subject:
[Foundation-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking

body:
The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
-- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.

Today it happened during a particularly slow time of the morning,
around 14:35 UTC, perhaps in combination with other use of the site
that slowed it down.  It was noticed quickly, but it took a good 17
minutes for it to be successfully deleted once the problem had been
announced on IRC, by the seemingly-omniscient Jimmy Wales.

While everyone was fretting over the site's slowness, a few problems
presented themselves:
* There was no one-click way to remove or delete an image
* There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in an emergency
* There was no packaged way to quickly redirect all visitors (to en:,
say) to another site or page
* There was no way to bring the site[s] to (or restart the site in) an
'emergency mode' that only allowed limited access (say, by logged-in
users)
** Even had there been such a way, there were few (only 1-2) people
with shell access who would have been able to run shell scripts, and
it took an extra minute or two to get someone's attention.
* There were a limited number of ways to reach the collection of devs
to let them know there was an emergency.

This was not the worst emergency in the world, so the last point in
particular was not as big a deal as it might have been.

===========
Possible solutions:

1) Documentation: write down a standard way to quickly block all
incoming requests / take down a site in an emergency / put up in its
place a try-back-soon message or redirection to a static snapshot (see
3)

2) Code: add an 'emergency mode' that redirects all visitors to a
static read-only snapshot of the site taken once a day

2.1) Code: add a text-only mode that only produces text
2.2) Code: add a one-click (js widget?) option [maybe 2 clicks with
some kind of pop-up confirmation that doesn't require rendering
another whole WP-page] so that even when the site is very slow, evil
images can be deleted in under 15 minutes
2.3) More Code: add a different 'emergency mode' that only allows a
limited set of users [logged-in users?  users on a specific list?] to
use the site.

3) Code + Image Policy:  add an IMAGE REVIEW step that imposes a time
delay (or requires user approval) before an image can be displayed
live on a page [until then the image could still be linked to via an
html link]

4) Offer pagers <s>and implantable homing devices</s> to devs who are
going to be in the vicinity of computers anyway and are willing to be
on-call for certain parts of the day; something more reliable than the
blinking of an IRC window.
============

1),  2), and 3) seem important to me.   2) also has useful
implications for periods of deep sloth, and for taking things down to
make changes.   3) addresses many problems we are having, not just on
the main page.

Please comment or suggest implementations.

--
+sj+


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes, and image checking


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
Felix, that's a good summary of the issues.

Right now, I would encourage Chinese-savvy, prospective Wikipedians to
work on ZH rather than spawning many, small Chinese-dialect
Wikipedias. Jimbo's statement is the most compelling argument for
this:

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're
doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004

To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a
"Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment
in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the
primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.

One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free
as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the
better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:55:15 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> Finally I have found my way here where the discussion takes place. There has not been much in meta. I have read arguments from both sides here, and I would like to contribute my ideas to the question we have.
>
> Let me first introduce my language background. My parents' native language is actually Shanghainese, so I know it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, so I am most fluent in Cantonese. My elementary school used Mandarin as the language of instruction, so I am also fluent in Mandarin. My education later was more and more in English, so I also know the British English dialect. Then I went to USA and became fluent in American English. I also know a little Japanese.
>
> It is very interesting but not surprising to see that the strongest opposition against setting up Wikipedia in Chinese dialects came from Chinese speakers. Yes, we are educated to believe that Chinese is one language and that Qin Shihuang has unified the written language thousands of years ago. One user correctly pointed out that the unified writing system was Classical Chinese (Wenyanwen). Today's Xiandai Hanyu / Baihuawen is actually based on the Mandarin vernacular. People not speaking Mandarin Chinese suddenly became illiterate when they first encountered Baihuawen but education has successfully established the Mandarin vernacular as the new standard of Chinese writing.
>
> Cantonese Chinese : Mandarin Chinese :: British English : American English?
>
> One user has correctly pointed out that the analogy is improper. All linguists agree that the first two dialects are not mutually intelligible but the last two dialects are. The reason that Mandarin speakers can understand writing by people from Hong Kong is that formal education requires students to writing in Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin grammar. Many students are unaware of the fact just because they do not speak Mandarin. That fact is that every literate Cantonese speaker can understand text written in the Mandarin vernacular. That is why some users argued that text written in Cantonese may not be needed.
>
> Colloquial vs. Vernacular
>
> There could be some misunderstanding that I have to make clear. Standard written Chinese is not in colloquial Mandarin but in vernacular Mandarin. There should be a sense of formality in written literature, and the vocabulary should be standardized, but it should sound natural and grammatical like it is spoken everyday. Standard written Chinese does not sound like Cantonese when every character is pronounced in Cantonese. I must say that the literary vernacular Cantonese standard is not as developed as Mandarin, but as many users has stated, there are people creating Cantonese literature. Although writing a Cantonese encyclopedia will be unprecedented, I supported the idea because I already found Wikipedia in minority languages and fictional languages. I thought: why not give major dialects of China a try?
>
> As an illustration, the language I am writing in is vernacular English. Colloquial English will be like this: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_englishcolloquial.htm
>
> I found that later in the discussion, the opposition started to get focused on the real issue that got my attention: If I am writing the encyclopedia in vernacular Cantonese using traditional Chinese script, how much will it be different from the existing ZH Wikipedia? We can only try it out to see. So far linguistic studies concentrated only on the spoken varieties of Chinese.
>
> Proposal
>
> I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
>
> That is just a thought. How feasible is the idea? Please fill me in on the technical issues. I hope that further discussions here can work on the details formalize the procedure so that every language/dialect can have a fair chance to start a new Wikipedia and have a reasonably good foundation if started.
>
> As for the doubt on how much time I will spend on the Wu Wikipedia? I don't know. How much commitment is required to support an issue on Wikimedia? Is there a policy? The reason I am only active in EN is because I want not only to edit, but to participate in the community. I prefer spending more time on one community first. I have already made some edits on ZH, and I will contribute more.
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--

Andrew Lih, Assistant Professor
Journalism and Media Studies Centre
University of Hong Kong
Email: alih at hku.hk | Web: http://jmsc.hku.hk/faculty/alih
AOL IM: fuzheado | ICQ: 231894253
Yahoo Messenger: andrew_lih | MSN Messenger: andrew_lih at msn.com


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking

body:
--- Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
> remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
> -- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.

What we need is the ability to protect pages pages/images with expiry times
(just like with blocks). That way any image linked from the Main Page can be
protected for the limited amount of time and nobody has to worry about
unprotecting it. Doing this automatically whereby any image that is displayed
on a protected page even via a template is autoprotected while this is the
case, would be better. But this would very likely a huge drain on the servers.

I'd also would really like to see uploads be limited to users accounts that
have been around for more than 0 edits and 0 days (100 edits and/or 30 days
sounds good to me). This would at least make it much more time-consuming to
perform any similar attack in the future (not to mention give people time to
learn the dos and don'ts of image uploads and tagging).

> 2) Code: add an 'emergency mode' that redirects all visitors to a
> static read-only snapshot of the site taken once a day

This is a very good suggestion.

> 2.2) Code: add a one-click (js widget?) option [maybe 2 clicks with
> some kind of pop-up confirmation that doesn't require rendering
> another whole WP-page] so that even when the site is very slow, evil
> images can be deleted in under 15 minutes

Something like rollback but for images? Sounds good.

> 2.3) More Code: add a different 'emergency mode' that only allows a
> limited set of users [logged-in users?  users on a specific list?] to
> use the site.

With so many thousands of users it may even have to be limited to admins. I
dunno....

> 3) Code + Image Policy:  add an IMAGE REVIEW step that imposes a time
> delay (or requires user approval) before an image can be displayed
> live on a page [until then the image could still be linked to via an
> html link]

I don't think that will be necessary. It mainly frustrates good people with
proven records of making good edits.  If there are any such limitations, they
need to be directed toward users with unproven edit records.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Oh, and also, here you seem not to fully understand the complex
relationship between Chinese vernaculars, comparing them to
"culturally significant English dialects" which according to you are
only a little bit less divergent.

Chinese vernaculars are extremely, extremely divergent from one
another. When written in Han characters, they're still divergent, but
not as much (since in han characters, all that shows is vocabulary and
grammar, not pronunciation).

The "desire" to "unite" fangyan (languages, dialects, regional speech)
with Baihua is mostly one felt by the government of the Mainland. Very
few actual speakers of these languages feel strongly about trying to
use a united written form, and if they do, they usually feel strongly
against it.

We have Wikipedias in languages now where there are a very very small
number of books published in them annually only, we have at least a
couple of Wikipedias in languages which many would argue are dialects.
Cantonese has a stronger claim to separate literature than most of
these, both Cantonese and Wu have a stronger claim to number of
speakers.

