from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Rex Mundy

body:
http://www.brianism.org/wikipedia.htm

(dated 20 January 2004!)

for the background, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brianism

--Optim

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Dan Carlson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Single-sign-on

body:
On Jan 16, 2004, at 12:23 AM, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> I just want to notice that there is fourth problem which noone
> realised so far
> - I have different user names at English and Serbian Wikipedias and
> they
> would need to be joined; I guess this could be the case with more
> users.

I've got a germ of an idea that might or might not be useful; I just
suggest it as a potential alternative.

What about creating an entirely new pan-Wikipedia user base that will
basically "trump" the existing users?  I'm not sure if this would be
possible (or even simple enough to code in), but what if the users were
offered a new single sign-up that everyone can voluntarily transfer to?
  At the same time, all newly registered users at any wiki would be
required to sign up with the new single sign-on membership, but all the
wikis would still draw on their old user base.

There'd probably have to be some complicated cross-checking (to avoid
duplication of existing names from *any* of the wikis' lists).

Basically, if such a dual-base system is possible, I'm thinking it
would help get our foot in the door so to speak; later, it's just a
matter of sorting out the users on a case-by-case basis.  Difficult,
but not impossible.

Maybe it's best to just approach the change in stages?

Dan Carlson


list: wikien-l

from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
For those of you who don't already know. Leffe is the best beer in the world. IMHO

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Gutza [mailto:gutza at moongate.ro]
Sent: 16 January 2004 09:59
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [OT][WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11)

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-)
>
>
You mean freedom fries. And they're Belgian. In any case, since they
wanted to use "freedom", they could have used "libert?, egalit?,
fraternit? fries". You say that's too long--well, it can be compressed
to "Leffe" for instance. But wait, we're back to Belgium. :)

(Check out [[en:French fries]] chapter 6 and [[Leffe]] if you don't know
what this is about.)

--Gutza

P.S. Hey, it's Friday, anyone should be entitled to an attempt at humor
on Fridays.

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] please re-enable "new articles"

body:
Am Donnerstag, 15. Januar 2004 18:45 schrieb Ulrich Fuchs:
>. So please re-enable
> the new article feature again.
>
It has been re-enabled. Thank you, whoever did it!

Uli


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia funds

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Lance Murdoch <wikipedia-l at lancemurdoch.org> writes:
>
>
>
>>Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the
>>capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>And what will be the next proposal?  Removing the other external
>booksellers because they don't bring in money?
>
>
Now, now...

If there's no bother for the user, I think we should do this. We link to
amazon anyway, and they offer us money because we do. So, the decision
is between
* take money that is offered to us for doing something we'd do anyway, or
* throw away the money

That's really one hard choice to make! ;-)

Magnus


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of
links in?

A better google comparison would be "september 11" "attack" -terrorist vs.
"september 11" "attack" "terrorist".

Shorter phrases will pretty much always have more hits than longer
equivalent ones.

The change from "September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack" to "September 11, 2001
Terrorist Attacks" was in my opinion completely unnecessary. But I
understand people's need to make an imprint.


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch)

body:
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >It should be taken out because it is both a characterization
> >and unnecesary for identifying the incident.
>
> It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying the
> incident. Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston
> Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'), [[Holocaust]], [[Racism]], and
> [[Terrorism]] itself.

Speaking of massacres, a few other incidents where the term is commonly
applied -- but doesn't actually fit would be the Saturday Night Massacre
(where, in fact, no one died), & the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (where
less than a dozen people died -- far less than at, say Katyn Wood).

For those rusty on their US history, the "Saturday Night Massacre" was an
episode of Watergate, where President Nixon attempted to fire a number of
lawyers investigating Watergate. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre occured
when either Al Capone or one of his henchmen killed a number of members
of a rival gang in Chicago.

Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of
army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in
Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were
killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them.
Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the
post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the
event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though.
>
> >There are numerous other incidents which might be qualified
> >as "terrorist", but where that term might be more hotly disputed.
>
> Then we dispute those! But please no blacklisting of terms. That is Newspeak
> and censorship.

I would recommend that we follow usage. If the word "terrorist" frequently
or commonly is used to refer to an event, we either offer a link with that
in the title, or put the word in the name of the article; if certain groups
use the word & others don't, then that fact is mentioned in the article
(& who calls it that).
>
> >By completely avoiding the term "terrorist", even when it seems
> >obvious, we can avoid the need to set boundaries that define
> >what is and what is not a terrorist act.
>
> Self-censorship is the worse kind.
>
I am reminded of a saying, sometimes attributed to St. Augustine. "Without
justice, what difference is there between a brigand and a king?" Almost
every terrorist is a freedom fighter in someone's eyes.

Geoff


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in TomeRaider format for PDAs

body:
On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 01:06, Brion Vibber wrote:

    The December 2003 updates to the TomeRaider-format downloadable copies
    of Wikipedia for offline viewing on PDAs are again available for
    download at:

    http://download.wikipedia.org/tomeraider/current/

    Versions are available in English, German, Dutch, French, and Esperanto.

Umm. If formatting versions for different languages is seriously
expensive
effortwise, ignore this note. I am just thinking about the list of
languages.
Those may well be the languages we have the most useful compendiums for.
But
while they may be nice for end(l)users, there is an unspoken, but IMAO
symmetrical utility for _content_providers_ (and an even more
deniability-enchanced personal interest of the poster of this message),
and
in those cases (the small languages) having the tomeraider-version on
your
palmtop as a handy check-off for topics already covered etc. might
further speed up the catching up process those minor (but not for ever)
affiliates
have to climb.

Ah. Chuck deniability! Ok. The above might need to be set into it's
accurate perspective by the addition of the backround information
that I have acquired a Handspring Visor Deluxe, and my analysis may
thus be more than slightly result-oriented, which usually is a bad
sign...

    For more information, please see
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_database

    -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
One other point. 9-11 is universally held to be a terrorist attack. By
arguing "We shouldn't use the word terrorist because we dispute the very
conception of terrorism" we are engaging in political advocacy.

Wikipedia should try to properly reflect the world more than it should try
to shape it.

We already have an excellent discussion of the fuzziness of "terrorism" in
that article. That's the place for such a discussion, not in the Sep. 11
namespace.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: .eu domains perhaps?

body:
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Oh please - Unless some type of high Internet tax is added, I would be very
>surprised if .eu domains would be more than 25 Euros/year in two years' time.
>On average every day we take-in more money than that *just* in Euros!

According to a registrar that is takin in .eu domain reservations (they
state around May 2004 for .eu domains to go online), the cost is
currently unknown but should be similar to .com domains.

Alfio


from_name: Peter Bartlett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia funds

body:
Mav wrote:
>Magnus wrote:
>>That's really one hard choice to make! ;-)

>Actually any economic relationship with Amazon is going to be a
politically
>sensitive topic around here. This is due to the large number of people
who
>have an almost irrational hatred of Amazon because of their business
>practices. I for one don't care, and in fact use Amazon often, but we
have to
>ask ourselves:
>
>Is the money we would get worth being viewed as selling our soul to
devil by a
>not-insignificant number of our contributors and many in the free
software
>community?
>
>I personally don't think the amount of money generated would be worth
the
>grief. But that is just me.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

That is a fair point but surely the current situation (linking to Amazon
but not referrer-linking) isn't great for either side of the divide. (Is
referrer-linking a dramtically more "economic relationship" than the
free advertising we do for them already?)

Maybe the ISBN page could be re-worded to include make the amazon link a
referrer link but also include a notice that this is a referrer link and
a link to , e.g., [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia's use of referrer links#Why link
to Amazon]] which spells out why someone might prefer NOT to click that
page, but to go to another bookseller instead.

Pete


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Stats: Perl expert advice needed on decompression
	code for SQL dump

body:
On Jan 16, 2004, at 09:22, Erik Zachte wrote:
> Brion has recently added code to store articles in 'old' SQL table in
> compressed format, so I will need to adjust the scripts for the
> international stats.
>
> I spent several hours on it, and despite some useful tips from Brion I
> can't get those article data inflated, all I get is a Z_DATA_ERROR (-3)

Ok, couple of problems:
Using chomp on the lines corrupts the input data. Taking the chomp out
fixes that.

The same inflation stream gets reused for every file. That doesn't look
right to me.

inflate() returns Z_STREAM_END when it gets to the end, not Z_OK. If
you get Z_OK, you have to ask it to run more data, or something...? Not
entirely sure how to handle that.

And the real hard one to figure out: PHP's gzdeflate(), gzinflate() set
the window size to -MAX_WSIZE which disables the checksum. Unless you
pass the same parameter to inflateInit(), the perl-side functions will
expect those extra bytes and fail without explanation.

Attached is a version that mostly works, except it doesn't handle the
Z_OK case right.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gutza

subject: [OT][WikiEN-l] Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-)
>
>
You mean freedom fries. And they're Belgian. In any case, since they
wanted to use "freedom", they could have used "libert?, egalit?,
fraternit? fries". You say that's too long--well, it can be compressed
to "Leffe" for instance. But wait, we're back to Belgium. :)

(Check out [[en:French fries]] chapter 6 and [[Leffe]] if you don't know
what this is about.)

--Gutza

P.S. Hey, it's Friday, anyone should be entitled to an attempt at humor
on Fridays.


