subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Oliver-
> 1. Linking with the use of anchors is a Bad Thing, as previously
> discussed,

Actually, the result of the discussion on wikitech-l is that we would keep
the option enabled (as it was always been; the anchors have just not been
generated and had to for the TOC) and to set the rules for when to use
anchors as policies.

> 2. The size of the article titles was fine as it was,

Several people complained about it, and I agree with them. Headlines are
not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are supposed to give the
viewer a quick overview of the different sections. The important thing is
not to use the same font size/style for totally different things.

> 3. There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings.

Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into pages
besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text etc.
These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important for
seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which
sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all the
ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I like
this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions.

> 5. I don't get the point of the "Post a comment" feature. It seems an
> unnecessary complication, providing no more functionality than normal
> editing.

It appends text directly to the page instead of requiring you to load and
save the whole page, which can be very large.

Because only your comment appears in the preview, the preview is much
faster and it is easier to see the effect of formatting, links etc.
because you don't have to scroll to your comment every time you preview
it. Having users not always unnecessarily load and save text that they
don't need anyway should also help server performance. Also, newbies often
are confused by the concept of editing a page to comment it, and they will
likely expect such a link. Furthermore, as you know, some browsers have
problems editing large pages; this feature allows users of such browsers
to post comments without loading the content of the entire page into the
edit window. This is also convenient for normal users.

This feature could also be the first stage of a more sophisticated
discussion system, where the next stage would be auto-appending signatures
and providing a "Reply to this" link after each comment.

As for the headings, we should make it a convention that each discussion
thread should have a heading, as this makes it much easier to participate
in discussions using the "Edit section" feature, providing many of the
same above advantages.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: Correction! Re: [Wikipedia-l] Vacation

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Hm... how many people have to "disappear" before I get to be in
> charge of Wikipedia myself? And what are their addresses? :)

*grin*  Well, I'm back now.

When I do that, it's only when I'm on vacation, and it is really just
in came something BIG happens such that some decision has to be made,
and just in case there's not a clear consensus of the people with
developer access as to what to do.  Sometimes a focal point for action
is needed, just to do *something* in an emergency.

Brion and Magnus and Lee know the software better than anyone else (I
guess), and have ssh access to the server.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Timwi-

> I have the feeling your changes are only gradually taking effect on
> test.wikipedia.org.

As I said, the software does not consider changes to the stylesheet
relevant enough to tag its cached pages as expired, so you'll have to log
in to see these changes immediately (only anons get static pages).

> I'm not seeing this change, so I'll look back at it tomorrow, but I
> don't think this will convince me.

Sorry, but you're simply a minority. There's only so much that can be
reasonably done to meet your concerns. Putting annoying fat borders on
every page is IMHO not an option.

> Well, actually the previous heading appeared bolder to me than the
> current one does. However, this is due to the particular font I've set
> in my browser (Verdana) and its habit of suddenly getting quite a bit
> fatter from one point size to the next. I understand most people use
> Times New Roman instead. However, if it doesn't upset too many people,
> if you could change it just slightly from 125% to 130%?

OK.

> Yeah, sorry. At the time I still had the yellow backgrounds. I see the
> new colour now, and to be honest, it's too light for me to distinguish
> directly from the pure white of real articles (I'm on an LCD).

I think that's great -- the colors should only give a weak indication that
you're on a different page type, not dominate the entire layout as the
yellow does. Wiki can be operated reasonably well without that
information.

> What about the simple grey meta uses? But then again, it'd be
> indistinguishable from meta.

I don't think every Wiki needs its own color set.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikitech-l] new global usage stat

body:
I know that page hits were turned off.  The same argument could be made for my idea, but who
knows.

I discussed with  brion once in IRC that id be interested in seeing some type of statistic
gathered for who is using wikipedia ,eg like "hfastedge, BrionVibber.... are online right now".

Brion  raised privacy concerns , which is fine.

Still, im very frustrated without some type of statistic. As a simple compromise, I want to record
:

(simply numbers, not names): how many people have used wiki over the last day, month , year.

This is a good statistic to have and a natural question to ask when you look at this data:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

if its ok (from a hardware perspective) i'll go an write the patch.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Phase IV layout engine based on a new CMS

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

> * Layout should be separated completely from the PHP code. I will
> check out a template engine like smarty (http://smarty.php.net/) to
> see how to
> do that effectively.

Yes!

>
> * Site look will be redesigned to fit the 21st century (new "kick-ass"
> look, yes that's its name :) ). The main problem with all current
> designs is that they basically still think in terms of "UseModWiki".
> ie. sooooo 95' single content HTML with no color, dynamics, and no
> usability features and even GodDamnHorribleCamelCase.

Yes... in part. But the default skin must be backwards-compatible --
this is the *curse* of all web design, sadly. Believe me, if I could
simply design to CSS standards... *dreams*

>
> I think more in terms of making a Content Management System, dynamic
> content type layout, which means:
>
> * Boxes, structure and order. Everything on the page is structured
> dynamically. (every editable box can have a cute "edit" and "print"
> button on the top right corner, for example)

hmmmmmmm.... sounds like complications
Wikipedia = simple to edit. simple to learn.

> * A page can present more than just the article. Additional content
> may be: TOC on the side box. Previous versions. Recent changes,
> announcements, news, etc. (whatever we'll choose, or the user will
> customize)

confusing...
on advanced skins, maybe. But one thing I want to improve on the current
Standard skin: *too much clutter*. Let's not replace clutter with more
clutter!

>
> * No more dedicated stand-alone "special pages". These are important
> features that deserve to be integrated (somehow) into the engine
> itself. ie. forget those yellow backgrounds etc. etc.

Why? I don't get this.

> * Discussions can be integrated into the layout. ie. they may sit
> after the article itself like blogs do, and may or may not be a wiki.
> (just an idea)

Not a good idea. We have an audience of readers. They don't need to see
backstage unless they ask to.
Their modems and our bandwidth doesn't need to pump out talk pages that
aren't needed.

>
> * Interface can change to whatever language the user specifies in
> their preferences. A side effect of the single installation, a user
> will able to work, say on an article in Swedish with the English
> interface.. (don't flame me for this, I don't know if technically it
> would be viable, just giving a direction...)

hmmm.... yeah, sure why not.
But bear this in mind: when I make interlanguage links, the only clue I
have of which language I am on is the interface! (this is why my design
proposals specify the language in the header!)

>
> * W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional/CSS. A really basic one for a modern site
> (I even use the strict XHTML 1.1 on my site). And yes, I will make
> sure it uses features that are compatible with browsers from IE 4.0+
> and Netscape 6. See http://www.w3.org/ and http://www.w3schools.com/

Well... I'd be happy if we made correct <p> blocks. That seems to be a
hard enough goal to achieve! Let's set our sights on that to start with!
(I've said it before: Mychaeel's Wookee parser handles this correctly by
chomping text into objects. I don't claim to understand it, but maybe
our coders should copy his code design?)

In summary: don't be too ambitious.
Let's implement something like Smarty first. Then designers can easily
work on new skins.
-- tarquin


list: wikien-l

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Robert, if you can't be nice, take your marbles to the other side of
the playground.

By the way: It is completely acceptable for people to hold their own
opinions and express them. It's called freedom of speech.

