subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
users who have changed each option from the default:

-----------------------------

skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
skin=2 (cologne): 991

hover=0: 52
underline=0: 2332
highlightbroken=0: 580
justify=1: 417
hideminor=1: 226
usenewrc=1: 362
numberheadings=1: 202
rememberpassword=1: 4735
editondblclick: 147
watchdefault: 213
minordefault: 160
previewontop: 831
nocache: 4

-----------------------------

Regarding the skins, I think Cologne Blue *could* become the standard with
some design fixes, but we should stick with Standard for now.

Considering that previewontop was recently changed to be the default,
there remain two strikingly popular options: rememberpassword=1 and
underline=0. Since most users never change their preferences, these
numbers are quite high, even if they are not the majority.

I therefore think it would make sense to make these options defaults, that
is, to make links non-underlined by default even for anonymous users, and
to remember passwords by default.

Underlining:

Users who like their links underlined can still turn on this option, but
extrapolating from the above, I would guess that non-underlined links are
more popular. Note that we are a very link-heavy page, so the high amount
of underlining on a page can get quite distracting. Links are reasonably
easy to distinguish from normal text when non-underlined.

Remember password:

This option needs to be distinguished from underlining, as it can also be
accessed on the login screen, not just on the preferences screen, and is
thus likely to be noticed by more people. However, I still think this
should be the default. There are users at places where they do not want
their password remembered, such as cafes and changing terminals at work.
What is the standard case and what the exception, though? My guess is that
most people log in to Wikipedia from one or two machines, and that the
browser on that machine is reasonably secure from access by others.
Other users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember"
checkbox during login.

Thoughts?

Regards,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Two issues here: what is legal to have on the server and what is legal in the user's nation

body:
On Thu, 22 May 2003 15:38:01 -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
gave utterance to the following:

>> (The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>):
>>
>> Yes there are: try child prOn, indecency and obscenity laws.
>
> Those are not restrictions on "nudity". Nude pictures of children
> are perfectly legal in the US, as long as they're not engaged in
> sexual acts or otherwise presented as erotic.

They seem to think differently in Texas:
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2003-04-17/feature2.html/1/index.html
(The publicity and resulting outrage cause the state to back away from the
case a week later).
--
Richard Grevers
Confucius say: People having gift for gab know not how to wrap it up


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion improvements

body:
Smurf-
> I hope I can add it in LanguageDE.php today, before the feature freeze.

Feature freeze != CVS freeze. Please continue to provide translations
where they are necessary. Bugfixes will also continue to be applied. The
idea behind a feature freeze is that we want to avoid adding new bugs
while we are putting all wikis on a stable version, so that we don't have
to update them again a day later. But bugfixes and language changes should
not be an issue.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
> Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
> users who have changed each option from the default:
>
> -----------------------------
>
> skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
> skin=2 (cologne): 991
>

Which means most useres uses the default? or is there another group with
"skin=0" ?

I think you have the sql-queries at you fingertips: can you give me the
stats (for the skins only) for german wikipedia, or the queries?

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
You wrote:
> wasn't Augustus Caesar stabbed in the back by his son,
> Brutus? (not that I'd do that to Jimbo)

No, that was Julius Caesar. JC was the first military dictator of Rome but he
didn't rule for long before he was killed by his illegitimate son Brutus and
several Senators (but historians are not certain that Brutus was in fact a
son of JC).

Augustus was the first emperor and as such was the person who established the
Emperorship of Rome.

-- mav


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error in search on WikipediaNL

body:
Searching (as well as moving) on WikipediaNL results in a database error.

Error message:

1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Smurf-
>> We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
>> Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
>> users who have changed each option from the default:
>>
>> -----------------------------
>>
>> skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
>> skin=2 (cologne): 991
>>

> Which means most useres uses the default? or is there another group with
> "skin=0" ?

skin=0 is the default, and the remaining users (of the ~11500 total) use
that one.

> I think you have the sql-queries at you fingertips: can you give me the
> stats (for the skins only) for german wikipedia, or the queries?

select count(*) from user where user_options like "%optionname=1%"

Do this for any option you want to check, and substitute optionname and 1
or 0 depending on what you want to know. Let me know if the results are
substantially different.

And I wish more people would use editondblclick. It's cool! ;-)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nomination

body:
John R. Owens wrote:
> Which reminds me, I've been intending to nominate User:Evercat for sysop
> status. If nothing else, to save me from having to check the history
> before deleting what he's just blanked all the time. ;) So, anyway, I'm
> nominating him now. I've mentioned my intent to him, but he didn't say
> outright whether or not he'd accept.

I second that (have the same problem too).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
> > >All being behaviors that anybody could follow,
> > without
> > >being necessary a sysop. Being gentle, caring,
> > loving
> > >anod trusted, is not the prergative of a sysop.

--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Recently, many people were proposed to be sysops. They
> were mostly sold the "trust" display, rather than what
> syosp really is (a police force). The more sysops
> there are, the less trust will be granted to non
> sysops, imho.

Which is why I don't care to be a sysop. It's more of a
responsibility  to police than anything (policing means responding to
the cries of foul from the populace). What Jimbo said above holds
true for me. No need to have a star-shape badge to be kind, and work
in a spirit of community.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion improvements

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Feature freeze != CVS freeze. Please continue to provide translations
> where they are necessary. Bugfixes will also continue to be applied.

Oh, but I think it's handy if the thing will be installed in the most
uptodate version. And nobody have to do it five minutes later again.

Therefore: LanguageDe.php has only 5 missing translations, and some of
them I first have to look where they are used.

I although included "Ancientpages" as Specialpage. I hope that was the
only one missing.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I guess a sysop is more like a judge. I don't think it
> is fair to say that sysops are a police force. Being a
> policeman (or woman) implies doing something
> compulsively, without consent, as opposed to someone
> more like a judge, who consents all involved parties
> as well as the rules/laws, the previous precedents,
> and the jury (in this case the Wikipedia community).

If sysops are going to consider themselves judges, we're going to
have serious long-term problems.

I for one prefer the Jimbo-as-judge, everybody else enforce his
decisions, either through force (police==sysop) or persuasion
(coaching==caring user).

Otherwise we'll run into the situation of he-said she-said.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Brion-

I thought you were going to bed :-)

>> Underlining:

> We should just get rid of this option and not specify anything about
> underlining in our style sheet. Every browser has an option to set
> this, and people turn underlining off in the site just because we
> override their browser settings.

Most people are not even aware of this browser setting, and even if they
are, it is useful to be able to set it on a per-site basis, for the
following reasons:

1) If a site sets the link color, but not the link style, that means the
browser setting is not overridden (at least in Mozi). So if a site decides
to use black underlined text for its links, this would then become black
non-underlined text. This is one reason to have this option turned on in
general, but for specific sites/themes, a user may wish to turn it off. I
for one would be very displeased if I would have to turn off underlining
for all websites just to view Wikipedia in non-underlined text.

2) Our site is a particularly link-intensive one. The main page alone
includes 127 links. Underlined text is ugly and hard on the eyes (which is
why it is almost never used in print), but with just a few links, easy to
locate on the page. It is quite obvious that the higher the link/text
ratio, the bigger the negative impact of underlined links. Most users who
surf with the default setting (the vast majority) will probably prefer
surfing Wikipedia without underlined links.

Of the options in preferences, "underline" is the one which our users
disable most often ("rememberpassword" doesn't count because it's also on
a different screen). I think it would be a good idea to change the
default.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IP stuff

body:
> The Cunctator, Lee Daniel Crocker,
>
>  Wrong question, wrong place to ask. :-(
>  I apologize to you.
>
>  Goodbye
>
> Alvaro

Hi all,
I don't think is the wrong place to ask.
I also think that hide IP to logged user led us to many problems we didn't
encounter before the Phase III.
Here is the problems I see :
- Same user who use multiple identity to justify a pov opinion
- Same user who use multiple identity to make multi votes
- Vandale who use user account to hide its ip
As sysop I have no idea to how block a logged user even if he do massive
vandalism (except send a message to this list and pray for one of the gods
can stop him).
I don't see any good reason to hide logged user IP.
It worked fine on Phase I & II, no ?
Regards,

Aoineko


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug fixes, feature freeze

body:
> (Thomas Corell <tcorell at igd.fhg.de>):
>
> I think you meen 'no CVS changes' with feature freeze?

