if it was possible to "cheat", and avoiding the whole compatibility problem, by doing something like this:

+--------------------+
| Private web server |
+--------------------+
  |
  |
  v
+--------------------+
|     MediaWiki      |
+--------------------+
  |
  |
  v
+--------------------+
|  Embedded Firefox  |
+--------------------+
  |
  |  Automatically print
  v
+--------------------+
|     PDF export     |
+--------------------+

I.e. a quasi-embedded version of what already happens, just all on one box, instead of over-the-network, and behaving like an
integrated pipeline, instead of as separate independent bits. The benefit of this is that you can use already-existing known-working
software, and avoid reinventing the wheel. And you don't have to worry about keeping compatibility with the parser - just leave it
as MediaWiki's problem to convert wikitext to XHTML. The downsides of this are:
* It may not even be possible to do this in a sensible way (i.e. to take these currently completely separate bits of software, and
embed them into one large process, which takes wiki-text as input, and spits out PDF at the end), although my current guess is that
it probably is (with a lot of hacking), but that's just a guess.
* You probably wouldn't get the "Support filters on the rendered HTML" functionality (or at the very least it might make it harder),
so thumbnails on the current print output would look like thumbnails on the PDF output.
* Wouldn't get internal PDF hyperlinks (e.g. clicking on something in the index to take you to somewhere in the body probably
wouldn't work).
* Would probably produce lots of separate intermediate PDF files (one per article), so there would need to be a step for combining
many separate PDFs together into one large one, whilst not having blank gaps between articles; Alternatively would have to create
one huge document which includes all of the required articles, and print that in one go, which would avoid this problem, but might
be slow (just as rendering a 200 page document through MediaWiki at the moment would be slow) and use lots of RAM.

BTW, the best "see also" web links for this would probably be http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Paper_Wikipedia and
http://pediapress.com/ ; The pediapress example in particular is interesting as they have a working commercial implementation of
some of this stuff, but it has a number of drawbacks, such as a) only seems to be for English Wikipedia b) was using a dump from
July 2006 last time I looked, so very out of date, plus errors frozen in time and cannot be removed or corrected c) the preview PDF
they give you has "SAMPLE" stamped across every page in red letters d) they're professional printers so they really want to sell
printed material, not create PDF files e) can't reorder articles, everything is in alphabetical order only f) can't include partial
content, such as sections g) can't pull content from non-local wikis h) can't see a way to collaborate on books or share with others
the stuff you have worked on but not yet finished. That said, their site is still kinda neat, and certainly worth looking at to see
what works well and what doesn't work so well.

All the best,
Nick.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
> Sent: Friday, 5 January 2007 3:02 PM
> To: Wikimedia developers; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] RfC: PDF and document management for MediaWiki
>
>
> I have identified an organization which is willing to spend up to
> about EUR 10,000 on adding support for exporting MediaWiki pages as
> PDF files, and improving document management for documents consisting
> of multiple pages.
>
> My current thinking is that the functionality implemented, as a
> minimum, would be as follows:
> a) Using an extension, integrate of a "PDF link" on any wiki page
> which would call an external library like HTMLDOC on a single wiki
> page
> b) Support filters on the rendered HTML (replacing image thumbnails
> with high resolution images, filter content by regular expression,
> etc.), and revision filters (export last revision edited by user on
> whitelist Y, or approximating currentdate-Z)
> c) Create a "PDF basket" UI which makes it possible to compile a PDF
> from multiple pages easily (and rearrange the pages in a hierarchy).
> The resulting structures could potentially also be stored as wikitext,
> using a new <structure> extension tag, so that they can be used both
> by individuals compiling PDFs for personal use, and by groups
> collaborating on complex documents.
>
> Possibly some budget could also be allocated for improving the
> external PDF library used, especially if we can allocate additional
> funds for this project.
>
> I'd like to request comments on this approach, specifically:
> - Besides HTMLDOC, do you know a good (X)HTML-to-PDF library which
> could be used for this purpose?
> - Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
> utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
> wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
> its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?
> - If you are a developer, would you be interested in working on this
> project, and available to do so? (If so, please contact me privately.)
>
> Any other comments would also be appreciated.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In particular, I wonder why the "on the Internet free of charge" bit
> > was added to the mission statement.
>
> To emphasize the free licensing / free availability distinction, and
> to make it explicit that we are committed to both (which we very much
> are).

What happens when webpages are replaced by GopherNG? ;)  I don't think
the technological binding makes sense in our mission. It's too deep in
the weeds.

In terms of "free licensing / free availability distinction" we're
also failing on that mark with the words "under a free license or in
the public domain" because "free license" is used to refer to both
Free Content licenses as well as "non-free content licenses which are
available for public use at no charge". I suspect the price or ability
to alter the license itself is immaterial to our goals ;).   If we are
going to expand the mission beyond a single sentence I'd much rather
see a highly condensed version of the free content definition in it.

"content which free of legal restrictions for all applications and
adaptations without cost, in all mediums, to all people, for all
perpetuity." or something like that.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> One problem I found on working with translators is that some of them
> tend to prefer to translate "free knowledge" into "knowledge free of
> charge"

Perhaps we should write an authoritative version in a language which
has reduced potential for this confusion and translate from that one?
There are quite a few languages where this confusion is reduced.  Or
more simply, perhaps someone needs to start a guide for translators
which helps people understand frequent issues like this one.

[snip]
> If Wikimedia itself pursue both form of free knowledge - knowledge as
> free as both beer and speech, I think it makes a sense its mission
> statement mentions *both* notions. Then no one shall misunderstand
> what the word "free" means here.

If it's really our mission that everything we distribute be at no
charge, we are already failing it. :)

I don't know that the no-charge part is really important. "Free as in
speech" pretty much promises that someone will make it available at no
charge. "Disseminate it effectively and globally" means that the
someone will usually be the foundation. I don't think it's a conflict
with our mission to use value added propagation as a fundraising
technique (like the realtime data feeds), but a mission statement
which over-emphasizes free-as-in-beer would create a conflict there.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] West Ham players: copyvio

body:
On 1/5/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I have been alerted to a claim of systematic copyvio on pages of players from West Ham, the London football club. This concerns copying from Tony Hogg, "Who's Who of West Ham United" (2000). I have no specifics, but this may well be true.
>
> Could someone in the know look at [[Category:Category:West Ham United F.C. players]], and determine if this is a well founded beef?
>
> Charles
>

No imposible but my random survey suggests it is not widespread
although a number do use Tony Hogg's various books as a source. would
be imposible to tell without a copy of the book though.

--
geni


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> Mmmm, think that is what apologies are for, though.

An apology is admitting you were wrong. If one side admits they were
wrong, then yes, the dispute is resolved.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> Let's say Person A often says certain sorts of things, which, to
> Person B, sound like personal attacks. Person B is offended and
> infuriated and begins a vendetta against Person A. Person A says, I'm
> sorry you took it that way; I didn't mean it like that. Person B has
> two choices: go around the wiki proclaiming that Person A is uncivil,
> never assumes good faith, and is racist; or forgive, forget, move on.

In that example, person B has apologised (for the misunderstanding,
rather than for doing something wrong, but it'll do), so the dispute
should be resolved at that point. If Person A isn't willing to accept
the apology, then they clearly just want to cause trouble, so telling
them to move on isn't likely to help.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Friday, January 5, 2007 09:39 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget
>
>> I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of
>> dispute resolution.
>
>It isn't a form of dispute resolution at all. You can't really forgive
>someone until they accept they did something wrong (well, I guess
>technically you can, but it doesn't achieve much), and once they've
>done that, the dispute is already resolved. All "forgive and forget"
>says is "once the dispute is resolved, move on, don't try and punish
>people for their mistakes".