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >> by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
> >
> >We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition.
>
> Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not
> characterize the
> dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on),
> but the
> intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the
> fact that
> few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks
> terrorist acts
> (what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions).

OK, this makes me sick.

If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT directed against Americans or Israelis?

What the hell is wrong with you people?

> >Terrorism by government is no less atrocious.  Destroying the
> >homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of
> >terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make
> >sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up.
>
> This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it
> terrorism (esp
> when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or
> were the
> family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a
> much larger
> population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that
> population).

<growls> Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING?

> >Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive
> >force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why
> small
> >groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre
> >weapons to secure their freedom..  Perhaps the way to prevent
> >them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them
> >something to lose.
>
> No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military
> spending
> and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the
> root causes
> of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance.

    Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance.

    Try another one.

> >Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who
> >is taking the "terrorist" action.
>
> No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language.

    Precisely.

Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human foolishness.

John


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
> Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of
> army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in
> Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were
> killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them.
> Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the
> post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the
> event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though.

You haven't looked it up in Wikipedia, then.

--
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.com | nothing but food and water.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Toolbar

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabriel Wicke" <groups at gabrielwicke.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 10:55 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Toolbar

> On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:23:06 +0100, mark-9hcUDxK07t8+ibij9IF1FkEOCMrvLtNR
> wrote:
>
> How about http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html?
> examples:
> wen mypage- get http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mypage
> wm Skins- gets http://meta.wikipedia.org/Skins
> --
> Gabriel Wicke

Excellent !!!
I created "en:", "fr:" and "ja:".

Aoineko


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
John asked, somewhat plaintively, "Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT
directed against Americans or Israelis?"

This is a good question, and we should develop an article to answer this
question. As a start, let's consider what the definition of terrorism
is, or list multiple definition.

"Violence directed against civilians"

Ah, but what about the bombings of Coventry or Dresden?

"Not an act of a state"

Ah, but what about state-supported terrorism?

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"

Hmm. Maybe the issue is "injustice".

That is, X will label a given act of violence against civilians
"terrorist" if he considers it unjust. Like, how dare those bastards
bulldoze this Arab man's house?

Meanwhile, Y might say that the same act is not terrorist, because he
does NOT consider it unjust. Like, we were destroying tunnels used to
smuggle weapons, etc.

Same logic applies to blowing up a bus or pizzeria. My side calls it an
act of war, a blow against oppression (i.e., justifiable). Your side
calls it cowardly, unjust, etc.

It all boils down to the point of view of the person classifying the
act. So let's identify the POV and its advocate. *yawn* case closed. Not
too hard, eh?

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: John C. Penta [mailto:pentaj2 at UofS.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:07 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >> by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
> >
> >We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition.
>
> Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not
> characterize the
> dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on),
> but the
> intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the
> fact that
> few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks
> terrorist acts
> (what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions).

OK, this makes me sick.

If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT
directed against Americans or Israelis?

What the hell is wrong with you people?

> >Terrorism by government is no less atrocious.  Destroying the
> >homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of
> >terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make
> >sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up.
>
> This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it
> terrorism (esp
> when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or
> were the
> family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a
> much larger
> population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that
> population).

<growls> Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING?

> >Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive
> >force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why
> small
> >groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre
> >weapons to secure their freedom..  Perhaps the way to prevent
> >them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them
> >something to lose.
>
> No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military
> spending
> and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the
> root causes
> of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance.

    Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class
mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance.

    Try another one.

> >Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who
> >is taking the "terrorist" action.
>
> No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language.

    Precisely.

Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human
foolishness.

John

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


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Using a dictionary considered helpful

body:
dpbsmith wrote:

>I don't regard a dictionary as holy writ, and I don't have any illusions that
>using one will settle these disputes, but I really do wish, when conducting
>arguments--particularly in writing via email--that contenders would resort
>more to the dictionary, at least as a starting point, for defining terms.

I tend to agree; but OTOH I also tend to feel that most dictionaries suck
and strongly prefer the Oxford English Dictionary (for English).

>For example:
>Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a
>person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of
>intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or
>political reasons."

>From the OED:
Terrorism:
2. gen. A policy intended to strike with terror those against whom
it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of
terrorizing or condition of being terrorized.

Notice the focus on how the victims /feel/ (terrorized, struck with terror)
rather than on /who/ the perpetrators (unlawful) and victims (societies) are.
Also no crap about legality; the /original/ "Terrorists" were a government!

My point here is not that you have given a bad suggestion,
just to show the limitations, which maybe you had already realised.
It is still a good suggestion!

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:

>We already have an excellent discussion of the fuzziness of "terrorism" in
>that article. That's the place for such a discussion, not in the Sep. 11
>namespace.

I agree.  That's why we should leave the matter out of the title.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of
>links in?

How is that?  Was the move not done properly?

>A better google comparison would be "september 11" "attack" -terrorist vs.
>"september 11" "attack" "terrorist".

Have you performed this Google search?  You may be surprised! ^_^

But those are both fairly useless searches to perform.
We want /phrases/ -- not the entire content of a page.

Analogue:
"jimmy carter" president : 335,000
"jimmy carter" -president : 221,000

So do we move [[Jimmy Carter]] to [[President Jimmy Carter]]?
No ... because more people will look for just "Jimmy Carter"
than for the entire phrase "President Jimmy Carter".

What the search above reveals is that /most/ web pages on Jimmy Carter
mention that he is president -- but that's not what we're asking for.

And if /most/ web pages on September 11 mentioned that it was terrorist
(my Google search suggest that they do not! but let's pretend),
that would not be of any help in choosing the title.

>Shorter phrases will pretty much always have more hits than longer
>equivalent ones.

One reason why page titles should usually be shorter.
The shorter phrase is what people will more often look for.
Titles are not meant to be maximally complete.
OTC, they should be (barring some other useful convention)
as short as will do the job (being clear and disambiguating).

>The change from "September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack" to "September 11, 2001
>Terrorist Attacks" was in my opinion completely unnecessary. But I
>understand people's need to make an imprint.

Well, the latter name violates /more/ naming conventions than the former,
if that's what you mean. ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
>I'm a bit confused about what is being discussed here.  Does anyone
>actually argue that calling it a terrorist attack is somehow mistaken
>or prejudicial?

Two answers.

First, I argue that it may be prejudicial.

I argue that an attack on the Pentagon isn't prima facie terrorism.
I argue that an attack on the Pentagon, in some situations,
could be a fairly straightforward act of war, where Al Qa'ida (or whoever),
believing that the Pentagon is directing military operations against them,
makes a decision to retialiate in an effort to put a stop to this.

Now, I /also/ argue that this was not the case in this situation.
The biggest evidence is the NYC attack, which /is/ prima facie terrorism;
but also, I don't see what military purpose Al Qa'ida could have accomplished.
It's not as if the Pentagon was directing anything big at them --
they were investigating the Cole attack, but anything else was covert
(assuming that anything else even existed), and pales in comparison
with the huge and very overt war that the Pentagon waged /afterwards/.
If nothing else, the attack was a gross miscalculation --
but it seems much more likely to me that the purpose was to terrorise,
and not to achieve any particular military goal at all.
So it was terrorism.

But that fact is not obvious until you think about it.
And if Al Qa'ida is trying to claim that the attack /was/ military,
then it even becomes POV to /claim/ that fact (even though I agree).

But the second answer is that this is mostly irrelevant.
If some Al Qa'ida supporter is still maintaining
that the attacks were not terrorism (which I doubt, actually),
then the article /body/ is the place to explain this in an NPOV fashion.
If the attacks were commonly referred to as "the September 11 terrorism",
then [[September 11 terrorism]] would still be a good article /title/ --
and the body could say if that name was disputed.

But that's not how they're referred to.  Most often, I hear just "9/11",
but that's ambiguous, so [[9/11]] and even [[September 11]] are bad titles.
Among disambuated names, "the September 11 attack" /is/ more common.
Now if there was some /other/ September 11 attack called just that
(I don't think so -- the Chilean coup is called "coup", not "attack"),
then we need to decide whether "2001" or "terrorist" disambiguates better.
Generally, I would prefer a year as a policy (or convention, rather),
since they almost always work when they apply -- a good convention.

Moral:  Short titles, as long as they aren't ambiguous, are generally better.
Not so much because a longer title runs the risk introducing a POV term
(indeed, a longer /article/ is almost always /less/ POV!),
but because a shorter phrase will almost always be more common.
That is how human language works.

-- Toby


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration

body:
sannse wrote:

>Perhaps as a first step the committee members could indicate whether they
>will be willing to take on that job?  Or should we just go ahead and
>nominate someone as chair?
>
>
As a zeroeth step, can we be reminded of who's on which committee?  I'm
sure we all remember which ones we're on personally, but I for one don't
remember who else is on which committee.  Actually, this should probably
be publically posted in the Wikipedia: namespace somewhere (or is it
already and I missed it?).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Mav wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Well, what /was/ the purpose?  Given the NY attacks, terror is likely.
>>As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage".
>>Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces?

>No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian
>population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition
>governments cannot commit terrorism.

1)  Yes!  So one cannot argue that /because/ there were civilian deaths,
the act was terrorism rather than warfare.  One must look at the /intent/:
an intent to terrorise.  Which is what I did; that was my only point there.