--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jules writes:
> > I looked at the last comments that RK said he removed
> > from his talk page.  Although the one from E of T was
> > a bit inflammatory, it seemed to be a response to one
> > of Roberts own "attacks" -- I infer a typically
> > one-sided and less than tactful comment he made about
> > someone else's work.  If my inference or
> > characterization are incorrect, I apologise.
>
> Jules, I really wish you had made an effort to ascertain
> the truth; as it turns out, your idea is totally off base.
> In point of fact, I was writing comments about creationism,
> evolution, speciation, genetics and cooperating with others
> on classifying our Gaia theory articles. These are science
> issues.
>
> I ask you: What kind of people see such mundane science
> discussions as appropriate for denunciations of my
> perceived views on the Israeki-Palestinian issue?
>
> What kind of obsessed person thinks the appropriate
> response to a discussion on genetics is something like "But
> you Zionists should stop oppressing Palestinians".
>
> Am I mistaken here? Is evolution now "anti-Arab"?  Is Gaia
> theory now pro-Zionist?   Come off it.  Let's talk about
> speciation and transitional fossils, as I was doing on
> Wikipedia.  Wait!  Doesn't this call for remarks about the
> Palestinians?
>
> No.
>
> At least, not to someone who doesn't have a grudge against
> a Wikipedia contributor, because he is Jewish.
>
> No matter what topic I write about, certain people simply
> ignore the topic, and drag the Zionists (i.e. the Jews)
> into this.  They are not trying to produce encyclopedia
> quality work; they are out to score points, hurt people,
> and make themselves feel "liberal".
>
>
> > The comment made by Pizza Puzzle may have been
> *personally* offensive to
> > Robert, but it is simply a statement of PP's own opinion
> on the
> > situation.  I may not be popular, but he is entitled to
> it.
>
> No, he is not entitled to keep harassing me on my own
> personal User page about his political views, especially
> when I am trying to work with others on some science
> articles.
>
>
> > Presumably user talk pages are meant to be places where
> we communicate with
> > each other in public -- so I don't see why there is a
> problem.
>
> So if you are white, then white-haters can taunt you
> repeatedly on your User page, and you won't have a problem
> with it?
>
> Zoe is gone due to similar harassment. A few of my other
> Jewish friends visited (teachers, PhD.s, etc.)...and left
> quickly, sensing a bit too much self-righteous left-wing
> animosity towards Jews. (And those same Jews were
> themselves rather left wing.)  They think I am nuts for
> staying here.
>
>
> > If RK doesn't like a comment, he can erase it -- as he
> did -- but
> > it's a pain in the arse to have to look it up in the
> history.
>
> No, I can't! You totally missed the point. When I tried to
> erase the comment, I was slandered as an Arabophobe.
>
> That, by the way, is untrue.  I happen to have lived for
> two years with a Muslim Arab from Morocco, and had Muslim
> Palestinian friends in graduate school, and I also happen
> to support Israeli political parties that are to the left
> of the current government.  I also have particiapted on
> numerous occasions with interfaith Muslim-Jewish prayer
> groups, and my synagogue is considered somewhat progressive
> for precisely this sort of thing.
>
> I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
> condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
> alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
> as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
> false characterizations of me.  But what this has to do
> with speciation, creationism and evolution, I'll never
> know!
>
> It seems pretty clear to me that many people on Wikipedia
> do not care if one is pro-tolerance and pro-Arab or not.
> Facts don't matter one whit to one whose conclusions are
> based only in prejudice.  All that many Wikipedians care
> about is constant proving how evil the Zionist (read:
> "Jewish") position is, even if they haven't the slightest
> fucking idea what I actually do or believe.
>
>
> > But my disagreement is less that RK is phobic of Arabs,
> but instead
> > is overly sensitive, perhaps even paranoid, about
> anything that isn't
> > vehemently pro-Israeli/pro-Zionist.
>
> Sorry, Jules, but I disagree. GENETICS AND SPECIATION ARE
> NOT PRO-ZIONIST.  Sorry for shouting, please look at the
> topics I was working on, and compare them to the comments.
> Do you see any relation?  Of course not; there isn't one.
> People are lashing out at me simply because I am a Jew.
> That is not paranoia.  It is, however, unacceptable.
>
> I thus ask you to reconsider your comments.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>By the way: It is completely acceptable for people to hold their own
>opinions and express them. It's called freedom of speech.
>
>
I don't think that has anything to do with the current situation.  There
is not unlimited free speech on Wikipedia, as we have some conventions.
If I went around posting "fuck you nigger" on the user talk page of
every person I thought to be black, I would rightly be condemned and
possibly even banned, free speech or not.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Getting back on topic (Was: English phonology)

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Anthere wrote in part:
>
> >We should have sounds in wiktionary...
> >to be NPOV, each word would have to respect each
> pronunciation :-)
>
> I'd suggest developing a morphophonic system for
> each language.
> Then the transcription can link to a page that
> explains
> how the morphophones correspond to phonemes (even
> phones)
> in some major dialects.  But the morphophones don't
> play favourites
> (and you can always keep adding to the list of
> "major" dialects).
>
> I explained briefly what morphophones are in a
> previous post.
> The classic reference seems to be: Smith, Henry Lee,
> Jr.;
> 1967; The Concept of the Morphophone; Language
> 43:3:306-341.
> I should look that up if I'm going to talk much
> more. ^_^
>
> >And...I pronounce nuclear, newclear :-(((
>
> What you don't realise is that /everybody/
> pronounces "nuclear" as "newclear".
> It is "new" itself that's pronounced "nyoo" /nju:/
> in some dialects
> and "noo" /nu:/ in others.  This is the English
> morphphone .long-u..
>
>
> -- Toby

There already is a morphophonic system for English
that is used in most (or atleast several) dictionaries
(I know atleast Webster). The only problem is that it
uses strange accent marks and does very poorly with
non-leading r's. Word/phrases like "going to" don't
fair well either. I don't really see how any
morphophonic system can deal with the wide range
between /g at n@/ and /goIN tu/, and in some cases, we
will need to write multiple pronunciations anyway.
Where I live, there are two towns, Chili and
Charlotte, which are pronounced completely differently
than a normal New York state accent would prescribe.
We pronounce them /tSailai/ and /Sar\l'at/
respectively, whereas people from elsewhere pronounce
it /tSIli/ and /'Sar\lIt/. There is no regular pattern
for this. I tried to develope a morphophonic system
while at camp but encountered these problems (but it
can do what the current system can do without accent
marks).

In any event, it would be very confusing for readers
to have a pronounciation system unique to wikipedia
that they'd have to learn.

-LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wiki upset

in_reply_to: <20030716143638.53577.qmail@web11502.mail.yahoo.com>; from utilitymuffinresearch@yahoo.com on Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 07:36:38AM -0700

body:
steve vertigo wrote:
> The below cmplaint by an unfairly banned and wiped
> user -- as first reported by Jt is exactly why the
> notion of jumping to revert someones edits merely
> based on a whirly notion of a slight resemblance to
> someone banned -- is a bad idea, was a bad idea, and
> will forever be a bad idea.

It was unfortunate, but not unfair.  The ban was appropriate in the
circumstances described.  The key tidbit is that this was someone who
had the unfortunate bad luck to be on an ip number previously used by
someone who is a known problem to us.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers)

body:
> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
> selected in every browser.

So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that
affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design
decisions.

Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My
point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you
would like it be.

Erik Zachte.


subject: [Wikitech-l] user contributions link

body:
I'm sure I read about a new way to link to a user contributions page.
But what is it?

[[contributions:212.50.183.100]] ?

Or is this only on the text server?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
--- Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:
> This is where English, I think is in the minority,
> and will typically tend
> to reject like the metric system any attempt at
> mundification.  So typically
> English sounds arent it - and neither are SAMPA
> eugh!  (There was an
> interesting booktv talk on the origins of the
> American units system, btw --
> and why today people in the US look at the metric
> system in a xenophobic and
> skeptical way)

Well, not *all* Americans think that, but a
significant number of them do so that no polititions
in office want to make the change.

> I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is
> both easy to read (SAMPA
> eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these
> attempt to. In the end,
> the sonic descriptors are practically irrelevant
> when they get into too much
> detail -- regardless of how accurately you interpret
> the signs, youre still
> going to speak the foreign word with your particular
> accent.  And its going
> to be wrong.  The merits of the Roman alphabet are
> that its fairly standard,
> covers quite enough ground -- is modifyable in
> slight ways (ie pinyin,
> romaji.... SAMPA eugh!)

eugh? The way you use it, it sounds bad, but I don't
see what's wrong with SAMPA. I don't see why we have
the need for a "readable" system in the first place.
If you mean "readable" as in "looks similar to English
spelling", you're out of luck. Even the most complex
system cannot match the utter irrationality of English
spelling.

> Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some
> direction toward an
> international standard is a good idea.
> -S-

Exactly. And the other systems have been developed
over several years by phonetics professors. We could
never do better than them. Oh, yeah, we do have
professors here. But it would still be hard to do well
at making a complex system like this.

-LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality

in_reply_to: <3F14CCE4.20002@rufus.d2g.com>; from delirium@rufus.d2g.com on Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 08:56:20PM -0700

body:
Delirium wrote:
> 1. [[User:BL]] is mass-adding the contents of palestineremembered.com --
> massive lists with hundreds of subpages comprising every village
> (defined as 10 or more people) destroyed in the 1948 war, every
> "massacre" (defined as 10 or more people) committed or purportedly
> committed during that war (little effort is made to distinguish), and a
> whole host of other information that's difficult if not impossible to
> verify.

I invite comments on this, but I'm initially inclined to agree with
Delirium that this isn't really appropriate.

There's nothing wrong with having articles on tiny little villages, of
course, as long as there's enough verifiable information to justify an
article.  But we have to be careful about mass-adding things, more on
editorial grounds than on purely NPOV grounds.  (RamBot went through
several revisions and a lot of discussion, and even mass-adding things
by hand seems somewhat questionable, if the same content could be more
effectively presented in a different way.

> 2. [[User:RK]] is, as is probably obvious, somewhat of a pro-Israeli
> activist, and is becoming difficult to clean up.  The latest thing I've
> noticed is him adding 2-paragraph-long attacks on Arab anti-Semitism to
> articles such as [[George Washington]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]], in the
> guise of "defending" their "tarnished" reputations against charges of
> anti-Semitism stemming from little-known fabricated quotes.

I'm not so sure I can agree with you on this one.  First, at least
looking at the current version of [[George Washington]], there's no
mention of _Arab_ anti-Semitism at all, and certainly no mention of
Palestine or Israel.

These fabricated quotes are a staple of *U.S.* anti-semitic groups,
'Aryan Nation' types, as we might expect from the subject (American
Presidents).  This has very little to do with Israel or the
Palestinians.

I will say, and I don't think that RK will say that I'm being unfair
to him at all, that RK is deeply concerned about issues involving
anti-Semitism, and that he is something of an activist on this issue,
and that *therefore*, we should be vigilant about his edits, lest he
might not always be as neutral as we would like.

But these particular edits don't strike me as problematic.

> The problem is that those most knowledgeable and interested in
> spending a great deal of time writing articles on these topics are
> often those who are most partisan to one side or the other.

That's exactly right, and it's a general problem that we have to face
on every controversial issue.