There is also "live and let live" by which, if someone isn't doing just what you want, you don't get on their case. There is also the common sense realization that if an experienced user is breaking a policy, essentially making a newbie mistake, that they may not be aware of it and may be somewhat embarrassed if attention is drawn to it in an aggressive way.

Fred


from_name: Teun Spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Anthony,

what, according to you, is the place to speak up?

I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere else?

teun

On 1/5/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information for
> > free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
> > advertisements, sponsorships or whatever.
>
> Yep, it sure doesn't.
>
> IOW, if you object to there ever being ads on Wikipedia, now is the
> time to speak up, before the mission statement is adopted.
>
> Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] MessageCache and MediaWiki namespace redesign

body:
"Tim Starling" <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote in
message news:enlnmo$69l$1 at sea.gmane.org...

> * During upgrade, delete all pages in the MediaWiki namespace which were
> last modified by "MediaWiki default".

Perhaps a second check if it wasn't, to see if the contents are identical to
the expected contents.  I'm sure there are lots of cases where a message was
changed and subsequently reverted, or where spelling errors were fixed
locally before upgrading to a version where they were fixed by default.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>"Thomas Dalton" wrote
>
>
>>Why do people put so much weight on Alexa's rankings? It's based on
>>very biased self selecting sample...
>>
>>
>Short answer: it's a good indicator of trend. Especially that you can now apply smoothing to the stats.
>
>Actually something weird appears to have been happening, with all the Chinese portals going up and down at the end of 2006. (WP went right down, and was running slow: China was going up.) The fact that one can see such effects suggests that Alexa rankings are sensitive to some tidal movements. What you cannot conclude is that the whole system is correctly calibrated. But it seems to me that it is possible to read these runes.
>
>
People do know that there was a significant earthquake off Taiwan last
week that damaged undersea telecommunications cables and severely
disrupted internet access to/from/in East Asia, right? Sometimes local
phenomena in the physical world still play a role.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
<usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

>Only 8 more to go.

Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mailing list scheduled downtime and changes

body:
Just to clarify, the new email address for the WikiEN-l mailing list will be:
wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
(note it's wikimedia.org rather than wikipedia.org).

Once again, thank you for your patience and understanding.

~Mark Ryan

On 05/01/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, WikiEN-l subscribers.
>
> This coming Saturday at 10:00 UTC/GMT, the mailing lists will be
> shifted to a new server. This will cause a downtime for the mailing
> lists (and may also incidentally affect other Wikimedia mail systems).
>
> The mailing lists will also be shifted to a new subdomain, so that the
> WikiEN-l mailing list email address will in fact be either
> "wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org" or "wikien-l at lists.wikipedia.org" (I
> don't know myself yet; probably the former). You will still be able to
> send mail to the mailing list via the current (wikien-l at wikipedia.org)
> email address, but all emails will have fields like "reply-to" reflect
> the new address. This will break most email filters which subscribers
> have in place to tag mailing list emails and sort them, so many of you
> will have to tweak your settings a bit once the change is made.
>
> Sorry for any inconvenience and confusion this might cause.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> WikiEN-l mailing list admin
>


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
I don't really see that we're far apart in our positions. It seems we
both agree that sources should be evaluated case by case.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.6/617 - Release Date: 05/01/07 11:11


from_name: Gurch

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
> <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Only 8 more to go.
>
> Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
> Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.
>
> Guy (JzG)

Well... a lot (most?) of Wikipedia's traffic comes from search engine
results, which the site has been steadily rising through to the point
that it is now the first result for a huge number of search terms. So,
provided a search engine of some kind is the default home page, it is
never far away.

-Gurch


body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
>> <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Only 8 more to go.
>> Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
>> Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.
>
> We are getting close. Microsoft is using its autoupdate tool to push
> the MSIE 7.0 to its dron^wcustomers. People will have the "option" to
> "chose" for different search providers for the upper right search form
> (maybe you have seen this in FF already). One of the offered search
> tools is Wikipedia.
>
> This should - however - not stop us from creating an offline tool that
> could be installed instead of Encarta for OEMs...
>
> Mathias

Just persuade some popular OEMs to ship new PCs with a shortcut to
Wikipedia on the desktop; that'd be enough.

-Gurch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> There is also "live and let live" by which, if someone isn't doing just what you want, you don't get on their case. There is also the common sense realization that if an experienced user is breaking a policy, essentially making a newbie mistake, that they may not be aware of it and may be somewhat embarrassed if attention is drawn to it in an aggressive way.

Of course. Basically, you must ask yourself: "Will fixing the problem
do more harm than the problem itself causes?" If the answer is "yes",
then "live and let live" is the best response.


body:
On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 20:59:29 +0100, "Mathias Schindler"
<mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

>We are getting close. Microsoft is using its autoupdate tool to push
>the MSIE 7.0 to its dron^wcustomers. People will have the "option" to
>"chose" for different search providers for the upper right search form
>(maybe you have seen this in FF already). One of the offered search
>tools is Wikipedia.

Yup.  But let's not forget that "making #1 in Alexa" is not one of the
aims of the project...

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 1/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
> <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Only 8 more to go.
>
> Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
> Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.

We are getting close. Microsoft is using its autoupdate tool to push
the MSIE 7.0 to its dron^wcustomers. People will have the "option" to
"chose" for different search providers for the upper right search form
(maybe you have seen this in FF already). One of the offered search
tools is Wikipedia.

This should - however - not stop us from creating an offline tool that
could be installed instead of Encarta for OEMs...

Mathias


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Hoi,
I do not know if you observe when people watch watch television, but
people go to the toilet when there is an advertisement break. People
tape a program and fastforward the ads. The notion that ads provide
information is vastly overrated. Advertisements are typically ignored.

There is a website of a friend.. it has Google ads. When I feel good I
hit an add knowing that it will benefit my friend. The notion that ads
create a conflict of interest is an article of faith, it is not based in
how people perceive things in real life. When you are patch is bald, and
you want a solution AND you are lazy .. that is when an add helps you to
get Miracle-Gro. When you are smart you buy it cheaply in bulk at a
local shop and not over the Internet.

Thanks,
    GerardM

TIVO is an American product .. a prove that adverts in the USA are
considered to be overly intrusive. Customers HATE ads.

James Hare schreef:
> The problem with advertising on Wikipedia is that it presents a conflict
> with our real mission: to provide neutral information to the peoples. In
> contrast, the goal of advertising is to feed one-sided information to people
> in a very flashy way. Showing only half the picture is what leads to
> conflict: people think Americans are ignorant pigdogs when there are some
> very intelligent Americans. Keyword-based ads would be terrible in this
> sense: in an article about fertilizers, if there is a Miracle-Gro ad, it is
> giving them unfairly better representation.
>
> Now, we could counter this by linking to the relevant Wikipedia article
> -next- to the advertisment. What if something non-notable were to be
> advertised? Then there would be no article...
>
> On 1/5/07, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Anthony,
>>
>> what, according to you, is the place to speak up?
>>
>> I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere
>> else?
>>
>> teun
>>
>> On 1/5/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hoi,
>>>> I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information
>>>>
>> for
>>
>>>> free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
>>>> advertisements, sponsorships or whatever.
>>>>
>>> Yep, it sure doesn't.
>>>
>>> IOW, if you object to there ever being ads on Wikipedia, now is the
>>> time to speak up, before the mission statement is adopted.
>>>
>>> Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
>>>
>>> Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 05/01/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it a good idea to allow the user to not have the desc page link at all?
> That's one of the reasons {{click}} is bad, since so many images are CC-BY
> or GFDL and need the link to comply with the licenses.

