from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have
>>some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it,
>>for instance the winner is the hoax that goes the longest without
>>being detected. For instance:
>>
>
>This is the type of utter and complete nonsense that I'm talking about.  How
>does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging*
>people to create bogus entries?
>
We're not a bunch of text-creating machines. It's "community
second", not "no community at all".

>
>Wikipedia is NOT A PLAYTHING! This project is not here for your enjoyment - we
>are here to create an encyclopedia. If you happen to have fun while helping us
>toward *that goal*, then great. If not, then let others work and be free of
>this type of distracting nonsense.
>
Actually, I am here for my enjoyment - it just so happens that I
enjoy making little-known information more visible by adding it
to WP. If only unenjoyable stuff was left to do, or interactions
with other editors made the daily experience unpleasant, I'd be
gone in a second; I have plenty of other hobbies.

Now to be serious about April Fools. While it can't possibly be
a tradition for print encyclopedias, it is a natural for news
organizations and for companies, and is practised even when it
"hurts productivity". For example, a big-company CEO's time is
worth thousands of dollars per hour, so when the CEO's office
is filled to the top with styrofoam peanuts, you can bet that's
costing the company real money. However, the morale boost is worth
far more than the loss of the CEO's time; employees get to talk
about something fun instead of how their current tasks suck, etc.
Silicon Valley companies do this the most of anybody, and I hear
their success is the envy of the rest of the world.

WP desperately needs to be more of a fun place. We already know a
lot of longtime contributors have been worn down to the point
where a single run-in with a troll causes them to explode and quit;
very much like what happens with longtime company employees when
their jobs are no longer enjoyable. If WP were a company, HR
would be all over Jimbo to do something about morale.

On April 1, there are going to be lots of articles fiddled with,
whether we like it or not; I certainly wasn't looking forward to
that aspect of the day (although since my watchlist hasn't worked
all week, it looks it will be other people's problem this year).

So I suggested the contest as a way to make the day something for
editors to anticipate rather than dread, and to channel some of
the urge in a way that will be more fun for more of the community.
I don't think it can possibly harm WP's reputation; people who
have a low opinion won't change their minds because of what we
or don't do on April 1, and people who have a high opinion will
like that we're recognizing the potential problem and coming up
with alternate ways to channel it.

Stan


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] technical problem

body:
mgm wrote

>Nope, things are working fine for me. Have you got a cookie installed
>that keeps you logged into Wikipedia?

As I said, the problem is not logging in -- I am logged in automatically,
and when I use other links (e.g. to my watchlist or to an article) I have
no problems.  It is only when I try to access my "user contributions" that
I am logged out, and the user contributions is missing all of my
contributions starting 3/27.  If I am at my "user contribution" page and
re-log in, I get a message that the login was successful.  When I try to
return to "special:contributions," however, I get the message "No Target:
You have not specified a target page or user to perform this function on."

The problem involves my user contribution page only, and it has been almost
four days.

I do not have any other problems.

Also, I figured that no one else is having this problem since no one else
has posted.  But that doesn't change the fact that I am having this
problem.  Can anyone help me?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:21:13 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia servers
> to block open proxies.

Are users able to login and then edit if they are behind a SORBS IP?

My guess is that we use SORBS because it is ineffective to play
wack-a-mole with IP banning on such offenders because there are so
many open proxies.  I would think that limiting these addresses to
edits by logged in users would be a more cautious position.

It would be unfortunate if we block a user for what he chooses to do
outside of wikipedia (for instance running an open proxy on his IP).
It is not necessarly true that all hosts listed in orbs are
misconfigured, I've seen a few 'first edits' to wikipedia take the
form of a warning that wikipedia is misconfigured. :)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Seth Ilys <seth.ilys at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There are several examples of this in [[nihilartikel]].
>>
>>
>
>I didn?t see any examples of respected encyclopedias doing this.
>
If EB were to publish 1990's April Fool joke in 2005 it could be a
little out of date.