--Jimbo


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: making rc smaller

body:
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:

> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > * using <i> not <em>			 319 bytes saved
> > * using <b> not <strong>		1219 bytes saved
>
> <em> and <strong> should be used, not <i> and <b>. The reasons are
> complicated and have to do with accessibility and text browsers. I don't
> really understand those reasons myself, but from my experience it seems
> to be consensus to use <em> and <strong>. I think <i> and <b> are even
> deprecated in the newest version of HTML, or something...

As far as I know, the reason is that <em> and <strong> specify the nature
of the text, while <i> and <b> specify how it should be shown. In theory,
the browser manufacturer or user could choose how he wants emphasized and
strongly emphasized text to be shown.

I myself am a proponent of using <em> and <strong> rather than <i> and <b>,
but in Wikipedia's case I think that the change would not be bad, might
actually be good. The reason is that a user will write ''text'' to put
a text in italics, not to give it light emphasis. Therefore, many of our
''text''s should not be <em>, but <cite>. Because this cannot be
machine-handled anyway, we might as well stop pretending that we do so.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> >By the way: It is completely acceptable for people to hold their
> own
> >opinions and express them. It's called freedom of speech.
> >
> >
> I don't think that has anything to do with the current situation.
> There
> is not unlimited free speech on Wikipedia, as we have some
> conventions.
> If I went around posting "fuck you nigger" on the user talk page of
>
> every person I thought to be black, I would rightly be condemned
> and
> possibly even banned, free speech or not.
>
> -Mark

True, because those are so-called: "Fighting words" ard are not
protected speech. But when someone says: "I disagree with your point
of view for the following reasons...", the recipient may /feel/
attacked, but the speaker is within his rights.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> You miss the point. No matter how "not nice" Robert is, focusing on
> his
> ethnicity is inapproriate. He doesn't have to be "cool" for that to
> be
> wrong.

I don't care whether he is right or wrong, all I care about is that
he express himself in a manner that will not be regarded as
confrontational  by a bystander.

I don't care about his religious, ethnic, or national background.

Others may be wrong, but just because others are wrong, does not
excuse him from leaving the path of civility.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 21 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> 1) The default skin has been somewhat modified. I made the borders
> thinner, and added a box around the footer to separate it from the article
> contents.

I like this one.

> The font size of navigational links is also somewhat smaller,
> and the background color for non-article pages (special pages) has been
> changed to a light metallic blue.

I do agree the yellow is not very good, but I don't like this one either.

> 2) You now get a "Post a comment" link on discussion pages. This takes you
> to an empty edit screen with a subject line. The subject line is used as
> an edit summary and is added as a ==headline== on top of the edit. The
> edit is appended to the current page.

Not sure whether I like this one.

> 3) There's now a cool way to edit sections: Instead of having ugly [edit]
> links next to each one, you can enable a user preference whereby you can
> edit sections by right-clicking on them. This only works in Mozilla and IE
> to my knowledge.

Worked with Netscape 6 under Unix/Xwindows as well, but strangely not the
first time I tried (I got a database error). Bug could not be replicated.

> 4) The Table of Contents can now be suppressed by adding the text
> "__NOTOC__" anywhere on a page. Note also that Brion and I wrote a
> JavaScript that allows you to dynamically show/hide the TOC on the page.
> The TOC itself has been slightly changed, with smaller font and a centered
> headline.
>
> Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version of the
> code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis soon.

Those lines below the section headers are really ugly. Please get rid of them
before you even think of putting these on the sites.

I do agree with previous posters that the smaller article title is not
an improvement.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 22 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> > 2. The size of the article titles was fine as it was,
>
> Several people complained about it, and I agree with them. Headlines are
> not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are supposed to give the
> viewer a quick overview of the different sections. The important thing is
> not to use the same font size/style for totally different things.

The title is not supposed to give a quick overview of a the different
sections, it is supposed to give a quick overview of the whole page.

> > 3. There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings.
>
> Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into pages
> besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text etc.
> These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important for
> seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which
> sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all the
> ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I like
> this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions.

Options:
1. Don't bother about this.
2. Disallow the other ways of getting this, or change them so they don't
   get the same thing.
3. Tell users who are bothered by this to switch on section numbering.

I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly just so some option that I don't know
yet whether I will use it at all and certainly did not miss when it did
not exist works better.

Andre Engels


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!

body:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:38:06 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> gave
utterance to the following:

> What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
> size ?
>
> This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
> font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
> (ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
> through javascript after the page has loaded. So, minimal overhead for
> the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
> user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
> formatting options might be added to the preferences page.

There's really no need to do any of the above. One gives the reader full
control over font size and face simply by not specifying them in the HTML
or stylesheet. They are then rendered in the user's preferred default which
they set in their browser. (Any user who seriously cares about optimizing
readability will probably be using a browser other than IE where the size
control options are rather limited)
--
Richard Grevers


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Andre-
> I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly

I disagree that it's ugly.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
You miss the point. No matter how "not nice" Robert is, focusing on his
ethnicity is inapproriate. He doesn't have to be "cool" for that to be
wrong.

Fred

> From: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:56:18 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour
>
> Robert, if you can't be nice, take your marbles to the other side of
> the playground.
>
> By the way: It is completely acceptable for people to hold their own
> opinions and express them. It's called freedom of speech.
>


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: making rc smaller

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> I myself am a proponent of using <em> and <strong> rather than <i> and <b>,
> but in Wikipedia's case I think that the change would not be bad, might
> actually be good. The reason is that a user will write ''text'' to put
> a text in italics

We're talking about the Recent Changes page though. ;-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposal for new default skin

body:
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, tarquin wrote:

> I am working on a new default skin.
>
> Here is the current rough version:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/0/00/Paddington-2.html
>
> comment on it here:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_skin
>
> I won't have time to do much work on this for another few weeks -- but
> if people put comments in now it would be a great help.
> Please could ambassadors mention this on their wikipedias, so we can get
> feedback from all the different languages.

I think that saying it is "a new default skin" is not the way to go.
Rather, first implement it as an alternative skin, and only then start
seeing whether people want it as the default skin.

Andre Engels


body:
>I think that saying it is "a new default skin" is not the way to go.
>Rather, first implement it as an alternative skin, and only then start
>seeing whether people want it as the default skin.
>
>Andre Engels
>
>
>
No.
Our default skin is terrible.
We have to implement something which is easily usable by the masses who
read Wikipedia.
Let's work on a good clean, cross-platform and -browser design which
does not turn newcomers away.
Our current Phase3 skin can remain as an option.
Any registered user is free to set their own skin -- so registered users
who prefer Phase3 skin can simply change their preferences!


from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re-evaluation per RK's request

body:
Hi all --

Robert seems to think I've been unfair to him, and for that I am sorry.
It may even be that he is correct and that I chose a less than perfect
example.  Nevertheless, I stand by the following points:

First, I saw no evidence of ad hominem attacks or harassment on Robert's
page, with the exception of Jtdirl's "Arabophobe" comment, which seemed
to me to have been written out of frustration -- although this is not an
excuse.

Second,  I think that many people ( I cannot speak for others, but this
is based on much of what I have read on talk pages for a couple of years
now) are tired of the accusation of anti-Semitism being raised in almost
every (non-Gaia) RK edit war.  There is a real and valid difference to
many people between anti-Semitism and questioning militant Zionism or
being pro-Israeli.  Tarring all his opponents with the same brush is
unjust, blurs the questions at hand, and is often just plain insulting
-- certainly not wikilove, and certainly not an intellectual way of
defending a position.

Third, ditto as above, replacing "anti-Semitism" with "trolling, abuse,
harassment", etc.

I have noticed that most of the articles where this happens live in a
grey area.  That's as it should be.  In such situations (we could just
as easily be talking about The Troubles), no one is innocent and
everyone who resorts to violence has what he or she sees as a valid
motivation for doing so.  The roots of the conflict are often well out
of the participants' hands -- and the real roots often the result of
someone else's meddling.  Our job is not to say who is right or wrong.
It is not to pick sides.  It is to produce well-rounded, neutral,
informative articles.  If we continue to create articles with
non-neutral subjects (Arab violence against Israelis, Israeli violence
against Arabs), instead of trying to present a balanced article that
gives light to all sides of the story (maybe, instead, Conflicts over
Israel, Arab-Israeli conflict), we're doomed to continue to deal with
these types of edit wars and accusations.  But again, over two years of
watching, I can't really recall any direct accusations of the type RK
claims to see.  There may be insults.  But I cannot for the life of me
see how that adds up  to "people are picking on me because I am Jewish."
Especially when other Jewish wikipedians are not making the same
complaints.  And especially when the "people are picking on me"
accusation comes up all-to-often when it's convenient.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030722/a22a7234/attachment.htm


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook Project

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> To be sure, Jimbo may lobby CA to stay out of the publishing business
> (or rather to get out of it -- it already prints quite a few items),
> and Sanford may lobby CA to print more material of civic use,
> and on this matter they will doubtless be bitter enemies.
> But in creating the content to begin with, they can be great friends.

Toby is very wise, and I agree with what he is saying here completely.

I won't -- can't -- drop my opposition to the state of California
being in the publishing business.  But that's really not especially
relevant to the rest of what we're going to be doing.

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] Jimmy vs Sanford

body:
Karl Wick wrote:
> Jimmy, if I didn't know better, I might think that you
> weren't giving Mr Forte the benefit of the doubt as to his
> personal experience, or not listening with empathy, or
> something.
>
> Probably just having a bad day ... :-)

Yes, that's right.  Some things just really really annoy me.