There is nothing wrong in providing a feature for users to use.
Provided, that is, that the user base knows when it's appropriate to
use an image, and when it's not.

If a user wants to know the licencing information for an image, s/he
can access the image description page, where this information is held.
It is acceptable, however, for us to use free-licenced images to beef
up our interface...we're not deliberately obscuring access to the
licence information at all.

Ultimately, like a lot of our features, it comes down to trusting the
user base to use what we've provided in a sane and legal fashion. If
we couldn't do that, and if we couldn't trust the users to also do
some self-policing of wikis...well, we wouldn't have *editing*, let
alone image uploads or usage...and then where would we be?

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding Users?

body:
On 05/01/07, Mike O <mikeo at operamail.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is a really easy question, but how can sysops add new accounts to MediaWiki if public creation of accounts is disabled? Is there some hidden link, or extension available? I don't see anythign relevant under Special Pages.

* Special:Userlogin
* Click "create account"

You can have the accounts created and, if email addresses are
provided, have the new password mailed to the user directly.

Rob Church


from_name: Mike O

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding Users?

body:
Sorry if this is a really easy question, but how can sysops add new accounts to MediaWiki if public creation of accounts is disabled? Is there some hidden link, or extension available? I don't see anythign relevant under Special Pages.

--
_______________________________________________
Search for products and services at:
http://search.mail.com

Powered by Outblaze


body:
On 1/5/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:

> Just persuade some popular OEMs to ship new PCs with a shortcut to
> Wikipedia on the desktop; that'd be enough.

including a shortcut to a website is not something that can be sold to
the customer as a feature. OEMs are doing this because they get paid
for (this way or another).

Mathias


references:
<459E5C38.9080400@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<nn9tp2tp54pdqkqag4qker8v3gpsu62u0g@4ax.com>
	<48502b480701051159k6f7033c1gdf0845257e207b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<kkdtp2d3dhqqg8e61egahv1v502jpqb4gd@4ax.com>

body:
On 1/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Yup.  But let's not forget that "making #1 in Alexa" is not one of the
> aims of the project...

being #1 on alexa will be a coincidental side-effect, same as
world-domination and one or two nobel prizes.


subject: [Wikitech-l] PDF and document management for MediaWiki

body:
"Erik Moeller" <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote in
message news:b80736c80701042001t58c3a7f9naf68c1e70045885 at mail.gmail.com...
>
> c) Create a "PDF basket" UI which makes it possible to compile a PDF
> from multiple pages easily (and rearrange the pages in a hierarchy).
> The resulting structures could potentially also be stored as wikitext,
> using a new <structure> extension tag, so that they can be used both
> by individuals compiling PDFs for personal use, and by groups
> collaborating on complex documents.

Why not just use the current page transclusion method.

If I want to create "The Human Body" I could create a page in my userspace:
"User:HappyDog/Body" and transclude the appropriate articles:

{{:head}}
{{:torso}}
{{:arm}}
{{:leg}}

etc.

I pick the articles, and pick the order.  I can insert my own headings and
specialised introduction, create a TOC manually (suppressing the normal one
using the __NOTOC__ magic word), and all the other stuff that is so easy to
do in Wiki text.  Then I can just 'Export PDF' to get my book.

Collections of information that may be useful to many people can be created
in the same way, but in a 'public' namespace (which will vary according to
the wiki in question).

I would suggest an addition to the transclusion syntax that allows the
specification of a particular revision, e.g. {{:body|1726}} to give revision
1726 (and yes, I am aware that pipe syntax will not work - I don't know the
parser well enough to suggest an alternative), but aside from that I think
the mechanisms we already have offer a much more simple and flexible
approach than a dedicated 'basket'.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
On 1/5/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 4 Jan 2007 at 22:57, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > On music players, the high-order bit is the deal with record companies
> > that allows for music to be sold online in vast quantities; Apple isn't
> > going to jeopardize that just to placate the 43 techies who really want
> > ogg support. For instance, an ogg implementation that was able to defeat
> > the DRM would trash Apple's entire music business. I don't have any
> > inside knowledge though, so for all we know they may announce ogg
> > support at Macworld in a couple weeks.
>
> That explanation seems kind of bogus... MP3, while it's "unfree" in
> the sense of having patent encumbrances, is free of DRM, and can be
> used to exchange unprotected music (including pirated music).  Apple
> still doesn't mind supporting it.  Adding Ogg support wouldn't
> provide any opportunity to get around DRM that isn't already there.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by laziness... The
demand for .ogg support isn't there, therefore it's not high on the
priority list.  That said, there are a multitude of ways to change an
.ogg file to an .mp3 relatively quickly and painlessly.  Providing the
most open format possible on Wikipedia allows the end user more
options for what to do with it, and is in the end working towards the
goals of the project.

-david


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 1/5/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's a top-poster? A person who posts above all the stuff beneath it?
>
> On 1/5/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> >
> > On 5 Jan 2007 at 06:09, "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be
> > very
> > > offensive towards those who mean well.
> > [top-posting trimmed]
> >
> > I suggest making "top-poster" the new universal insult of choice.
> >
> >
> > --
> > == Dan ==
> > Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> > Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> > Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

And doesn't trim off the mailing list footer when quoting, either!

-david


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Hoi,
It is nice to be insulted with a word that I do not know .. Thank you.

When you read what I wrote, you will find that they are TYPICALLY
ignored. You would also read in the part that you did not bother to copy
that often a better deal can be had by not being lazy and by thinking
about what there is to buy.

Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, the point I make is not that it
has no effect it has little effect. Another point that I l make is that
the Wikimedia Foundation can be much more effective when it had a bigger
budget. Given the growth rate of all our projects, our need for money
will increase even when we only want to continue to provide the level of
service that we do.

Given that many people in Europe do not know Wikipedia, given that we
have not really made an impact in Africa, Asia and South America I do
argue that we have not scratched the service of what we aim to do. The
fact that only the English Wikipedia has more than a million articles
proves to me that Wikipedia is still very much a rich man's game. We do
not have the organisational infrastructure to do well in many languages.
We do not have a clue in what language the next "Seigenthaler" affair
will come to light. We do not have the ability to deal with such an affair.

The point is that we need much more money than we have. The aim of the
foundation is to bring information to everyone. We do not do as good a
job as we could. This is the argument that is not addressed when people
are rabidly against advertisements. Even when like in the Virgin Unite
case that organisation does not sell a thing. The problem I have with
this blanket anti add attitude is that it has little to do with our aims
and that it prevents to do good for languages other than the other
languages of economically strong countries.

Thanks,
     GerardM

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fatuous

The Cunctator schreef:
> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> I do not know if you observe when people watch watch television, but
>> people go to the toilet when there is an advertisement break. People
>> tape a program and fastforward the ads. The notion that ads provide
>> information is vastly overrated. Advertisements are typically ignored.
>>
>
>
> Look. Ads obviously work. That's why so much money is spent on them.
>
> Claiming that people just ignore ads is fatuous.
>
>  Ads influence people. Please don't pretend otherwise.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Gurch wrote

> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
> > <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> Only 8 more to go.
> >
> > Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
> > Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
>
> Well... a lot (most?) of Wikipedia's traffic comes from search engine
> results, which the site has been steadily rising through to the point
> that it is now the first result for a huge number of search terms. So,
> provided a search engine of some kind is the default home page, it is
> never far away.