>I did notice
>this:
>
>?It is not always simple to recognize a Nihilartikel. It is especially
>difficult when the same fictitious entry is reprinted and adapted by multiple
>reference works. In such cases, the multiple sources serve to bolster the
>entry's authenticity, so that many come to believe that they are reading a
>factual article.?
>
Just imagine, all these reputable publications failing to exercise due
dilligence. After April 1 the clues will certainly be there for all to
see. I wonder: Maybe the failure of these authoritative publications to
include the clues could be seen as some kind of violation of GFDL. :-)

>This is certainly not something we should be encouraging.
>
>
Fair enough, but we do want to encourage critical thinking.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Syntax standardization effort

body:
At ETech in San Francisco, I met with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, and
we discussed the idea that there should be a central core set of
standard wiki syntax.  Ross was quite keen on the concept.

Standard syntax is important for the entire wiki world so that as
people become more accustomed to using wikis for all kinds of things,
they can feel comfortable on a variety of platforms.

It seems natural to me that as the largest wiki project (and we are
probably the wiki engine with the most installations, although I have
no actual way of knowing that), we should take a leadership role in
this.

http://www.socialtext.net/mayfield/index.cgi?action=refcard&login=user4232

is a quick 'refcard' on the syntax of socialtext.

I propose that we set up a group of people either in a mailing list or
a wiki or both, and invite representatives from all the major wiki
software projects and companies to participate in a syntax standard.

I don't know anything about how formal standards are proposed and
decided, but just as with HTML, it seems that wiki syntax is a natural
for some standardization.

--Jimbo

--
"Pianosa is een Italie" - first words of 50,000th article on nl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>
>>April fools jokes are traditional.
>>
>>
>
>And what evidence do you have that respected encyclopedias have done this?
>
How many "respected encyclopedias" are updated on a day-by-day basis
like Wikipedia is, with a front page that shows current events within
minutes of their happening and then the next day replaces them with
something else newer? It's not like the Wikipedia 1.0 snapshot is going
to be frozen and rushed to the printers that day, with this article
forever fixed in stone on its pages - it's not even in the main article
namespace. On April 2 the link will be gone and the article will once
again retire to BJAODN, probably never to be used again in this manner
(repeating a joke is rarely funny).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia == Fox News (was: Friday's featured article)

body:
Viajero wrote:

> Phil Sandifer a.k.a. Snowspinner wrote:
>
> > A lot of people still see us as Fox News.
>
> Does anyone else find this a deeply disturbing suggestion? I for one
> would disassociate myself from this undertaking sooner rather than
> later if I thought this assertion was true. Can Mr Sandifer cite any
> evidence to support this exceedingly provocative statement?

Did Wikinews plan to run a story about such a merger for April 1? :-)

Ec


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 03:21:13PM +0200, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia servers
> to block open proxies.

SORBS is for email proxies, isn't it?

What's the advantage of blocking open email proxies from using
Wikimedia sites?

~Evan


body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:30:35 -0500, Evan Prodromou <evan at bad.dynu.ca> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 03:21:13PM +0200, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> > Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia servers
> > to block open proxies.
>
> SORBS is for email proxies, isn't it?
>
> What's the advantage of blocking open email proxies from using
> Wikimedia sites?

SORBS also maintains a list of open web proxies.. since web based
spamming has become a large issue as well.. (think blogs and wikis)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with censorship?

body:
Poor, Edmund W said:
>
> When a junior high school library decides not to shelve Lady
> Chatterly's Lover (or The Story of O), that is most definitely
> censorship.
...
>
> Complying with local, regional or national laws which forbid certain
> expressions or depictions is also censorship.
...
>
> Masking censorship by calling it "editorial decisions" sounds timid at
> best. Why not call a spade a spade?
>
Absolutely.  Why is this word so taboo?  We all censor.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:21:13 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia servers
> to block open proxies.
>
> If someone is having troubles to edit now, here are the steps he can do
> to solve the problem:
> (...)

Not that efforts to stop vandalism aren't needed, but it might be more difficult than that for legitimate users to get around.

I would have been blocked by this a few months ago myself -- the IP address I had was listed in SORBS for something a previous customer of my ISP had set up. SORBS ignored the request for a retest since I am not the administrative contact, and the ISP ignored complaints as there *was* no open relay, and they don't consider it their concern what customers run on their own systems anyhow.

After a service outage our IP changed or I'd still be blocked at the moment. Fortunately I wasn't blocked from anything I particularly cared about, but I would be upset if I could not edit Wikipedia. (No comments about withdrawal symptoms, now...)

I see at least one active editor has been affected; is there any workaround for logged-in users who would otherwise remain blocked?