I'll try to keep my annoyance with the idea of the state of California
taking over the textbook publishing business off list.  It's
inessential to our project.

---Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook.wikipedia.org and authorship paradigm

body:
I think these are valid concerns, but I think we should try the
wikipedia way first.  If there are huge problems, we could look
for a more restrictive single-author/group-author paradigm.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: making rc smaller

body:
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 11:56:36AM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:
>
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > * using <i> not <em>			 319 bytes saved
> > > * using <b> not <strong>		1219 bytes saved
> >
> > <em> and <strong> should be used, not <i> and <b>. The reasons are
> > complicated and have to do with accessibility and text browsers. I don't
> > really understand those reasons myself, but from my experience it seems
> > to be consensus to use <em> and <strong>. I think <i> and <b> are even
> > deprecated in the newest version of HTML, or something...
>
> As far as I know, the reason is that <em> and <strong> specify the nature
> of the text, while <i> and <b> specify how it should be shown. In theory,
> the browser manufacturer or user could choose how he wants emphasized and
> strongly emphasized text to be shown.
>
> I myself am a proponent of using <em> and <strong> rather than <i> and <b>,
> but in Wikipedia's case I think that the change would not be bad, might
> actually be good. The reason is that a user will write ''text'' to put
> a text in italics, not to give it light emphasis. Therefore, many of our
> ''text''s should not be <em>, but <cite>. Because this cannot be
> machine-handled anyway, we might as well stop pretending that we do so.

In Recent Changes italics is used for look only, not for emphasis,
so you're right here.


body:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:08:01 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> gave
utterance to the following:

> At 12:37 PM 7/22/03 +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:38:06 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl>
>> gave utterance to the following:
>>
>>> What about giving the reader more control over things like font type
>>> and
>>> size ?
>>>
>>> This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
>>> font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
>>> (ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
>>> through javascript after the page has loaded.
>
> No thank you. Javascript is a security risk; Wikipedia doesn't need it
> and shouldn't ask me to use it.
>
>>> So, minimal overhead for
>>> the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
>>> user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
>>> formatting options might be added to the preferences page.
>>
>> There's really no need to do any of the above. One gives the reader full
>> control over font size and face simply by not specifying them in the
>> HTML or stylesheet. They are then rendered in the user's preferred
>> default which they set in their browser.
>
> Most of us set defaults for common things like "visited link", not for
> unusual
> ones like "Wikipedia talk page".

Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button on the first
panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on Web pages and documents
which do not have a specified text font" - it's generic as can be. And I
have 13pt Trebuchet selected in every browser.

--
Richard Grevers
Computers don't laugh at a three-and-a-half-inch floppy


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>I'm not seeing this change, so I'll look back at it tomorrow, but I
>>don't think this will convince me.
>
> Sorry, but you're simply a minority. There's only so much that can be
> reasonably done to meet your concerns. Putting annoying fat borders on
> every page is IMHO not an option.

Who else in this thread was voting against the fat borders? I can't
recall anyone ever saying they definitely want them gone, or for what
reasons. Them being "ugly" is certainly not a reason, or at least not as
good a reason as clear separation of the content from the navigational
links is.

Timwi


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
At the moment, only PHP coders can re-design skins. This is bad, since
good coding skills and good design skills are not strongly correlated.
With all the effort being devoted to tweaking the current layout, and
arguing about it, we could instead be doing two things:
* decoupling code from content by using text-only template files instead
of PHP code to control the final assembly of page content
* decoupling content from graphical presentation by using CSS more
thoroughly

This then turns making new skins into something that can be done by
regular logged-in users with only graphic design / Web skills, without
any security or performance implications. By allowing them to edit their
own template and CSS files _on the Wiki itself_, we can enable them to
show off their skin designs to other users. We can then hold a beauty
contest without elaborate votes... by doing, rather than by talking.
This would also make designing a new layout much more interesting as a
general design competition for graphic designers.

The fly in the ointment is backwards compatibility to ancient and
brain-dead browsers such as IE 3.0 and Netscape 4.7. What we need for
these is a special backwards-compatibility skin, just for these, and
some server-side browser sniffing to deliver this skin instead of the
normal default skin for these broken browsers.  There are only a finite
number of broken browsers, and anything else can be reasonably expected
to be either a text-only browser or a reasonably working new post-CSS
browser, and served with the default skin if there is no other preference.

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity

body:
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Rotem Dan wrote:

> I do support having (some) uniform Logo for all languages, but I don't
> think that all wiki users feel good about Hobbes' quote.

That's an issue that nl: has already taken up - nl: uses a very similar
logo, but with a different text in it (to be exactly, a text from "Max
Havelaar", probably the most influential work of Dutch literature).

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: making rc smaller

body:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:

> Andre Engels wrote:
>
> > I myself am a proponent of using <em> and <strong> rather than <i> and <b>,
> > but in Wikipedia's case I think that the change would not be bad, might
> > actually be good. The reason is that a user will write ''text'' to put
> > a text in italics
>
> We're talking about the Recent Changes page though. ;-)

Oops, you're completely right of course. Still, I would say that in that
case neither <em> nor <cite> captures the meaning very well. Do we want
to keep it in italics at all? (*bends down quickly to avoid the blows*)

Andre Engels


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> The test.wiki at
>
>         http://test.wikipedia.org
>
> has now a bunch of improvements/changes:

Well -- we've seen from this thread that people have different tastes
and thus the reactions to the changes were different.

So I propose we ... vote.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layout_vote

Of course, feel free to add more separate polls to the bottom if I've
missed any.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: webmaster

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
So you admit you are just as guilty as you claim RK to be.  In that case, I must make a suggestion.  Chris, don't bring RK's religion into arguements, thats what we call a hit below the belt.  And RK, you've had many confromtations with users.  Please try to be as nice as possible, even if you are mad.

--
Michael Becker
a.k.a. Mbecker
a.k.a. MB

----- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date:  Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:00:09 -0700 (PDT)

>
>--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> You miss the point. No matter how "not nice" Robert is, focusing on
>> his
>> ethnicity is inapproriate. He doesn't have to be "cool" for that to
>> be
>> wrong.
>
>I don't care whether he is right or wrong, all I care about is that
>he express himself in a manner that will not be regarded as
>confrontational  by a bystander.
>
>I don't care about his religious, ethnic, or national background.
>
>Others may be wrong, but just because others are wrong, does not
>excuse him from leaving the path of civility.
>
>
>
>=====
>Christopher Mahan
>chris_mahan at yahoo.com
>818.943.1850 cell
>http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
>http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Second,  I think that many people ( I cannot speak
> for others, but this
> is based on much of what I have read on talk pages
> for a couple of years
> now) are tired of the accusation of anti-Semitism
> being raised in almost
> every (non-Gaia) RK edit war.

He ! I might be an exception here. I was not said to
be "anti" something, I was said "pro" something else
:-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: merphant

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small change to wikistandard.css

body:
Hi, if there are no objections, could someone please add

li  { padding-bottom: 0.4em; }

to wikistandard.css? See the current discussion on en:Village pump.

Thanks,

Merphant


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Whatchoo talkin bout Fred?

body:
Im uncertain what Fred's point is here -- is he feeding/petting a troll, or criticizing Jules for acting out of upstanding reason and putting her foot down on Bob's "victim me" sort of behaviour? I dont want unnecesarily ruffle feathers here -- it wont do any good -- I'm just pointing out that the one with the most puffy, ornately ruffled feathers doesnt deserve by default the upper hand.  Catering to certain people to make certian people they feel good about themselves is unquestionably irrelevant to the problem of people slandering others for what we loosely call "racism."

-S-

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
Robert,

You are correct. However misguided and offensive your "science" perspective
is; it has nothing to do with your being Jewish or having whatever opinions
you may have on Zionism, etc. However you got trapped into having to defend
yourself is irrelevant.

They are picking on you and should stop. Anti-Semitism is indeed
unacceptable behaviour whatever excuse may be found for it.

I do wish you had picked someone besides Jules to straighten out though.
She's just about had it too.