If a reader doesn't want to view a particular Wikipedia, and neither
does the next one, there is always one that will. There is no way to
tell what the interest will be, and it would be a bad decision, I
think, to say "no" just because only 5% or 10% (this is just a
scenario - for all I know, 99.9999% or 0.0001% are actually
interested) are interested when even they number in the hundreds of
thousands on their own.

Mark

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 12:52:42 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Stirling Newberry wrote:
> >> I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
> >
> > We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet
> > poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what
> > the writers are willing to contribute.
>
> I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large
> body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from
> Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
> standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
> in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
> notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
> research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
> one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However,
> a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular
> idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect
> within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in
> English which, never the less, are not under going the process of
> linguistic separation.
>
> This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us
> who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be
> the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to
> be the final criterion for making decisions.
>
> Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
> better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then
> finding a means to provide that.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Feb 3, 2005, at 11:03 AM, Alex Kwan wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>> One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
>> don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free
>> as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the
>> better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
>
> I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I
> can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as,
> I don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project
> benefits more people.
>
> So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more
> people? Why should that be my concern just because it is yours?
> Especially when you're giving me the vibe that you could care less
> about my pet project? You're asking for my/our help and yet you're
> dismissive of my/our wants and wishes.
>

I thought the question is what the *readers* want.


body:
On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>> I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
>
> We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet
> poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what
> the writers are willing to contribute.

I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large
body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from
Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However,
a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular
idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect
within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in
English which, never the less, are not under going the process of
linguistic separation.

This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us
who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be
the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to
be the final criterion for making decisions.

Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then
finding a means to provide that.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] os.wikipedia.org (Cyrillic only will do)

body:
Brion's remarks were about updating language files, not about starting
an Ossetic Wikipedia. I hope that that will be created soon, as I
think it's one of the most major candidates among those that do not
yet exist.

You will be using the Russian language time for the time being, I suppose?

Andre Engels

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:55:35 +0300, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do realise that developers have lots of things to do, but I'd like
> to know the approximate date, when the Ossetic wikipedia could be
> started. While the full application is already there --
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages -- I've
> never received any confirmation as "don't worry, we have noticed your
> request and the work will be done by, say, March 2005".
>
> Thank you in advance for your attention and concern,
>
> Slavik IVANOV


body:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:06:20 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not instead tell people to focus their energy on English, since
> there are more English speakers?

Because as smart as I thought you were, you still don't see recognize
the problem of having less than 20,000 articles for the most widely
spoken language in the world.

And since you consistently assail the character of those who disagree
with you, and maliciously reinterpret peoples' comments, I'm done with
with you.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] me and my three reverts

body:
Tony Sidaway said:
> Jake Waskett said:
>>
>> I'm sorry that it...interferes with your advocacy of the
>> zero-tolerance approach to Wikipedia users.
>
> I am not in favor of a zero-tolerance approach to Wikipedia users.

As this seems to be getting out of hand I suggest any further
communications addressed to me on this subject go via direct email.

I've already detailed the manner in which I feel both the facts of the
case and my personal opinion have been repeatedly misrepresented.  Anyone
who hasn't gotten the message yet won't learn more by reading further
responses from me.


from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] Alternates to PHP: Wikipedia with a fast C-Engine?

body:
>
> | I have an simple XML/HTML-Parser C-object, so I have a look to the
> wiki-to-XML
> | parser (where is the actual source?).
>
> CVS HEAD, module "flexbisonparse". It is a "real" parser, in difference
> to a "mere" converter. Be aware, however, that looking at Bison files
> may cause eye bleeding ;-)

well, my two cents  - at least you could debug the damn thing properly i
f it was written in C/C++. You might want to consider C# as well.. although
I don't know how mature the mono compiler is...

Ed


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
Hello, Brion,

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 11:48:10 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> > moving. There is a limited amount of available developer time, and time
> > spent on one thing comes out of time that could be spent on another (bug
> > fixes, performance tweaks, maintenance, adding new wikis).

I do realise that developers have lots of things to do, but I'd like
to know the approximate date, when the Ossetic wikipedia could be
started. While the full application is already there --
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages -- I've
never received any confirmation as "don't worry, we have noticed your
request and the work will be done by, say, March 2005".

Thank you in advance for your attention and concern,

Slavik IVANOV

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Magnus Manske

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

Manfred Rebentisch schrieb:
| Hello,
| I am new to this list and I don't know about older discussions.
|
| So I ask you: is it interesting for you, to change Wikipedia from PHP
to a
| C-written engine?

Doing C/C++ myself, I have considered that for some time. But, any
replacement would have to do *exactly* what the current software does.
While this is certainly possible, it will be a lot of work, and getting
developers on it might not be easy until it is basically ready, which
turns out to be a circular problem :-(

| I just in development (most is ready) of a high-performance,
high-security
| tool, usable for Wikis, CMS or forums. It is Open-Source (GPL). The
sources
| are not available at the moment, because I make changes every day. But it
| need only some weeks... I created two libraries to make a
| forum-platform-application: libstd3000c and libcpcgic. The application
can
| use fastCGI and communicate with Apache as an daemon
(FastCGIExternalServer).

You might be interested in the "waikiki" module of MediaWiki CVS, which
contains simple but working C++ code for rendering pages from the
MediaWiki wiki-style flavour.

Also, we are trying to get a Bison-based wiki-to-XML parser in C working
(we could use some help there!). That would enable us to keep the
existing PHP framework while "outsourcing" the runtime-critical parsing
to C.

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

iD8DBQFCAi5vCZKBJbEFcz0RAhKHAJoDIH/7RQ8CHuIEzSz1aIKHEIDujwCdGJVX
7IBib3FtIHXabK7ghtSEGNs=
=UZoe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ben Brockert

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and imagechecking

body:
>>>Please comment or suggest implementations.

If this is a regular ocurrence, then images that are currently being displayed on the front page could be protected while on the front page. It wouldn't greatly restrict the openness of the 'pedia; anyone could still upload images. Images that have made it to the front page rarely need to be uploaded over anyway.

Ben


from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Wed, February 2, 2005 7:35 pm, Andrew Lih said:
> Felix, that's a good summary of the issues.
>
> Right now, I would encourage Chinese-savvy, prospective Wikipedians to
> work on ZH rather than spawning many, small Chinese-dialect Wikipedias.
> Jimbo's statement is the most compelling argument for
> this:
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
> free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
> -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
>
> To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a
> "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment
> in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the
> primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
>
> One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
> don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as
> in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And
> I don't think that's a selfish notion.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
Hi Andrew:

I do not find anything selfish about wanting to create a good free ZH encyclopedia, but I do not believe we must forbid creation of encyclopedia in other Chinese dialects to acheive the goal.

The main page of the ZH Wikipedia says, "hai3 na4 bai3 chuan1, you3 rong2 nai3 da4" (The sea receive hundreds of rivers. It accepts, so it is large.) People become editors for various reasons, and obviously some do not share our goal of producing a good free encyclopedia. Wikipedia accepts them, and it becomes great. Most Internet users are not Wikipedia editors. Let's think about getting more people involved rather than grabbing existing human resources.

My vision is different from yours. If a ZH-YUE Wikipedia were to setup, some people originally active in ZH may go there to help its start, but according to the current demography, I believe most resources will be initially drained from EN. Eventually ZH-YUE will either die out or attract new editors. Those new editors may also edit on ZH and EN, and there may be good articles in ZH-YUE to be translated into ZH and EN.

I am not really an advocate of literature in Chinese dialects. But if someone requests, I will testify that they exist and are not the same as standard written Chinese (Bai2hua4wen2), I will not oppose those that have reasonable number of readers and potential editors, and I will support those that I can contribute.

I consider myself an active EN editor, though not Wikiholic enough. Eventually I will spend most effort on EN, second most on ZH, and some effort on ZH-YUE and ZH-WUU if they can be successfully created. In terms of writing, my skills is EN > ZH > ZH-YUE. I still need to learn which characters to use to write in ZH-WUU from examples.

Here, I would also like to encourage Chinese people who know English to write more on China-related topics in EN because I think EN is the Wikipedia closest to completion, and it will benefit even more people than the ZH Wikipedia. However, I will not say that they should work on EN *rather than* Wikipedia in other languages.

Also, please remember: Wikipedia was an experiment, it still is, and we should not stop innovation just because we see some success.