It is not 'fantasy' or even 'science fiction' that WP, or something rather like it, could be the world's top website by traffic. The reason that WP surpassed eBay on Alexa is not hard to see: eBay had come close to saturating its market, at least in the areas and languages at which it was throwing capital. It had found most of the people who wanted to use it. WP is not in that position, yet. It might struggle to overtake Google and Baidu. But there is no real reason why a reference site with a real global footprint might not dominate, if the search market fragmented more, and the Chinese-language portals don't consolidate.

Anyway there is a slight silliness about this. If search sites are powered by Google behind a facade, 'Google users' understates the people who use Google.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] RfC: PDF and document management for MediaWiki

body:
On 1/5/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 05:01:45AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > - Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
> > utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
> > wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
> > its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?
>
> Some work has already been done on this front; check the archives.
> It's one of the reasons I encouraged MythTV to move from Moin to MW.

I also have done some work on my wiki-to-xml-to-stuff converter. It's
not up-to-date regarding the last changes to the parser (if-templates
etc) but does the basics pretty well.

http://127.0.0.1/wiki2xml/php/w2x.php

It probably has many small bugs, but the last time I used it, it ran
pretty solid. It comes with a MediaWiki extension framework, so it can
run both as a separate installation and/or as a MW extension. If you
install it locally, you can set it up for automatic PDF creation via
docbook.

Magnus


body:
On 1/5/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I also have done some work on my wiki-to-xml-to-stuff converter. It's
> not up-to-date regarding the last changes to the parser (if-templates
> etc) but does the basics pretty well.
>
> http://127.0.0.1/wiki2xml/php/w2x.php

clicking on that link only gives me lots of pr0n and... oh. nevermind.

Mathias


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Software to generate customised reading material on
	Wikipedia

body:
Maybe we should contact this guy and tune our search engine a little?

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=345782&ssid=29&sid=ENV


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Software to generate customised reading material
	on Wikipedia

body:
On 1/5/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Maybe we should contact this guy and tune our search engine a little?
>
> http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=345782&ssid=29&sid=ENV

His paper can be found at http://www.alexwg.org/ICALT2006.pdf and
http://www.alexwg.org/resources.html

Mathias


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
The Cunctator schreef:
> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> It is nice to be insulted with a word that I do not know .. Thank you.
>>
>
>
> Not trying to insult you, though I guess fatuous is a bit strong. I did mean
> it in the "delusive", not "inanely foolish" sense. Wiktionary is missing
> that definition.
>
>
As we do not agree on the effect of adverts, we can agree that you are
as delusive from my point of view.
> When you read what I wrote, you will find that they are TYPICALLY
>
>> ignored. You would also read in the part that you did not bother to copy
>> that often a better deal can be had by not being lazy and by thinking
>> about what there is to buy.
>>
>
>
> It's a mistake to believe that ads are typically ignored. Again, ads work
> because they influence people. Ads typically do not motivate people to
> direct action (at least percentagewise) but they do inevitably influence
> people.
>
Ads do not work on their own, you have to do a lot more than just
advertise when you want to get and keep a market share. But hey, that is
marketing and sales.
>
> Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, the point I make is not that it
>
>> has no effect it has little effect. Another point that I l make is that
>> the Wikimedia Foundation can be much more effective when it had a bigger
>> budget. Given the growth rate of all our projects, our need for money
>> will increase even when we only want to continue to provide the level of
>> service that we do.
>>
>
>
> One would hope that the need for money will not grow disproportionately to
> the growth in audience. In fact, there should be economies of scale.
>
The economies of scale happen within one language. We have 250 languages
and on many of them we have not invested a dime. We expect that the
content is good and that they will develop in the same way as the bigger
projects did. The issue is that there is no understanding of what is
actually happening and we do not know if projects have not been high
jacked by POV pushers. For the Belarus language this is certainly the
case from a linguistic point of view.

There are other far more serious issues and we do not have the resources
to deal with.
>
> Given that many people in Europe do not know Wikipedia, given that we
>
>> have not really made an impact in Africa, Asia and South America I do
>> argue that we have not scratched the service of what we aim to do. The
>> fact that only the English Wikipedia has more than a million articles
>> proves to me that Wikipedia is still very much a rich man's game.
>>
>>
>
> That's an interesting conclusion but hardly the only one that can be drawn.
>
Well, I am probably more involved with other languages than you are.
>
> We do
>
>> not have the organisational infrastructure to do well in many languages.
>>
>
>
> I guess it depends on what you mean by "well".
>
> One thing to recognize is that Wikipedia is part of the Web -- if the reach
> of the Web in particular regions of the world is limited in certain ways,
> that will limit the effectiveness and growth of those language's Wikipedias.
>
That ignores the fact that we DO have projects in 250 languages and that
for all of them the Wikimedia Foundation has a responsibility. We do not
know what the quality is of many of these projects and what risks we
run. This is an issue, that will bite us sooner rather than later and it
will cost us.
>
> The point is that we need much more money than we have.
>
>
> That's your argument. It's not prima facie true. We'd certainly *like* much
> more money, but need?
>
>
> The aim of the
>
>> foundation is to bring information to everyone. We do not do as good a
>> job as we could. This is the argument that is not addressed when people
>> are rabidly against advertisements. Even when like in the Virgin Unite
>> case that organisation does not sell a thing. The problem I have with
>> this blanket anti add attitude is that it has little to do with our aims
>>
>
>
> In your opinion. If, for example, you accept that ads influence people, then
> it's not too far to conclude that they unavoidably violate NPOV.
>
I do not accept that ads influence people in the way you do. As long as
we do not have advertisers influence our editorial process, there is
little chance that is will violate our NPOV. By the way, the biggest
problem in the way people consider things to be advertisements is that
it prevents the WMF from partnering with organisations and be openly
grateful. Partnering is not necessarily receiving money, partnering is
collaborating and given the roles of the organisations in such a
collaboration money may flow.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
On 4 Jan 2007 at 22:57, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On music players, the high-order bit is the deal with record companies
> that allows for music to be sold online in vast quantities; Apple isn't
> going to jeopardize that just to placate the 43 techies who really want
> ogg support. For instance, an ogg implementation that was able to defeat
> the DRM would trash Apple's entire music business. I don't have any
> inside knowledge though, so for all we know they may announce ogg
> support at Macworld in a couple weeks.

That explanation seems kind of bogus... MP3, while it's "unfree" in
the sense of having patent encumbrances, is free of DRM, and can be
used to exchange unprotected music (including pirated music).  Apple
still doesn't mind supporting it.  Adding Ogg support wouldn't
provide any opportunity to get around DRM that isn't already there.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 5 Jan 2007 at 06:09, "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be very
> offensive towards those who mean well.
[top-posting trimmed]

I suggest making "top-poster" the new universal insult of choice.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: howard chen

subject: [Wikitech-l] How Wikipedia deal with MySQL replication delay?

body:
I suppose the problem should be quite obvious...

any technique deal with this kind of delay?


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
What's a top-poster? A person who posts above all the stuff beneath it?