Fred

> From: Robert
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:21:11 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour
>
> Jules writes:
>> I looked at the last comments that RK said he removed
>> from his talk page. Although the one from E of T was
>> a bit inflammatory, it seemed to be a response to one
>> of Roberts own "attacks" -- I infer a typically
>> one-sided and less than tactful comment he made about
>> someone else's work. If my inference or
>> characterization are incorrect, I apologise.
>
> Jules, I really wish you had made an effort to ascertain
> the truth; as it turns out, your idea is totally off base.
> In point of fact, I was writing comments about creationism,
> evolution, speciation, genetics and cooperating with others
> on classifying our Gaia theory articles. These are science
> issues.
>
> I ask you: What kind of people see such mundane science
> discussions as appropriate for denunciations of my
> perceived views on the Israeki-Palestinian issue?
>
> What kind of obsessed person thinks the appropriate
> response to a discussion on genetics is something like "But
> you Zionists should stop oppressing Palestinians".
>
> Am I mistaken here? Is evolution now "anti-Arab"? Is Gaia
> theory now pro-Zionist? Come off it. Let's talk about
> speciation and transitional fossils, as I was doing on
> Wikipedia. Wait! Doesn't this call for remarks about the
> Palestinians?
>
> No.
>
> At least, not to someone who doesn't have a grudge against
> a Wikipedia contributor, because he is Jewish.
>
> No matter what topic I write about, certain people simply
> ignore the topic, and drag the Zionists (i.e. the Jews)
> into this. They are not trying to produce encyclopedia
> quality work; they are out to score points, hurt people,
> and make themselves feel "liberal".
>
>
>> The comment made by Pizza Puzzle may have been
> *personally* offensive to
>> Robert, but it is simply a statement of PP's own opinion
> on the
>> situation. I may not be popular, but he is entitled to
> it.
>
> No, he is not entitled to keep harassing me on my own
> personal User page about his political views, especially
> when I am trying to work with others on some science
> articles.
>
>
>> Presumably user talk pages are meant to be places where
> we communicate with
>> each other in public -- so I don't see why there is a
> problem.
>
> So if you are white, then white-haters can taunt you
> repeatedly on your User page, and you won't have a problem
> with it?
>
> Zoe is gone due to similar harassment. A few of my other
> Jewish friends visited (teachers, PhD.s, etc.)...and left
> quickly, sensing a bit too much self-righteous left-wing
> animosity towards Jews. (And those same Jews were
> themselves rather left wing.) They think I am nuts for
> staying here.
>
>
>> If RK doesn't like a comment, he can erase it -- as he
> did -- but
>> it's a pain in the arse to have to look it up in the
> history.
>
> No, I can't! You totally missed the point. When I tried to
> erase the comment, I was slandered as an Arabophobe.
>
> That, by the way, is untrue. I happen to have lived for
> two years with a Muslim Arab from Morocco, and had Muslim
> Palestinian friends in graduate school, and I also happen
> to support Israeli political parties that are to the left
> of the current government. I also have particiapted on
> numerous occasions with interfaith Muslim-Jewish prayer
> groups, and my synagogue is considered somewhat progressive
> for precisely this sort of thing.
>
> I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
> condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
> alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
> as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
> false characterizations of me. But what this has to do
> with speciation, creationism and evolution, I'll never
> know!
>
> It seems pretty clear to me that many people on Wikipedia
> do not care if one is pro-tolerance and pro-Arab or not.
> Facts don't matter one whit to one whose conclusions are
> based only in prejudice. All that many Wikipedians care
> about is constant proving how evil the Zionist (read:
> "Jewish") position is, even if they haven't the slightest
> fucking idea what I actually do or believe.
>
>
>> But my disagreement is less that RK is phobic of Arabs,
> but instead
>> is overly sensitive, perhaps even paranoid, about
> anything that isn't
>> vehemently pro-Israeli/pro-Zionist.
>
> Sorry, Jules, but I disagree. GENETICS AND SPECIATION ARE
> NOT PRO-ZIONIST. Sorry for shouting, please look at the
> topics I was working on, and compare them to the comments.
> Do you see any relation? Of course not; there isn't one.
> People are lashing out at me simply because I am a Jew.
> That is not paranoia. It is, however, unacceptable.
>
> I thus ask you to reconsider your comments.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030722/a4777438/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

body:
LD wrote:"eugh? The way you use it, it sounds bad, but I don't
see what's wrong with SAMPA. I don't see why we have
the need for a "readable" system in the first place.
If you mean "readable" as in "looks similar to English
spelling", you're out of luck. Even the most complex
system cannot match the utter irrationality of English
spelling."

Well, this is nice -- but you seem to have picked up my bad habit of talking out of both sides of my mouth... On the one hand your all for Sampa, on the other hand, you dont care if its actually *readable or not. Hmm. :)

> Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some
> direction toward an
> international standard is a good idea.
> -S-

LD: "Exactly. And the other systems have been developed
over several years by phonetics professors. We could
never do better than them. Oh, yeah, we do have
professors here. But it would still be hard to do well
at making a complex system like this."

Professors certainly are smart -- what with all that schoolin' and fundin' and stuff. Golly jee whiz, Ah wood'na daresay 'et we kin jus a'go changing da po'fessa's lang'age. Geez. Dat wood bee sum kinda fool 'be tawkin like dat dere. Go a'changin lang-widge! Haw, Haw. How d'zat happ'n?

-S-

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030722/226fdee4/attachment.htm


body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> At the moment, only PHP coders can re-design skins. This is bad, since
> good coding skills and good design skills are not strongly correlated.
> With all the effort being devoted to tweaking the current layout, and
> arguing about it, we could instead be doing two things:
> * decoupling code from content by using text-only template files
> instead of PHP code to control the final assembly of page content
> * decoupling content from graphical presentation by using CSS more
> thoroughly

Great idea........

>
> This then turns making new skins into something that can be done by
> regular logged-in users with only graphic design / Web skills, without
> any security or performance implications. By allowing them to edit
> their own template and CSS files _on the Wiki itself_, we can enable
> them to show off their skin designs to other users.

Up to this point!
Do you know how many times I reload a design in Mozilla, Netscape, Ie
and Opera? Ever 30 seconds or so.
There is no way I could work on designs within the wiki system. It would
simply take too long.

> We can then hold a beauty contest without elaborate votes... by doing,
> rather than by talking.

Talking is better.
A beauty contest .... we'd get "The header of design A is nice" "The
footer of design B is nice".
If we *talk* we can set out design goals and clear ways to implement them.

> This would also make designing a new layout much more interesting as a
> general design competition for graphic designers.
> The fly in the ointment is backwards compatibility to ancient and
> brain-dead browsers such as IE 3.0 and Netscape 4.7. What we need for
> these is a special backwards-compatibility skin, just for these, and
> some server-side browser sniffing to deliver this skin instead of the
> normal default skin for these broken browsers.

Nice idea. Is it feasible?


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] wget forbidden

body:
When I try "wget http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden", the only
response I get is HTTP status 403 "Forbidden".  Lynx and other web
browsers work OK.  How come?  It worked fine until Jan 28, 2003.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


body:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 22:52:45 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> gave
utterance to the following:

> We're not just discussing fonts, though. The current questions include
> how to
> best use different background colors to distinguish between *kinds of
> Wikipedia
> page*. "Default font for everything" is common; specific-to-a-single-
> Website things
> will be set by few people.
>
You might be but I was answering Erik's suggestion that all sorts of
unecessary stuff like script and cookies be used to give users control of
font size and face for articles. The sub-thread background discussion is
happening somewhere else on this list.

Actually, a few months back I posted a feature request at sourceforge
suggesting that user preferences be expanded to allow users to specify an
URL(s) for their personal stylesheet(s) (plural allowing for meta, talk). I
would host my preferred skin on my internal network, saving wikipedia
bandwidth, and I'm sure people who create skins might allow others to link
to them on their own server space.
--
Richard Grevers


subject: [Wikitech-l] wget forbidden

body:
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 04:28:13PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> When I try "wget http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden", the only
> response I get is HTTP status 403 "Forbidden".  Lynx and other web
> browsers work OK.  How come?  It worked fine until Jan 28, 2003.

Someone banned wget.
Add -U NoSuchBrowser/1.0 and it will work fine :)


from_name: sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Arbitrary changes (was: New stuff on test.wiki)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
> yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other feedback before doing so.

It's probably best just to change it back. Arbitrary changes like that
are going to cause unnecessary friction. I may prefer purple as the
background colour, but because I'm not a developer, I can't do
anything about it.

> We can also experiment with other colors.

Maybe, but I doubt that everyone is going to pick the same colour.
:)

> Perhaps it should be a user
> preference (then again, perhaps we should just support user-defined
> stylesheets ..).

That's the best course of action.

- Stephen G.
-------
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] mods to Cologne Blue

body:
There's discussion on Polish wikipedia about new skin based on Cologne Blue.
As for now, there's no consensus for change, but who knows what people will
think after a few more changes :)

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyskusja_Wikipedii:Propozycje_do_nowej_sk%C3%B3rki

Modifications so far:
* quickbar much more readable, with higher lines, no underlining, centered headings,
  less bold text, no OK buttons, and no fourth link to main page
* quick login in quickbar
* all underlining turned off

=== About underlined links ===
I think that there should be 2 options:
* no underlining at all
* underlined links in article, but not in quickbar

Instead of current:
* no underlining at all
* underlined links in article, and in quickbar

=== Modifications ===
I think these modifications should be incorporated into Cologne Blue
on every wikipedia, whether it will be default or not.

=== Screenshot ===
Newest is at http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyskusja_Wikipedii:Propozycje_do_nowej_sk%C3%B3rki

=== Quick Login ===
I think every skin should have it. PHP code to do this works fine to me.
Of course labels must be shorter than on login page.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!
 (Richard Grevers)

body:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Erik Zachte wrote:

> > Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
> > on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
> > Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
> > - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
> > selected in every browser.
>
> So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
> want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that
> affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design
> decisions.

No. We want them to find and change it to get their favorite design. And
if they do so, we don't want to say "Well, we made another decision".
At least they have the _possibility_ to correct our decision that way.
If someone is happy with browsing using the default settings, then they
probably will be happy using Wikipedia with their default settings. If
they have changed their default settings, they probably will prefer
their own settings to ours.

> Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
> really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish.

Apparently you would prefer to have some HTML in the page that would
make Bable Fish give English nevertheless? The proposal is to give the
user the choice of what font to use, rather than to discard all
Wikipedias except in one specific font.

> My point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you
> would like it be.

My point: If it's not broke, don't fix it. And the user may not know
what he wants, but he's probably better at guessing it than we are.