Not exactly, just "no new features". Bug fixes should go in,
let's just get all the software running cleanly before we go
adding more things to it.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>>skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
>>>skin=2 (cologne): 991

German : 0: 1233
          1: 50
          2: 304

Is there a posibility to include a "last_login" (user_touched, I think)
in that query (touched last 3 or 5 month), to exclude inactive users? A
field user_created not exists, as far as I know. I'm not fit enought to
do so, and experimental sql-queries on the live DB I'm not willing to
do. My test-system is unfortunaly not reachable form work.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:

> Is there a posibility to include a "last_login" (user_touched, I think)
> in that query (touched last 3 or 5 month), to exclude inactive users? A
> field user_created not exists, as far as I know. I'm not fit enought to
> do so, and experimental sql-queries on the live DB I'm not willing to
> do. My test-system is unfortunaly not reachable form work.

or possibly better: nummer of changed pages of the users > 5 or so

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks

body:
jlk7e at juno.com wrote:
> The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that
>there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist
>state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc.
>This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as
>the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace
>of Marxist-Leninist ideology.  Political scientists use the term
>"Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system.  I
>believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and
>others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing
>them).

It sounds like the title should be "Definining characteristics of a
communist state" or some such, then, to alleviate the ambiguity.
These are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a state to be
called a communist state.

Things like 'suppression of dissent' happen in some kinds of
non-Communist states, so even thought it's true that communist states
have a track record in this area, it is not a defining characteristic.

Calling the articles "Communist state" versus "Communist government"
is probably not helpful in preventing the kinds of controversies we
have seen.

--Jimbo


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nomination (was:Re:NO-FX ban)

body:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 06:42:46 -0700
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NO-FX ban
>
<snip>
>
> Just now, I see User:Sned and User:Evercat working together on an
> article on [[BCC]].  User:Frecklefoot is continuing his excellent
> article on [[Sundog Frozen Legacy]].  These quiet folks never come to
> our attention on the list, but they are the heart and soul of what
> we're here for.
>
> --Jimbo

Which reminds me, I've been intending to nominate User:Evercat for sysop
status. If nothing else, to save me from having to check the history
before deleting what he's just blanked all the time. ;) So, anyway, I'm
nominating him now. I've mentioned my intent to him, but he didn't say
outright whether or not he'd accept.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Commander Ivanova:	Always finding good in every situation, Captain?
Captain Sheridan:	Absolutely.  If I didn't, I might end up like
			you.
Ivanova:	Hey, what's that supposed to mean?  Did anyone else hear
		that?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia at meetup.com

body:
http://wikipedia.meetup.com/

I think this is pretty neat, and I'm glad someone did this.

We should promote this from time to time, and see if we can really end
up having some actual meetups.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Thoughts?

skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
underline = off
remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
default recent changes size = much bigger than now


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another user greeting boilerplate

body:
Just a heads-up that I've created another boilerplate user-greeting for
those users who have made some good edits but have not yet created a user
ID. It's much the same as the Standard User Greeting, except that it is
more appropriate for those users who have not yet really "joined" the
Wikipedia.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AStandard_user_greeting

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Title characters

body:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> * Cannot allow: # (sharp), | (pipe), " (quote), [] (brackets),
>   {} (braces), <> (greater,less), + (plus), \ (backslash) because
>   allowing them would interfere with link syntax and make the
>   software more tricky to write. I can live without these, though
>   I think + might be handy in some places (like C++), and might be
>   worth the effort to allow.

Plus + and quote " are frequently asked for. These would not interfere
with wiki syntax at all, though both would require escaping in URLs (as
does the ampersand & when used in the query string and the percent % and
question mark ? always, all of which we presently allow).

> * Should allow anything Unicode calls a letter, numeral, syllable,
>   or ideograph.

Okay...

> * Should not allow Unicode diacriticals, combining forms, display
>   forms (ligatures), controls, and other specials.

Waitaminute... that would seem to exclude the use of accented characters
that do not have a precombined form. This could be seriously detrimental
to some languages.

(In any case, we ought to do a little fancier work with UTF-8 to make sure
that canonical forms are used to prevent false non-matches. I don't know
if there's a library we can link into PHP to do this or if we'd have to
write something.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin nominations

body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > >All being behaviors that anybody could follow,
> > > without
> > > >being necessary a sysop. Being gentle, caring,
> > > loving
> > > >anod trusted, is not the prergative of a sysop.
>
> --- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Recently, many people were proposed to be sysops.
> They
> > were mostly sold the "trust" display, rather than
> what
> > syosp really is (a police force). The more sysops
> > there are, the less trust will be granted to non
> > sysops, imho.
>
> Which is why I don't care to be a sysop. It's more
> of a
> responsibility  to police than anything (policing
> means responding to
> the cries of foul from the populace). What Jimbo
> said above holds
> true for me. No need to have a star-shape badge to
> be kind, and work
> in a spirit of community.

Agreed. Btw, all what is written above your comment
was written by me, not by Jimbo. Though, hopefully, he
agrees with it.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Part of the negative material which I and Cuntator struggled to include in
the article, "Communist State" did concern the practical political science
aspects of the governmental system, specifically, rule and control of
information by the politbureau. This was found just as objectionable as any
other negative material regarding the Communist state. In fact, there was
such a hypercritical attitude that they actually took issue with the
spelling of "politbureau", preferring the transliterated cyrillic version,
"politboro". (Both are correct in English).

I don't think they liked the notion that members of the party were the
ruling class either.

Hard to say what they were thinking in detail, they simply deleted it all.

Fred

> From: jlk7e at juno.com
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:03:38 GMT
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
>
>
> My first post to the mailing list...
>
> Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and
> "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the
> current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be accomplished by
> the former article is in error.
>
> The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a
> particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced
> in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc.  This governmental system is
> characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the
> Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology.  Political
> scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of
> governmental system.  I believe this is the argument that was put forth by
> jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing
> them).
>
> They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss
> other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in articles
> about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift
> solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only* go in
> Communist state.  As such, the type-of-government discussion would get
> cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things
> communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
>
> I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is
> susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional monarchy", or
> what not.  But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view.  Furthermore,
> what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory and the
> communist state in practice.  Both "Communist state" and "Communist
> government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways.  In
> particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in
> regards to the structure of the form of government.  (The theory of how a
> communist state should function would be rather different, at least for
> Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist
> state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
>
> That's all for now
>
> John Kenney
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] [tfoote@bomis.com: A MUST see]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> A friend forwarded me this humor page, and I tried to use
> it with http://www.wikipedia.org, with the very surprising
> result that it returned the "Index of /" from wikipedia, rather
> than the Snoop-Dogg lingo translation of the page.
>
> Probably this is evidence of something we've done wrong?
>

Well, it works only on www.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org blocks. Seems
to be a missing config line on the new server la^H^Hen-Server.

Possibly: DirectoryIndex

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikitech-l] Countering the vandals who attack users (not just pages)

body:
Anthere-
> But I think it wrong regular users can not from time
> to time check whether pages were not unproperly
> deleted (not along community defined rules).

On en:, someone created [[Wikipedia:Censorship]] a while ago to complain
about such incidents. I don't think it's the best title (who would want to
be labeled a censor?), but such a page would certainly allow for the kind
of feedback you envision.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php

body:
Attached to this file, you will find a new version for languageNl.php. Please
put this on the site, thank you.

Andre Engels
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Title characters

body:
In the process of writing some standards documents for the Wikipedia
content model (some lower level behind-the-scenes stuff that needs to
be done before working on the syntax and to beef up the test suite),
I've come to the point were I need to decide exactly what characters
are and are not allowed in page titles. I'd like to solicit input on
this. Keep in mind here that what I'm specifying is what set of
characters can a page title be chosen from; that is, what strings
will be allowed between the brackets of a link, and displayed at the
top of a page, regardless of whatever URL-encoding tricks we have to
use to make that happen. _After_ we specify that, then we can specify
exactly how to construct URLs from them. Here are my current thoughts:

* Cannot allow: # (sharp), | (pipe), " (quote), [] (brackets),
  {} (braces), <> (greater,less), + (plus), \ (backslash) because
  allowing them would interfere with link syntax and make the
  software more tricky to write. I can live without these, though
  I think + might be handy in some places (like C++), and might be
  worth the effort to allow.