2)  This is also a good point.  But as far as articles /titles/ go,
we need to look at this more thoroughly.  If more people refer to
the terrorist attacks on that day as "the September 11 attack(s)"
than "the September 11 terrorist attack(s)" (as one would expect),
then the common-name naming convention suggests that we prefer the former.
/If/ they called it, say, "the September 11 terrorism",
then [[September 11 terrorism]] would be a reasonable title,
despite its rather blatant POV content.  But they don't.

3)  That is false.  (Well, IMO, it's clearly false.  Our article [[Terrorism]]
should be NPOV about this.)  Source: OED ^_^.

Viajero wrote:

>>>On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote
>>>something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist"
>>>should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I
>>>am inclined to agree with him.

This is far too extreme (as Viajero later admitted).
But there /is/ a lesson in Zero0000's suggestion, all the same.
Clich?d as this is, terrorism often /is/ in the eye of the beholder.
We shouldn't leap to calling people terrorists when it's not necessary.
OTOH, we should definitely cover, by the usual NPOV methods,
accusations that somebody is a terrorist.  Outside of such coverage,
however, it'll be much more useful just to say what somebody did.
Readers can decide if that's terrorism or not.

-- Toby


from_name: Bjorn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Terrorist attacks

body:
> True, but that's really not relevant to this debate,
> since both "September 11 attack" and "September 11 terrorist attack"
> can be found, in common usage, to refer to this event.

Additionally, "September 11 attack" googles much better than
"September 11 terrorist attack" (22k to 9k).

BL


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia funds

body:
Peter Bartlett wrote:

>Maybe the ISBN page could be re-worded to include make the amazon link a
>referrer link but also include a notice that this is a referrer link and
>a link to , e.g., [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia's use of referrer links#Why link
>to Amazon]] which spells out why someone might prefer NOT to click that
>page, but to go to another bookseller instead.
>
>

Also, I have never seen an ISBN reference in Wikipedia unrelated to the
actual book title. I'm sure that if someone feels so strongly against
Amazon/Wikimedia or their relationship they can still use their minds
and skills to make a decision they're happy with regardless of where and
how we link (e.g. go to Amazon via direct URL and perform the search
manually, search at other booksellers, search on Google, ask friends,
place an ad, physically search in bookshops, etc).

The only possible "unethical" possibility would be to actually surcharge
the buyer for the reference to Amazon. As long as that's (obviously) not
happening, Wikimedia is clean and its spirit is pure--after all, it's
offering what most of the commerical community would call a free
service: it spares the poor buyer of the agony to manually search the
Amazon database (the horror!).

Just my 2c,
--Gutza


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

subject: [Wikitech-l] Single-sign-on

body:
Am Freitag, 16. Januar 2004 06:23 schrieb Nikola Smolenski:
> On Thursday 15 January 2004 16:07, Ivo K?thnig wrote:
> > If I`ve got it, we have 3 main problems:
> >
> > 1. There could exists users on different lang-WPs with the same name.
> > 2. There is no (good) way to find out automatically which accounds with
> > the same name in different lang-WPs belong to different persons and which
> > belong to the one person.
> > 3. We have actually no good solution for the first problem but as long as
> > we wait the problem gets larger.
>
> I just want to notice that there is fourth problem which noone realised so
> far - I have different user names at English and Serbian Wikipedias and
> they would need to be joined; I guess this could be the case with more
> users. _______________________________________________

Thats not a Problem with the single-sign-on, since you can have two accounts
later too and even now in one single lang-WP, but my mail gives the
solutation even for that...

Regards
Ivo K?thnig


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] referrals (was: Wikipedia funds)

body:
On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 06:02:15AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Lance Murdoch <wikipedia-l at lancemurdoch.org> writes:
>
> > Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the
> > capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
>
> And what will be the next proposal?  Removing the other external
> booksellers because they don't bring in money?

Excuse me to point out that this comment was as constructive as bombing
Hirosima.

Naturally following your direction it is LOGICAL that modifying the amazon
links means reading wikipedia going to cost you 5 EURO/read (reloads are
half priced), and you have to send your youngest virgin daughter to the
Wikipedia staff at new years eve.

And quite naturally we have to sacrifice you at the moment you make a
derogatory comment about any editors.

Oh, you're dead.

:-)

Peter

ps: lighten up. these people aren't that bad that those all out there.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Single-sign-on

body:
Am Donnerstag, 15. Januar 2004 16:07 schrieb Ivo K?thnig:
> Hello,
>
> I am new at wikitech-l, so I dont know what is said before to the theme
> "sinle-sign-on" (yes I know I could read the archive and I tried, but it is
> too long for today :-)...) but here are some thoughts from me...

Ahh, this was my first mail :-) right header :-) but wrong adress :-(. May the
admin of this list should free the other adress, I think I will forget to
enter the right one very often... sorry...

Regards
Ivo K?thnig


subject: [Wikitech-l] Single-sign-on

body:
Am Freitag, 16. Januar 2004 06:23 schrieb Nikola Smolenski:
> On Thursday 15 January 2004 16:07, Ivo K?thnig wrote:
> > If I`ve got it, we have 3 main problems:
> >
> > 1. There could exists users on different lang-WPs with the same name.
> > 2. There is no (good) way to find out automatically which accounds with
> > the same name in different lang-WPs belong to different persons and which
> > belong to the one person.
> > 3. We have actually no good solution for the first problem but as long as
> > we wait the problem gets larger.

Thats not a Problem with the single-sign-on, since you can have two accounts
later too, but my mail gives the solutation even for that...

Regards
Ivo K?thnig


subject: [Wikipedia-l] German Wikipedia Inavailability/Hardware Status

body:
On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 04:26:57AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> 2.  In various configurations consistent with the correct placement of
> memory, Geoffrin gives sporadic errors in test #11.  These are listed
> as "ECC" errors, which Jason believes may mean that these are o.k.,
> i.e.  errors that were caught and fixed by the ECC stuff in the RAM.
> Or, it may mean something else.  He was researching that yesterday
> afternoon.

I would use these only if they're out of the guarantee period. Any errors
mean it's not perfect, and you should change them if they're still covered
by the seller. (Well, at least we do that in good old Europe, but maybe
industry of the USA is not that advanced ;->.)

My $0.02.

grin


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
> Umm. If formatting versions for different languages is
> seriously expensive effortwise, ignore this note.

It is. It takes me almost a week to check for Wp specific oddities
(like restructured main page, which needs Wp specific parsing to render
into a TOC),
convert 5 Wp's for 3 platforms to TomeRaider format,
import in TR, zip, split, MD5, upload to Brion's PC (only this takes 20
hrs now for 700 Mb).

This is without adjustments for ever evolving wiki syntax.
Building custom TeX to HTML convertor took me 2 months.
By the way, new table syntax not yet supported.

New versions can be added with minimal translation effort,
but not for more or less trivial purposes, sorry.

Fortunately the files a well in demand.
Over 15,000 page views on my site since April 2003.

Erik Zachte
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Newspeak (Was: Sep 11)

body:
Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:

>Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:

>>Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds me of something I read
>>in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The
>>goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought
>>control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind
>>those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people.
>>Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the
>>transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the
>>population for it.

>Orwell's society did not ban the word "freedom".  It just reserved the
>right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way.
>Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject
>population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas.

Point of information:

I read 1984 again just last month, and this very word
(well, the adjective "free") is addressed in the appendix.

Newspeak /did/ ban the word "free" (in its political sense) /entirely/.
They did /not/ merely insists that you call Ingsoc free and dissent unfree.
They wanted to make it /impossible/ for somebody to say something like
"Hold on a minute -- maybe Ingsoc is not free after all!".
A big point of Newspeak -- and how it went /beyond/ efforts in the USSR --
was the elimination, not merely restriction, of terms, for this reason.

BTW, the word "free" did survive in Newspeak, but in a different sense.
You could say "My apartment is not free of cockroaches.",
but not "My life under Ingsoc is not free." -- /that/ would be meaningless.

All in all, comparing Newspeak to political correctness
is a huge exaggeration -- Newspeak just goes beyond
anything that has occured in the real world (and thank goodness!).
That was part of Orwell's point -- the other part of his point
being that Newspeak might not be such an exaggeration in 1984.
(Thank goodness that it still is!)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:

>Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:

>>Ec wrote:

>>>It should be taken out because it is both a characterization
>>>and unnecesary for identifying the incident.

>>It should only be taken out if it is deemed unnecessary for identifying
>>the incident.

I basically agree with this.  Somebody else noted that the name
"St. Valentine's Day Massacre" is wrong, since only 7 people were killed.
But [[St. Valentine's Day]] is ambiguous, and there is no good alternative.
[[St. Valentine's Day gang killing]] /would/ be nice --
if anybody actually called it that!  But they don't.

>With that you make it sound as though you are agreeing with me.

But I also agree with this.  [[September 11 attack]] is probably enough.
Certainly [[September 11, 2001 attack]] is enough.
This leaves the question of [[September 11 terrorist attack]],
/if/ [[September 11 attack]] is actually ambiguous;
I'll address that below.

>>Otherwise we would have to rename [[My Lai Massacre]], [[Boston
>>Massacre]], (many, many other 'massacres'),

Another good point about these is that they're /fixed names/.
Light [[St. Valentine's Day Massacre]], they are capitalised --
not proof, but good evidence in English of some sort of standard name.
There is no standard proper name for 9/11 in English yet,
but there may well be in, say, 10 years.  And in 10 years,
if the standard proper name is [[September 11 Terrorist Attack]],
then I would have to agree with that (capitalised!) title.