Andre Engels


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Stephen Gilbert <sgilbert=Ec9gIrrHw6csA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> writes:
>
> > I don't think we want to force every contributor to learn SGML or XML.
> > Our list of Wikipedians would shrink rather dramatically.
>
> You cannot prove that claim.

No, I can't, nor do I wish to try it and be proved right. :)

> HTML is SGML and there are quite some HTML
> writers.  Using SGML is easy.  They can separate paragraphs by <p> and
> they are done.  More advanced users can use more tags.

"Easy" and "difficult" are subjective. What happens when a beginner comes
across an article written by an advanced user?

The main point is that it raises the bar for participation. Yu could no
longer just drop by and make edits; you would first have to learn about
the markup language before doing anything. As it stands, you don't have
to know about the wiki syntax to do most things.

> _Many_ editors isn't a good thing per se; we should rather go for _good_
> editors.

Being able to use a markup language doesn't make you a good encyclopedia
contributor. Being knowledgable about what you're writing is key.

> > He orginally wrote it to export wiki documents, but he found it also
> > was much easier to write new documents in wiki syntax and convert them
> > rather than starting with straight DocBook.
>
> It isn't easier, but he is lazy ;) And he obviously enjoys using a
> cryptic markup language.  Cf. my User page.  Aditionally, you will never
> know whether wikipedia software accepts your HTML elements or not.

He finds it easier, and he doesn't find our wiki syntax cryptic. "Easy"
and "difficult" are subjective.

In theory, wiki syntax may be "cryptic". In practice, people from varied
backgrounds, many non-technical, find writing articles with it easy.

<snip>

> If someone is seriously interested in uniformity, he should vote for
> SGML/XML; ignoring using a proper markup language is just a waste of
> human resources: without a DTD we are force to edit or adjust articles
> again and again.

I think that if Wikipedia ever puts out a "stable" version for
distribution, the articles should be structured with XML. That's a job
for dedicated editors with a good knowledge of document structure.
Forcing it on the live wiki would, in my unproven opinion, by harmful.

- Stephen G.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

> I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
> dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.
>
> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-concept-demo.htm
>
> NOTE: please view with Mozilla (tested on 1.4), IE doesn't display the
> widths correctly (though it does work somehow) and the transperant logo.
> I haven't had the time to tweak it for IE yet.

It looks really nice. It doesn't display properly in Opera 7, either, for
the record.

- Stephen G.


body:
Richard,

Point taken, font type can be set through MSIE options. Fair enough. I
also admit the option is not so hard to find. We might even provide a
hint, e.g. a link on the preferences panel to [[non wiki options: hints
for popular browsers]].

Still this is only one aspect of the readability issue. In MSIE I can
also change text size from medium to small, but again this affects all
text for all sites. Medium works fine for me on most sites, but if I
would visit no other sites than Wp I would choose small (I don't do it
since changing this option after every url change is just too awkward).

My problem mainly centers on HEADERS. In a huge article, where h2's are
widely spaced apart I do not mind the size that much. Yet very many
articles have three, four or even five h2 headers in an article that has
scarcely more than a screen full of content.

Three h2 headers placed after each other use 141 pixels of screen height
(MSIE, medium text). Often the problem is worse because people add extra
linebreaks around headers. 141 is more than a fifth of my *effective*
view window even on 1152x864 screen (see below). If people would use h3
or h4 to cut a six lines article in three parts, that would lessen the
problem, yet they often don't and shouldn't have to.

So my idea was make things like header size (and e.g. rendering h4
normal+italic in stead of bold) user configurable without server
overhead (javascript, cookie). It will work for most visitors.

Another option is to make the skin creation process more wiki like. Why
can't we devise a personal stylesheet and upload this without lots of
discussion and without reworking the preferences page to allow for a
fourth choice. It will still be necessary to provide decent defaults,
but regular users can pick any skin they like (we might sort the list by
numbers of wikipedians that use it, something like Mozilla skin download
sites do, the best skins will survive and be further optimized). Then
after a while the most popular skin becomes the new default.

Appendix:
Screen height = 864 - MSIE title bar, MSIE menu bar, MSIE favourites
bar, GOOGLE bar, MSIE bar, XP taskbar (double height). I know I could
get more viewing space by forsaking some of these features, I can even
switch to full screen mode, but that is not generally known and not very
handy when surfing. I see a lot of people who do have a lot less actual
view area: (1024*768 screen or less, they forget to maximize the window
(wel those should blame themselves), have large icons hence higher
navigation bars, have the address bar placed under the links bar, loose
a quarter of the screen to a browser dside bar, etc). So I consider my
viewing space average at least.

I am not taking other browsers into account. I know some are more
flexible, yet emerging rivals for MSIE at best.

Regards, Erik Zachte

|-----Original Message-----
|From: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-
|admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org
|Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 14:00
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1242 - 8 msgs
|
|Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
|	wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
|	http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
|	wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org
|
|You can reach the person managing the list at
|	wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|
|When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
|than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
|
|
|Today's Topics:
|
|   1. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz)
|   2. NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ; great promo link for
|Wikis and Wikipedia (Daniel Mayer)
|   3. Re: Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Erik Moeller)
|   4. Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers)
(Erik
|Zachte)
|   5. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Andre Engels)
|   6. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Andre Engels)
|   7. Re: New stuff on test.wiki (Erik Moeller)
|   8. Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard
Grevers)
|(Richard Grevers)
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 1
|Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 07:02:32 +0200
|From: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpj at gower.pl>
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|On 21-07-2003, Anthere wrote thusly :
|>
|> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
|> > Daniel-
|> > > Please change that back.
|> >
|> > I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick
|> > of the obnoxious
|> > yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other
|> > feedback before doing so.
|> > We can also experiment with other colors. Perhaps it
|> > should be a user
|> > preference (then again, perhaps we should just
|> > support user-defined
|> > stylesheets ..).
|>
|>
|> Feed back
|>
|> I like the new blue color.
|I don't like the new blue colour.
|>
|> I don't like either the strong yellow of talk pages,
|> so I would not mind it being changed. However, I think
|> it important that colors distinguish between talk page
|> and article page. A much lighter yellow would be fine.
|> Or a light green perhaps. I shall not push for pink :-)
|I've got used to this shade of yellow but I wouldn't object
|to a change for a lighter one.
|
|Regards,
|Kpjas.
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 2
|From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:53:12 -0700
|Subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ;
great
|promo link for Wikis and Wikipedia
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|National Public Radio in the United States has run a story on how Wikis
are
|being used on the Internet and within corporations to collaboratively
|create
|documents. There is a very prominent mention of Wikipedia in this story
(in
|fact about half the segment is about Wikipedia).
|
|Please email this link to your boss and co-workers!
|
|http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/segment.jhtml?wfId=1344426
|
|-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 3
|Date: 22 Jul 2003 08:58:00 +0200
|From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New stuff on test.wiki
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|Timwi-
|
|> I have the feeling your changes are only gradually taking effect on
|> test.wikipedia.org.
|
|As I said, the software does not consider changes to the stylesheet
|relevant enough to tag its cached pages as expired, so you'll have to
log
|in to see these changes immediately (only anons get static pages).
|
|> I'm not seeing this change, so I'll look back at it tomorrow, but I
|> don't think this will convince me.
|
|Sorry, but you're simply a minority. There's only so much that can be
|reasonably done to meet your concerns. Putting annoying fat borders on
|every page is IMHO not an option.
|
|> Well, actually the previous heading appeared bolder to me than the
|> current one does. However, this is due to the particular font I've
set
|> in my browser (Verdana) and its habit of suddenly getting quite a bit
|> fatter from one point size to the next. I understand most people use
|> Times New Roman instead. However, if it doesn't upset too many
people,
|> if you could change it just slightly from 125% to 130%?
|
|OK.
|
|> Yeah, sorry. At the time I still had the yellow backgrounds. I see
the
|> new colour now, and to be honest, it's too light for me to
distinguish
|> directly from the pure white of real articles (I'm on an LCD).
|
|I think that's great -- the colors should only give a weak indication
that
|you're on a different page type, not dominate the entire layout as the
|yellow does. Wiki can be operated reasonably well without that
|information.
|
|> What about the simple grey meta uses? But then again, it'd be
|> indistinguishable from meta.
|
|I don't think every Wiki needs its own color set.
|
|Regards,
|
|Erik
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 4
|From: "Erik Zachte" <e.p.zachte at chello.nl>
|To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
|Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200
|Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!
|(Richard Grevers)
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
|> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
|> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
|> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
|> selected in every browser.
|
|So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
|want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting
that
|affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design
|decisions.
|
|Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
|really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish.
My
|point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you
|would like it be.
|
|Erik Zachte.
|
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 5
|Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:27:06 +0200 (CEST)
|From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|On 21 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
|
|> 1) The default skin has been somewhat modified. I made the borders
|> thinner, and added a box around the footer to separate it from the
|article
|> contents.
|
|I like this one.
|
|> The font size of navigational links is also somewhat smaller,
|> and the background color for non-article pages (special pages) has
been
|> changed to a light metallic blue.
|
|I do agree the yellow is not very good, but I don't like this one
either.
|
|> 2) You now get a "Post a comment" link on discussion pages. This
takes
|you
|> to an empty edit screen with a subject line. The subject line is used
as
|> an edit summary and is added as a ==headline== on top of the edit.
The
|> edit is appended to the current page.
|
|Not sure whether I like this one.
|
|> 3) There's now a cool way to edit sections: Instead of having ugly
[edit]
|> links next to each one, you can enable a user preference whereby you
can
|> edit sections by right-clicking on them. This only works in Mozilla
and
|IE
|> to my knowledge.
|
|Worked with Netscape 6 under Unix/Xwindows as well, but strangely not
the
|first time I tried (I got a database error). Bug could not be
replicated.
|
|> 4) The Table of Contents can now be suppressed by adding the text
|> "__NOTOC__" anywhere on a page. Note also that Brion and I wrote a
|> JavaScript that allows you to dynamically show/hide the TOC on the
page.
|> The TOC itself has been slightly changed, with smaller font and a
|centered
|> headline.
|>
|> Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version
of
|the
|> code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis
soon.
|
|Those lines below the section headers are really ugly. Please get rid
of
|them
|before you even think of putting these on the sites.
|
|I do agree with previous posters that the smaller article title is not
|an improvement.
|
|
|Andre Engels
|
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 6
|Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:34:44 +0200 (CEST)
|From: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|On 22 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
|
|> > 2. The size of the article titles was fine as it was,
|>
|> Several people complained about it, and I agree with them. Headlines
are
|> not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are supposed to give
the
|> viewer a quick overview of the different sections. The important
thing is
|> not to use the same font size/style for totally different things.
|
|The title is not supposed to give a quick overview of a the different
|sections, it is supposed to give a quick overview of the whole page.
|
|> > 3. There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings.
|>
|> Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into
|pages
|> besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text
|etc.
|> These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important
for
|> seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which
|> sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all
the
|> ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I
like
|> this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions.
|
|Options:
|1. Don't bother about this.
|2. Disallow the other ways of getting this, or change them so they
don't
|   get the same thing.
|3. Tell users who are bothered by this to switch on section numbering.
|
|I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly just so some option that I don't
know
|yet whether I will use it at all and certainly did not miss when it did
|not exist works better.
|
|Andre Engels
|
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 7
|Date: 22 Jul 2003 12:42:00 +0200
|From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|Andre-
|> I don't want Wikipedia to look ugly
|
|I disagree that it's ugly.
|
|Regards,
|
|Erik
|
|--__--__--
|
|Message: 8
|Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 23:33:50 +1200
|To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly
layout!
|(Richard Grevers)
|From: Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
|Organization: Dramatic Design
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|
|On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl>
gave
|utterance to the following:
|
|>> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
|>> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
|>> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
|>> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
|>> selected in every browser.
|>
|> So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
|> want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting
that
|> affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia
design
|> decisions.
|
|You are so totally not getting this. The default browser setting will
not
|affect "every web page" - it will only affect web pages which do not
|specify fonts and sizes, i.e. pages designed with accessibility as a
|priority. The best design decision is to make no design decision
regarding
|font family and size - virtually every significant design website and
forum
|pushes this line. For every user there is an optimal text presentation
that
|they find easy to read, and only the user knows what that is - the
designer
|can't guess it. And there is no question of this being an adjustment
"for
|wikipedia only" - why should the user's optimal font for reading
wikipedia
|be any different from their optimal font for reading anything else on
the
|web?
|
|And as for this 96% IE figure, that's higher than any stat I've seen,
even
|for Win/Mac only.
|Most stats seem to have IE6 at around 45%, IE5.5 28% and IE5 14%, and
it
|actually appears that IE's market share has topped out and is slowly
|starting to erode.
|>
|> Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
|> really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish.
My
|> point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as
you
|> would like it be.
|>
|> Erik Zachte.
|>
|You were the one who posted "What about giving the reader more control
over
|things like font type and size?"
|I simply pointed out that the mechanism for this already exists and is
|supported by every visual browser since Mosaic. And it's exactly what
|Wikipedia's default skin does, whereas Cologne Blue inflicts an (In my
|opinion, which is pretty well supported among typographers) inferior
font
|at too small a size.
|
|--
|Richard Grevers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|--__--__--
|
|_______________________________________________
|Wikipedia-l mailing list
|Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|
|
|End of Wikipedia-l Digest