Felix Wan


from_name: Josh Sponenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cisco GBIC module: GLC-SX-MM pricing possibilities

body:
Hello, this is Sponge from irc (same user name for wiki) and I dug up
some pricing on the GLC-SX-MM module we need for the cisco switch.

http://www.axiontech.com/prdt.php?src=FG&item=69092  $99 They have
two, they're in a California warehouse, but they can ship same day.
Shipping for NDA via UPS is affordable at less than $30 to zip-code
33703.

http://www.saveateagle.com/cisgesfplcco.html?ovchn=OTHER&ovcpn=Price+Watch&ovcrn=GLC-SX-MM&ovtac=CMP

They have them, they're $119.00, and NDA shipping via UPS is over $50 to 33703.

And finally we have:

http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/detail~dpno~107051.asp

$349.99 NDA shipping over $50 again.

I'd suggest Axion, I've ordered stuff from them before, so we know
they're legit (sort of).

If I can be of any further help, let me know. :)    ~~~~   errr, --Sponge! ;-)


from_name: Urs C Muff

body:
mono is not the issue, mono is stable.

- Urs

Edward Peschko wrote:

>>| I have an simple XML/HTML-Parser C-object, so I have a look to the
>>wiki-to-XML
>>| parser (where is the actual source?).
>>
>>CVS HEAD, module "flexbisonparse". It is a "real" parser, in difference
>>to a "mere" converter. Be aware, however, that looking at Bison files
>>may cause eye bleeding ;-)
>>
>>
>
>
>well, my two cents  - at least you could debug the damn thing properly i
>f it was written in C/C++. You might want to consider C# as well.. although
>I don't know how mature the mono compiler is...
>
>Ed
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>


body:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 3:41 am, Mark Williamson said:
> Hi Felix,
>
> I also noticed what you said in Meta about not supporting having a
> separate edition for Penkyamp and a separate edition for romanized Wu. I
> think this point is important to emphasize.
>
Actually, if someone propose a romanized Cantonese or Wu edition, I will consider each proposal on its own merits. My main concern in Meta was to stick to what the section title says, and that when people need to make a decision, they know exactly who support what.

I myself am not an advocate of literature in Cantonese or Wu, but I want to present a picture of what is going on, as accurately as I can do, and if some people are willing to try, I want to support their effort.

> I don't see why these separate editions are nessecary. The difference
> is only between scripts, and Han characters can be converted to Penkyamp
> or a Wu romanization system by computer with great accuracy.
>
I have not considered that. It will not be straight forward though. The complexity should be larger than the conversion between traditional and simplified Han scripts in the existing ZH Wikipedia.

Moreover, if a Chinese dialect is not written in Han script but in Latin script, it may result in a different literary standard. For example, a Latin script will discourage play of words using homophones. Try creating a Wikipedia using Hanyu Pinyin, following all the official orthographic rules, and we will discover the difficulty in automatic translation. Translation in the other way round need even more artificial intelligence.

> Having separate editions for Chinese vernaculars is in my view a good
> thing, but as you said it may be a little bit hard to gather support at
> first. Imagine how much harder it will be if it is divided across 3
> entirely separate Wikipedias for different scripts?
>
> I think we should all start out using the Han script, and from there
> we can develop conversion technology if nessecary.
>
> What I think is most important here however is this:
>
> The board needs to make an ultimate decision on whether groups of
> native speakers should be allowed their own Wikipedia when they request it
> amid objections from a group of speakers of a different language.
>
> IE, should a Cantonese and Wu Wikipedia be created with the full
> support of people like Felix Wan and Nishishei and Pangguanzhe, and the
> tentative support of people like Alex, all of whom actually speak these
> languages, as well as the support of some non-speakers (Pektiong,
> MilchFlasche, Kaihsu, and encouraging words from a few
> other zh.wikipedians who don't actually know any of these languages),
> against the strong wills of non-speakers such as Andrew Lih, Sheng Jiong
> (who, it should be noted, does speak Minnan), Shizhao, and such?
>
> What I think is particularly compelling about this particular case is
> that no Cantonese or Wu speakers have come out yet to say outright "No",
> even skeptical native speakers like Toytoy have not given such a strong
> opinion.
>
> I also think a decision should be made in the near future so this
> issue can stop being argued over in slow motion.
>
> Mark
>
Please notice that Shizhao said he will not oppose ZH-YUE or ZH-WUU if they are written in Latin scripts, as ZH-MIN-NAN currently is. His concern was that the difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese may not be different enough to need a new encyclopdia. That concern was also shared by Toytoy. It was their concern that motivated me to suggest writing experimental pages for each proposed new Wikipedia project. I believe that can address their concern.

People support or oppose the same thing for very different reasons. We can still use some discussion to understand each other better.

Felix Wan


from_name: Manfred Rebentisch

body:
Am Donnerstag, 3. Februar 2005 15:00 schrieb Magnus Manske:
>
> Doing C/C++ myself, I have considered that for some time. But, any
> replacement would have to do *exactly* what the current software does.
> While this is certainly possible, it will be a lot of work, and getting
> developers on it might not be easy until it is basically ready, which
> turns out to be a circular problem :-(

I like to have a look to this. I accept the challenge to migrate PHP-projects
to my Engine - but today I don't know, how much time it need.

>
> You might be interested in the "waikiki" module of MediaWiki CVS, which
> contains simple but working C++ code for rendering pages from the
> MediaWiki wiki-style flavour.

I do read ...

>
> Also, we are trying to get a Bison-based wiki-to-XML parser in C working
> (we could use some help there!). That would enable us to keep the
> existing PHP framework while "outsourcing" the runtime-critical parsing
> to C.

There are mostly many ways to find a solution for a given problem.

I have an simple XML/HTML-Parser C-object, so I have a look to the wiki-to-XML
parser (where is the actual source?).

Manfred


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistandards (was Requests for new Wiki projects)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- willtop31 at epsfh.com wrote:
>
>
>>===Working title===
>>*Link to proposal on mailing list: [http://mail.wikipedia.org/]
>>*Naming suggestions: ElectroWiki Wikitronics Wikital
>>*Domain name: Electrowiki.org
>>*Scope: A place to gather international standards for electricity,
>>electronics,
>>and robotics. Instead of paying large sums of money to the IEEE and ISO for
>>access to their standards.
>>*Details: Electronics and electrical Wikipedia. This project will grow as
>>student contribute and use it as a resource for studying electronics,
>>alternative energy, and robotics.
>>*Proposer: Craig Topham
>>*People interested joining:
>>Students of Lane Community College Electronic Technology Programs. Eugene,
>>Oregon U.S.A
>>
>>
>
>Sounds like it would make for a great set of books on Wikibooks.
>
>-- mav
>
>
I had set up a previous proposal for something somewhat similar, with a
strong emphasis on computer science and electronics, but more broadly
done to support standards in other areas as well.  Look at this link for
more details of the proposal:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikistandards

I've been lurking on the mailing list for awhile now mainly to avoid
upsetting the existing power structure.  Since this subject is being
brought up, I might as well go "public" and ask on this mailing list as
well.  There are a number of aspects of this proposal that are important
to keep in mind:

*    Avoid duplicating work on already free standards.  That would
include most of what happens with the W3C group, as well as ITEF with
the RFC internet standards.  Work on new standards should merely
reference these existing standards where necessary.  It isn't even worth
the bother of trying to mirror these standards, unless there is a very
serious concern that these public domain standards are going to be
withdrawn from public consumption.

*    Some new standards documents need to be created.  Some of this is
advertising (Hey!  We are here and can offer you a forum to put your
standard together!), and a need to find people who want to come together
and develop standards.  The creation of a standards document is usually
to scratch an itch, where there has been some confusion in the past, and
to help with interoperability issues, i.e. trying to get two pieces of
equipment to work together or two pieces of software to understand
shared data.  I've developed several in-house standards documents for my
employers in the past, and often it is these minor standards that can be
useful if you can find a place to have them available.  Basically, we
need to find what kinds of standards need to be developed, and start
putting them together.

*    Indexing existing standards:  There are a number of standards that
are already available, and when you are starting a new project it is
always better to follow an existing standard than try to make something
new up on your own.  A good "beginning" to get a project like this
started would be to simply do a survey of existing standards documents
that are freely available on the internet.  Classifying and creating
various indexes to link to these standards would be very valuable in its
own right.  Hopefully, if it is a resource being used some of the people
interested in creating standards would look at the index, and if the
existing documents don't seem to fit the task or need a new document
could be created.  A wiki is a very natural way to accomplish this task.

There is more that I put into the proposal wiki page, but I think this
is a real quick overview of what I am proposing.  BTW, wholesale copying
of IEEE or ISO standards would be essentially forbidden, unless the
express written consent of the original standards author(s) is willing
to independently provide a copyright license that is compatable with the
GFDL.  The typical ISO copyright does not allow for this, and often can
be more draconian than even a typical Microsoft EULA.  Be extra careful
if you even have more than a printed library of ISO documents.  There
are also some very complicated software and electronic patent issues
that you need to be aware of if you try to deal with IEEE or ISO
standards as well.  This is also true of RFCs to a lesser extent, but
the W3C group has been pretty good (up until now) about making sure that
to the best of their knowledge there are no patent issues on any of
their documents.