Although if you want my prediction for the title in 10 years:
[[Nine Eleven]].  Shall we take bets? ^_^

>>Self-censorship is the worse kind.

>I would call it restraint by avoiding inflammatory titles.

This is also a good point -- it doesn't override common names,
because while [[St. Valentine's Day Massacre]] may be inflammatory,
it's a /necessary/ inflammation, if we are to use a common name.
The article body is the place to explain that only 7 people were killed.

But in choosing between [[September 11, 2001 attack]]
and [[September 11 terrorist attack]]
(under the assumption that [[September 11 attack]] is ambiguous),
then I believe that Ec's point becomes important.
Only article bodies can go into the depth necessary
to be /truly/ NPOV -- to explain the intracies of differing opinions.
But article titles can still show restraint.

Also, using dates to disambiguate historical events
is just good policy (at the level of naming convention),
since they almost always work.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>This assumes that there's a reason for it to be in the title at all.
>>Why is that?  What else could "September 11, 2001 attack" mean?
>>Titles are not required to be maximally complete.

>Point taken. I was operating under the assumption that your reasoning was only
>that 'terrorist' should be blacklisted from the title because it is a "loaded
>term". 'September 11 Attack' is *at least* used as often as 'September 11
>Terrorist Attack' (probably more so). Of course we would have the add '2001'
>to the title because of ambiguity reasons.

I /do/ think that the "loaded term" bit is relevant, but at a lesser level.
(My immediately previous post explains this.)
But no, that is not the main part of my reasoning.

WARNING!  The rest of this post is mostly off-topic.
(Or at least secondary to the main point of the thread.)

>>I remember once trying to convince you of this very thing:
>>NPOV is primarily about article bodies, not titles,
>>and titles need to be further determined through arbitrary conventions.

>Nah - my opinions are always right for all time. ;) But I seriously don't
>remember holding such an opinion since it is not possible to have NPOV in
>titles because we have to choose just *one* title for any topic.

That was part of my point -- also the bit about titles becoming very long.
Perhaps it was somebody else that I was arguing against and not you?

This came up back when Lir and I and Ec (to decreasing extents)
wanted to use (for example) [[M?nchen]] as a title instead of [[Munich]].
And somebody claimed that to violate the common name convention
would be POV.  (Lir's argument /was/ basically a POV argument,
on the grounds that [[Munich]] was somehow a "racist" name,
but mine and Ec's position didn't rely on that characterisation.)

I'm not going to look this up, because it's pretty much irrelevant.
Not only is it a historical digression in /this/ discussion,
but it was a secondary point even in /that/ discussion!
(Your argument was based squarely on the "common name" convention,
not on any NPOV argument.)

So it's all IIRCWIPD ("if I remember correctly, which I probably don't").
^_^

>>Since this is a digression, I won't go on about what slander
>>the term "PC" is. Suffice it to say that no social movement
>>called itself that.

>Well there is no political action committee whose aim is PC that I am aware
>of, nor any groups that have exclusively pro-PC meetings. PC is more of a
>cross-group "movement" to change the English language (using the word
>"movement" very loosely). Perhaps "trend" would be more accurate (even though
>there are many counter trends to PC that help to negate its progress).

I will accept "trend", even "a trend found in some social movements".
The term "politically correct" was invented by those movements' opponents,
to denigrate this trend and thereby denigrate them.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Mark (Delirium) wrote in part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The Cunctator wrote:

>>>Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of
>>>links in?

>>How is that?  Was the move not done properly?

>The only solution at present is
>to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist
>Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which
>whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them).

Ah! if this is so, then the move was /not/ done properly.
This is a problem, but it is a different problem.
One doesn't kill these links /every/ time the title is changed,
only every time that it is not changed properly! ^_^

That said, according to "What links here", there are /no/ double redirects.
Not a single one!!!

To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug???

-- Toby


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Rex Mundy

body:
--- Nikos-Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> http://www.brianism.org/wikipedia.htm
>
> (dated 20 January 2004!)
>
> for the background, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brianism
>
> --Optim
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Rex Mundy


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
On Friday 16 January 2004 12:19 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> "Not an act of a state"

Just out of interest. Does anyone know where this part of the mainstream US
definition came/comes from. I have my suspicions that it might have
originated from the propaganda department of some government, (maybe the
british during the their squabble with america?). Anyone got any sources on
this?

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration

body:
I vote for Angela and/or sannse for leader of the Mediators.

And I hereby donate one WikiDollar each to the campaign funds of
Maveric, Camembert & Delirium for Head Arbitrator (how do you arbitrate
a head, anyway? ;-)

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
I don't think mainstream US definition of terrorism lets states off the
hook. I thought "state terrorism" was a US term!

Anyway, we should think about moving this discussion to
[[talk:terrorism]]. I'd like to see an article come out of all this
fine, intelligent, cooperative discourse. (No sarcasm implied or
intended)

Ed Poor


body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>I don't regard a dictionary as holy writ, and I don't have any illusions that
>using one will settle these disputes, but I really do wish, when conducting
>arguments--particularly in writing via email--that contenders would resort
>more to the dictionary, at least as a starting point, for defining terms.
>
>For example:
>
>Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a
>person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of
>intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or
>political reasons."
>
>Terrorist: "One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism."
>
>Not an answer, not unambiguous, not unchallengable, but a starting point.
>
>

I'm not contesting your input, I don't even follow the dispute, I just
think it's funny to notice that corroborating the definition above with
the subjective point of view (who determines what's unlawful?), the
whole of US were terrorists *by the book* in regards to the old Iraqui
regime. The eye of the beholder...

--Gutza


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:
>
>
>>Gah. You do all realize every time we change the title we kill thousands of
>>links in?
>>
>>
>
>How is that?  Was the move not done properly?
>
>
Mostly because we don't have a good automated way of moving articles
that have inbound redirects.  When an article is moved, its former
location becomes a redirect (to the new location), so any inbound
redirects to the old location are now double-redirects (redirects to a
redirect) that no longer work properly (since the Wikipedia software
only follows one level of redirection).  The only solution at present is
to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist
Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which
whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Mark (Delirium) wrote in part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug???

>I think the link table's gotten messed up somehow.

>I'll post a message on the village pump about it, in case a
>developer who reads that but hasn't been following this rather lengthy
>discussion drops by. =]

There's a bug somewhere -- also check out the red links on [[September 11]].

I just reported this to the Sourgeforge business.

The main relevance of this bug to the debate /here/
is that we probably shouldn't change things anymore
until the bug gets fixed, so the double redirects can be fixed.
(I say "anymore" since Lance's move has just been reverted,
so there should be no double redirects right at this moment.
I still support Lance's move if the redirects /are/ fixed.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
Terrorism tends to spill over into "low-level warfare". I read a lot
about revolutionary strategy and tactics, and at one point in my army
career I considered becoming a counter-insurgency officer.

But ultimately I'm more comfortable with education. I consider my work
at Wikipedia a long-term investment in home-schooling materials...

Sabotoging powerlines sounds like something Marxist guerrillas would do.
The object is to make life under the current regime so miserable that
people are desperate for a regime change. Then your group offers
yourselves as the perfect alternative. Sometimes this works, sometimes
not.

Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon.
There's lots of great material here, hint, hint.

Ed


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Sean Barrett wrote:

> > Katyn Wood is an event in Polish history. The mass graves of a number of
> > army officers, government officials, & other intelligensia were found in
> > Katyn Wood. The Soviet Union claimed for many years that these people were
> > killed by Nazi Germany; the Nazis claimed that the Soviets killed them.
> > Communist Poland refused to discuss the event, & I have no idea if the
> > post-Communist government has made an official statement concerning the
> > event. I have not seen it referred to as a "massacre", though.
>
> You haven't looked it up in Wikipedia, then.
>
What I meant was that I haven't seen it referred to as "The Massacre of
Katyn Wood". If that is the name of the article, then I'd flag it for
NPOV reasons.

Of course, there's a lot of material on Wikipedia I haven't seen. And I
doubt I would agree with.

Geoff


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair

body:
I am available for arbitration but not for chairperson.

Fred Bauder

> From: "Martin Harper" <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: martin at myreddice.co.uk
> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:40:39 -0000
> To: gutza at moongate.ro, wikipedia at myreddice.co.uk, david at oohat.net,
> sean at epoptic.org, fredbaud at ctelco.net, delirium at rufus.d2g.com,
> maveric149 at yahoo.com, pilich at btopenworld.com, james at jdforrester.org,
> cunctator at kband.com
> Cc: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Deciding on a chair
>
> Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency]
>
> It's possible that some of you may not have read Jimbo's recent mailing list
> post, so I
> felt a quick email shot would be appropriate.
>
> Please read through Jimbo's post, at
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009614.html
>
> Please reply to all indicating whether or not you will be available to chair
> the
> committee through this initial organisational phase. If you are no longer
> available to
> be an arbitrator due to unforseen time constraints, please say so: I'm hoping
> to get a
> response from each of you.
>
> A quick reminder of who we all are:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitrators
>
> Just to add my own reply, I am still available and willing to be an
> arbitrator. I'm
> happy to be the chair too, but I feel that either Delirium (Mark) or Camembert
> (Lee
> Pilich) would be more adept in that role.
>
> Finally, apologies to Kat/Uninvited company, as I don't have his email
> address. If
> anyone does, that'd certainly be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reducing redirects (was: Sep 11)

body:
Gotta check your redirects.