from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop abuse and trolling (a minor correction)

body:
Hi all.

I'd like to make a minor correction to Jtdirl's (James Duffy) recent email concerning
RK's talk page.

Jtdirl said that the following paragraph:

> "My apologises, I just thought that your naming of the link to: "Deir Yassin
Remembered; This pro-Palestinian site claims that there was little military
conflict, and that 100 Arabs were flat-out murdered." was a little...
inflammatory."

Was written by "Pizza Puzzle". In fact, this paragraph was contributed by [[user:BL]],
unsigned. RK removed it when he removed the edits of Pizza Puzzle and
EntmootsOfTrolls, presumably by accident. You can verify this in the page history of
RK's talk page. [1]

Incidentally, BL's apology was in response to this comment on hir talk page by RK:

> "Um, your "Stop being a Moron" comment was not helpful. We need to cooperate to make Wikipedia articles better. When you interject into discussions that you are a not a part of, just to insult me, it doesn't help anyone." [2]

The edit comment in question can be seen in the page history of our article on the
Deir Yassin "massacre". [3]

BL's apology is in stark contrast to RK's behaviour later that day on the talk page of
[[Terrorism against Israelis]]", where he told BL "your statements are abhorrent",
accused hir of "a deep hatred of Israeli Jews" and advised hir to "Control yourself
and get over you [sic] hatred of Israel". [4]

Apparently, this is the reward one gets for trying to be nice to RK. Personally, I have
run out of patience with RK's insults, and intend to deal with them as I see fit.

Yours sincerely,
Martin "MyRedDice" Harper

1: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RK&action=history
2:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:BL&diff=1143767&oldid=11418
34
3: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Deir_Yassin_massacre&action=history
4:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Terrorism_against_Israelis&diff=114
4845&oldid=1144639


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue mod

body:
Here's a patch that I think should be applied on all Wikipedias (after some testing).
It changes only Cologne Blue skin.
* no OK buttons for search. Every browser that exists allow submiting
  a form by pressing enter.
* group headings in quickbar are centered
* only "important" links in quickbar are in bold
* removed link to main page from quickbar - already 3 other on page
* link to special pages moved up
* quick login for non-logged-in users (as Cologne Blue is default only on eo. now,
  it won't affect other Wikipedias at all, but I hope some day all wikis will go
  away from that ugly standard toward something nicer, like for example Cologne Blue)
* | separator in topbar replaced by -, | looked too much like I and was not
  aligned well (the same problem on Konq, Moz and Opera, so it's not just browser
  problem). More readable now.

Changes visible on screen shot but not in patch:
* anything related to underlining, font sizes and line heights changes

Patch applied to test.wikipedia.org. Have fun :)
-------------- next part --------------
diff -ruN wiki.orig/Language.php wiki/Language.php
--- wiki.orig/Language.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/Language.php	2003-07-22 19:20:46.000000000 +0200
@@ -489,6 +489,10 @@
 "passwordsent"	=> "A new password has been sent to the e-mail address
 registered for \"$1\".
 Please log in again after you receive it.",
+"qbaryourname" => "Login",
+"qbaryourpassword" => "Password",
+"qbarremembermypassword" => "Remember me",
+"qbarlogin" => "Log in",

 # Edit pages
 #
diff -ruN wiki.orig/LanguagePl.php wiki/LanguagePl.php
--- wiki.orig/LanguagePl.php	2003-07-21 02:03:46.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/LanguagePl.php	2003-07-22 19:20:05.000000000 +0200
@@ -452,7 +452,7 @@
 "login" => "Zaloguj mnie",
 "userlogin" => "Logowanie",
 "logout" => "Wyloguj mnie",
-"userlogout" => "Wylogowanie",
+"userlogout" => "Wyloguj",
 "notloggedin" => "Brak logowania",
 "createaccount" => "Za??? nowe konto",
 "badretype" => "Wprowadzone has?a r??ni? si? mi?dzy sob?.",
@@ -476,6 +476,10 @@
 "noemail" => "W bazie nie ma adresu e-mailowego dla u?ytkownika \"$1\".",
 "passwordsent" => "Nowe has?o zosta?o wys?ane na adres e-mailowy u?ytkownika \"$1\"
 Po otrzymaniu go zaloguj si? ponownie.",
+"qbaryourname" => "Login",
+"qbaryourpassword" => "Has?o",
+"qbarremembermypassword" => "Pami?taj mnie",
+"qbarlogin" => "Zaloguj",

 # Edit pages
 #
@@ -1271,4 +1275,4 @@

 }

-?>
\ No newline at end of file
+?>
diff -ruN wiki.orig/SkinCologneBlue.php wiki/SkinCologneBlue.php
--- wiki.orig/SkinCologneBlue.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/SkinCologneBlue.php	2003-07-22 20:30:45.000000000 +0200
@@ -100,14 +100,14 @@
 		global $wgUser;
 		$s = "" .
 		  $this->makeKnownLink( wfMsg( "mainpage" ), wfMsg( "mainpage" ) )
-		  . " | " .
+		  . " - " .
 		  $this->makeKnownLink( wfMsg( "aboutpage" ), wfMsg( "about" ) )
-		  . " | " .
+		  . " - " .
 		  $this->makeKnownLink( wfMsg( "helppage" ), wfMsg( "help" ) )
-		  . " | " .
+		  . " - " .
 		  $this->makeKnownLink( wfMsg( "faqpage" ), wfMsg("faq") )
-		  . " | " .
-		  $this->specialLink( "specialpages" ) . " | " .
+		  . " - " .
+		  $this->specialLink( "specialpages" ) . " - " .
 		  $this->specialLink( $wgUser->getID() ? "userlogout" : "userlogin" ) ;
 		return $s;
 	}
@@ -119,17 +119,16 @@
 		$s = "\n
";