On 1/5/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> On 5 Jan 2007 at 06:09, "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be
> very
> > offensive towards those who mean well.
> [top-posting trimmed]
>
> I suggest making "top-poster" the new universal insult of choice.
>
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> In particular, I wonder why the "on the Internet free of charge" bit
> was added to the mission statement.

To emphasize the free licensing / free availability distinction, and
to make it explicit that we are committed to both (which we very much
are).
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> What happens when webpages are replaced by GopherNG? ;)

Well, we're not saying anything about the web, we're saying
"Internet". In that respect, "multilingual wiki projects" is much more
tech-centric. But either seems fine with me; if these solutions become
outdated, we will simply update our mission statement, as we've done
before. It's the vision statement which should be timeless.

> In terms of "free licensing / free availability distinction" we're
> also failing on that mark with the words "under a free license or in
> the public domain" because "free license" is used to refer to both
> Free Content licenses as well as "non-free content licenses which are
> available for public use at no charge". I suspect the price or ability
> to alter the license itself is immaterial to our goals ;).

Hair splitting, but we can change it to "free content license".
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin, 6 January, 2007

body:
In a message dated 1/5/2007 8:25:22 PM Eastern Standard Time,
mingwangx at gmail.com writes:

There is  more information of tour at  Tour
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tour>in Wikimania  2007
Official Website.

I want to go to ... I want to go to ... hmmm ... I can't figure out which
one. Can you let us know when it is translated.

Danny


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Categories & Namespace?

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

howard chen wrote:
> Currently, wikipedia's categories seems to be a flat categories system
> - no fixed common categories naming & inter relationship,

Categories are opaque text tags for cross-referencing and utility, not
tightly-defined semantic relationships.

See the Semantic MediaWiki project for ongoing work in that direction.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFn2bawRnhpk1wk44RAtZsAKDNQizEUTVloKhjX6LEy8+N9A1oxgCfRLBJ
JsrRCv0wyifllCtdUofRifA=
=MPFP
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from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] How The Other Foundation is doing

body:
An information pointed out to us by Mathias.
Interesting to read imho.

January 2, 2007
The Mozilla Foundation: Achieving Sustainability

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/01/the_mozilla_foundation_achievi.html

see also: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
The current localisation system has a number of undesirable properties:

* Start from a cold cache is extremely slow, taking from 20 seconds to
several minutes.
* The database is preloaded with hundreds of default messages, causing:
   * Slow installation, to the point where web installation is entirely
impossible on some resource-limited shared web hosts without commenting
out the message cache section
   * Excessive disk usage and slow backups on sites with large numbers of
near-empty wikis
* The message cache can exceed the 1MB limit of MemCached, causing total
failure
* The performance of the message cache degrades when some of the keys are
large

I spent a fair bit of time pondering how to fix this, but I think it was
Rotem who finally suggested the obvious solution: don't have pages for
default messages.

The only reason for preloading the MediaWiki namespace was to provide
admnis with model text upon which they could base their translations. This
justification has long since disappeared, since action=edit, action=view
and Special:Allmessages are now all capable of drawing default message
text from the message files if the articles do not exist.

So here's what I've done in my working copy, soon to be committed:
* Removed InitialiseMessages.inc and rebuildMessages.php
* During upgrade, delete all pages in the MediaWiki namespace which were
last modified by "MediaWiki default".
* Reoptimised the message cache for the sparse MediaWiki namespace.

The main message cache (i.e. the $wgDBname:messages key) will now be a
faithful representation of the contents of the MediaWiki namespace,
instead of (as it previously was) a representation of the contents of all
messages. If a page does not exist, it will not have a message cache key.

To solve the performance problems of having a small number of large items,
any page which is larger than some threshold (10KB by default) will only
have a placeholder stored in the main message cache, instead of the
complete page text. The full contents of these items are stored separately
in the cache.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives

body:
Teun Spaans wrote:
> hi Anthere,
>
> I just posted you request for a volunteer to email the clones in the pub.
>
> There also have been a number of reactions. User:Taka gave the longest reaction:
> 1) The legal risk statement raised a question: which legal risks do we
> run by publishing data on dvd or in books? (supposing we do a good
> check to prevent copyvios)

Well, doing a good check on 2000 articles is okay. Doing the same on 500
000 articles is a little bit more challenging.
Aside from copyvios, there are also other reasons why we could get sued.
  Most typically, complaints for defaming comments.
Such complaints made online are not a big problem to deal with; we can
immediately remove problematic content.
Not on DVDs or books.
If some one really want to get after us, he could get wikipedia down.
So, the Foundation itself should imho, not take such a risk.

Perhaps an organisation slightly separated from the Foundation ?

> 2) News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
> them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it
> premum content.

Hmmmm. Though I am not so sure the idea of selling scanned-for-vandalism
version, whilst letting non scan for free, will be widely accepted.
People may request free AND checked. Or maybe I did not exactly
understood your proposal.

> 3) The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas,
> as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known
> and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars,
> The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and
> the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on
> the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the
> soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to
> fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia.  Second, most of
> the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The
> english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch
> wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog
> of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among
> the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly
> simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did
> not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think
> of it?

* Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if
fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its
acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This
could probably support all wiki projects.

So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website,
primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly
copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on
this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support
other projects ?

Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???

Ant

> kind regards,
> teun spaans
>
> On 1/3/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Teun Spaans wrote:
>>
>>>On 1/2/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Teun Spaans wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
>>>>>* save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
>>>>>html seems already pretty lean.
>>>>>* Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
>>>>>contradicts GFDL.
>>>>>* Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
>>>>
>>>>** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something
>>>>we should work on.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>* There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
>>>>>* Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
>>>>>* Grid computing
>>>>>* Publish thematical information as commercial books
>>>>
>>>>** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we
>>>>can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a
>>>>deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>* Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
>>>>>* Make deals with clones or block them
>>>>
>>>>There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
>>>
>>>
>>>Perhaps we can approach the others?
>>
>>Absolutely !
>>Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are
>>obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education.
>>As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and
>>propose them a datafeed.
>>
>>A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is
>>useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can
>>certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a
>>community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and
>>try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate
>>contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds.
>>If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked.
>>The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so
>>this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though).
>>The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work.
>>Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing
>>perfect).
>>
>>But yes, feasible.
>>Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to
>>identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can
>>take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>
>>>>>* Same for news agencies
>>>>
>>>>Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
>>>
>>>I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that
>>>wikinews has to pick up   a bit more before this will work.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>* Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
>>>>>field guides
>>>>
>>>>Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
>>>
>>>If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>* Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
>>>>
>>>>Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on
>>>>this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests.
>>>>Volunteers welcome.
>>>
>>>I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have
>>>a broad array of companies which advertise.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>* Be more selective in accepting articles
>>>>>* Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
>>>>>all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if
>>>>>fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its
>>>>>acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This
>>>>>could probably support all wiki projects.
>>>>>* If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
>>>>
>>>>I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions.
>>>>thanks for the feedback
>>>
>>>Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested
>>>there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it
>>>may be interesting.
>>>
>>>Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the
>>>appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
>>>
>>>teun
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>ant
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>teun
>>>>>
>>>>>On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Old Chinese proverb:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>mountain = foundation
>>>>>>wind = people whining.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>:-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Jeff
>>>>>>
>>>>>>effe iets anders wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Hi all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy
>>>>>>>of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people
>>>>>>>and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly
>>>>>>>things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any
>>>>>>>serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope
>>>>>>>you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places
>>>>>>>where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up
>>>>>>>with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have
>>>>>>>one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I
>>>>>>>look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the
>>>>>>>current solution is for other threads.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Lodewijk / Eia
>>>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

references:
<enk1qb$8e3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<459D9B91.3010806@pobox.com>	<enkbc3$oj2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8178106.post@talk.nabble.com>
	<e92136380701050626p3cc46a7euc8aa4b5f709fa142@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 05/01/07, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's got my vote. Am I safe in thinking this might well be a good way to put
>> the dreaded {{click}} template to rest?
>
> That came to mind when I was messing about with it, too.