-Kat
[[en:User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


subject:
April Fool contest idea (was Re: [WikiEN-l]
	Friday's	featuredarticle)

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote
>
>> Now to be serious about April Fools.
>
>
> To do that, I suggest a [[Saturnalia]].  Just for a day we give admin
> powers to 400 anons.  Real sysops can't use them.  Inclusionists will
> be forced to vote to delete important pieces of fancruft.  We all
> treat Jimbo like a newbie, the rest of us are God-Kings and God-Queens
> for a day.  No one is allowed to edit their own User page.  The
> Village Pump will flow with wine. All pages based on Larry's Text will
> be reverted to the originals ...
>
> Need I go on?  The AF suggestions so far have been quite modest.

Sounds a little like Boxing Day!

But stay on your toes anyway, I wouldn't put it past our
developers to quietly create an alternate-reality fork of
the database.

Stan


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Viajero wrote:
>
> > Phil Sandifer a.k.a. Snowspinner wrote:
> >
> > > A lot of people still see us as Fox News.
> >
> > Does anyone else find this a deeply disturbing suggestion? I for one
> > would disassociate myself from this undertaking sooner rather than
> > later if I thought this assertion was true. Can Mr Sandifer cite any
> > evidence to support this exceedingly provocative statement?
>
> Did Wikinews plan to run a story about such a merger for April 1? :-)

Now that would be funny. :)

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Autoblocking on all wikis now ?!?!?!

body:
For now my problem seems solved. I wonder a couple of things though .......

1) For how long, as I get a new IP address slapped on by my provider
every 24 hours.
2) How many people are still blocked because of this and do not speak
english and do now know where to complain
3) How many people wanted to start editting today on th.wikipedia and
other wikipedia's and have we lost.

Walter / Waerth


list: wikimedia-l


body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Obviously not.  This is the only encyclopedia in which it's possible for a
> random editor to create an article with the name "Daniel Mayer needs to
> remember that this is a Wiki".  I don't know how long you expect to get
> away with this odd pretense that Wikipedia is like other encyclopedias.

It is more up to date and has a great deal more content. It also has a much
better hypertext format (lot's of links esp) and IMO, its articles simply looks
a lot nicer and are easier to use. Other than that, to the reader, it is pretty
much like any other encyclopedia - a place to get quick facts on topics.
However, it's reliability has also been questioned due to the way it is
created. Making it fun to purposely deceive readers does not help either that
perception or the kernel of truth behind it.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
I totally agree with Andre here.

I think it's important for us to take a middle path here.  (Big
surprise coming from me, huh?)  We can't be complete cultural
relativists and say "anything goes in any wikipedia as long as the
participants agree" -- this would be the end of neutrality.  At the
same time, we must not be complete cultural *imperialists* and assume
that exactly identical decisions have to be made everywhere,
particularly on sensitive matters that have a strong cultural
component.

Andre wrote:
> A policy that says that we will exclude the same on all languages,
> says that we don't trust the Wikipedias to make their own choices.

I think that's very well said.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
A few people have hoped that I would weigh in with an opinion.

I'm torn.  I think it's really fun, but we're also a very serious
project.  So I gave it some thought and I have this idea...

Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
our April Fool's Page."

And on that page, we have fun with ourselves... nothing mean spirited
against each other, but gently having some fun with our quirks.  So
yes, the feature article can be the european toilet paper page.  But
we also could have an article about Gdansk
^h^h^h^hDanzig
^h^h^h^hGdansk!
Danzig, dammit!

In this way, we get to have a little fun with the holiday, but we also
don't abandon our seriousness for the day.  And at the end of the day,
everything can be locked and archived and deleted, and we can do it
once a year.

Maybe if a developer can be persuaded, we could set the whole thing up
at AprilFools.wikipedia.org or something like that.

--Jimbo

--
"Pianosa is een Italie" - first words of 50,000th article on nl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] interwikis redirects disabled

body:
Just joined the list .....

Thx Tim and Brion

Waerth/Walter


body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> >http://www.freelists.org/list/wiki
> >
> >There is already a group and a mailing list, but activity is rather low.
> >
> Hmmm talking about wiki syntax standardization in a email list sounds
> rather bizarre.

Yes, but I sort of like it. :-)

> Nontheless, I remind that there are already projects comparing different
> syntax aspects of different wiki engines.
>
> http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:compare
>
> this matrix, right. s12n would maybe start from there.