 		$sep = "
";
-		$s .= $this->menuHead( "qbfind" );
+		$s .= $this->menuHeadLeft( "qbfind" );
 		$s .= $this->searchForm();

 		$s .= $this->menuHead( "qbbrowse" )
-		  . $this->mainPageLink()
-		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "recentchanges" )
-		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "randompage" )
+		         . "" . $this->specialLink( "recentchanges" ) . ""
+		  . $sep . "" . $this->specialLink( "specialpages" ) . ""
+		  . $sep . "" . $this->specialLink( "randompage" ) . ""
 		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "newpages" )
 		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "imagelist" )
 		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "statistics" )
-		  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "specialpages" )
 		  . $sep . $this->bugReportsLink() ;
                 if ( wfMsg ( "currentevents" ) != "-" ) $s .= $sep . $this->makeKnownLink( wfMsg( "currentevents" ), "" ) ;
                 $s .= "\n";
@@ -151,8 +150,8 @@
 			$s .= $sep;

 			$s .= $this->menuHead( "qbpageoptions" );
-			$s .= $this->talkLink()
-			  . $sep . $this->printableLink();
+			$s .= "" . $this->talkLink() . ""
+			  . $sep . "" . $this->printableLink() . "";
 			if ( 0 != $wgUser->getID() ) {
 				$s .= $sep . $this->watchThisPage();
 			}
@@ -171,8 +170,8 @@
 			}
 			$s .= $sep;
 		}
-		$s .= $this->menuHead( "qbmyoptions" );
 		if ( 0 != $wgUser->getID() ) {
+			$s .= $this->menuHead( "qbmyoptions" );
 			$name = $wgUser->getName();
 			$tl = $this->makeKnownLink( $wgLang->getNsText(
 			  Namespace::getTalk( Namespace::getUser() ) ) . ":{$name}",
@@ -183,10 +182,21 @@
 			  Namespace::getUser() ) . ":{$name}", wfMsg( "mypage" ) )
 			  . $sep . $tl
 			  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "watchlist" )
-		  	  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "preferences" )
+		  	  . $sep . "" . $this->specialLink( "preferences" ) . ""
 		  	  . $sep . $this->specialLink( "userlogout" );
 		} else {
-			$s .= $this->specialLink( "userlogin" );
+			# @@@ simple login
+
+			$action = wfLocalUrlE( $wgLang->specialPage( "Userlogin" ), "action=submit" );
+
+			$s .= "
<form id=\"userlogin\" method=\"post\" action=\"{$action}\">"
+			   .  $this->menuHeadLeft( "qbaryourname" )
+			   .  "<input type=text name=\"wpName\" size=10>
"
+			   .  $this->menuHeadLeft( "qbaryourpassword" )
+			   .  "<input type=password name=\"wpPassword\" size=10>
"
+			   .  "<input type=checkbox name=\"wpRemember\" value=\"1\">" . wfMsg( "qbarremembermypassword" )
+			   .  "
<input type=submit name=\"wpLoginattempt\" value=\"" . wfMsg( "qbarlogin" )
+			   .  "\"></form>";
 		}
 		$s .= $sep . "\n
\n";
 		return $s;
@@ -194,6 +204,12 @@

 	function menuHead( $key )
 	{
+		$s = "\n
" . wfMsg( $key ) . "
";
+		return $s;
+	}
+
+	function menuHeadLeft( $key )
+	{
 		$s = "\n
" . wfMsg( $key ) . "
";
 		return $s;
 	}
@@ -206,8 +222,7 @@
 		if ( "" != $label ) { $s .= "{$label}: "; }

 		$s .= "<input type=text name=\"search\" size=10 value=\""
-          . htmlspecialchars(substr($search,0,256)) . "\">"
-		  . "<input type=submit value=\"" . wfMsg( "ok" ) . "\"></form>";
+          . htmlspecialchars(substr($search,0,256)) . "\"></form>";

 		return $s;
 	}
diff -ruN wiki.orig/style/cologneblue.css wiki/style/cologneblue.css
--- wiki.orig/style/cologneblue.css	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/style/cologneblue.css	2003-07-22 19:14:40.000000000 +0200
@@ -59,20 +59,23 @@
 }
 #quickbar {
  font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
- font-size: 8pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 9.5pt;
+ font-size: 8pt; line-height: 9.5pt;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: black;
  padding: 0; margin-top: 0;
 }
 #quickbar a { color: #446688; }

-#quickbar h6 {
+#quickbar h5,h6 {
  font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 10pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 12pt;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #666666;
  padding: 0; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-top: 6px;
 }
+#quickbar h5 {
+ text-align: center;
+}
 #quickbar form { padding: 0; margin-top: 0; }

 h1 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
diff -ruN wiki.orig/upload/log_dlJbnMZb wiki/upload/log_dlJbnMZb
--- wiki.orig/upload/log_dlJbnMZb	1970-01-01 01:00:00.000000000 +0100
+++ wiki/upload/log_dlJbnMZb	2003-07-22 19:23:45.000000000 +0200
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+** no caching **
+20030722172345	0001.216	 anon


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikidev group on server

body:
Lot of files are set g-w on server, so the fact they
are owned by wikidev doesn't help any.

1. Please, everyone, modify your umask from 022 to 002.
2. Could someone with root account modify all wikidev files
   on both servers to g+w (except maybe in /home)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Amillar blocked?

body:
Amillar wrote on [[Wikipedia talk:Bots]]:

>>>
I believe my IP address has been banned because I swamped the server with a
script. (It was retrieving and not updating, but being automated I suppose
it qualifies as a bot anyways. I thought it was slow enough, but apparently
not.) Strangely, though, my IP address does not show up in
Special:Ipblocklist. How do I go about verifying that is what happened, and
perform appropriate apologies and grovelling to get re-instated? Thanks for
any advice. -- Amillar 19:16 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
<<<

He was later much more specific on [[User talk:Amillar]]:

>>>
The IP I'm having trouble connecting from is 216.99.203.72. Just to verify,
I resolve www.wikipedia.org as 130.94.122.199, to which I can ping and
traceroute but not open port 80. Thanks. -- Amillar 15:15 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
<<<

I thought this sounded easy enough to fix, since I had seen a list of such
bots in the /apache/conf directory on larousse. But after some grepping, I
couldn't find any IP address in his block listed, or his domain name
(aracnet). I'm out of ideas, does anyone else know what's going on?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contraversial edit war

body:
There is an edit war in process at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism.  Could someone please protect
it?  Things have gotten way out of hand!  Unfortunately, I have taken
sides on the issue, so I must request that someone else protect it.  A
mediator that is not Christian would also be appreciated.

--
Michael Becker


body:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> gave
utterance to the following:

>> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
>> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
>> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
>> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
>> selected in every browser.
>
> So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
> want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that
> affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design
> decisions.

You are so totally not getting this. The default browser setting will not
affect "every web page" - it will only affect web pages which do not
specify fonts and sizes, i.e. pages designed with accessibility as a
priority. The best design decision is to make no design decision regarding
font family and size - virtually every significant design website and forum
pushes this line. For every user there is an optimal text presentation that
they find easy to read, and only the user knows what that is - the designer
can't guess it. And there is no question of this being an adjustment "for
wikipedia only" - why should the user's optimal font for reading wikipedia
be any different from their optimal font for reading anything else on the
web?

And as for this 96% IE figure, that's higher than any stat I've seen, even
for Win/Mac only.
Most stats seem to have IE6 at around 45%, IE5.5 28% and IE5 14%, and it
actually appears that IE's market share has topped out and is slowly
starting to erode.
>
> Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
> really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My
> point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you
> would like it be.
>
> Erik Zachte.
>
You were the one who posted "What about giving the reader more control over
things like font type and size?"
I simply pointed out that the mechanism for this already exists and is
supported by every visual browser since Mosaic. And it's exactly what
Wikipedia's default skin does, whereas Cologne Blue inflicts an (In my
opinion, which is pretty well supported among typographers) inferior font
at too small a size.

--
Richard Grevers


body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> I've just wasted my weekend working on designs, but
> never mind.

Si je devais compter le nombre d'heures perdues sur
Wikip?dia
:? ajouter du contenu, effac? par d'autres,
:? tenter de justifier mes positions face ? une
personne d'une mauvaise foi sid?rante
:? supprimer des articles couverts par un copyright,
pour me voir reprocher de ne pas plut?t les r??crire
(tu es le bienvenu pour r??crire tous les articles
upload?s ? la chaine sur les historiens romains :-))
:? tenter de faire ?voluer une r?gle, en fournissant
des arguments justifi?s, pour entendre "non, parce que
c'est comme ?a", ou "oui, mais de toutes fa?ons,
personne n'impl?mentera la modif"

Frustrant frustrant frustrant

Malgr?s tout, il en restera toujours quelque chose.
Pour les skins aussi :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com