After you move an article, please click on the "What Links Here" link.
Identify any double-redirects, and reduce them to singles.

Thanks.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Compare "September 11 Rerrorist Attack" with "Sneak Attack at Pearl Harbor".

Fred


from_name: Steven G. Johnson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] automated TeX-like dashes (-- for –
	and --- for — )?

body:
Just a suggestion, it would be great if it were easier to do proper dash
typography. I find TeX's -/--/--- convention for hyphen/en-dash/em-dash
to be fairly intuitive.

Right now, if you do — in the text, it makes things much less
readable and is confusing for newbies.  The need for these glyphs is so
common that wiki support seems worthwhile.

Cordially,
Steven G. Johnson


subject: [WikiEN-l] Urgent: to Arbitrators

body:
Martin (MyRedDice) wrote:

> Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency] . . .

Please don't cc to wikien-l or the software will automatically hold your
post. I won't be around the next three days to "Approve" it.

I think you'd better:

A. Send one copy to wikien-l; or
B. Send a copy to multiple recipients on your committee; or
C. Both, i.e., two SEPARATE e-mails

Note that option (C) is unnecessary, if committee members read the
mailing list.

I'm going off-line now, so if you disregard this advice you're going to
get "hold" messages till Tuesday, and you don't want THAT! Not at this
crucial time!!

Urgently,

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Admin


subject:
[Wikitech-l] FW: Your Arbitrator Committee posts will be held
	unless...

body:
Someone who knows mailing lists, please stand by to bail these guys out
if needed.

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Admin

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W.
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:19 PM
To: 'martin at myreddice.co.uk'; gutza at moongate.ro;
wikipedia at myreddice.co.uk; david at nohat.net; sean at epoptic.org;
fredbaud at ctelco.net; delirium at rufus.d2g.com; maveric149 at yahoo.com;
pilich at btopenworld.com; james at jdforrester.org; cunctator at kband.com
Subject: Your Arbitrator Committee posts will be held unless...

Please do not add multiple recipients when posting to wikien-l or else
your post will be "held for moderator approval". And I'm going to be
offline for the next three days!!

If you have to keep the lest informed, you MUST send a separate e-mail.
Otherwise, the software automatically puts a "hold" on it. I don't know
any way to turn off this feature.

Urgently,

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Admin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Sabotoging powerlines sounds like something Marxist guerrillas would do.
>The object is to make life under the current regime so miserable that
>people are desperate for a regime change.
>
It's the word Marxist that doesn't make sense in this statement.  Not
because Marxist guerillas don't use it, but because it suggests that
somehow they are the *only* ones that do.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair

body:
In no particular order,

I'm still willing to be on the committee.

I'm willing to be the chair, if the rest of the committee so desires
(and I should have sufficient free time to do so).

If I were to have to pick a chair, I would most likely pick Martin
(MyRedDice).  Mav is also a good choice I think, but I understand he's
either officially or unofficially Wikimedia's treasurer (?), so if
that's the case it may be best to not have one person wearing too many
administrative hats (Jimbo excepted, of course =).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
Viajero wrote:

>On 01/16/04  at 04:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:
>
>>Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon.
>>There's lots of great material here, hint, hint.
>>
>Yes, but more important at this point would to come to some concensus here
>on the mailing list regarding use of the term "terrorist" to serve as
>guideline for the varous articles. Otherwise, the issue will be hashed out
>over and over again on the respective Talk pages -- as is currently
>happening.
>
Exactly.  This debate is not really about the nature of terrorism or who
is a terrorist, but about whether the use of the word is appropriate in
the title of an article.

The simple fact that such a use has generated such a lively debate
involving respected Wikipedians on both sides is reason enough to omit
it from the title.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Mark (Delirium) wrote in part:
>
>
>>The only solution at present is
>>to manually change each of these "#REDIRECT [[September 11 Terrorist
>>Attacks]]" pages to "#REDIRECT [[September 11, 2001 attacks]]", which
>>whoever moved the page did not do (there are, indeed, quite a lot of them).
>>
>>
>[...]
>That said, according to "What links here", there are /no/ double redirects.
>Not a single one!!!
>
>To be honest, this is so surprising, that I'm wondering if it's a bug???
>
>
I think the link table's gotten messed up somehow.  When I checked a few
hours ago (when I wrote the message you quoted above), there were quite
a few double-redirects that I was pondering fixing, but I decided to
wait until the dust settled before spending a lot of time doing so.  The
fact that they've all disappeared is a bit confusing.  Hopefully we can
track down these now-missing redirects and point them to the right
place, or get the link table for [[September 11, 2001 attacks]] rebuilt
properly.  I'll post a message on the village pump about it, in case a
developer who reads that but hasn't been following this rather lengthy
discussion drops by. =]

-Mark


from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] merging watchlists

body:
At 10:51 AM 1/16/2004, you wrote:
>*Please* implement a *completely independent watchlist-server*. Since
>Wikipedia
>is growing exponential modularizing it is the only way to survive. It
>could also
>help attracting programmers that do not like to get into a big monolithic
>program like MediaWiki that you can almost only use for Wikipedia.

This may be an old idea, or not. But the thought of modularizing did bring
a thought to mind that is related to how Ebay does things...

What if the articles in a certain alphabetic range were stored on one
server, and those in another alphabetic range stored on another? A third
server stands in front doing nothing more than redirecting traffic to the
other servers. It might make statistics and such a bit more of a headache,
but it would certainly assist in reducing the bandwidth requirements of the
server.

Whether such an implementation would be simplistic or terribly difficult
requires a greater understanding of the underlying architecture than I have.

Just a thought.

-Kelly


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Squid testing/ task coordination

body:
On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 02:07:12 -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> At 08:08 AM 1/15/2004, you wrote:
>>I've set up a test wiki for Squid tuning at http://wiki.aulinx.de/. It's
>>already passing through Squid.
>
> Sorry, new to the list, what's Squid?

;-) It's a caching proxy server that can help to speed up wikipedia. A
long explanation is at http://www.aulinx.de/oss/code/wikipedia/. Squid
itself has its homepage at http://www.squid-cache.org.

> and is there an archive of this list so that I don't have to ask more
> 'stupid' questions? :-)

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical
and
nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical
(that's with your newsreader).
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: gmane posting policy

body:
On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:28:46 +0100, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
> To do this you need a way to explain to Mailman that postings that contain
> the header;
> X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/
>
> are allowed to be posted by non-members. Who knows how to do this?

Hm- i thought it was easy but googling for it didn't turn up anything
relevant. I'll post the question to the gmane.discuss newsgroup.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
Viajero wrote:
>This rationale does not hold water since countries like Libya
>and Iran. which we can assume do have something to loose,
>still appear to support it.

Supporting terrorism and having your regular troops commit acts of war are
very different things. One is secretive and at least somewhat deniable (often
more than somewhat), while the other is indisputable and direct. That is a
very real distinction. A nation has a good chance of getting away with one,
while the other will get them into a war. So 'state sponsored terrorism' is a
very real thing.

>The Gulf War is not a good example, But I think we must
>acknowledge that there are a lot of people in the Third World,
>using *their* definition of "terrorism",  who believe that the US
>has committed "terrorists acts" against civilian targets.

Yes of course! The accuracy of their usage is not relevant; only the fact that
they say that is relevant. That is the type of info that can and should be in
appropriate articles on the subject. But page titles follow common usage of
English speakers (again, with the caveats of ambiguity and unreasonable
offensiveness).

>To begin with, in recent days, two discussions have taken place
>on Talk pages ([[Osama bin Laden]] and [[Shining Path]]) over the
>insertion of the phrase
>
>"... is considered by many people to be a [terrorist | terrorist
>organization]"
>
>I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this
>phrase. I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement
>on the subject.

I thought that the phrase at OBL was "in the West he is widely regarded as a
[[terrorism | terrorist]]". This is factually correct and taking it out is
censorship and advocating for a certain POV. That will not be tolerated.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11

body:
I respond below to some of the issues Mav and others have raised in recent
posts, arguing that labelling people like Bin Laden "terrorists" is
passing a moral judgement, and if we indiscriminantly do so, then others
can insist that the actions of our governments (US/UK for the sake of
argument) should also be labelled "terrorist". My conclusion is that it is
not in the interest of Wikipedia for the CIA to be labelled a  "terrorist
network".

On 01/15/04  at 06:35 PM, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:

> Viajero wrote:

> >"Terrorism" is a lot more than just a technical term; it carries
> >emotional baggage and implies a moral judgement (like calling
> >someone a "vandal" in Wikipedia!).

> Like the words 'racism', 'holocaust' and 'massacre'? I guess the
> articles on  those topics will have to be renamed as well.

No, I would argue that "terrorism" is really sui generis. Given its highly
controversial nature, its strongly negative connotations, and its primacy
in current affairs, I don't think we should draw any general principles.

> >Moreover, if we label Al Queda or Shining Path terrorists, one can
> >make the argument for labelling the US government a terrorist
> >organization for mining the harbor of Managua in the 1980s, or
> >destroying the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan in 1998,
> >or causing 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the
> >1990s by means of sanctions. Passing moral judgements can go both ways.