*nod*

I'm just hoping to provoke some action.  Lots of people seem to agree
that this should be done.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
Jimbo> I don't know anything about how formal standards are
     > proposed and decided, but just as with HTML, it seems that
     > wiki syntax is a natural for some standardization.

I do know something of the process, having participated in it for PNG,
and have done some work toward a cleaner wiki syntax already.  The
hardest part, as already mentioned, is that there is a pretty large
installed base of other wikis and lots of divergent opinions on what's
good and bad about each of them.  Yes, prehaps our position as the
largest one gives us some leverage.

Magnus> There's another way:
      > * Agree on a XML standard for wikis
      > * Each wiki system writes a wiki-to-XML and XML-to-wiki function

Well, for "XML standard" substitute "Semantic model" and you've got a
good start.  Once you have the model, then you can express it in XML to
allow data-sharing, but we'd still want to work toward standardising the
user experience.

AsciiDoc <http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/> impresses me as a step
in the right direction, but the model needs to be expanded to include
a few wiki-specific things.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> There's another way:
> * Agree on a XML standard for wikis
> * Each wiki system writes a wiki-to-XML and XML-to-wiki function

I think this doesn't resolve the main issue, which is end-user joy.
What I hope to do is encourage at least a strong subset of syntax
which is used universally, so that I can go to any wiki and do some
basic normal things and have the result be what I want.

This has nothing to do with the separate issues of portability of wiki
text, although I think that's important too.

--Jimbo


from_name: Dori

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Autoblocking on all wikis now ?!?!?!

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 01:23:56 +1000, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Has anyone had a chance to look at bug 550? It's specifically so that this
> > sort of block will only hit anon users.
>
> I've told the list before that the spammers already have software to log
> in to wikis, and the vandals log in whenever it's convenient for them.
> In a previous post, I even gave details of vandalbot attacks by logged
> in users. But I guess you won't believe me that it's useless until you
> see it. I already had an exemption in place for non-newbies, I've
> replaced this with an exemption for all logged-in users.

Tim please don't. We already had a bot page move attacked on sq: (from
[[w:sq:User:Biskota]]). I happened to be online at the time (only two
admins on sq, about 5 regular users), and still it took me and another
contributor a good 20 minutes to clean up all the page moves. If I
hadn't been online the only good way to fix it would have been a db
restore. We were also lucky that it wasn't using a proxy, but it's the
next logical step for an attacker.

Page move and edit throttling for newbie users would also be
tremendously useful (maybe it can be put in 1.5 since the schema is
changing).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> But is it imperialistic to say that one side of the issue does not
> have the right to completely exclude the other side with the only
> justification being that the one side believes they have a commandment
> from god to rid the world of such ideas?

Again, really, this is just extremely over the top.  Tell you what, if
you go out and find someone in the wikipedia community who says "I
have the right to complete exclude the other side because I have a
commandment from god to rid the world of such ideas" then by all means
drag them in here to the mailing list so we can make fun of them.

It'll be great fun.

In the meantime, let's try to address the arguments of people who are
actually engaged in this discussion.  I think that virtually everyone
comes down along a spectrum in the broad middle which says: (a) there
are universal standards and (b) there are local cultural
considerations as well, so that (c) we expect some things to be more
or less universal, but we can also have some local flavor.

--Jimbo

--
"Pianosa is een Italie" - first words of 50,000th article on nl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Rick

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:
> Daniel Mayer said:
> > --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> wrote:
> >> You're being unreasonable by demanding that a
> tradition cannot apply
> >> to Wikipedia unless it also applies to "respected
> encyclopedias."
> >> There are no encyclopedias like Wikipedia.
> Britannica and Encarta
> >> don't change from one day to the next.
> >
> > You are the one that said this was a tradition. I
> called you on that.
>
> Clearly you misunderstood me.  April Fools is a
> longstanding tradition.
> The fact that "respected encyclopedias" do not have
> the opportunity to
> indulge in it is neither here nor there.
> [...]

Britannica is online.  Does their online version
indulge in foolishness?

> > That is not an article. If I find it or any other
> hoax in the article
> > namespace, then I'll delete it on sight (might
> move it to BJAODN).
> >
>
> Then the joke is on you.  Lighten up.