* Should allow anything Unicode calls a letter, numeral, syllable,
  or ideograph.

* Should not allow Unicode diacriticals, combining forms, display
  forms (ligatures), controls, and other specials.

* Should allow most ASCII punctuation that might appear in a name
  or title in text, specifically - , . ( ) ' & : ; % ! ? / $ *
  (Note that some of these, like *, are not currently alowed,
  and that : is a special case that's allowed but only when the
  text before it doesn't match a namespace, etc.)

* Should not allow non-ASCII punctuation like em dash, curly
  quotes, etc., because they cause problems on machines with
  strict ISO character sets.

* Space is allowed. Underscore is allowed, but indistinguishable
  from space. No other controls (tab, etc.) are allowed.

Anyone have other ideas/suggestions?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Back to the source no NPOV

body:
On 5/23/03 6:54 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Don't blame me! The problem is that what is defined on
>> [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] != "neutral point of view". That is, the concept
>> denoted by the four letters NPOV, as defined within the Wikipedia
>> context, is not congruous to the concept denoted by the phrase "neutral
>> point of view".
>>
>> This is a basic problem.
>
> Fair enough, I suppose.  It's jargon, and jargon is dangerous in that
> way.
>
> I'd recommend changing it, but it's so well entrenched in our culture
> now, that...
>
The important thing to do before (talking about) changing it is to figure
out what it actually means, which we can do by looking at how "NPOV" is used
in context.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>Thoughts?
> skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> underline = off
> remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> default recent changes size = much bigger than now

SQL:
select count(user_options)as Number, user_options from user group by
user_options order by diff desc LIMIT 20

shows the top twenty of the mosed used configs. Possibly you need more
than top twenty on english wikipedia to get a propper result.

On german DB (that's what I can access) this shows that 382 has changed
rememberpassword=0 and 167 changed to rememberpassword=1, and thats the
only change they made, the rest is at default.

Smurf
--
Only trust a statistic you faked yourself.
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IP stuff

body:
> > Hi all,
> > I don't think is the wrong place to ask.
> > I also think that hide IP to logged user led us to many problems we
didn't
> > encounter before the Phase III.
> > Here is the problems I see :
> > - Same user who use multiple identity to justify a pov opinion
> > - Same user who use multiple identity to make multi votes
> > - Vandale who use user account to hide its ip
> > As sysop I have no idea to how block a logged user even if he do massive
> > vandalism (except send a message to this list and pray for one of the
gods
> > can stop him).
> > I don't see any good reason to hide logged user IP.
> > It worked fine on Phase I & II, no ?
>
> Aside from privacy concerns, it would allow any sysop to ban any other
> user, which might cause problems. To alleviate these concerns, we could
>
> 1) store the IP number the user signed up with in his user data
> 2) allow sysops to look up the IP number of any user who has signed up
> less than a month ago.
>
> This would make it impossible for sysops to obtain ALL the IP numbers of a
> user, or to ban long time contributors, but still allow them to ban
> vandals effectively by IP address.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Thanks Erik,
Your solution can handle punctual vandale attack (except if he registred
enough time before).
Personnaly I don't care everybody (not only sysop) can see my IP address.
I fell it really better than the bad ambiance created by suspicion between
users.
Do you had any problems in Phase I & II with IP address !?
Overall, I think there are enough sysop so if one sysop block unfairly an IP
address (I don'y see the difference with anonymous user block), and other
sysop can un-block it easly.
By the way, it may be a nice idea to show IP block in the Recent Change page
(do you already do?).
Regards,

Aoineko


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Back to the source no NPOV

body:
I agree with the Cunctator that context is important, and perhaps worthy of
more discussion.  But I am not sure I completely get the current
questioning about NPOV.  As I understand it, our NPOV policy does not state
that every "statement" must be NPOV, it states that articles must be
NPOV.  What that amounts to in effect is providing multiple points of view
and also providing context for each point of view.  I do not think that any
one contributor has the obligation to write a complete and polished NPOV
article; writing articles is a collaborative process.  But this does not
mean NPOV is a platonic ideal.  There may be many kinds of chairs and
people may have some sort of abstract notion of "chair" that is an ideal,
but we can still point to something and say "that is a real chair" and
"that is a good chair" or "that chair still needs one more leg" (if you
don't mind an analogy).  I do think that every contributor must contribute
in a way that acknowledges or makes possible the inclusion of other points
of view, and must provide some context and allow for more context to be added.

As for what constitutes context, the wikipedia "news style" pretty much
covers it, I think -- who what when where why.  Naming who, when, and where
is pretty simple (although sometimes people resist it -- it is taking ages
to get some contributors on the "Supernaturalization" page to offer this
kind of context); providing the why is more difficult especially since
people may have different notions of why, thus, why itself becomes subject
to NPOV (requiring multiple points of view with context) -- still, to me
that is the fun of research; it is doable, and I believe the results are
worth it.

Steve

At 01:53 PM 5/23/2003 -0400, you wrote:

>On 5/23/03 6:54 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
> > The Cunctator wrote:
> >> Don't blame me! The problem is that what is defined on
> >> [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] != "neutral point of view". That is, the concept
> >> denoted by the four letters NPOV, as defined within the Wikipedia
> >> context, is not congruous to the concept denoted by the phrase "neutral
> >> point of view".
> >>
> >> This is a basic problem.
> >
> > Fair enough, I suppose.  It's jargon, and jargon is dangerous in that
> > way.
> >
> > I'd recommend changing it, but it's so well entrenched in our culture
> > now, that...
> >
>The important thing to do before (talking about) changing it is to figure
>out what it actually means, which we can do by looking at how "NPOV" is used
>in context.
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
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Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lir makes useful, but not npov, contributions to i-e

body:
Fred, I hope you don't mind my using i-e as the
abbreviation for internet-encyclopedia, even though IE
is the abbreviation for the wost web browser ever
created.

Lir has made some good (but POV, as the rules allow)
contributions to internet-encyclopedia. I copyedited
her [[cybercop]] article into wikipedia, which was
somewhat informative, but I had to npov-ise it. I
guess Fred (or someone, I can't remember who) was
right that Lir makes useful, but POV, entries
--littledan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] what is a sysop?

body:
Let's not get bogged down in semantics.  This may be a case where an
analogy to sysop is neither needed nor helpful.  After all, judges under
certain circumstances have a lot of power, and police often listen to
different sides in a dispute, act as mediators, and are themselves
policed.  If we continue on this track we may end up having a very
interesting and informative conversation about the differences between
police, judges, and I would then add to the mix constables.  But if we are
having a discussion as sysop, I have three comments.

1) I never sought out the position of sysop but given that it implied a
certain amount of trust by a segment of the community I didn't feel I could
turn it down.  When I first saw my new screen, with all the powers suddenly
at my disposal, I really felt overwhelmed, almost dizzy.  Of course my
first act was to abuse the power -- although I was the only victim of that
abuse.  I have recently had an experience where I have been sorely tempted
to put a block on a page and ban a user.  Obviously I did not.  But -- and
I realize this may be of little interest to most of you -- so far I see
being a sysop as a sort of zen exercise in accepting and renouncing power.

2) But I have also deleted a couple of pages, and I know some others have
been very active in this.  I wanted to ban one user with what I thought was
good cause, and someone else did it the next day.  Since virtually everyone
in the community saw that person as a pest more than as a member of the
community, I'd say -- if we really must have an analogy -- I'd compare
sysop to house-cleaner.

3) Whether sysop is a mop or a cop, either way I see the role as being an
agent of the community.  If I understand the deal right now, there is
virtually nothing a sysop can do that cannot be undone by another
administrator; it seems to me that virtually all sysops, if they ever act,
do so when they have a sense from the community.