It would be nice to have some simpler syntax for that particular case.
It's probably better than {{click}}, but it still lacks elegance.

Also I think to replace {{click}} it would need a portable implementation
of the "default" directive.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> So here's what I've done in my working copy, soon to be committed:
>> * Removed InitialiseMessages.inc and rebuildMessages.php
>> * During upgrade, delete all pages in the MediaWiki namespace which were
>> last modified by "MediaWiki default".
>> * Reoptimised the message cache for the sparse MediaWiki namespace.
>>
>> The main message cache (i.e. the $wgDBname:messages key) will now be a
>> faithful representation of the contents of the MediaWiki namespace,
>> instead of (as it previously was) a representation of the contents of all
>> messages. If a page does not exist, it will not have a message cache key.
>>
>> To solve the performance problems of having a small number of large items,
>> any page which is larger than some threshold (10KB by default) will only
>> have a placeholder stored in the main message cache, instead of the
>> complete page text. The full contents of these items are stored separately
>> in the cache.
>
> Sounds good, but...
>
> ...will this in any way affect the means by which extensions have to
> add messages to the Message Cache? Will the existing interfaces still
> work, or do we now have to update all the code, 'cause I'm concerned
> about people breaking backwards compatibility again.

The only interface change is that I've renamed getFromCache() to the more
accurate getMsgFromNamespace(), but that function was implicitly private.
Anything that accesses $wgMessageCache->mCache directly will be broken.
But the usual public interfaces such as addMessages() and get() are preserved.

I'm usually pretty careful these days to maintain interface compatibility,
but it was no challenge this time around, since the code changes are
fairly minimal.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007

body:
Hello,

On 1/1/07, florencedevouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
> Hello community

Thank you for letting us sharing your idea for year 2007. I have two
proposals about that;
1) how do you think to put it to the foundation wiki as a letter from
the Chair, though it would have been originally intended to the
community, not the wider audience?
2) Considering the idea and thought of this mail and now being
finalized mission statement, could each committee summarize their
goals and ideas for year 2007, either publicly or internally
(internally i say, since some information might not be fitting to make
public at this time, though I have no such material as far as I am a
Transcom member)?

Just a thought.
Cheers,

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives

body:
Peter van Londen wrote:

>Some minor changes:
>1) Not set-up a different website, but Fanpedia would be a wiki, sister
>project of Wikipedia, Wikiquote and so on, it will also benefit from a high
>google-ranking as have all wikimedia projects.
>2) Fair use images: I hope not; I certainly hope that we get the fair use
>matter solved for all wikimedia projects.
>3) Advertisements on fanpedia will subsidize all other projects (there will
>be a lot of trafic diverted to Fanpedia, so money will flow).
>
>The thing is that a lot of people work on the fancruft, imho
>non-encyclopedian, part of Wikipedia and that is OK. Prison Break is one of
>the most visited articles on dutch Wikipedia. Most nl-Wikipedians are uneasy
>with this kind of articles, which evoluate to a encyclopedia inside the
>wikipedia in itself, and would be happy to move them to a different project.
>
>I think you what you are saying is that you are afraid that the sysops of
>this project would not be able to manage the project enough, as it will
>certainly be people which might have a different view on wikimedia ideals?
>
>This proposal will certainly help solve the money-problems, with an
>acceptable compromise for adds on one of the Wikimedia projects.
>
>Kind regards
>Londenp
>
>
This sounds very similar to Wikicities/Wikia.  Do you care to elaborate
how this would be any different (other than direct control by the WMF)?

Fan websites are very common, indeed could be called a "killer app" for
Wikia.  Note especially Memory Alpha and the Stargate Wikias that fit in
particularly with what you are saying here with fansites, in addition to
explicit advertising that appears.  Fair use images have been decided by
each Wikia community independently.

Now what the exact relationship bewteen Wikia and WMF is right now, I'm
not entirely sure.  Two (is it three?) former members of the WMF board
of trustees are still involved with Wikia, and there was some talk once
upon a time that Wikia would help sponsor the WMF through some sort of
cash contributions.  I havn't seen anything explicitly mentioned in
fundraisers about this, however, or in any of the currently published
financial reports.  There are several participants on this mailing list
that could certainly elaborate on this point authoritatively.  I do know
there is no legal relationship between Wikia and the WMF at the moment.

Quite a bit of material from Wikibooks has been transwikied to Wikia
projects where, based on sentiment within the Wikibooks community, it
was felt that it was most appropriate to those projects.  As a general
principle, I try to encourage this action only between Wikimedia
projects, but there are some obvious holes in Wikimedia project coverage
that keeps this from being a perfect fit with information that otherwise
would be a general part of the Wikimedia charter.  "Fancruft", as you
have tried to suggest, certainly is one of these areas.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:
> Is it a good idea to allow the user to not have the desc page link at all?
> That's one of the reasons {{click}} is bad, since so many images are CC-BY
> or GFDL and need the link to comply with the licenses.

If I leave out the option, someone will write a JavaScript/CSS hack to
hide the link, 5 seconds after it goes live. With the feature included,
the security is no worse, but the ease of use and portability are better.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: SJ Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives

references:
<73f3ff1b0612281519pc62b47qce3e65246bdc3d87@mail.gmail.com>
	<45944D25.1000903@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<8fb899d70701020124n11a623een7d446b0eaf3ab545@mail.gmail.com>
	<endsel$vf5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8fb899d70701021148k186dbe76ia2163eb55523fe28@mail.gmail.com>
	<enet2b$6hd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8fb899d70701050829s1008afd8mdab5a16fee06d472@mail.gmail.com>
	<enmrd8$g2k$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Anthere wrote:

>> 2) News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
>> them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it
>> premum content.
>
> Hmmmm. Though I am not so sure the idea of selling scanned-for-vandalism
> version, whilst letting non scan for free, will be widely accepted.
> People may request free AND checked. Or maybe I did not exactly
> understood your proposal.

Once we have a way to generate a scanned-for-vandalism flag, I imagine
that all communities will move to take advantage of this, and it will be
available to all.

> * Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
> all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if
> fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its
> acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This
> could probably support all wiki projects.
>
> So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website,
> primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly
> copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on
> this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support
> other projects ?
>
> Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???

This sounds like a mistake.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/6/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In particular, I wonder why the "on the Internet free of charge" bit
> > was added to the mission statement.
>
> To emphasize the free licensing / free availability distinction, and
> to make it explicit that we are committed to both (which we very much
> are).

Understood. And I think it helpful for translators & coordinators;
there is always misunderstanding around the notion of "free".

One problem I found on working with translators is that some of them
tend to prefer to translate "free knowledge" into "knowledge free of
charge" and miss it means also (or rather) free licenced. I have been
trying to persuade them "knowledge free of charge" was not a good
translation, but whenever new translator(s) joined, I should repeat
"what free knowledge means here" preaches. More terrible thing is that
I am not sure if some translated versions are spreading this kind of
misunderstanding.... hopefully not .... but I am not sure. One of
possible reasons of this kind of misunderstanding may have been anyway
it is true we are working for knowledge free of charge too.