> See my response to Toby on this point:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009600.html

Ok, here it is:

> Toby Bartels wrote:

> >Well, what /was/ the purpose?  Given the NY attacks, terror is likely.
> >As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral
> >damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed
> >forces?

> No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian
> population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition
> governments  cannot commit terrorism.

The Gulf War is not a good example, But I think we must acknowledge that
there are a lot of people in the Third World, using *their* definition of
"terrorism",  who believe that the US has committed "terrorists acts"
against civilian targets.  As others have already pointed out in this
lists, a "terrorist" or a "terrorist act" is largely in the eye of the
beholder.

As for 3) "by definition governments  cannot commit terrorism": It seems
to me that this qualification is selectively applied. "State terrorism" is
a contradiction in terms where Western governments are concerned but not
when it involves our "official enemies". Do a Google query on "libya +
support + terrorism" (190,000 hits) or  "Iran + support + terrorism"
(476,000 hits) and you find documents containing such texts as:

  Does Iran sponsor terrorism?
  Yes. The State Department calls the Islamic Republic of Iran the world's
"most active state sponsor of terrorism."
  (http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iran.html)

  Over the past twenty years, Libya has been foremost on the list of
countries supporting terrorism.
  (http://www.ict.org.il/articles/article3.htm)

If "sponsoring" or "supporting" is a meaningful distinction (I think not),
than someone could argue that bin Laden is not a "terrorist"; he only
supports it. In any case, it is beyond a doubt that the Reagan
adminstration "supported terrorism" (first legally, later illegally) by
its backing of the Contras whose goals were very much which Mav defines
above, ie "to terrorize the civilian population."

> One reason why terrorism is often
> seen as being  worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that
> there is no clear  thing to retaliate against when it is committed.

I regard this is strictly a tactical problem -- not a moral issue!

> At least in the Cold War we  could rely on the concept of mutually assured
> destruction to keep the Soviets  from nuking us (and vice versa). We
> cannot rely on that for terrorist acts  since the organizations the
> perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much  to loose as a nation
> performing the same act would.

This rationale does not hold water since countries like Libya and Iran.
which we can assume do have something to loose, still appear to support
it.

> >On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote
> >something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist"
> >should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I
> >am inclined to agree with him.

> I'm sorry but this is an absurd position to have and I do hope you
> re-consider  it. Not only would it result in  [[Terrorism]] becoming an
> orphan, but it  would whitewash a great many articles. If and when it is
> relevant to say that  X said Y about Z then we should say it!

> Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad idea

I take it back. "Banning" was too strong a word. No, you are quite right:
we do not want to "ban" words or ideas from Wikipedia. But I think we need
to look carefully at how the term is used.

To begin with, in recent days, two discussions have taken place on Talk
pages ([[Osama bin Laden]] and [[Shining Path]]) over the insertion of the
phrase

  "... is considered by many people to be a [terrorist | terrorist
organization]"

I am opposed (along with several others) to the inclusion of this phrase.
I believe it uses weaselspeak to insert a moral judgement on the subject.
We should simply allow the facts to speak for themselves. In the case of
Shining Path, its atrocities were numerous, unambiguous, and
well-documented. The case, as it were, speaks for itself.

In [[Shining Path]], in response to the above, another user replaced it
with the following text at the end of the article:

  Internationally, Shining Path is widely regarded as a terrorist group.
  The organization is on the United States Department of State's list of
  Foreign Terrorist Organizations, meaning (among other things) that it
  is illegal for US citizens to provide any aid to the group. The United
  Kingdom and European Union likewise list Shining Path as a terrorist
  group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support,
  although membership is not prohibited.

This is an improvement. However, the assessment of an organization as
"terrorist" is hardly just a technical, bureaucratic matter; it is not
like declaring it in arrears or something. It is a moral judgement, and
given that a state is not a moral agent (unlike say the Catholic Church) I
would question the appropriateness of any government taking the high moral
ground in this way, above all the US and the UK, given the fact they
recently launched an illegal war against Iraq. "Let he without blame cast
the first stone".

However, in another article, [[Binational solution]], which many of you
may have seen since it was one the Main page over Christmas, there is an
instance of the use of the word "terrorist" which is appropriate. It forms
an integral part of the historical narrative and is not included
essentially as a moral judgement:

  The 1973 Yom Kippur War was both a military and a political disaster
  for the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular. The crushing defeat
  of the Arab armies prompted a fundamental political rethink among the
  Palestinian leadership. It was realised that Israel's military strength
  and, crucially, its alliance with the United States made it very
  unlikely that it could be defeated militarily. In December 1974, Yasser
  Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -- regarded as a
  terrorist group by the Israeli government - declared that a binational
  state was the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  The change in policy was met with considerable confusion, as it was
  official PLO policy to replace Israel with a secular state with a full
  right of return for all displaced Palestinians.

As I said in an earlier message, passing moral judgements -- directly or
by means of weaselspeak -- goes both ways. If we insist on labelling Al
Queda "terrorist", others can do the same with the CIA for example. Aside
from whether I personally agree with this (an irrelevant matter), having
the CIA labelled a "terrorist network" in the interest of balance is, from
a strictly utilitarian point of view, counterproductive; it will only
alienate an important part of our audience. Hence, lets not go down the
slippery slope of labelling -- gratuitously at least -- bin Laden et al
with moralistic, emotionally-laden terms like "terrorist".

V.


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration

body:
Jimbo wrote (in part):

> There are a few people (Anthere, TufKat, others?) who I neglected to
> include in my first list, but it is past the start of the year, and we
> have a few outstanding controversies that need to be addressed.

Do you mean they weren't on the list but /are/ on one of the committees?  Or
are they not yet appointed?

> I'd like for a (relatively quick, as there's work to be done now) vote
> among each committee for a chairperson, who will be tasked with
> organizing the work.  I'd say that the chair should come up with a
> plan of action, and propose some voting thresholds, and then with the
> input and consensus of the wider community, I'll stamp my official
> seal of approval on that.

Perhaps as a first step the committee members could indicate whether they
will be willing to take on that job?  Or should we just go ahead and
nominate someone as chair?

Regards

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration

body:
Ed wrote:
>And I hereby donate one WikiDollar each to the campaign
>funds of Maveric, Camembert & Delirium for Head Arbitrator
>(how do you arbitrate a head, anyway? ;-)

Thanks Ed. :)

However, I'm already wearing a bunch of hats right now and would greatly
appreciate it if somebody else were nominated to take the lead of the
arbitration committee. I will definitely help set things up though.

I also think that setting up private mediation-l and arbitration-l mailing
lists would be a good idea (as explained in a previous email).

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009576.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia funds

body:
On Amazon,

I think the issue is with their one-ckick patent, which is seen by
many people, as a patent, to being counter-productive to the interest
of the internet and computer innovation as a whole.

This view is held by enough geek/hacker/tech people that associating
with amazon in a money-maker (which would benefit Amazon more than
the W) would be considered be a "Bad Thing".

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Stats: Perl expert advice needed on decompression code
	for SQL dump

body:
Brion has recently added code to store articles in 'old' SQL table in
compressed format, so I will need to adjust the scripts for the
international stats.

I spent several hours on it, and despite some useful tips from Brion I
can't get those article data inflated, all I get is a Z_DATA_ERROR (-3)

Brion sent me a small sample of the articles in the fr: 'old' dump in
compressed raw format, without escape sequences and other fields, just
article data. Even this I could not tackle.

Brion wrote:
> Here's a zip file containing the raw bytes of compressed old_text from

> the first up to 100 columns in the table:
http://leuksman.com/misc/raw.zip
> They do decompress with gzdeflate() in PHP.

Here is my test script
#!/usr/bin/perl

  use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
  use Compress::Zlib;

  $path = "raw/" ;
  ($refinf, $status) = inflateInit();

  for ($i = 1 ; $i <= 100 ; $i++)
  { &ReadFile ($i) ; }

  exit ;

sub ReadFile
{
  $file_in = $path . "old-" . $i . ".raw" ;

  open "FILE_IN", "<", $file_in ||
          die ("Input file " . $file_in . " could not be opened.") ;
  binmode FILE_IN ;
  $article = "" ;
  while ($line = <FILE_IN>)
  {
    chomp ($line) ;
    $article .= $line ;
  }

  ($article2, $status) = $refinf->inflate ($article) ;
  if ($status == Z_OK) # Z_OK = 0
  { print "$i:OK: " . substr ($article2,0,50) . "\n" ; }
  else
  { print "$i:Unzip error: $status\n" ; } # Z_DATA_ERROR = -3
}

Can someone help me out with this?
I can deflate/inflate dummy texts, so libraries are all in place.
(I use ActivePerl 5.8, on Windows)
-------------------------------------------------------------
There is a second problem,
possibly trivial after problem above has been solved:
(well actually I hope the problem above is a trivial oversight of mine
too)

The SQL dump contains escape sequences:
A small section of fr: old dump, new style, that Brion sent me contains
\Z: 3541 times
\\: 3497
\": 3428
\n: 3598
\r: 3550
\0: 3190

\Z is not listed on http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/String_syntax.html
I could not find any other doc referring to it.
\z is listed, so maybe upper/lower makes no difference, but I doubt it.