Anyway, aside from my periodic zen moments, it does seem to me that the job
is mostly about tidying up.  It seems to me that anyone can do this on a
limited basis (by editing -- just like we don't expect the maid or
custodian to do all cleaning), and that the other tasks (e.g. cultivating
NPOV) really are for the whole community, sysop or not.

Steve

At 11:10 AM 5/23/2003 -0700, you wrote:

>--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I guess a sysop is more like a judge. I don't think it
> > is fair to say that sysops are a police force. Being a
> > policeman (or woman) implies doing something
> > compulsively, without consent, as opposed to someone
> > more like a judge, who consents all involved parties
> > as well as the rules/laws, the previous precedents,
> > and the jury (in this case the Wikipedia community).
>
>If sysops are going to consider themselves judges, we're going to
>have serious long-term problems.
>
>I for one prefer the Jimbo-as-judge, everybody else enforce his
>decisions, either through force (police==sysop) or persuasion
>(coaching==caring user).
>
>Otherwise we'll run into the situation of he-said she-said.
>
>
>=====
>Christopher Mahan
>chris_mahan at yahoo.com
>818.943.1850 cell
>http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
>http://search.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
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Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia at meetup.com

body:
> (Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>):
> http://wikipedia.meetup.com/
>
> I think this is pretty neat, and I'm glad someone did this.

If you want to arrange physical meetings, I much prefer something
much more transparent and free-form like evite.com. They don't
try to impose any structure, they just facilitate the process of
people organizing their own meetings.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] what is a sysop?

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> Let's not get bogged down in semantics.  This may be
> a case where an
> analogy to sysop is neither needed nor helpful.
> After all, judges under
> certain circumstances have a lot of power, and
> police often listen to
> different sides in a dispute, act as mediators, and
> are themselves
> policed.  If we continue on this track we may end up
> having a very
> interesting and informative conversation about the
> differences between
> police, judges, and I would then add to the mix
> constables.  But if we are
> having a discussion as sysop, I have three comments.
>
> 1) I never sought out the position of sysop but
> given that it implied a
> certain amount of trust by a segment of the
> community I didn't feel I could
> turn it down.  When I first saw my new screen, with
> all the powers suddenly
> at my disposal, I really felt overwhelmed, almost
> dizzy.  Of course my
> first act was to abuse the power -- although I was
> the only victim of that
> abuse.  I have recently had an experience where I
> have been sorely tempted
> to put a block on a page and ban a user.  Obviously
> I did not.  But -- and
> I realize this may be of little interest to most of
> you -- so far I see
> being a sysop as a sort of zen exercise in accepting
> and renouncing power.
>
> 2) But I have also deleted a couple of pages, and I
> know some others have
> been very active in this.  I wanted to ban one user
> with what I thought was
> good cause, and someone else did it the next day.
> Since virtually everyone
> in the community saw that person as a pest more than
> as a member of the
> community, I'd say -- if we really must have an
> analogy -- I'd compare
> sysop to house-cleaner.
>
> 3) Whether sysop is a mop or a cop, either way I see
> the role as being an
> agent of the community.  If I understand the deal
> right now, there is
> virtually nothing a sysop can do that cannot be
> undone by another
> administrator; it seems to me that virtually all
> sysops, if they ever act,
> do so when they have a sense from the community.
>
> Anyway, aside from my periodic zen moments, it does
> seem to me that the job
> is mostly about tidying up.  It seems to me that
> anyone can do this on a
> limited basis (by editing -- just like we don't
> expect the maid or
> custodian to do all cleaning), and that the other
> tasks (e.g. cultivating
> NPOV) really are for the whole community, sysop or
> not.
>
> Steve

Yeah, I guess that makes more sense than an anology.
But I just realised that sysops have another, rarely
used power. Sysops have power just from their name
"sysop". If a sysop tells a bunch of non-sysops
something, and they haven't heard the type of
conversation on the mailing list (ie don't know that
sysops aren't this exclusive band of 5 people who go
around fixing the server and banning people), they'd
probably listen to you more than a non-sysop. I don't
think this power is actually used by anyone other than
jimbo, though.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: alvaro

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error in search on Wikipedia FR

body:
Erreur base de donn?es

Pour la requ?te "L?nder"

Erreur de syntaxe dans la base de donn?es. Cette erreur peut ?tre caus?e
par une requ?te de recherche incorrecte (voir Chercher dans Wikip?dia),
ou une erreur dans le logiciel. La derni?re requ?te trait?e par la base
de donn?es ?tait :

     SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex
WHERE cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_title) AGAINST ('l?nder')) ) AND
cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 20

depuis la fonction "SearchEngine::showResults". MySQL a renvoy? l'erreur
"1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".

Hi, Brion,
M?me traitement que wiki japonais et n?erlandais ?

Thanks in advance (merci d'avance)

Alvaro


subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS

body:
It used to be that the Wikipedia php-files could be found at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/
However, when I look now, none of the files has been edited in the past five
weeks, although there has been discussion, and even announcements, on this
list. Why?

* There has really been changed nothing in the last 5 weeks
* Everytime something was changed, someone forgot to change it on SourceForge
  as well
* The PHP-code of Wikipedia is now elsewhere
* The PHP-code of Wikipedia is not openly available any more
* Something else?

Andre Engels


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> It used to be that the Wikipedia php-files could be found at
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/
> However, when I look now, none of the files has been edited in the past five
> weeks, although there has been discussion, and even announcements, on this
> list. Why?

Lee announced the new location weeks ago:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phase3/

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>My concern and support about the much bruited
>>foundation has not been
>>based on the actions of our present dictator, but on
>>insuring long term
>>continuity that would protect the project and make
>>it self-sustaining
>>far into the future.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>
>So you think that wikipedia will slowly die out if we
>never make the Wikimedia foundation?
>--LittleDan
>
No, that's not what I said. There are any number of unfortunate things
that could happen to Jimbo which would leave the project in a difficult
situation. It is prudent to develop contingency plans for these events.
It would also be prudent to develop diversity in our funding sources
instead of depending on one person for everything. If you want to
develop a sound investment portfolio you invest in several different
kinds of shares; those people who only had Enron in their portfolios
only have themselves to blame for the results.

In the long run (up to 95 years into the future) who makes sure that the
project's copyrights are protected from people who want to claim them as
their own?

Also, how do we deal with those of our colleagues who would ruthlessly
ban or who would easily forget the important principle of openness. To
me, what the Foundation is all about is members taking responsibility
instead of privileges.

Ec


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php (part II) (was: Re: CVS)

body:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:

> Andre Engels wrote:
> > It used to be that the Wikipedia php-files could be found at
> > http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/
> > However, when I look now, none of the files has been edited in the past five
> > weeks, although there has been discussion, and even announcements, on this
> > list. Why?
>
> Lee announced the new location weeks ago:
>
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phase3/

Ah, sorry, missed that one... Here is a further update for languageNl.php
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia at meetup.com

body:
Well, when I click on that it asks me if I want to go a meeting in Pueblo,
Colorado. Not real likely (unless I am well paid).  I live in a resort town
that really would be a cool place to visit.  It all seems kind of canned to
me. I certainly have no desire to go to a bar in Pueble (Pewtown even
repealed its smoking ordinance).

Fred

> From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: 23 May 2003 22:04:00 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia at meetup.com
>
>> http://wikipedia.meetup.com/
>
>> I think this is pretty neat, and I'm glad someone did this.
>
> Hmm. How about organizing these meetings using some kind of editable
> scratchpad .. a page where anyone can contribute, add suggestions,
> refactor etc. I know it sounds strange .. should have a strange name, too.
> How about "wookee"?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
My understanding is that there were two debates going on (which I think got
confused, too easily).  One was a debate between whether the term was a
generalized of (and thus with examples from) real identifiable "communist
states," versus an ideal term which could be used in comparative politics,
but which itself is an abstract concept.  The second debate was whether the
term should be defined and described as it is used by political scientists
(or even more narrowly, by political scientists specializing in comparative
politics), or whether the article should accommodate a variety of
definitions or usages by a variety of people.

Personally, with regards to debate #1 I appreciate the value of both
approaches and would favor an article that has both.  I think many others
are intensely divided over this, though.