As far as getting students involved, it would be a very educational (as
in learning from the School of Very Hard Knocks) for college students to
get involved even with the simplest of standards documentation.  You
know you are in trouble when you argue for over three hours wheither you
should have a semi-colon in one place or another.  I would imagine that
discussion pages on some of these standards documents could get quite
lengthy and heated if done as a wikipedia project.  The awsome thing
about doing it in this manner is that you can join in the development of
these standards even though you don't have a PhD at the end of your
name, or that you aren't working for an exclusive group of companies
that deliberately try to exclude other individuals, even if those other
people really do know the technology.

Originally I proposed this in its own seperate domain, but to start with
I'd love to simply make this a sub-project on wikibooks, with the
near-term interest of making it a seperate sub-domain of wikibooks.
 That wasn't my idea, but now that I've seen what and how things are put
together here I think this is a more logical approach.  It really isn't
a bunch of textbooks, as is the original focus of wikibooks, but it is a
bunch of book-like things that are organized in a very similar approach.

If there are people interested in getting an independent wiki-based
standards group going, please let me know.  I think there is a real need
for this in general, and I've seen the issues regarding the development
and use of standards documents really affect quite a few people.  When
you need a public and free standard, it is worth its weight in gold.
 Litterally, if you print it out on gold foil, people would gladly pay
more than that just to have the document.  I'm not kidding.  This is
also one area that corporate sponsors might help with the subsidizing of
Wikimedia projects, even if they don't have direct banner ads or other
forms of blatent advertising.  Simply having these documents available
might just be enough, and I could even make a reasonable presentation to
show it would be in a company's interest to provide this sponsorship,
done as an engineering expense, not adverstising expense.  I digress
here though with the financial aspects...

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: NSK

body:
On Thursday 03 February 2005 18:17, Sj wrote:
> Please comment or suggest implementations.

I suggest to implement stopwords in MW, so if someone tries to insert the
words "GOATSE" or "POKER" in MW the edit is automatically disallowed, except
if the user is a sysop.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/freehosting


from_name: sannse

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,	and image
	checking

body:
NSK wrote:
> On Thursday 03 February 2005 18:17, Sj wrote:
>
>>Please comment or suggest implementations.
>
>
> I suggest to implement stopwords in MW, so if someone tries to insert the
> words "GOATSE" or "POKER" in MW the edit is automatically disallowed, except
> if the user is a sysop.
>

Neither or those words were used in this attack.

Any words we add as stopwords will either give false positives or be
easily avoided.

--sannse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.4 - Release Date: 01/02/05


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Thursday 03 February 2005 17:39, NSK wrote:
> On Thursday 03 February 2005 18:17, Sj wrote:
> > Please comment or suggest implementations.
>
> I suggest to implement stopwords in MW, so if someone tries to insert
> the words "GOATSE" or "POKER" in MW the edit is automatically
> disallowed, except if the user is a sysop.

Unfortunately, this will probably as effective as spam-filtering:

	G O A T S E
	G.O.A.T:S.EE
	P3ni5
	OMGLOLUH/-\XORS

e.g. not at all. I even got a giant ASCII-art viocodin (is that even
spelled that way?) spam last week. impossible to vilter oud iv u ged my
meanink :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Feb  3 19:26:16 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Mediawiki graph-extension: http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Originally I proposed this in its own seperate domain, but to start with
> I'd love to simply make this a sub-project on wikibooks, with the
> near-term interest of making it a seperate sub-domain of wikibooks.
>  That wasn't my idea, but now that I've seen what and how things are put
> together here I think this is a more logical approach.  It really isn't
> a bunch of textbooks, as is the original focus of wikibooks, but it is a
> bunch of book-like things that are organized in a very similar approach.

Don't give up so easily. :)

What I really don't like are subject-specific ideas for projects (different
subjects can be handled through internal WikiProjects). You, however, implied a
general approach which I liked the sound of (a wiki devoted to all different
types of standards).

That may be a viable concept - it may not. But there is nothing wrong with
proving the concept on Wikibooks if that project's format and goals fit
well-enough -  could make for a series of nice books/booklets. You may also
find that there is no need for a separate project.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [WikiEN-l] me and my 3RR block

body:
--- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com> wrote:
> I'd just like to take a moment to "defend" my actions in blocking
> Slrubenstein and Jalnet2. I have no problem with Slr, with whom I've had a
> very pleasant and civil discourse on the subject

Your actions don't need defending, AFAIC. I for one was having a policy
discussion over interpretations of what 'more than 3 reverts' means under the
3RR, not whether or not what you did was right or wrong.

I hold you blameless, for what it is worth.

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
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from_name: kylelutze

body:
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Hash: SHA1

I'm not sure wikibooks is the best place to start, but a wikistandards
site is definitely something I'm interested in. There's only a couple of
problems I see with it. As it is a wiki, and some of these standards are
rather important, if somebody puts some false info into a standard, and
people start using it while most others are using the correct one, this
could lead to problems. The other is copyright infringements being made
easily because some fool decides to post standards to a closed source
project(I don't know if there is an easy legal way around this).

Kyle

Daniel Mayer wrote:
| --- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
|
|>Originally I proposed this in its own seperate domain, but to start with
|>I'd love to simply make this a sub-project on wikibooks, with the
|>near-term interest of making it a seperate sub-domain of wikibooks.
|> That wasn't my idea, but now that I've seen what and how things are put
|>together here I think this is a more logical approach.  It really isn't
|>a bunch of textbooks, as is the original focus of wikibooks, but it is a
|>bunch of book-like things that are organized in a very similar approach.
|
|
| Don't give up so easily. :)
|
| What I really don't like are subject-specific ideas for projects
(different
| subjects can be handled through internal WikiProjects). You, however,
implied a
| general approach which I liked the sound of (a wiki devoted to all
different
| types of standards).
|
| That may be a viable concept - it may not. But there is nothing wrong with
| proving the concept on Wikibooks if that project's format and goals fit
| well-enough -  could make for a series of nice books/booklets. You may
also
| find that there is no need for a separate project.
|
| -- mav
|
|
|
| __________________________________
| Do you Yahoo!?
| Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
| http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|
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from_name: Sulev Iva

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Võro Vikipeediä

body:
OK, if the "fiu-voro" is good for the first time and request
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#V.C3.B5ro_Wikipedia is done what is the next step for V?ro Wikipedia
to be started?

Sulev

3.02.2005 11:02:26, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> kirot':