Anyone encountered this before?

Thanks for any help.

Erik Zachte


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair

body:
Delirium wrote:
>If I were to have to pick a chair, I would most likely pick
>Martin (MyRedDice).  Mav is also a good choice I think,
>but I understand he's either officially or unofficially
>Wikimedia's treasurer (?), so if that's the case it may
>be best to not have one person wearing too many
>administrative hats (Jimbo excepted, of course =).

Well I'm just the guy who updates the account balances on the fundraising page
and who created a spreadsheet (with Ec's help) showing all PayPal donations
for 2003. Whether or not I become the official Wikimedia treasurer is up to
Jimbo and the community to decide.

Getting the work done is the important thing, so I'm just making sure it gets
done. If somebody else wants to do the work and can be sufficiently trusted,
then that would be one less hat I for me to wear and I could then
concentrate on other things that need to get done. Lacking that, I would be
honored to be Wikimedia's treasurer if and when I am appointed and confirmed.

With that said, I hereby second the nomination of Martin and Mark.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jakob

subject: [Wikitech-l] merging watchlists

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> What I would in particular like, is to have the ability to check
> at once new messages on my User talk: in all languages, and having a
> merged watchlist.

I think that is beyond what is discussed now but also a feature I would like -
it would propably also increase the number of people contributing to multiple
languages. But before you think about adding more and more tables to a system
getting more and more complex:

*Please* implement a *completely independent watchlist-server*. Since Wikipedia
is growing exponential modularizing it is the only way to survive. It could also
help attracting programmers that do not like to get into a big monolithic
program like MediaWiki that you can almost only use for Wikipedia.

A watchlist-server would only need to collect RSS-feeds of recent changes and
get watch/unwatch-this-page-messages of users - no work on the live database.
Maybe it could also collect "you-have-a-message"-notices, posts to the
mailinglists and even other weblogs and stuff. Each user gets his aggregated
feed of changes, new articles and what he wants - you can also deliver messages
about changes per mail and of course RSS. Not to speek about features like
* list of most-watched-articles
* diagram of current active in edits/minute at each wikipedia
* subscribing public pre-defined-watchlists
and even notices about articles that are watched by people that watch similar
articles like I do!

Well, we do not need all of this features right now but its much more likely to
get them implemented and running independent from the MediaWiki-codebase and the
Wikipedia-server that may switch them on and off.

By the way the search functionality can also be put on an independent server
with an independent database like every other read-only-tasks.

just my 2 cents

Jakob


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation, arbitration

body:
Mark wrote:

> As a zeroeth step, can we be reminded of who's on which committee?  I'm
> sure we all remember which ones we're on personally, but I for one don't
> remember who else is on which committee.  Actually, this should probably
> be publically posted in the Wikipedia: namespace somewhere (or is it
> already and I missed it?).

The mediation committee is listed at [[Wikipedia:Mediation Committee]]

Originally I made at least one mistake in this listing - linking to
[[User:Geoff]] rather than  [[User:Llywrch]] (aka Geoff on the mailing
list).  Below is Jimbo's original list for the mediation committee and our
user names (please shout if I made any other booboos in matching Jimbo's
list with accounts)

Angela (User:Angela)
LDan (User:LittleDan)
Geoff (User:Llywrch)
DanteAlighieri (User:Dante Alighieri)
VancouverGuy (User:Vancouverguy)
sannse (User:Sannse)
Ed Poor (User:Ed Poor)
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (User:Cimon avaro)
Stevertigo (User:Stevertigo)

The arbitration committee is listed at [[Wikipedia:Arbitrators]]

Jimbo's original list:

Gutza
MyRedDice
NoHat
Epopt
Fred Bauder
Delirium
Maveric149
Camembert
Jdforrester
Kat/UninvitedCompany
Cunctator
Erik Moeller


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
I'm probably the only one who didn't participate in this discussion -
until now! :-)

This might be a little naive of me, but isn't terrorism defined by the
very word it is based on - terror? Because that's what a terrorist does.
He doesn't destroy  an important military target or kill an important
person - that's what military and assassins are for. A terrorist's goal
is, in the end, to create _terror_. Fear that *you* or your loved ones
could be next. Uncertainty. Trust in the state's ability to protect you
melting like butter in the fusion reactor.

And that's what 9-11 was about. Bin Laden (or whoever) didn't gain
anything directly through the death of the people in the WTC or the
Pentagon. The only "gain" of these peaople comes from the fear, from the
*terror* their actions produce. That's why they are called terrorists,
and their actions are terrorism.

And it worked. Terror they got. The patriot act alone speaks volumes.

Magnus

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> John asked, somewhat plaintively, "Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT
> directed against Americans or Israelis?"
>
> This is a good question, and we should develop an article to answer this
> question. As a start, let's consider what the definition of terrorism
> is, or list multiple definition.
>
> "Violence directed against civilians"
>
> Ah, but what about the bombings of Coventry or Dresden?
>
> "Not an act of a state"
>
> Ah, but what about state-supported terrorism?
>
> "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"
>
> Hmm. Maybe the issue is "injustice".
>
> That is, X will label a given act of violence against civilians
> "terrorist" if he considers it unjust. Like, how dare those bastards
> bulldoze this Arab man's house?
>
> Meanwhile, Y might say that the same act is not terrorist, because he
> does NOT consider it unjust. Like, we were destroying tunnels used to
> smuggle weapons, etc.
>
> Same logic applies to blowing up a bus or pizzeria. My side calls it an
> act of war, a blow against oppression (i.e., justifiable). Your side
> calls it cowardly, unjust, etc.
>
> It all boils down to the point of view of the person classifying the
> act. So let's identify the POV and its advocate. *yawn* case closed. Not
> too hard, eh?
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John C. Penta [mailto:pentaj2 at UofS.edu]
> Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:07 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:13 am
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Sep 11
>
>
>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>>
>>>>by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
>>>
>>>We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition.
>>
>>Granted this part of the definition is disputed (I would not
>>characterize the
>>dispute the way you do - IMO it is not as disputed as you let on),
>>but the
>>intent to cause terror in a civilian population is not. Nor is the
>>fact that
>>few people in the English-speaking world call the 9/11 attacks
>>terrorist acts
>>(what English speakers say is relevant to naming conventions).
>
>
> OK, this makes me sick.
>
> If 9/11 wasn't terrorism, WHAT IS? Does terrorism only occur if it's NOT
> directed against Americans or Israelis?
>
> What the hell is wrong with you people?
>
>
>>>Terrorism by government is no less atrocious.  Destroying the
>>>homes of innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of
>>>terrorizing them even when the troops are careful to make
>>>sure that there is no-one in the house when it is blown-up.
>>
>>This is a practice I find abhorrent but I would not call it
>>terrorism (esp
>>when it directed at people who somehow aided suicide bombers or
>>were the
>>family of the suicide bombers - terrorism is directed toward a
>>much larger
>>population which causes general fear for *everybody* in that
>>population).
>
>
> <growls> Must we bring the Palestinians into EVERYTHING?
>
>
>>>Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive
>>>force to achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why
>>
>>small
>>
>>>groups of people would ever want to continue to use their meagre
>>>weapons to secure their freedom..  Perhaps the way to prevent
>>>them from engaging in terrorist acts would be to give them
>>>something to lose.
>>
>>No argument from me here. The U.S. could save billions on military
>>spending
>>and terrorism security if they invested in ways to stomp-out the
>>root causes
>>of terrorism - poverty and its close cousin ignorance.
>
>
>     Somehow I doubt a middle-class twenty-something, or a middle-class
> mom-turned-suicide-bomber, is really hit by poverty or ignorance.
>
>     Try another one.
>
>
>>>Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who
>>>is taking the "terrorist" action.
>>
>>No - it depends on how English speakers use the English language.
>
>
>     Precisely.
>
> Now, pardon me while I vomit at this unique expression of human
> foolishness.
>
> John
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sep 11 (wasL User:LanceMurdoch)

body:
Rick a ?crit:
> You said the title of the article is POV.  That would mean that there is
> no Anti-French sentiment in the US, which is obviously not true.
>
> RickK

You do not read me well Rick :-)
Or I do not explain myself clearly enough

Here is the thread again

Daniel Mayer wrote:

Blacklisting terms is a very bad idea and is more PC than NPOV. Let's
not forget that PC is in fact an extreme form of POV and is *not* akin
to NPOV at all (which really deals with article *content* and not titles
- titles are dealt with through our naming conventions).

Tarquin then said
I wonder what happens when the PC brigade come across articles that
begin "So-and-so is a black British actor"

I commented
I would like the PC brigade to have a look at the title of the
[[anti-french sentiment in the United States]] as well

	(hint : I was talking of *having* a PC title for the antifrench
sentiment, not claiming there was no antifrench sentiment)

Then you said
Well, I'm certainly confused.  Are you saying that there is NO
Anti-French sentiment in the United States?

I answered
About as much as [[September 11 terrorist attack]] ever happened in the US.

	(hint : I was thinking that if [[September 11 terrorist 			attack]] was
renamed for PC reasons, we could perhaps do 			the same for the
[[anti-french sentiment in the United 				States]], and make it more PC
as well)

	(another hint : I was saying that it was just as funny to try to
hinder the "terrorist" aspect of the attack, than trying to 			pretend
there was no antifrench sentiment in the US)

Then you commented
You said the title of the article is POV.  That would mean that there is
no Anti-French sentiment in the US, which is obviously not true.