Fooling our readers is not "lightening up", it's
perpetrating a hoax on them.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Putting Wikipedia on a CD or DVD

body:
German amazon link for pre-ordering:
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3898530205/qid=1112179489/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/302-3260343-6700015

Poor, Edmund W schrieb:
> Magnus Manske schrieb:
>
>
>>I would like to remind everyone that the German Wikipedia has
>>just been published on a combined CD-DVD-set, at a price of
>>about 10 Euros.
>
>
> Where can I order a copy? I don't know German, but some of my colleagues
> probably do.
>
> And did you do the programming and configuration for that DVD? You are
> certainly keeping busy; how do you find the time?
>
> Gratefully,
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Full text search - JODA program by Jochen Magnus

body:
Thank you, Thomas,

older versions of Joda are working since 1996 as news paper archive for
the Rhein-Zeitung (Koblenz and Mainz, Germany). It's also used for
archive and newsdesk purposes from several other european newspapers. At
the moment it is going into action as full text index for europeans
biggest magazine. It is also in use for the public index of the state
archive of Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany).

Last year I created two mirrors of WikiPedia, one using MediaWiki for
demonstration purposes and another - our public one - using our own
read-only web frontend. Joda is integrated into both mirrors:

    http://wikipedia.rhein-zeitung.de/index.php/Hauptseite (MediaWiki)
    http://lexikon.rhein-zeitung.de/ (our special Wikipedia interface)

At the suggestion of Magnus Manske (not related :-) I published Joda
under LGPL and made serveral improvements for the Wikipedia task. I
wrote tools for indexing a whole cur table either from MySQL or from a
SQL dump (which is twice faster). Indexing the german Wikipedia cur
table (>210.000 articles, 36 million words) lasts approx. 45 minutes. An
optional database optimization lasts additional 25 minutes. Both on a
dual Athlon 2800+ machine with 1 GB RAM (the indexer is a multi threaded
perl program).

Joda can erase or update entries on the fly and can handle queries with
parantheses and word distance operators like
http://lexikon.rhein-zeitung.de/?((Albert OR Alfred) AND.1 Einstein)
NEAR Quant*) NOT Gravitation. See more features under
http://ioda.sourceforge.net/

Joda kernel is written with the Free Pascal compiler
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/). The tools are written in
Perl. There a libraries for using joda directly from C, Perl, Python and
PHP, all published under LGPL. The joda binaries are: command line
program, TCP socket driven server and CGI.

Yours

jo


from_name: Peter Grecian

body:
A babelfish of the review says:
*/
Product description of the manufacturer/*
*The free encyclopedia - expenditure spring 2005*
The Wikipedia is a project in the InterNet for the production of an
encyclopedia.

Each InterNet user can cooperate to the Wikipedia, the project enjoys
increasingly of larger popularity. Knowledge is spread in this way and
divided with others. Since January 2001 first only on English, and
meanwhile internationally also over millions articles in more than 50
languages available, there are since May 2001 a deutschprachige
expenditure of the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia.Taeglich is added
approximately 300 new German-language articles from all fields of activity.

World-wide are already involved over 99.000 humans as authors of
contributions or also as Korrektoren to the Wikipedia. Contrary to the
classical encyclopedias the articles of the Wikipedia are extremely
current, since usually already after few minutes relevant information of
current events in the articles settles. The broad topic spectrum
contains also numerous contributions over social edge topics. A
substantial characteristic of the Wikipedia is it that the articles can
be read but also changed not only by everyone. Contents are freely
copyable and may be further spread owing to the GNU free
Dokumentationslizenz.

Extremely high openness, the topicality and transparency in the
emergence of the on-line reference books contribute to the substantial
success of the Wikipedia.

The popular on-line encyclopedia was made accessible by 2004 CD-ROM of
the digital library for the first time also off-line appeared in the
autumn. The expenditure spring 2005 is the updated version with
editorship conditions from 3 March 2005 and contains 200,000 references
on a DVD (with pictures) as well as on a CD-ROM (without pictures). The
expenditure is equipped with the software Digibib4 for Windows, Mac and
Linux and is also executable for Palm OS, pocket PC as well as various
mobile phones and Communicator. Further updated off-line versions will
appear in each case in half-yearly rotation.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Towards consensus on April Fools

body:
Lots of us want let loose one day a year and figure a few jokes will
boost morale enough to pay for the clean-up time.