>Hi Sulev,
>
>Since "vro" and "vr" aren't official codes, unfortunately we can't use them.
>
>I agree that fiu-voro is probably best for right now.
>
>It's not difficult to change later, although usually instead of
>changing you just move it to another domain but keep the old one as a
>redirect.
>
>Mark
>
>On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:50:48 +0200, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
>> It seems that "vor" in the next release of ISO 639 doesn't stand for the V?ro language in Estonia. There is a Voro language
>> somewhere in Nigeria using SIL code "VOR", see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=VOR. Probably "vor" is meant
for
>> this African language. We can not use the same code for V?ro in Estonia.
>>
>> I planned to ask the codes "vro" and "vr" for V?ro (my mother tongue spoken in Estonia) from ISO and Ethnologue. I have no
>> information that somebody else had asked codes for V?ro.
>>
>> So it would be great if we could use "vro" or "vr". But if it is impossible so why not to use "fiu-voro" or "fiu-vr" or "fiu-
>> vro" as a temporary code. But is it hard to change it later into "vro" or "vr"?
>>
>> Regards
>> Sulev
>>
>> 3.02.2005 7:51:04, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> kirot':
>>
>> >Mark Williamson wrote:
>> >
>> >>Yes, but it has not been released yet, and according to Brion we won't
>> >>use it until it is.
>> >>
>> >>So, unless they want to wait until some time in 2006 for their own
>> >>Wikipedia, we'll have to make do with a non-3-letter code.
>> >>
>> >>Mark
>> >>
>> >>
>> >The to be released ISO 639 codes will be used in a proper manner; codes
>> >published will only be used for the proposed use and when this use is
>> >withdrawn the codes will not be re-used. I am interested to know WHY we
>> >would not use these codes.
>> >
>> >Gerard
>> >
>> >>On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 00:22:09 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
>> >><gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>>I propose that we use something like fiu-voro as the language code
>> >>>>(there is no ethnolgue code for Voro because it lists it as a dialect
>> >>>>of Estonian).
>> >>>>
>> >>>>The issue of a code nonwithstanding, I think it should be set up right away.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>Mark
>> >>>>
>> >>>>On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:11:58 +0000, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>>Forwarding from foundation-l to wikipedia-l since there was no
>> >>>>>reaction on that list....
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> >>>>>From: Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee>
>> >>>>>Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:43:52 +0200
>> >>>>>Subject: [Foundation-l] V?ro Vikipeedi?
>> >>>>>To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>Dear members of the foundaton,
>> >>>>>I'm a user of Estonian (V?rok) and English Wikipedia (V?rolang) and a
>> >>>>>native speaker,
>> >>>>>researcher and activist of the V?ro language spoken in Estonia. V?ro
>> >>>>>(native name V?ro
>> >>>>>or V?ro kiil?) belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric
>> >>>>>languages. It has about
>> >>>>>70.000 speakers mostly in southern Estonia.
>> >>>>>Language codes (not yet official) are Vro and Vr. See more about V?ro in
>> >>>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V?ro and http://www.wi.ee/.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>I and my friends would like to begin with V?ro language Wikipedia. We
>> >>>>>can translate
>> >>>>>Estonian language file to V?ro (actually we have already started) and begin with
>> >>>>>creation of new articles. Of course your objection may be that there are too few
>> >>>>>speakers of V?ro. Yes, but the speakers are quite active and
>> >>>>>computerized people and
>> >>>>>the V?ro language community needs an encyclopedia in their own
>> >>>>>language. I'm sure the
>> >>>>>number of potential editors in V?ro is not smaller than the Kashoub,
>> >>>>>Cornish, Gaelic,
>> >>>>>Faroese or Saami's or many other small languages' one. I have
>> >>>>>discussed the idea of
>> >>>>>V?ro Wikipedia with Estonian Wikipedia developers: Andres, Ker, Klaus etc.
>> >>>>>(http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipeedia:Community_Portal#V.C3.B5rukeelne_Wikipedia).
>> >>>>>They are supporting the idea and will help us. I hope you will support us too.
>> >>>>>Best regards, V?rolang -- 80.235.61.143 11:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
>> >>>>>_______________________________________________
>> >>>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> >>>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> >>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>_______________________________________________
>> >>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> >>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> >>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>There is a code for Voro in the upcoming version of ISO-639 it will be vor.
>> >>>
>> >>>Thanks,
>> >>>    GerardM
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>_______________________________________________
>> >>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> >>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >_______________________________________________
>> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
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Manfred Rebentisch schrieb:
| Am Donnerstag, 3. Februar 2005 15:00 schrieb Magnus Manske:
|
|>Doing C/C++ myself, I have considered that for some time. But, any
|>replacement would have to do *exactly* what the current software does.
|>While this is certainly possible, it will be a lot of work, and getting
|>developers on it might not be easy until it is basically ready, which
|>turns out to be a circular problem :-(
|
|
| I like to have a look to this. I accept the challenge to migrate
PHP-projects
| to my Engine - but today I don't know, how much time it need.

The "big stuff" is surprisingly easy - it's the "little" things that
will take time. We have so many functions beyond "edit-parse-render" -
the long list of special pages alone. Did you think of how to move and
manage the 100+ translations? The interaction with our squid servers?
Template dependencies? (I could go on here...)

| I have an simple XML/HTML-Parser C-object, so I have a look to the
wiki-to-XML
| parser (where is the actual source?).

CVS HEAD, module "flexbisonparse". It is a "real" parser, in difference
to a "mere" converter. Be aware, however, that looking at Bison files
may cause eye bleeding ;-)

Magnus
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from_name: Frank v Waveren

subject: [Wikitech-l] Block table optimisation (backport from HEAD)

body:
Here's a patch to add the smart block table query from HEAD to
mediawiki 1.4beta. The current implementation is painful when checking
if logged in users are on the block list as the query cannot use
indexes and has to scan the entire table, which is apparantly causing
big pain for en.wikipedia. Please apply.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

-------------- next part --------------
--- includes/Block.php~	2005-02-03 22:07:20.000000000 +0100
+++ includes/Block.php	2005-02-03 22:07:20.000000000 +0100
@@ -81,10 +81,17 @@
 			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user} $options";
 		} elseif ($user=="") {
 			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) . "' $options";
-		} else {
-			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
-				"' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
-		}
+                } elseif ( $options=='' ) {
+                        # If there are no options (e.g. FOR UPDATE), use a UNION
+                        # so that the query can make efficient use of indices
+                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
+                                "' UNION SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user}";
+                } else {
+                        # If there are options, a UNION can not be used, use one
+                        # SELECT instead. Will do a full table scan.
+                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
+                                "' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
+                }

 		$res = $db->query( $sql, $fname );
 		if ( 0 == $db->numRows( $res ) ) {
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from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> It's not being dismissive. It's great if folks have the critical mass
> to start a new Wikipedia, and that's why there's been discussion about
> defining a "starting set" of articles, front page, initial
> contributors, etc. However, Mark has an exuberance in starting new
> language Wikipedias, often without any prospect of sustainability.

1) http://scn.wikipedia.org/ - created October 2004, well-maintained
by a number of regular contributors with now nearly 300 articles.
2) http://fur.wikipedia.org/ - created 25 January 2005, currently has
5 articles and appears to be doing good rather than bad so far.
3) http://sc.wikipedia.org/ - created a very long time ago, when I was
still new to Wikipedia. No regular contributors, 3 articles. The
difference between the other two is that for them, support came before
creation rather than after.

Mark.

(of all those other Wikipedias I have supported creating which were
eventually created, ang: is doing well, got: is not, and tum: appears
to be a bit stale though this had no opposition from anybody)


body:
Hi Felix,

I agree that conversion TO han characters is very difficult and not
reasonable, however conversion to romanization FROM han characters is
very simple, especially in the case of Mandarin (it's a bit more
difficult for Cantonese and Wu).

Perhaps you are right - perhaps we should have separate Wikipedias for
the romanization.

My suggestion, however, is that we start with a single Yue Wikipedia
on a trial basis, and if it has any measure of success, we explore the
issue of opening others for romanization.

As for the opposition of Shizhao and Toytoy, you are right. I think
that now is a good time to start these experimental articles on meta:
I think a good URL would be
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test:Yue/Articlename , my suggestion
would be to write one Hong Kong related article, and two other
articles.

Mark

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 16:57:35 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Thu, February 3, 2005 3:41 am, Mark Williamson said:
> > Hi Felix,
> >
> > I also noticed what you said in Meta about not supporting having a
> > separate edition for Penkyamp and a separate edition for romanized Wu. I
> > think this point is important to emphasize.
> >
> Actually, if someone propose a romanized Cantonese or Wu edition, I will consider each proposal on its own merits. My main concern in Meta was to stick to what the section title says, and that when people need to make a decision, they know exactly who support what.
>
> I myself am not an advocate of literature in Cantonese or Wu, but I want to present a picture of what is going on, as accurately as I can do, and if some people are willing to try, I want to support their effort.
>
> > I don't see why these separate editions are nessecary. The difference
> > is only between scripts, and Han characters can be converted to Penkyamp
> > or a Wu romanization system by computer with great accuracy.
> >
> I have not considered that. It will not be straight forward though. The complexity should be larger than the conversion between traditional and simplified Han scripts in the existing ZH Wikipedia.
>
> Moreover, if a Chinese dialect is not written in Han script but in Latin script, it may result in a different literary standard. For example, a Latin script will discourage play of words using homophones. Try creating a Wikipedia using Hanyu Pinyin, following all the official orthographic rules, and we will discover the difficulty in automatic translation. Translation in the other way round need even more artificial intelligence.
>
> > Having separate editions for Chinese vernaculars is in my view a good
> > thing, but as you said it may be a little bit hard to gather support at
> > first. Imagine how much harder it will be if it is divided across 3
> > entirely separate Wikipedias for different scripts?
> >
> > I think we should all start out using the Han script, and from there
> > we can develop conversion technology if nessecary.
> >
> > What I think is most important here however is this:
> >
> > The board needs to make an ultimate decision on whether groups of
> > native speakers should be allowed their own Wikipedia when they request it
> > amid objections from a group of speakers of a different language.
> >
> > IE, should a Cantonese and Wu Wikipedia be created with the full
> > support of people like Felix Wan and Nishishei and Pangguanzhe, and the
> > tentative support of people like Alex, all of whom actually speak these
> > languages, as well as the support of some non-speakers (Pektiong,
> > MilchFlasche, Kaihsu, and encouraging words from a few
> > other zh.wikipedians who don't actually know any of these languages),
> > against the strong wills of non-speakers such as Andrew Lih, Sheng Jiong
> > (who, it should be noted, does speak Minnan), Shizhao, and such?
> >
> > What I think is particularly compelling about this particular case is
> > that no Cantonese or Wu speakers have come out yet to say outright "No",
> > even skeptical native speakers like Toytoy have not given such a strong
> > opinion.
> >
> > I also think a decision should be made in the near future so this
> > issue can stop being argued over in slow motion.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> Please notice that Shizhao said he will not oppose ZH-YUE or ZH-WUU if they are written in Latin scripts, as ZH-MIN-NAN currently is. His concern was that the difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese may not be different enough to need a new encyclopdia. That concern was also shared by Toytoy. It was their concern that motivated me to suggest writing experimental pages for each proposed new Wikipedia project. I believe that can address their concern.
>
> People support or oppose the same thing for very different reasons. We can still use some discussion to understand each other better.
>
> Felix Wan
>
>


body:
I am sorry, I confused your name with somebody else's.