If Wikimedia itself pursue both form of free knowledge - knowledge as
free as both beer and speech, I think it makes a sense its mission
statement mentions *both* notions. Then no one shall misunderstand
what the word "free" means here.

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


list: textbook-l

from_name: Stanley "Toshmann" Ozoemena

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibook User Arbitration

body:
Thanks for the information, Dragontamer!

--- percy tiglao <prtiglao at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/4/07, Robert Scott Horning
> <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> > I have lothed the day that this would be
> necessary, but Wikibooks has
> > now gone to a formal user arbitration situation.
> >
> > For details, see:
> >
> >
>
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Arbitration/Panic2k4_vs._SBJohnny
> >
> > I have agreeed to step in here in terms of trying
> to resolve this
> > situation.  Panic hasn't been doing blatant
> vandalism, but he has been
> > making it tough (apparently) to edit the C++
> Programming Wikibook and
> > has made a few enemies and a few others who are
> upset over his editorial
> > style.
> >
> > In an attempt to formalize this discussion and try
> to bring some order
> > here, and to keep this from spilling into areas
> like policy pages to
> > legislate the behavior of Panic out of existance,
> this has really turned
> > into a judicial situation instead.  Both that, and
> this situation is
> > quickly approaching the level of blatant wheel
> warring, and I want to
> > nip that right away to keep it from happening.
> >
> > Yes, this is perhaps a little more complicated
> than the Wikipedia
> > arbitration.  OK, that is intentional in this
> situation, as I would like
> > to set this up in such a way that you don't want
> to go through this meat
> > grinder if at all possible.  Arbitration is
> clearly the last and final
> > resort beyond trying to pull in people from
> outside of the project to
> > make very arbitrary decisions based on very
> incomplete information.  I
> > certainly don't want to see Jimbo, Anthere, or
> Erik having to get
> > involved here being pressured to act when they
> won't know what is going
> > on in the first place.  I know I have had to ask
> around a bit and work
> > hard to even see if there is a case to be made
> here at all.
> >
> > It is my hope that these arbitration/mediation
> cases are very, very
> > rare.  I'm trying hard to stay objective here as
> well, and am leaving
> > most of what is said to the discussion pages
> above.
> >
> > Once all of this has been more or less resolved, I
> hope that we can come
> > up with the formal arbitration guidelines that
> have been discussed now
> > for more than a year on Wikibooks.  I guess that
> until a situation like
> > this came up, there wasn't a percieved need to get
> this put together.
>
> *Sigh* it was only a matter of time. Get a bunch of
> people working
> together, and people will suddenly not want to work
> together for
> whatever reason :-/
>
> I have not looked at the current issue (in fact,
> this is the first
> time I have heard of it. But I feel that in this
> specific case,
> community consensus may be a bad thing. Eventually,
> there may be
> groups of users vs other groups of users. Maybe
> Jimbo or some other
> person would have to step in there.
>
> Oy, this is a whole new can-o-worms in Wikibooks
> policy...
>
> --Dragontamer
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

namespace Stanoz  {
/*
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------

How do you think Bill Gates got rich?
By being the smartest programmer in the world?
Or by owning the right to the work-product of other
programmers?
Your guess, I guess, is just as good as mine.

(Never mind...)

************************************************************
Stanley Ozoemena
STANOZ Computers (Nig.) Ltd.
20, Wetheral Rd., Owerri.
Imo State.
www.stanoz.com

0803 66 77 521
 083   232010

...er, from outside of my Nigeria; that'll be
+234 803 667 7521
+234  83  232010

Peace and Love.
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
*/
}

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


subject:
[Textbook-l] Fwd: [BP] Free mathematics textbook,
	TeX source with GFDL license

body:
Thanks for the info!

--- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> FYI
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rob Beezer <beezer at ups.edu>
> Date: Dec 28, 2006 2:19 AM
> Subject: [BP] Free mathematics textbook, TeX source
> with GFDL license
> To: bookpeople at pobox.upenn.edu
>
>
> This is an announcement of Version 1.0 of
>
> A First Course in Linear Algebra
>
> a free textbook that has TeX source available under
> the terms of the GNU
> Free Documentation License (GFDL).  The book's
> website is at
> http://linear.ups.edu
>
> This is a sophomore-level course typically for
> mathematics and science
> majors who have finished calculus and plan to take
> further advanced
> courses in mathematics.  However, calculus is not
> really a prerequisite.
>  The book is notable for a careful approach and
> extensive hyperlinks to
> previous definitions and theorems as new arguments
> are formulated.  It
> should be suitable for independent study.
>
> I've published the book in a variety of formats:
>
> *  Downloadable PDF's with varying page formats (8.5
> x 11, A4, etc),
> some meant for printing, some meant for on-screen
> reading
>
> *  MathML/XML which will render very well in Firefox
> if you add the
> suggested fonts for mathematics
>
> *  Print-on-demand through Lulu.com in paperback or
> with a coil binding
> (split into two volumes) at a cost of about $25 or
> $30
>
> If you maintain an online list of such books, adding
> a link to
> http://linear.ups.edu  will help increase the book's
> visibility and
> hopefully lead to a community of contributors who
> will work with me to
> add new material and correct the inevitable mistakes
> and missteps.
>
> Feedback and suggestions welcomed.
>
> Rob
>
> --
> Robert A. Beezer
> Professor
> Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
> University of Puget Sound
> 1500 N Warner
> Tacoma, WA  98416-1043
>
> beezer at ups.edu
> http://buzzard.ups.edu
>
> Voice:  253.879.3564
> Fax: 253.879.3522
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was sent via the Book People mailing
> list.
> Posting address:
> bookpeople at pobox.upenn.edu
> Admin. & unsubscribe address:
> bookpeople-request at pobox.upenn.edu
> Charter & archive:
> http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/bplist/
>
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an
> official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

namespace Stanoz  {
/*
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------

How do you think Bill Gates got rich?
By being the smartest programmer in the world?
Or by owning the right to the work-product of other
programmers?
Your guess, I guess, is just as good as mine.

(Never mind...)

************************************************************
Stanley Ozoemena
STANOZ Computers (Nig.) Ltd.
20, Wetheral Rd., Owerri.
Imo State.
www.stanoz.com

0803 66 77 521
 083   232010

...er, from outside of my Nigeria; that'll be
+234 803 667 7521
+234  83  232010

Peace and Love.
------------------------------------------------------------
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*/
}

__________________________________________________
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from_name: mingwangx

body:
 *Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin
*6 January, 2007

Summary:

   - Please express your intention for attending Wikimania 2007 in the
Attendees
   Page <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees> on Wikimania
   2007 Official
Website<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>so Wikimania
Taipei team can estimate the possible number of attendees.
   - China Times Travel Service will be the official travel agency of
   Wikimania 2007 and they will offer different tours in Taiwan from 1 to 3
   days.
   - The interwiki prefix of Wikimania 2007 Official Website now can be
   used.

Attendees Page

The conference and main accommodation venue will be arranged at Chien Tan
Overseas Youth Activity Center. The number of attendees should be evaluated
so that the Taipei Team can book rooms at Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity
Center. In order to provide information for the Team to evaluate the number
of rooms and beds, this page is needed to investigate how many people plan
to attend Wikimania 2007. Please express your intention of attending
Wikimania 2007 in the Attendees
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees>on Wikimania
2007 Official Website <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>.