With regards to debate #2 I strongly favor the second approach; I believe
that the second approach would also accommodate both sides in the first
debate.  It is my sense, however, that some participants, especially JTDIRL
and 172, favor the first approach.  Although I adisagree with them I have
no fundamental objection as long as the article itself makes that approach
clear (which it does).

Steve

At 01:08 PM 5/23/2003 -0600, you wrote:

>Part of the negative material which I and Cuntator struggled to include in
>the article, "Communist State" did concern the practical political science
>aspects of the governmental system, specifically, rule and control of
>information by the politbureau. This was found just as objectionable as any
>other negative material regarding the Communist state. In fact, there was
>such a hypercritical attitude that they actually took issue with the
>spelling of "politbureau", preferring the transliterated cyrillic version,
>"politboro". (Both are correct in English).
>
>I don't think they liked the notion that members of the party were the
>ruling class either.
>
>Hard to say what they were thinking in detail, they simply deleted it all.
>
>Fred
>
> > From: jlk7e at juno.com
> > Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:03:38 GMT
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
> >
> >
> > My first post to the mailing list...
> >
> > Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and
> > "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the
> > current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be
> accomplished by
> > the former article is in error.
> >
> > The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there
> is a
> > particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state",
> practiced
> > in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc.  This governmental
> system is
> > characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state
> with the
> > Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology.  Political
> > scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of
> > governmental system.  I believe this is the argument that was put forth by
> > jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm
> mischaracterizing
> > them).
> >
> > They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss
> > other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in
> articles
> > about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift
> > solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only*
> go in
> > Communist state.  As such, the type-of-government discussion would get
> > cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things
> > communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
> >
> > I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is
> > susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional
> monarchy", or
> > what not.  But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view.  Furthermore,
> > what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory
> and the
> > communist state in practice.  Both "Communist state" and "Communist
> > government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways.  In
> > particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in
> > regards to the structure of the form of government.  (The theory of how a
> > communist state should function would be rather different, at least for
> > Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist
> > state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
> >
> > That's all for now
> >
> > John Kenney
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
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Steven L. Rubenstein
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php (part II)

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Ah, sorry, missed that one... Here is a further update for languageNl.php

It's in the CVS. Some machine admin will have to activate it.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikipedia-l] IP stuff

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> About banning people I only mention "massive vandalism".
> Banning people was not the main point to ask to be able to see IP like
> before.
> For me show the IP address of everybody like in Phase I & II is to :
> - Be equal to anonymous users (as for privacy as for banning)
> - Limit multi vote by same user
> - Reduce identity steal
> - Break some suspicion that create very bad atmosphere
> I suppose you had a good reason to remove this feature in Phase III, but I
> don't know it.
> What is for ?
> I really feel that hide IP was "one" of the reason why the ambiance on the
> french wikipedia is deteriorated.

But you know that there are Users with changing IP's? I have minimum
every 24h a new one at home. Will that helps? Or at work: everyboby goes
thought the firewall/proxy. One IP-Address for about 500 users.

I don't think that an IP-Address helps that much.

Smurf
--
IPv6: Every wikipedia article has it's own IP-Address :)
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [WikiEN-l] how many edits

body:
Is there any way for me to find out, without counting,
how many edits I have done? I'm not on the "most
active wikipedians" list.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google and our mailing lists

body:
Our mailing list archive currently seems to be only indexed up to January
by Google, which, if I remember correctly, is the same time Google
temporarily stopped indexing Wikipedia articles due to a robots.txt
mishap.

Would it be possible to change the robots.txt so that our mailing lists
archives are fully indexed again? Since mailman itself has no search
feature, having them on Google would help a lot in locating past threads.
Of course, Hfastedge announced some time ago that he would look into a
search engine patch for mailman, that would also be neat.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] how many edits

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is there any way for me to find out, without
> counting,
> how many edits I have done? I'm not on the "most
> active wikipedians" list.
>

I just found out I've done 1091 edits, so I should be
on the list, but I'm not. The list says "compiled
March 10", so how could I recompile it?
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Countering the vandals who attack users (not just pages)

body:
David-
> However, I haven't heard anyone comment about changing the
> "talk" pages into a threaded discussion group:

Yes, this is a good idea, and has come up before. See:
"How to improve talk pages", by me, Dec 2002
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-December/001758.html

"Talk pages redesign proposal", by Tomasz, Jan 2003
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-January/002022.html

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media
and threads linked from there.

The bottom line:
1) We want to keep our mailing lists, although a WWW posting interface may
be desirable.
2) Having talk pages handle comments thread-style automatically while
retaining wiki-form would be desirable.

For 2), I would suggest an implementation approach whereby any defined
segment of a wiki-page can be retrieved and edited separately without
editing the wiki-page as a whole. This would also be useful in editing
sections of long aricles, instead of the whole articles. Edit conflict
handling should also be improved.

I have this in my to do list and will probably start working on it at some
point, but you could also make yourself a lot more popular by sending us a
patch ;-). We could surely use an experienced software designer like
yourself as an active developer.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Eugene Gill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Taku and OOP

body:
Hi, I'm just completely fed up with TakuyaMurata's mangling of articles
concerned with OOP and I can't take it anymore. Can someone who knows the
subject sufficiently well, please look at his changes especially look at the
talk page of inheritance (object-oriented programmg). I'm finished with it.

Mintguy


body:
Jimbo-
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 2) Having talk pages handle comments thread-style automatically while
>> retaining wiki-form would be desirable.

> Can you explain what you mean by this?  What do you mean by "retaining
> wiki-form"?

> One thing that I like about the current talk pages is that they are
> wiki pages, so that they can be refactored from time to time.  It is
> true that we don't really do much refactoring, and that it's a huge
> social taboo to edit other people's comments during a discussion, but
> there's something important, I think, about the mutual trust that's
> built up when we *can* screw with each other's remarks, but *don't*.

See the referenced URLs; basically, having an auto-inserted "reply to
this" link after each comment that takes you to a blank editing window
whose contents are inserted in indented form after the comment you reply
to. You could still choose to use "Edit this page" instead, but "reply to
this" would be a convenience, because you would not have to scroll to the
proper place in the wikitext and would not have to sign your comment.
Similarly, a "post a comment" link should be on each talk page, which
takes you to a blank editing form that allows you to write wikitext that
is also auto-signed and appended to the bottom of the page (starting a new
thread). In this case, there should also be a "subject" field, which would
automatically be translated to a "== foo ==" heading on the page. And for
extra fun, we could have an automatic "archive this thread" link after
each heading :-).

Optimally, in both cases, edit conflicts would be handled in the
background, but this is a more general problem that could be solved with
some smart merging. To do this, we would need some kind of tagging,
visible in the wikisource or not, for comments for the software to
identify them individually. This could perhaps be combined with the
signature marker. If the markers are visible in the wikitext, it would be
possible to break them through malicious editing, but then again, we deal
with this in other situations, so it's probably no big deal.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] hello all

body:
hello all... (again?)

I just saw the topslot Yahoo headline on Uday's possible surrender - the
story actually links to... guess where... the Wikipedia Uday Hussain article
as its top source! Not bad, people. Prepare for the onslaught, I would say -
except it occurs to me that people who read Wikipages dont necessarily
understand right away that they are editable, and consequently, (goodness)
don't bother. -

Steven MacGrieves


body:
Anthere-
> However, for a proper feedback, are needed both tools and information. If
> noone give regular users the information they kindly ask, there are only
> questions unanswered, and no feedback.

I agree. I am sure sysops will be more willing to paste the content of
deleted pages once the deletion feature is improved (currently
Special:Undelete is almost unusable because of the page size; flushing the
archive might be a tempfix). The changes I just made, with the text of
short pages auto-pasted into the comment field by default, should also
help. Patience :-)

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Power structure of Wikipedia

body:
This has come up a number of times, so I have decided to create

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APower_structure

to explain the current power structure of Wikipedia. Please review for any
errors. The next time someone asks you whether Wikipedia is a
dictatorship, or a democracy, or whatever, you can point them to this
document.