My question for you however is: do you have any objection to having
these Wikipedias on a /trial basis/ to see what happens?

Mark

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 12:54:46 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are there
> > schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
> > standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
> > in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
> > notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
> > research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
> > one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress.
>
> A very good point indeed. And I also agree with Andrew's view, that
> Wikipedia's chief aim is to write encyclopedias, not promoting any
> kind of promoting of languages. If any Chinese dialects any other than
> Mandarin has received significant attention in the world, and that
> people have gotten used to writing/reading these languages, there is
> of course a need to set up a Wikipedia in this language. But the truth
> is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
> and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects. In
> fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
> there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
>
> And to Mark: please do note that I speak Shanghainese rather than
> Min-nan. Therefore among those opposers there is also a native speaker
> of the language. It is not as you wrote that only those who do not
> speak the language oppose the proposal. I am still strongly opposed to
> the set up of any Chinese dialect Wikipedias. And I am not actually
> glad to see the Min-nan Wikipedia too. I simply doubt if any Min-nan
> speakers can understand the current Min-nan Wikipedia.
>
> [[User:Formulax]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.4beta6 released (SECURITY)

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

MediaWiki 1.4beta6 is a security and bug fix release for the 1.4 beta
series.

In previous 1.4beta and 1.3.x releases an attacker could craft a URL
which, when visited by a particular logged-in user, would execute
arbitrary JavaScript code on the user's browser in the wiki's site
context. This attack has been blocked, and as an extra precaution the
user CSS and JavaScript subpage support is now disabled by default.
Sites which want this ability may set $wgAllowUserCss and $wgAllowUserJs
in LocalSettings.php.

Additional protections have been added against off-site form submissions
hijacking user credentials. Authors of bot tools may need to update
their code to include additional fields.

1.3.x users not using the 1.4 beta should upgrade to 1.3.10.

Note that 1.4 beta releases prior to beta 5 include an input validation
error which could lead to execution of arbitrary PHP code on the server.
Users of older betas should upgrade immediately to the current version.

Beta 6 also introduces the use of rel="nofollow" attributes on external
links in wiki pages to reduce the effectiveness of wiki spam. This will
cause participating search engines to ignore external URL links from
wiki pages for purposes of page relevancy ranking.

The current implementation adds this attribute to _all_ external URL
links in wiki text (but not internal [[wiki links]] or interwiki links).
To disable the attribute for _all_ external links, add this line to your
LocalSettings.php:

~  $wgNoFollowLinks = false

For background information on nofollow see:

~  http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

=== Changes since beta 5 ===

* (bug 1335) implement 'tooltip-watch' in Language.php
* Fix linktrail for nn: language
* (bug 1214) Fix prev/next links in Special:Log
* (bug 1354) Fix linktrail for fo: language
* (bug 512) Reload generated CSS on preference change
* (bug 63) Fix displaying as if logged in after logout
* Set default MediaWiki:Sitenotice to '-', avoiding extra database hits
* Skip message cache initialization on raw page view (quick hack)
* Fix notice errors in wfDebugDieBacktrace() in XML callbacks
* Suppress notice error on bogus timestamp input (returns epoch as before)
* Remove unnecessary initialization and double-caching of parser variables
* Call-tree output mode for profiling
* (bug 730) configurable $wgRCMaxAge; don't try to update purged RC entries
* Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow" on external links
~  (on by default)
* (bug 1130) Show actual title when moving page instead of encoded one.
* (bug 925) Fix headings containing <math>
* (bug 1131) Fix headings containing interwiki links
* (bug 1380) Update Nynorsk language file
* (bug 1232) Fix sorting of cached Special:Wantedpages in miser mode
* (bug 1217) Image within an image caption broke rendering
* (bug 1384) Make patrol signs have the same width for page moves as for
edits
* (bug 1364) fix "clean up whitespace" in Title:SecureAndSplit
* (bug 1389) i18n for proxyblocker message
* Add fur/Furlan/Friulian to language names list
* Add TitleMoveComplete hook on page renames
* Allow simple comments for each translation rules in MW:Zhconversiontable
* (bug 1402) Make link color of tab subject page link on talk page
indicate whether article exists
* (bug 1368) Fix SQL error on stopword/short word search w/ MySQL 3.x
* Translated Hebrew namespace names
* (bug 1429) Stop double-escaping of block comments; fix formatting
* (bug 829) Fix URL-escaping on block success
* (bug 1228) Fix double-escaping on & sequences in [enclosed] URLs
* (bug 1435) Fixed many CSS errors
* (bug 1457) Fix XHTML validation on category column list
* (bug 1458) Don't save if edit form submission is incomplete
* Logged-in edits and preview of user CSS/JS are now locked to a session
token.
* Per-user CSS and JavaScript subpage customizations now disabled by
default.
~  They can be re-enabled via $wgAllowUserJs and $wgAllowUserCss.
* Removed .ogg from the default uploads whitelist as an extra precaution.
~  If your web server is configured to serve Ogg files with the correct
~  Content-Type header, you can re-add it in LocalSettings.php:
~    $wgFileExtensions[] = 'ogg';

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=302312

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.4beta6.tar.gz?download

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.10 released (SECURITY)

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

MediaWiki 1.3.10 is a security release.

In earlier 1.3.x releases an attacker could craft a URL which, when
visited by a particular logged-in user, would execute arbitrary
JavaScript code on the user's browser in the wiki's site context. This
attack has been blocked, and as an extra precaution the user CSS and
JavaScript subpage support is now disabled by default. Sites which want
this ability may set $wgAllowUserCss and $wgAllowUserJs in
LocalSettings.php.

Additional protections have been added against off-site form submissions
hijacking user credentials. Authors of bot tools may need to update
their code to include additional fields.

All wikis running 1.3.x are strongly urged to upgrade to 1.3.10.

=== Changes from 1.3.9 ===

* Logged-in edits and preview of user CSS/JS are now locked to a
session token.

* Per-user CSS and JavaScript subpage customizations now disabled by
default. They can be re-enabled via $wgAllowUserJs and $wgAllowUserCss.

* Removed .ogg from the default uploads whitelist as an extra
precaution. If your web server is configured to serve Ogg files with the
correct Content-Type header, you can re-add it in LocalSettings.php:
~  $wgFileExtensions[] = 'ogg';

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=302313

Download:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.10.tar.gz?download

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Alex Kwan

body:
Hello,

Andrew Lih wrote:
> One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
> don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free
> as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the
> better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.

I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I
can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as, I
don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project
benefits more people.

So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more people?
Why should that be my concern just because it is yours? Especially when
you're giving me the vibe that you could care less about my pet project?
You're asking for my/our help and yet you're dismissive of my/our wants
and wishes.

*And* you're assuming that a number of us will be working on the
"Mandarin" wikipedia if we don't have a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia to work
on, which isn't necessarily true. I, for example, write better and
faster in English and I'll probably spend more time on the English
wikipedia if I can't help in a Cantonese/Yue one.

little Alex


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina

body:
The following is the beginning of a discussion on Wikisource. This arose
when the contributor sought to have some pages deleted as part of a
rearrangement of the material.