   - If you will definitely attend Wikimania 2007, please sign in "
   Definetely<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees#Definitely>"
   area.
   - If you may attend Wikimania 2007, please sign in
"Maybe<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees#Maybe>"
   area, and tell us the possibility of your attending Wikimania 2007.
      - 80%
      - 60%
      - 40%
      - 20%
   - If you probably will not definitely attend Wikimania 2007, please
   sign in "Probably
not<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees#Probably_not>"
   area, and tell us what is your concern.
   - If you definitely will not definitely attend Wikimania 2007, please
   sign in "Definitely
not<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees#Definitely_not>"
   area.

 Official travel agent

China Times Travel Service is the official travel agent of Wikimania 2007.
It will provide 3 travel routes for 1 day, 2 days and 3 days.

   1. One day in I-Lan
   2. Two days in Hualien
   3. 3 days at Ali Mountain, Snake Kiln and Sun Moon Lake

There is more information of tour at Tour
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tour>in Wikimania 2007
Official Website.

Interwiki prefix of Wikimania 2007 Official Website

The interwiki prefix of Wikimania 2007 Official Website is now active. You
can use [[:wm2007:]] when linking a page on this wiki from any Wikimedia
Website. For example:

   - Link to the Main Page?[[:wm2007:Main Page]]
   - Link to the Team Bulletin?[[:wm2007:Team Bulletin]]

 Distribution of this Bulletin and feedback

Everyone is welcome to reproduce and distribute this bulletin to their
websites, mailing lists, BBS, blogs, and so on, but please kindly include the
Bulletin's original
location<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20070106>on
the official Wikimania 2007 website in your distribution.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them at...

   - http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Team_Bulletin/20070106
   - Wikimania-l mailing
list<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l>

 *Sponsorship<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sponsorship&action=edit>
* <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania.svg>
Patron? Chunghwa
Telecom <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunghwa_Telecom>[1]<http://www.cht.com.tw/>
Benefactor? dotAsia<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=DotAsia&action=edit>
[2] <http://www.dotasia.org/>  Friends?
 Supporter? Cottingham & Company  Contributor?


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:00:24 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

>People do know that there was a significant earthquake off Taiwan last
>week that damaged undersea telecommunications cables and severely
>disrupted internet access to/from/in East Asia, right?

Certainly do.  Our APAC admins have been picking up the pieces ever
since.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Gianluigi Gamba

subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives

body:
Anthere ha scritto:
> So... what you suggest is that the Foundation set up a website,
> primarily constituted of fan-oriented information, with mostly
> copyrighted images under fair-use doctrine, and put advertisement on
> this web site, and use the income generated by this mean to support
> other projects ?
> Errrrr. What do other think of that idea ???
>
The only trouble I see is in defining where to trace the boundary
between fan-oriented information and "encyclopedical" information. There
are borderline cases that the community will have to discuss, but the
same process is happening now when communities decide whether to keep or
reject an article.
Which project do all the series of articles dedicated to "the Lord of
the Rings", as example, might belong?
Certainly, such a project can help the existing ones to fight against
self-promotion, gossip and various vanities.

How successful can such a project be? If being a Wikimedia-project is
enough to capture the attention of the many already existing fan
communities (in and out of Wiki-world), chances are good. But editors
might dislike the idea of not being allowed to write on the main
projects about their idols and being directed to what might be perceived
as a "stepchild" project...

Sorry for not being much clear, it's just aloud thiking.
G.


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives


from_name: RCTLocoWikiSpam

subject:
[WikiEN-l] I appeared to be banned from Wikipedia. -
 Reply-to-reply -

body:
All I got is this from Jimbo Wales:

"Cory,

Reoving semi-protected tags when this article or articles is still protected
that you're not allowed to do that is against Wikipedia policy.

There are reasons:

1. Wikipedians who kept removing semi-protected tags will be banned
permanently from interactivity on Wikipedia.

2. If you're firing Brad Patrick (permanently), I'll get Donald Trump, and
he'll fire you for bothering him.

Wikipedia enforces a zero tolerance policy in regards to wiki vandalism in
Wikipedia. There is a possibilty that you will be banned from interactivity
on Wikipedia if you continue to vandalize any wiki stuff. If you have
questions,  mailto:wikispeaker at gmail.com email me.  It should be noted that
replies to this email will go unanswered and your only course is emailing
me!

--Jimbo"

In fact, they didn't request unbanning, in fact, you could get away with
wiki vandalism, right? Then you say, "Oh, shit!"

Dan Collins-2 wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> Removing semi-protected tags when the article is still protected doesn't
>> sound like it's a useful kind of editing.
>> Why would you want to do that?
>>
>> Mgm
>>
>>
>> On 12/30/06, RCTLocoWikiSpam  wrote:
>>>
>>> If they didn't request unblocking i was banned permanently for removing
>>> semiportected tags. It's against Wikipedia policy. I'm not spamming
>>> anymore.
>>>
>>> "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking
>>> plane!"
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
>>> http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8095323
>>> Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> forwarding the reply to the user
>
> --
> GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8196701
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] I appeared to be banned from Wikipedia.

body:
All I got is this from Jimbo Wales:

"Cory,

Reoving semi-protected tags when this article or articles is still protected
that you're not allowed to do that is against Wikipedia policy.

There are reasons:

1. Wikipedians who kept removing semi-protected tags will be banned
permanently from interactivity on Wikipedia.

2. If you're firing Brad Patrick (permanently), I'll get Donald Trump, and
he'll fire you for bothering him.

Wikipedia enforces a zero tolerance policy in regards to wiki vandalism in
Wikipedia. There is a possibilty that you will be banned from interactivity
on Wikipedia if you continue to vandalize any wiki stuff. If you have
questions,  mailto:wikispeaker at gmail.com email me.  It should be noted that
replies to this email will go unanswered and your only course is emailing
me!

--Jimbo"

In fact, they didn't request unbanning, in fact, you could get away with
wiki vandalism, right? Then you say, "Oh, shit!"

Dan Collins-2 wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> Removing semi-protected tags when the article is still protected doesn't
>> sound like it's a useful kind of editing.
>> Why would you want to do that?
>>
>> Mgm
>>
>>
>> On 12/30/06, RCTLocoWikiSpam <rctlocomotionwikipeida at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> If they didn't request unblocking i was banned permanently for removing
>>> semiportected tags. It's against Wikipedia policy. I'm not spamming
>>> anymore.
>>>
>>> "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking
>>> plane!"
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
>>> http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8095323
>>> Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> forwarding the reply to the user
>
> --
> GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/I-appeared-to-be-banned-from-Wikipedia.-tf2897550.html#a8196701
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony,
>
> what, according to you, is the place to speak up?
>
This thread is certainly a good place.  If you think "without
advertisements" should be added to the mission statement, suggest it.
It would be interesting to see who, if anyone, objects.

> I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere else?
>
There's a talk page for that mission statement draft.  Not sure where
else it's being discussed.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
On 1/5/07, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > I also have done some work on my wiki-to-xml-to-stuff converter. It's
> > not up-to-date regarding the last changes to the parser (if-templates
> > etc) but does the basics pretty well.
> >
> > http://127.0.0.1/wiki2xml/php/w2x.php
>
> clicking on that link only gives me lots of pr0n and... oh. nevermind.

D'oh! Shoulda hide the pr0n better next time ;-)

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php

Magnus