I answer
You do not read well Rick :-)

	(hint : that means I never wrote anywhere the title of 				the article
was POV. That was interpretation of your part. I 			only commented on PC
considerations. In short, we are just 			talking of two different
things. I was also mentionning the 			suggestion Jimbo made a year ago :
the title [[French American 			relationships]] is more **PC** than the
current one.

I often think that I write too much in length, but sometimes, it is best
that I use 10 times more words, since visibly, I am so little understood.

Do you understand now ?

	(hint : if you tell me again that I am wrong in claiming that 			there
is no antifrench sentiment in the US, play again :-))

-------

What were you saying Ed ?
School ?
Text analysis ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
On 01/16/04  at 09:12 PM, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> said:

> isn't terrorism defined by the
> very word it is based on - terror? Because that's what a terrorist does.
>  He doesn't destroy  an important military target or kill an important
> person - that's what military and assassins are for. A terrorist's goal
> is, in the end, to create _terror_.

What makes it complicated is that there are also things like attacks on
civil infrastructure which play into the equation. In Colombia for example
the FARC regularly targets things like power lines. Strictly speaking,
these are probably more accurately classed as acts of sabotage; they may
be more tiresome than terrifying. But attacks on things like wells, and
water purification and sewage treatment plants can condemn tens or
hundreds of thousands of people to slow death from diseases like cholera.
Are these acts of terror? Perhaps not. But people tend to label them as
such. Are they morally equivalent? Good question. Aside from the number
direct victims, crashing planes into buildings certainly has a terrible
psychological impact on vast numbers of people, but destroying the civil
infrastucture of a country can retard economic growth for years if not
generations.

V.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-French Sentiment (was: Sep 11)

body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> I created the article in question, "Anti-French sentiment in the United
> States".
>
> I am not anti-French. I love French Fries, particularly McDonald's ;-)
>
> I studied French in high school and actually did my homework for it --
> unlike most of my other courses.
>
> I memorized this poem:
>
> Dejeuner du Matin
>
> Il a mis le cafe
> Dans la tasse
> Il a mis le lait
> Dans la tasse de cafe
> Il a mis le sucre
> Dans le cafe au lait
> Avec la petite cuiller
> Il a tourne
> Il a bu le cafe au lait
> Et il a repose la tasse
> Sans me parler
> Il a allume
> Une cigarette
> Il a fait des ronds
> Avec la fumee
> Il a mis les cendres
> Dans le cendrier
> Sans me parler
> Sans me regarder
> Il s'est leve
> Il a mis
> Son chapeau sur sa tete
> Il a mis
> Son manteau de pluie
> Parce qu'il pleuvait
> Et il est parti
> Sous la pluie
> Sans une parole
> Et moi j'ai pris
> Ma tete dans ma main
> Et j'ai pleure.
>
> However, many Americans (other than me) evinced anti-French sentiment
> because of the Iraq War. "The French should appreciate our soldiers'
> sacrifice during World War II," they said. "Look at all the cemeteries
> filled with tens of thousands of dead GIs, fallen while defending them
> from the Nazis."
>
> Hmm, I wonder if the 'filter' will let this post through.
>
> Oncle Edmond

Edmond,

This is a very nice poem. Very well known.

 From the same author, I like this one even better.
Any french child learn it one day or another

LE CANCRE

Il dit non avec la t?te
Mais il dit oui avec le c?ur
Il dit oui ? ce qu?il aime
Il dit non au professeur
Il est debout
On le questionne
Et tous les probl?mes sont pos?s
Soudain le fou rire le prend
Et il efface tout
Les chiffres et les mots
Les dates et les noms
Les phrases et les pi?ges
Et malgr? les menaces du maitre
Sous les hu?es des enfants prodiges
Avec des craies de toutes les couleurs
Sur le tableau noir du malheur
Il desine le visage du bonheur

It is up to them, what they really want to be.
Listen to the teacher, tolerate the traps, and say no with their heads
Or listen to their heart, draw happiness, and make yes.

I hope it goes through the filter as well.


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deciding on a chair

body:
Dear fellow arbitrators [CC'd to wikien-l for transparency]

It's possible that some of you may not have read Jimbo's recent mailing list post, so I
felt a quick email shot would be appropriate.

Please read through Jimbo's post, at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-January/009614.html

Please reply to all indicating whether or not you will be available to chair the
committee through this initial organisational phase. If you are no longer available to
be an arbitrator due to unforseen time constraints, please say so: I'm hoping to get a
response from each of you.

A quick reminder of who we all are:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitrators

Just to add my own reply, I am still available and willing to be an arbitrator. I'm
happy to be the chair too, but I feel that either Delirium (Mark) or Camembert (Lee
Pilich) would be more adept in that role.

Finally, apologies to Kat/Uninvited company, as I don't have his email address. If
anyone does, that'd certainly be appreciated.

Regards,
-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deciding on a chair

body:
My apologies, I got nohat's email address wrong. It is of course
david at nohat.net, not david at oohat.net


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: watchlist idea

references:
<opr1s9fvkkos6ot2@news.gmane.org>
	<93C299E2-4746-11D8-8DB6-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>
	<opr1tfkop9os6ot2@news.gmane.org>
	<shzncn9ohi.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
On Jan 16, 2004, at 20:40, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> For the moment, my idea is: the user should be allowed to fetch his
> list once a day.

What's been hacked in for now is that a fetched watchlist will be
cached for an hour, so someone clicking the button over and over won't
load things down. The limits can be adjusted here and there if
necessary.

>   If that's still to expensive simplify the layout or
> contents of the watchlist - don't generate diff and version links (I am
> able to do the diff locally).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean; generating diff links is a
simple string concatenation and doesn't involve the database.

> And switch to PostgreSQL.  PostgreSQL obeys the SQL standard much
> better and thus it is more likely to attract SQL developers

I'd like to assume this statement is backed up with a plan to adapt
MediaWiki to work with PostgreSQL and demonstrate superior performance
with benchmarks. We're all in favor of choice here and would like
MediaWiki to be more generalized, but PostgreSQL advocacy here has a
history of being a lot of bluster followed by no action.

Unless someone would like to lend the benefit of their experience in
getting the code set up and actually demonstrate something, it's just
not going to happen; code doesn't write itself.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's roll! (was: Sep 11)

body:
On 01/16/04  at 04:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> Anyway, I hope we can move this discussion to some talk pages soon.
> There's lots of great material here, hint, hint.

Yes, but more important at this point would to come to some concensus here
on the mailing list regarding use of the term "terrorist" to serve as
guideline for the varous articles. Otherwise, the issue will be hashed out
over and over again on the respective Talk pages -- as is currently
happening.

V.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Single-sign-on

body:
Ivo K?thnig wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am new at wikitech-l, so I dont know what is said before to the theme
> "sinle-sign-on" (yes I know I could read the archive and I tried, but it is
> too long for today :-)...) but here are some thoughts from me...
>
> If I`ve got it, we have 3 main problems:
>
> 1. There could exists users on different lang-WPs with the same name.

I have a idea to solve this problem.

Create the concept of a "home-wikipedia useraccount".

For my the home-wikipedia is the dutch wikipedia.
My username there is "walter"
Change it to "walter_(NL)"

When i make edit on my home-wikipedia only the short username is
visible. In the recent changes you only see a edit by user "walter". The
extended username is hidden on your home Wikipedia.

When i go to the English Wikipedia I am still using the same account
"walter_(NL)" but when I make a edit the full username is visible,
"walter_(NL)".

So on the English Wikipedia or any other Wikipedia the home-wikipedians
of that wikipedia can see I am not there user "walter" but different one.

Whit this system every language can have short an easy usernames and
existing problems of the same username by different users is solved.

Walter_(NL)


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: High-res logo

body:
On Jan 15, 2004, at 4:53 PM, David Friedland wrote:

> I have made a high-res version of the logo, including the text. It is
> at
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/9/91/Nohat-logo-XI-big-text.png

Just took a look at the high-res logo; it seems to be missing the
breath mark (?) by the omega and breve (?) over the Cyrillic 'I' (?)
(backwards 'N').  I think that's it.

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Toolbar

references:
<EJENIMNDFLKBMNBMAGKDGEGJCGAA.mark@kruegerbrothers.com>
	<20040115203045.GB21862@tomk32.homelinux.org>
	<20040115214154.GF21046@joey.bomis.com>
	<200401151700.41301.sascha@pantropy.net>
	<20040115233234.GO21046@joey.bomis.com>

body:
On Jan 15, 2004, at 6:32 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Sascha Noyes wrote:
>> That is because of two reasons: 1. "toolbars" are spyware in most
>> cases. Spyware targets people who don't know much about computers,
>> which happens to be people that use mainly non-free software.
>
> To me, that should actually generate demand for a GNU-free
> alternative, right?  People can trust that it's not doing anything
> evil, because the source is publicly available.

Unfortunately, most people in the toolbar market don't care.  Most
probably don't know what GNU means, or even what free software is.
Many probably don't know what source code is.

BTW, this isn't to say open source isn't worth it in this effort.  It's
mainly just a rant about, well, whatever you call the uninformed masses
of the computer world.

Windows users?

*shields self*

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show