Note: This is intended to apply to the English Wikipedia only; the non-
English wikis all have their own power structures.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: jlk7e at juno.com

body:
My first post to the mailing list...

Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be accomplished by the former article is in error.

The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc.  This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology.  Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system.  I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them).

They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in articles about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only* go in Communist state.  As such, the type-of-government discussion would get cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.

I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional monarchy", or what not.  But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view.  Furthermore, what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory and the communist state in practice.  Both "Communist state" and "Communist government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways.  In particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in regards to the structure of the form of government.  (The theory of how a communist state should function would be rather different, at least for Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)

That's all for now

John Kenney


subject: [Wikitech-l] strange: not logged in user with a user name

body:
Hello,

Something strange on en:
I made a modification on my user page, I was not logged in (?) but my
name appears on the modification:

Some kind of "screen capture" on "Recent changes" :
----
Printable version
Not logged in
Log in | Help

* (diff) (hist) . . User:Alvaro; 16:36 . . Alvaro (Talk) (some personal
stuff)
----

Someone has an idea ?

Thanks in advance / Merci d'avance

Alvaro


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [Wikitech-l] Title characters

body:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 13:46:28 -0500
> From: Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Title characters
>
<snip>
>
> * Cannot allow: # (sharp), | (pipe), " (quote), [] (brackets),
>   {} (braces), <> (greater,less), + (plus), \ (backslash) because
>   allowing them would interfere with link syntax and make the
>   software more tricky to write. I can live without these, though
>   I think + might be handy in some places (like C++), and might be
>   worth the effort to allow.
>
> * Should allow most ASCII punctuation that might appear in a name
>   or title in text, specifically - , . ( ) ' & : ; % ! ? / $ *
>   (Note that some of these, like *, are not currently alowed,
>   and that : is a special case that's allowed but only when the
>   text before it doesn't match a namespace, etc.)
>
> * Should not allow non-ASCII punctuation like em dash, curly
>   quotes, etc., because they cause problems on machines with
>   strict ISO character sets.
>
> * Space is allowed. Underscore is allowed, but indistinguishable
>   from space. No other controls (tab, etc.) are allowed.
>
> Anyone have other ideas/suggestions?

Missed one: the "at" symbol, @, is currently not allowed. I don't feel
strongly one way or the other about it myself, but it's come up on the
Village Pump recently when someone wanted to use it, so it should probably
be on one of those lists.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package.  How efficient of
you!
				--Londo Mollari


subject: [Wikitech-l] strange: not logged in user .... DONT'T ANSWER PLEASE

body:
excuse me, I hadn't see the special pages on the new server ; that's a
knomw problem

alvaro


from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nomination (Evercat)

body:
> From: "John R. Owens" <jowens.wiki at ghiapet.homeip.net>
>
> Which reminds me, I've been intending to nominate User:Evercat for sysop
> status. If nothing else, to save me from having to check the history
> before deleting what he's just blanked all the time. ;) So, anyway, I'm
> nominating him now. I've mentioned my intent to him, but he didn't say
> outright whether or not he'd accept.

I will, unless there are objections.

Evercat

--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IP stuff

body:
> > > Hi all,
> > > I don't think is the wrong place to ask.
> > > I also think that hide IP to logged user led us to
> > many problems we didn't
> > > encounter before the Phase III.
> > > Here is the problems I see :
> > > - Same user who use multiple identity to justify a
> > pov opinion
> > > - Same user who use multiple identity to make
> > multi votes
> > > - Vandale who use user account to hide its ip
> > > As sysop I have no idea to how block a logged user
> > even if he do massive
> > > vandalism (except send a message to this list and
> > pray for one of the gods
> > > can stop him).
> > > I don't see any good reason to hide logged user
> > IP.
> > > It worked fine on Phase I & II, no ?
> >
> > Aside from privacy concerns, it would allow any
> > sysop to ban any other
> > user, which might cause problems. To alleviate these
> > concerns, we could
> >
> > 1) store the IP number the user signed up with in
> > his user data
> > 2) allow sysops to look up the IP number of any user
> > who has signed up
> > less than a month ago.
> >
> > This would make it impossible for sysops to obtain
> > ALL the IP numbers of a
> > user, or to ban long time contributors, but still
> > allow them to ban
> > vandals effectively by IP address.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Erik
>
> I think the type of vandals where it is necessary to
> ban very quickly and with no previous discussion are
> only the very tough ones, posting by bots for example,
> and making it hard for humans to clean the mess. These
> ones don't wait a month before vandalising, more
> likely a couple of minutes. Should this type of
> situation be foreseen, I would put the time limit to
> one day instead of one month.
>
> For any "questionable" vandalism or "questionable"
> edits (such as Daniel editing his page apparently),
> banning is wrong. My Red Dice option of rainclouding
> people and their contributions is better.

About banning people I only mention "massive vandalism".
Banning people was not the main point to ask to be able to see IP like
before.
For me show the IP address of everybody like in Phase I & II is to :
- Be equal to anonymous users (as for privacy as for banning)
- Limit multi vote by same user
- Reduce identity steal
- Break some suspicion that create very bad atmosphere
I suppose you had a good reason to remove this feature in Phase III, but I
don't know it.
What is for ?
I really feel that hide IP was "one" of the reason why the ambiance on the
french wikipedia is deteriorated.
Regards,

Aoineko


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia at meetup.com

body:
> http://wikipedia.meetup.com/

> I think this is pretty neat, and I'm glad someone did this.

Hmm. How about organizing these meetings using some kind of editable
scratchpad .. a page where anyone can contribute, add suggestions,
refactor etc. I know it sounds strange .. should have a strange name, too.
How about "wookee"?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga

body:
Helga is activ again:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78

Has her banning been lifted (right word?)?

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> To clarify, we moved everything to a new module because Lee decided to
> redo the directory structure of the code. CVS really, *really* doesn't
> handle that case well: effectively, you have to 'delete' all the files
> and 'create' new ones in the subdirectories, so we'd lose the
> continuity of versions anyway.
>
> Additionally, 'phpwiki/newcodebase' was unwieldy (besides, 'PhpWiki' is
> the name of a *different* wiki software package, and it was potentially
> confusing).

Possibly it would be nice to have an alias e.g. "current" which lead to the
current version. Look at: CVSROOT/modules.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga

body:
Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> writes:

> Helga is activ again:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78

One cannot "ban" a user resp. the IP address in aeternum.

> Has her banning been lifted (right word?)?

Now now tell what's wrong the contributions.  There is (new) info in the
articles submitted by 66.47.62.78, feel free to edit them.

Other article submitted by "well minded" contributors are not better
neither (German articles on Goethe or Tieck); also consider to ban
respective contributors, too (in case of Tieck, that's me).

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Server Load

body:
After some days before Brion mailed some stats of the new server load going
down, of course there comes the question: Can we reduce the time e.g. the
SpecialPages Maintenance are off service?

Unfortunatly the Pages are not reachable at the after work hours in Europe,
and a lot of work waits because the users can't access the pages during the
time they can spend in wikipedia.

Of course, I expect this not before the work Lee will do the following
week, but I hope someone can calculate the load and evaluate if it will be
possible.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga

body:
Karl Eichwalder schrieb:
> Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> writes:
>
>>Has her banning been lifted (right word?)?
>
> Now now tell what's wrong the contributions.

I'm not arguing for or against the banning. I'm just asking because
there has been some confusion about it on the German list.

A few days ago I took a look at the archive of wikiEN-l. All the
discussion about banned users comming back under new accounts frightens
me a lot. It's not those users, but the impact which the suspicions have
on the community. And the frustration.

Kurt


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga

body:
> From: Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 01:54:19 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga
>
> Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> writes:
>
>> Helga is activ again:
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.4
>> 7.62.78
>> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Spezial:Contributions&target=66.47
>> .62.78
>
> One cannot "ban" a user resp. the IP address in aeternum.
>
>> Has her banning been lifted (right word?)?
>
> Now now tell what's wrong the contributions.  There is (new) info in the
> articles submitted by 66.47.62.78, feel free to edit them.

If it is Helga (unless she's changed) she'll take an archaic German
Nationalist view that focuses on the Eastern territories that were lost and
stick like a tick to that viewpoint. Modifying any of her articles will set
off an edit war.