> "Lista Wildsteina" is a hot subject in Poland these days - it's a list
> of people who used to collaborate with former secret service agencies
> or were their victims, that's why it provokes various unwanted
> reactions - it can't be exactly stated who was a secret agent and who
> was a victim. After it is published here, possibly by Ausir - a
> registered user - you should put a protection log on all its parts so
> that people won't modify it. Consider it, please. With regards, Selena
> von Eichendorf <http://wikisource.org/wiki/User:Selena_von_Eichendorf>
> 12:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>
>     The above description leaves me very concerned about whether we
>     should have this kind of material at all. My first impression is
>     that it is a list of people who are alleged to have participated
>     in certain kinds of wrongdoing. In the absence of further evidence
>     I would consider this material a defamatory and libellous attack
>     on the people listed. It is effectively a long series of personal
>     attacks, and contrary to Wikimedia policy on that basis. The
>     Wikimedia should have no role in the spreading of this kind of
>     thing. I cannot comment at this time about what implications the
>     material might carry under United States law.
>
>     Secondarily, there is no indication about who produced this list,
>     and whether the author has released the material under GFDL.
>     Eclecticology <http://wikisource.org/wiki/User:Eclecticology>
>     07:31, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>
The subject has already generated considerable controversy on the Polish
Wikipedia, though I do not understan Polish so I am unable to follow
that discussion.  The material that has been placed on Wikisource after
a brief explanation in Polish is a list of names accompanied by what
seems to be a file number for each..

I believe that publishing this kind of material (assuming that I have
interpreted what I see correctly) is utterly wrong in every respect.  If
the effect would be to make Wikimedia complicit in any kind of revenge
against these alleged collaborators, we would need to share the guilt
for whatever form such revenge might take.

Unless I am advised that I have completely misinterpreted the material I
propose to delete it all beginning tomorrow evening.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina


list: textbook-l

from_name: John Pozniak

subject: [Textbook-l] thanks for activating the subdomains function!

body:
I've seen the complaint from the cookbook editor before, and have done
some checking.  FlexWiki has features that allow namespaces to operate
as somewhat independent wikis, including separate recent changes. Would
it be possible to include such a feature in a (not so distant) future
version of MediaWiki?

John (Gentgeen) Pozniak

On Feb 3, 2005, at 9:33 AM, Karl Wick wrote:
>
> Also  a contributer to the Cookbook is complaining about
> disorder and wishes to make a separate domain for the
> cookbook so that the categories and other functions are
> cookbook-focused within the cookbook pages. Opinions?
>
> Karl
>


body:
Hello,

Stirling Newberry wrote:
> I thought the question is what the *readers* want.

We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet
poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what the
writers are willing to contribute.

And even going from your perspective, waving around the figure of 1
billion+ people in China doesn't work that well. How many of those 1
billion+ people have frequent access to a computer, to the net? And can
find their way to the wikipedias?

I don't know how to find out, but there is a possibility that the
percentage of Cantonese/Yue and Wu speakers who have frequent access to
the net is higher than the purely Mandarin speakers... Because some of
the fastest growing/most developed regions are Guangdong and Jiangsu
province. And Jiangsu is specialising in computer chips, etc.

little Alex


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Patch for bug 15 needs review

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

Alan Wessman wrote:
<snip>
> The patches are written against the current HEAD revision, and
> backporting to 1.4 and 1.3 has not yet been done.
<snip>

You can forget 1.3 which is now frozen unless there is any security
issue. 1.4 is feature frozen. So just work on HEAD :o)

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
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from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Why www.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?

body:
Robin Shannon ti 2005/1/7 EP 03:52 sia-kong:
> How about some introductory text (say one paragraph) which is in
> whatever language the browser says as its preference. Then all the
> wikipedias with foo+ articles in alphabetical order BUT at the front
> of that list the defult language.

Yes, I think http-accept-language could be used to highlight one or more
preferred languages, independently of how we choose to sort the list.

>Then after that the full
> alphabetical list of all the languages (not quite where we order
> non-latin scripts in that) in smaller font size.

One possibility is to base the font size on, say, article count.  Use a
log scale or something.  In this case it might not be necessary to have
an "A List" of languages.

> Say for example i had quechua (about 8 articles atm) as my prefered
> langauge it would display a paragraph explaining wikipedia (in
> quechua) then have a link to Quechua then Deutsh, English, Francais
> etc.
>
> paz y amor,
> [[User:The bellman]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Google preventing comment spam

body:
Kevin Puetz ti 2005/1/25 ChS 09:57 sia-kong:

> The best proposal I've seen so far is to apply it to all recently-modified
> pages (with 'recent' determined per project by how fast you think the
> editors will get it cleaned up - probably a day or so is reasonable).

This is sensible.

> It would also penalize valid pages that just change frequently (like, say,
> the front page) but I would think most such are really not good sources of
> PageRank correlation anyway.

Assuming that high frequency translates to "well-patrolled", then maybe
only recently AND infrequently modified pages would be "nofollowed".
Spammers, of course, might then hit a page multiple times to have it
appear well-patrolled.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 00:03:02 +0800, Alex Kwan <litalex at slashyalex.com> wrote:
> I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I
> can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as, I
> don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project
> benefits more people.

No, it's nothing like that. Unfortunately, Mark's mischaracterizations
have not helped. The point from the start - a Wikipedia with a single
contributor is a very lonely place. Make sure we're helping to nurture
sustainable efforts before sending onesies-and-twosies to start a new
edition.

I've been across Asia encouraging the growth of SE Asia language
Wikipedias, like Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Cambodian
Wikipedias. Some efforts have been successful, some not. Veterans on
this list know I'm all for encouraging more editions.

> So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more people?
> Why should that be my concern just because it is yours? Especially when
> you're giving me the vibe that you could care less about my pet project?
> You're asking for my/our help and yet you're dismissive of my/our wants
> and wishes.

Most people seem to like working on Wikipedia because it benefits
others. One can certainly work on Wikipedia for different reasons.

It's not being dismissive. It's great if folks have the critical mass
to start a new Wikipedia, and that's why there's been discussion about
defining a "starting set" of articles, front page, initial
contributors, etc. However, Mark has an exuberance in starting new
language Wikipedias, often without any prospect of sustainability.

> *And* you're assuming that a number of us will be working on the
> "Mandarin" wikipedia if we don't have a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia to work
> on, which isn't necessarily true. I, for example, write better and
> faster in English and I'll probably spend more time on the English
> wikipedia if I can't help in a Cantonese/Yue one.

That's fine. The Wikipedia project has never hesitated to highlight
where help is needed, and it's never forced people to commit to only
one thing. The same is true here.

--
Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina

body:
The security services in the Soviet Bloc were corrupt; names, actions and
information were included simply to meet quotas, names of people who had no
connection whatever with totalitarian activities.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 00:18:19 -0800
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina
>
> I believe that publishing this kind of material (assuming that I have
> interpreted what I see correctly) is utterly wrong in every respect.  If
> the effect would be to make Wikimedia complicit in any kind of revenge
> against these alleged collaborators, we would need to share the guilt
> for whatever form such revenge might take.
>
> Unless I am advised that I have completely misinterpreted the material I
> propose to delete it all beginning tomorrow evening.
>
> Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina


body:
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 01:41:43 +0800, Alex Kwan <litalex at slashyalex.com> wrote:
>
> And even going from your perspective, waving around the figure of 1
> billion+ people in China doesn't work that well. How many of those 1
> billion+ people have frequent access to a computer, to the net? And can
> find their way to the wikipedias?

One of Wikipedia's goals is to provide the source for CD, DVD and
print editions, so that it's not just people who have computer and net
access.

(From Guardian UK, October 26, 2004, http://tinyurl.com/5z937):
'However, Wales and his community of volunteers are not resting on
their laurels. He is in negotiations to print part of the content, and
distribute it in Africa as part of their ambition to "put a free
encyclopedia in the hands of every person on the planet".'

Also, see: [[en:Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team]]

> I don't know how to find out, but there is a possibility that the
> percentage of Cantonese/Yue and Wu speakers who have frequent access to
> the net is higher than the purely Mandarin speakers... Because some of
> the fastest growing/most developed regions are Guangdong and Jiangsu
> province. And Jiangsu is specialising in computer chips, etc.

Interesting point, though in the PRC, not sure what "purely Mandarin
speakers" refers to. For most PRC folks, there is the local dialect
for the household and community, and putonghua for schooling and
formal business. I gave a talk to Jiangsu Media Group last year (part
of it about Wikipedia) and the majority of regional radio and
television content is not in the local dialect, but in putonghua. For
Guangdong's local media, it's largely the same case.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
Andrew Lih ti 2005/2/2 EP 10:35 sia-kong:
> To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a
> "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment
> in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the
> primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
>
> One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
> don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free
> as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the
> better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.

No, but it is a statement of (nationalist?) faith in the ubiquity and
all-empowering contemporary relevance of Mandarin to today's Chinese
population, one not necessarily backed by empirical evidence and
ordinary experience. A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study,
for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable
of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4";
http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058).  This is likely
to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of
urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many
members).

That is not to deny that a Chinese encyclopedia to benefit millions is
not a worthwhile goal.  Only that we should not delude ourselves of the
power and grandeur of such a project which, after all, serves but one
language -- one spoken by hundreds of millions but nevertheless hardly
the primary, everyday language of millions more.  And that is assuming a
very high literacy level, which again is supported neither by studies
nor our experience interacting with those outside of the elite classes.
  (To be sure, Wikipedia could be voice-recorded, by human or machine,
or printed for the millions and millions too impoverished to own a PC,
but these media require more expensive -- not to mention,
censorship-prone -- means of presentation and delivery.)

Unfortunately it is all too common for both non-Chinese and Chinese
alike to imagine a kind of monolithic, timeless cultural norm, be it to
serve nationalism or to depict a simplistic other (see B. Anderson's
"Imagined Community"; Said's "Orientalism"), rather than engaging with
the reality on the ground.  Ultimately Wikipedians should not fall prey
to such imagination.

~~~~


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project
	Has Been Around For A While

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> But to get back to seriousness: Wikipedia does need to get more
> friendly to a higher level of information integrity, and it does need
> to get to a higher level of citation, and it does need to recruit many
> more people from academia to contribute articles - more specifically,
> it needs more people who write in their area of profession to
> contribute. One need not be a professor to write a good explanation of
> a star scheme, but actually having implemented one a few times will
> generally be a huge help in writing about them.

Very well said.

There's something interesting about all of this discussion: no serious
person in the wikipedia community, no matter where they may fall on
the spectrum of "respect/deference to professors" holds the
anti-elitist view that Sanger ascribed to us.

If anything, I think we're more elitist than that: we look at academia
and say "Yes, pretty good, but we should do better."

This means finding and retaining and supporting the best elements of
academia, while ignoring critics who think this means that
credentialism is the answer to everything.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Wikitech-l] New table  required for Head?

body:
In trying to run the code currently in HEAD, I find that it needs a
table called "group". Is there a mechanism for building this table?
Barring that, is there information on what the table is supposed to
look like?

-Rich Holton

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent changes - don't show bots

body:
Hi, on all wiktionaries/wikipedias normally when viewing the recent
changes you have the possibilty to exclude the recent changes. On the
Italian wiktionary this option is not there:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Speciale:Recentchanges. (Strange enough I
noted the same on the Italian wikipedia).

Where can I add this? It helps so much to monitor manual entries - and
at the moment we are having at least one vandal a day on the Italian
wiktionary - so I really need this.

Thank you for any hint!!!

Ciao, Sabine


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
> Where can I add this? It helps so much to monitor manual entries - and
> at the moment we are having at least one vandal a day on the Italian
> wiktionary - so I really need this.

The problem is in the translation of the interface. Page
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Rclinks should contain
something like "Mostra le ultime $1 modifiche negli ultimi $2 giorni;
$3.", but the "$3" is missing there. See e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Rclinks (Note that all pages in
the MediaWiki namespace are protected, only a sysop can make that
correction.)

Ciao,

-- [[ cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


from_name: Ben Brockert

body:
From: Brion Vibber <brion.vibber at gmail.com>
>Beta 6 also introduces the use of rel="nofollow" attributes on external
>links in wiki pages to reduce the effectiveness of wiki spam. This will
>cause participating search engines to ignore external URL links from
>wiki pages for purposes of page relevancy ranking.

How is the per-project option coming on this?

(See also: [[m:Nofollow]])

Ben


from_name: Christof Damian

body:
doesn't this break for mysql 3.23 ?

I mentioned this on http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244
already.

christof

On Thu, 03 Feb 2005, Frank v Waveren wrote:
> Here's a patch to add the smart block table query from HEAD to
> mediawiki 1.4beta. The current implementation is painful when checking
> if logged in users are on the block list as the query cannot use
> indexes and has to scan the entire table, which is apparantly causing
> big pain for en.wikipedia. Please apply.
>

> +++ includes/Block.php	2005-02-03 22:07:20.000000000 +0100
> @@ -81,10 +81,17 @@
>  			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user} $options";
>  		} elseif ($user=="") {
>  			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) . "' $options";
> -		} else {
> -			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
> -				"' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
> -		}
> +                } elseif ( $options=='' ) {
> +                        # If there are no options (e.g. FOR UPDATE), use a UNION
> +                        # so that the query can make efficient use of indices
> +                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
> +                                "' UNION SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user}";
> +                } else {
> +                        # If there are options, a UNION can not be used, use one
> +                        # SELECT instead. Will do a full table scan.
> +                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
> +                                "' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
> +                }
>
>  		$res = $db->query( $sql, $fname );
>  		if ( 0 == $db->numRows( $res ) ) {

> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Christof Damian
christof at damian.net


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] AIDS and HIV denial

body:
Harry Pasternak, an AIDS-denier, wrote an extremely
disingenuous letter to Jimbo and the rest of us.  Mr.
Pasternak falsely claimed that their are no peer-reviewed
studies and papers that prove that the HIV virus causes
AIDS.  For shame.

He is using the same tactic used by certain religious
fundamentalists who deny that there are any peer-reviewed
papers which prove that Evolution occurs, and the same
tactic used by religious fundamentalists who claim that
there are no peer-reviewed papers which prove that the
world is 4.5 billion years old.

In all such cases there *are* such papers, and in all cases
Wikipedia articles *do* link to reputable cites which have
vast amounts of peer-reviewed scientific information on
this topic.  We can add more citations of course, but
Pasternak's claim is not meant to improve the article.  It
is meant to mislead, obfuscate, and push AIDS-denial, and
it is written in the same way that Evolution deniers and
Holocaust deniers work.  They give the appearance of being
rational, but they distort statements made by other people,
and refuse to accept any evidence at all.

The utter denial of the existence of such peer-reviewed
papers is dishonest, and borders on a pathological
obesession.  We need not take such bizarre rants to this
list, for any form of "denial".

On this subject, some good reading material about
PEER-REVIEWED studies, can be found here:

http://www2.niaid.nih.gov/newsroom/focuson/hiv00/default.htm

http://www2.niaid.nih.gov/Newsroom/FocusOn/Hiv00/MACSWIHS.htm

Unless these websites don't exist either, and the studies
cited within do not exist, and the scientists quoted do not
exist....

Robert (RK)

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body:
Also important, in my mind, is this: nobody argues that simply not
participating in a Wikipedia you don't like is bad, but would it be
right of us to override popular support of language-speaking
Wikipedians and deny creation of these Wikipedias citing a desire for
"linguistic unity" in a move that would be more expected of
Gongchandang/Gungchaandong/Kongchetaz than
Weijidang/Waigeidong/Viqitaz?

Mark

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 05:47:09 -0500, Henry H. Tan-Tenn
<share2002nov at lomaji.com> wrote:
> Andrew Lih ti 2005/2/2 EP 10:35 sia-kong:
> > To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a
> > "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment
> > in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the
> > primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
> >
> > One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply
> > don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free
> > as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the
> > better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
>
> No, but it is a statement of (nationalist?) faith in the ubiquity and
> all-empowering contemporary relevance of Mandarin to today's Chinese
> population, one not necessarily backed by empirical evidence and
> ordinary experience. A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study,
> for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable
> of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4";
> http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058).  This is likely
> to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of
> urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many
> members).
>
> That is not to deny that a Chinese encyclopedia to benefit millions is
> not a worthwhile goal.  Only that we should not delude ourselves of the
> power and grandeur of such a project which, after all, serves but one
> language -- one spoken by hundreds of millions but nevertheless hardly
> the primary, everyday language of millions more.  And that is assuming a
> very high literacy level, which again is supported neither by studies
> nor our experience interacting with those outside of the elite classes.
>   (To be sure, Wikipedia could be voice-recorded, by human or machine,
> or printed for the millions and millions too impoverished to own a PC,
> but these media require more expensive -- not to mention,
> censorship-prone -- means of presentation and delivery.)
>
> Unfortunately it is all too common for both non-Chinese and Chinese
> alike to imagine a kind of monolithic, timeless cultural norm, be it to
> serve nationalism or to depict a simplistic other (see B. Anderson's
> "Imagined Community"; Said's "Orientalism"), rather than engaging with
> the reality on the ground.  Ultimately Wikipedians should not fall prey
> to such imagination.
>
> ~~~~
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Alexander Sigachov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] os.wikipedia.org (Cyrillic only will do)

body:
 >>> we'd like to start the Wikipedia in
 >>> Ossetic from the Russian language

 >> Russian language file recently was updated

> Updates to any file in MediaWiki should be submitted as a unified diff
> against the files in CVS (cvs diff -u) FOR EACH AFFECTED BRANCH (the
> REL1_4 release branch is not the same as the current development work in
> HEAD), posted as a file attachment to a bug report in Bugzilla.
> Assurances that it's been tested are helpful.

Completed.

See http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1455

--
Cxion la plej helan,
Alexander "Ajvol" Sigachev