Fred

>
> Other article submitted by "well minded" contributors are not better
> neither (German articles on Goethe or Tieck); also consider to ban
> respective contributors, too (in case of Tieck, that's me).
>
> --
> |      ,__o
> http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
> ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
I-E permits POV articles. The main article on any topic should be written
from a sympathetic point of view toward the person, country, topic etc. Lir
is a man named Adam BTW. So he does fine on Internet-Encyclopedia where the
type of articles he writes is expected. So does 172 BTW, see:

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.info/wiki.phtml?title=Kim_Jong_Il

Fred

> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 14:16:45 -0700 (PDT)
> To: Wiki Pedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Lir makes useful, but not npov, contributions to i-e
>
> Fred, I hope you don't mind my using i-e as the
> abbreviation for internet-encyclopedia, even though IE
> is the abbreviation for the wost web browser ever
> created.
>
> Lir has made some good (but POV, as the rules allow)
> contributions to internet-encyclopedia. I copyedited
> her [[cybercop]] article into wikipedia, which was
> somewhat informative, but I had to npov-ise it. I
> guess Fred (or someone, I can't remember who) was
> right that Lir makes useful, but POV, entries
> --littledan
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
> http://search.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Optimizing default prefs

body:
"Erik Moeller" skribis:

> >> Underlining:
>
> > We should just get rid of this option and not specify anything about
> > underlining in our style sheet. Every browser has an option to set
> > this, and people turn underlining off in the site just because we
> > override their browser settings.
>
> Most people are not even aware of this browser setting, and even if they
> are, it is useful to be able to set it on a per-site basis, for the
> following reasons:

What about these three options?

 ( ) underline links
 ( ) use browser default
 ( ) not underline links

Which one to be the default is
another question.

Paul


subject: [WikiEN-l] what is a sysop?

body:
> Yeah, I guess that makes more sense than an anology.
> But I just realised that sysops have another, rarely
> used power. Sysops have power just from their name
> "sysop". If a sysop tells a bunch of non-sysops
> something, and they haven't heard the type of
> conversation on the mailing list (ie don't know that
> sysops aren't this exclusive band of 5 people who go
> around fixing the server and banning people), they'd
> probably listen to you more than a non-sysop. I don't
> think this power is actually used by anyone other than
> jimbo, though.

This kind of intimidation works only on folks who know part of the story,
know that there are sysops and administrators but don't know their
limitations. As a sysop (provided you follow the rules) is does no good at
all in a dispute. Definitely not something you want to pull out and wave
around during an edit war you are involved in yourself.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga

body:
That all sounds rather Teutonic ;

Anyway it is your business, not ours, Helga is a nuisance on English
wikipedia. If you're happy with her, fine.

Fred

> From: Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 14:15:47 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga
>
> Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> writes:
>
>> Yes, it is her. Yes, it is still the Eastern territories. Yes, she
>> still insists on calling every city by its German name.
>
> In de.wikipedia.org?  In the German version the German name are not
> wrong, though.  Okay, "K?nigsberg" is arguable, but there are residents
> (Russian!) in Kaliningrad who want to have back the "old" name.  Read
> "Die Zeit", last week.  "Die Zeit" is a trustworthy German newspaper.
>
> Things aren't that easy as they might look at the first glance.
>
> --
> |      ,__o
> http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
> ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I-E permits POV articles. The main article on any
> topic should be written
> from a sympathetic point of view toward the person,
> country, topic etc. Lir
> is a man named Adam BTW. So he does fine on
> Internet-Encyclopedia where the
> type of articles he writes is expected. So does 172
> BTW, see:
>
>
http://www.internet-encyclopedia.info/wiki.phtml?title=Kim_Jong_Il
>
> Fred

I never said he wasn't doing a fine job. But I though
your policy was to write on all points of view. I
guess I'm wrong, since i-e itself says sympathetic
point of view.  I don't know how you can say (on
[[Internet Encyclopedia:Sympathetic Point of View]])
"this breaks down in cases like Hitler..." because one
could equally question George W. Bush's motives in the
"War on Terror".
I think that your sympathetic point of view is
interesting, but more fit for a collection of essays
than an encyclopedia.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Power structure of Wikipedia

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> But seriously, I'm not sure what "the principle of
> minimal
> interference" is, so I'm not sure that I agree with
> it.
>
> The reason that I almost never edit on the Wikipedia
> itself is that
> since I'm called on to make tough political choices,
> it's best that I
> not get involved in battles over particular pages.
>
> I often dig through people's edit histories when
> there is a
> controversy, and I try to mediate conflicts as I see
> them happening.
>
> Now that the website is not so slow, I might try
> monitoring specific
> talk pages to try to mediate conflicts before they
> blow into the
> mailing list.
>
> --Jimbo

Not that you have to, but I think it should be
perfectly OK for you to edit the other 99% of
wikipedia that's non-contravercial.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia for education

body:
--- Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
wrote:
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
> >  I heard a news story the other day that in
> >  California, textbooks
> >  are now forbidden to mention Mount Rushmore.
> See:
> >  http://www.wtvw.com/Global/story.asp?S=1288473
>
> Well...for starters, I'd personally recommend being
> wary about any
> information that comes from the blow-dried "talent"
> on Fox News. In
> any case, here's the "rest of the story":
>
> (1) The news story above (by a woman named Ann
> Moore, who apparently
> does a regular feature called "The Moore You Know")
> cites a number of
> examples of alleged neutering of textbooks, all
> seemingly for reasons
> of leftist "political correctness," such as not
> allowing the
> representation of women as nurses, depictions of
> junk food, etc.
> However, she doesn't mention any specific textbooks
> in which this has
> happened.
>
> (2) With regard to Mount Rushmore, the story is a
> bit more
> complicated than Moore's brief mention suggests.
> Back in the days
> when I was in school, my textbooks didn't mention
> that the guy who
> built Mount Rushmore was a leader in the Ku Klux
> Klan. Here's a
> discussion from a review of a book on the subject by
> Jesse Larner:
>
> >There are complex stories behind those faces on
> Mount Rushmore that
> >have been edited out of the guidebooks and
> textbooks. There is the
> >story of how the land on which Rushmore stands was
> expropriated from
> >the Lakota Sioux in 1877, abrogating a major
> treaty. There is the
> >story of the sculpture's creator and ideologue,
> Gutzon Borglum, a
> >leader in the Ku Klux Klan, who saw in the
> expansion of European
> >settlement across the American West the fulfillment
> of white racial
> >destiny. Rushmore is prefigured in the story of
> Custer, who sealed
> >the fate of the Black Hills when he discovered gold
> there in 1874.
> >Larner traces the meaning and evolution of the
> Custer battle
> >commemorations, and pursues the ways in which
> Custer's defeat, the
> >killings at Wounded Knee, and Rushmore, are linked
> in the story of
> >the Indians' loss of the Black Hills. Mount
> Rushmore also traces
> >modern political uses of the monument, from Cold
> War television
> >broadcasts to Boy Scout conventions to political
> campaigns. It looks
> >at Rushmore's semi-religious status as the national
> shrine of
> >Democracy, and contrasts this with political
> restrictions on the
> >practice of Indian religions in the Black Hills.
> Finally, Larner
> >deals with previous works on Rushmore that have
> avoided its message
> >of conquest, preferring to focus on a simplistic
> narrative of
> >national glory. Even the tour guides at Rushmore
> understand little
> >of its real history, or of the legal fact that the
> land from which
> >it rises belongs to the Lakota.
>
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=16-1560253460-2
>
> Viewed in its full historical context, therefore,
> this example
> illustrates how the story of "censorship from
> textbooks" involves a
> whole lot more than the decision to mention or not
> mention some
> monument. My old school textbooks never mentioned
> the genocide
> against Native Americans, and judging from Larner's
> account, it seems
> that this is something that ought to be mentioned
> when students learn
> about Mount Rushmore -- unless, of course, we think
> "history" should
> consist solely of self-congratulatory propaganda.
>
> (3) With regard to depictions of things like "junk
> food,"
> unfortunately there is no shortage of this in our
> schools. Channel
> One, a for-profit company, provides video equipment
> and programming
> to many cash-strapped schools throughout America, in
> exchange for
> which the schools have signed contracts promising to
> show kids a
> daily quota of TV commercials for companies like
> Pizza Hut. There is
> a long and sad story (which I will truncate here)
> involving the use
> of schools as marketing venues for fat- and
> sugar-laden fast foods.
> If anyone wants to know more about this, read Marion
> Nestle's
> excellent book, "Food Politics." (Nestle is a
> nutritionist who bears
> no relation to the chocolate company.) One school
> got so carried away
> by these promotional activities a few years back
> that it actually
> suspended a student for the "disruptive" thought
> crime of wearing a
> Pepsi T-shirt to a Coke Day rally. Here's an
> interview with the
> student that I personally found amusing:
> http://www.fadetoblack.com/interviews/mikecameron/
>
> The bottom line is that all sorts of forces --
> commercial, political
> and social -- take an interest in influencing the
> way we educate our
> youth. It isn't just coming from some "politically
> correct" clique.
> And should we expect or want things otherwise? I
> think most of us
> *hope* school boards would step in and exert
> editorial oversight if a
> textbook referred to black people as "niggers" or
> described Hitler as
> a great man. Judgments about appropriate content for
> textbooks don't
> qualify as "censorship," and different people are
> bound to have
> different views about what is and isn't appropriate.
> Some people may
> think that a decision not to mention Mount Rushmore
> is absurd and
> ridiculous. Outside our national cult of patriotism,
> however, I
> imagine some folks in Europe and elsewhere think it
> is equally absurd
> and ridiculous that Americans would revere a
> mountain-sized statue of
> the heads of dead presidents.
> --

I'm lucky. I don't have to worry about censorship in
my social studies class. The textbooks (20 years old)
censor some (not as much as the modern, colorful
textbooks), but my social studies teacher fills in the
gaps. I also look things in Wikipedia that I learn
from  social studies class if they sound funny.
--LittleDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] NO-FX ban

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > Soft security seems to work for the other wikis,
> but
> > since we're the biggest wiki, it doesn't seem to
> work
> > for us. Is there something in the  middle?
>
> Well, although we obsess over difficulties on the
> mailing list, the
> reality is that soft security works remarkably well
> for us across a
> broad spectrum of possible and actual problems.
> Hard security (bans)
> works well for passing vandals, but has a decidedly
> mixed record on
> some others.
>
> Despite all our (necessary and important) kvetching
> on the list, we
> should remember that at any given time, you can
> check recent changes
> and 99%+ of the edits are delightful WikiMagic.
>
> Just now, I see User:Sned and User:Evercat working
> together on an
> article on [[BCC]].  User:Frecklefoot is continuing
> his excellent
> article on [[Sundog Frozen Legacy]].  These quiet
> folks never come to
> our attention on the list, but they are the heart
> and soul of what
> we're here for.
>
> --Jimbo

I think most passing vandals only do something once,
see if it actually goes on it, then leave. They
deserve soft security, and only the worse people
deserve hard bans.
--LittleDan

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error uploading files on the Polish Wikipedia

body:
Je Sabato 24 Majo 2003 01:24, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz skribis:
> wys?ane przez funkcj? "SearchUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL zg?osi? b??d
> "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".

Should be fixed now.

> Additionally it produces invalid filenames in the system.

Can I get some more details on this? Which filenames, invalid how?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
Hello all,

There have been persistent problems with file upload on the Polish
Wikipedia.

---------------cut here----------------------------------------
Wyst?pi? b??d sk?adni w zapytaniu do bazy danych. Mog?o to by?
spowodowane przez z?e sformu?owanie zapytania (zobacz Przeszukiwanie
Wikipedii) albo przez b??d w oprogramowaniu. Ostatnie, nieudane zapytanie
to:

    REPLACE DELAYED INTO searchindex (si_page,si_title,si_text) VALUES
(18161,'mahatma gandhi jpg',' mahatma gandhi z wp-en ')

wys?ane przez funkcj? "SearchUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL zg?osi? b??d
"1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".
---------------cut here----------------------------------------

Additionally it produces invalid filenames in the system.

Developer help needed urgently.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] Several new articles on Jaguar cars

body:
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 06:06:08AM -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> --- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
> wrote:
> > Someone at the IP address 194.228.103.247 has
> > created a couple of new
> > articles on Jaguars that all contain data from the
> > website
> > www.jaguarracing.wz.cz to which a link was also
> > added to the Jaguar (car)
> > page by the same user. Anyone want to weigh in on
> > whether this constitutes
> > a copyright violation?
>
> If it's just *data* from that website, there is no
> copywrite violation. Information itself isn't
> copywrited.
> --LittleDan
>
It's also descriptive text, which is copyrighted, and to
a lesser degree the presentation of the facts, which can
be copyrighted, that makes these contribution problematic.

JeLuF


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] MAJOR VANDALISM http://www.neonet.no-ip.com

body:
This guy is posting the same text on MANY pages.
every time I block an IP, he comes back with another

easy to spot, because he always posts "http://www.neonet.no-ip.com" on
the page.
what can we do agains this?


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] No-FX

body:
No-FX is Michael, as is very apparent.  Michael has
aleady been banned.  I don't see what needs to be
discussed.

Zoe

--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> Given No-FX's most recent vandalization of Zoe's
> user-page, I believe
> he/she/it should be banned.  I guess this should be
> discussed for a while,
> but I vote for banning as soon as possible.
> Steve
>
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> >
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system
> (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release
> Date: 5/6/2003
>

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] can we remove "Put your text for the new page here." on wiktionary too ?

body: it's even more frustrating than on wikipedias, as most articles are much smaller.


subject: [WikiEN-l] NO-FX ban

body:
What do you suggest?  I am very open and willing to
learn.  Michael refuses to discuss why he insists on
putting false information into articles.  That's why
he was banned in the first place.

Zoe

--- Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 May 2003, steven l. rubenstein wrote:
> > Brion, I think that ultimately, you are right --
> vigilance and patient
> > deletion or reversion is the only way to deal with
> such a troll.  But even
> > reverting crap is a form of swatting.  If the
> question is whether we simply
> > ignore someone and let them do what they want, or
> act in some way against
> > vandalism, it seems we all agree on some form of
> action.
> >
> > The question is, what form.  From context it seems
> like you are arguing
> > against banning.  Well -- and I raise this as a
> general question, not just
> > concerning No-FX -- would you ban under any
> circumstances?
>
> Oh, sure; indeed I have made bans where it seemed
> appropriate. A visit to
> [[Special:Ipblocks]] will show that. But repeatedly
> "banning" the same
> person over and over, when proven ineffective with
> that person, is rather
> pointless. The social effects of the ban haven't
> discouraged the person
> (indeed, perhaps encouraged them), and they've found
> a way around the very
> simple technical effects of the ban.
>
> Obviously a change in strategy is required if we
> want to do anything
> other than re-ban Lir and Michael all day long. To
> continue to use the
> same strategy that we *know* is ineffective is
> neurotic.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> This guy is posting the same text on MANY pages.
> every time I block an IP, he comes back with another
> easy to spot, because he always posts "http://www.neonet.no-ip.com" on
> the page.
> what can we do agains this?

Is he still active? If necessary, we can block the whole IP range. Leave
a message on my talk page if this comes up again.

Regards,

Erik (Eloquence)


body:
Je Sabato 24 Majo 2003 11:06, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz skribis:
> On 24-05-2003, Brion Vibber wrote thusly :
> > Je Sabato 24 Majo 2003 01:24, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz skribis:
> > > wys?ane przez funkcj? "SearchUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL zg?osi?
> > > b??d "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)".
> >
> > Should be fixed now.
> >
> > > Additionally it produces invalid filenames in the system.
> >
> > Can I get some more details on this? Which filenames, invalid how?
>
> 23-05-2003
> * (r??n) (hist) . .N Grafika:; 22:08 . . Kpjas (Dyskusja) (Filipiny
> godlo)
>
> following the Grafika link gives an error msg.

Is it still doing that or were those only being created while the
searchindex table was broken?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)