A few of us think April Fools should be more subtle: you score points by
how broad a hint you can give right at the start, while STILL hooking
the unwary.

No one wants a long-term hit on our credibility.

Some feel it's inevitable and just wonder how best to deal with it.

A few think, what's the big deal?

Uncle Ed    <-- slightly miffed that his well-laid plans are now moot


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo Wales de-sysopped

body:
For immediate release:

Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was de-sysopped today by a coalition
of rogue admins (the Troll League) and his account blocked indefinitely.
The new GodKing, Rickk, immediately reinstated

RK weds Helga! The long-awaited wedding will feature mav147 wearing the
traditional Muslim headscraf (click here for picture).

Kim Jong-Il brings peace to Palestine. The leader of the world's
remaining Hermit Kingdom outlawed both Judaism and Islam throughout the
Middle East, replacing all forms of religious worship with the playing
of old Beatles records.

(I was saving these, but ... )

Uncle Ed


from_name: Geoffrey Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Seth Ilys wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 05:02:33 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Again, I have not seen a single example of a respected encyclopedia doing this.
>> Give me one example and I'll stop complaining.
>
> There are several examples of this in [[nihilartikel]].
>
Sheesh, if there is so much resistence over [[European toilet paper]], how
about if we were to nominate a real topic, like [[Wankers Corner, Oregon]]
for Friday's FAC?

Unless none of you trust my word that it actually exists?

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
> alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
> our April Fool's Page."

I think that is a great idea. :)

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo Wales de-sysopped

body:
I love it!

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> For immediate release:
>
> Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was de-sysopped today by a coalition
> of rogue admins (the Troll League) and his account blocked indefinitely.
> The new GodKing, Rickk, immediately reinstated
>
> RK weds Helga! The long-awaited wedding will feature mav147 wearing the
> traditional Muslim headscraf (click here for picture).
>
> Kim Jong-Il brings peace to Palestine. The leader of the world's
> remaining Hermit Kingdom outlawed both Judaism and Islam throughout the
> Middle East, replacing all forms of religious worship with the playing
> of old Beatles records.
>
> (I was saving these, but ... )
>
> Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Tony Mobily

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia blocked alongside "gambling,
	porn and other potential hazardous sites"

body:
Hi,

>> If I find out which ISP it is (if in fact they have done this) then I
>> will most definitely make a big stink. I might get a few bloggers
>> involved and alert the media.
>> I need to know which ISP first, however.
>> TBSDY
>
> 220.233.86.223 resolves to Exetel (http://www.exetel.com.au).
> Having said that I don't think we need even contact them, the whole
> ring just reeks of bulls**t.

I don't mean to be a pain, Pete... however, I was hoping you had a time
when the person did the post (in GMT), and... well, a link to the post
itself (sorry, I joined the mailing list half way through the
discussion, and...).

I can very, very easily check if Exetel does block Wikipedia, AND if
one of theirs employees wrote that post. I can just call up, speak to a
manager and tell him/her something like "I am Tony Mobily from Free
Software Magazine. I would like to write an article about censorship
and I heard about their new policy of blocking Wikipedia". If it's not
true, then he will simply confirm it and check the IP address which
made the post. If it is true... I wouldn't want to be the employee who
wrote the post - and I might as well write an article about censorship!

Bye,

Merc.


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
I meant the suggestion in terms of reputability. I don't think we're
seen as having a neo-conservative agenda. But I think we're about as
trusted by a lot of people. In fact, I know we are. Five minutes ago,
sitting in my office, I heard another TA tell a student not to use
Wikipedia as a source because "anyone can edit it" so it must not be
reliable. She looked to me for affirmation, and I said that, actually,
it's very reliable and that false information gets removed quickly. She
wasn't convinced, and told the student not to use it anyway.

We can't afford to knowingly post false information. Too many people
think we do it already.

-Snowspinner

On Mar 30, 2005, at 11:51 AM, Viajero wrote:

> Phil Sandifer a.k.a. Snowspinner wrote:
>
> > A lot of people still see us as Fox News.
>
> Does anyone else find this a deeply disturbing suggestion? I for one
> would disassociate myself from this undertaking sooner rather than
> later if I thought this assertion was true. Can Mr Sandifer cite any
> evidence to support this exceedingly provocative statement?
>
>
> V.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) multiple wikitext standards based on families of existing wiki
> syntaxes sharing the largest similarities.

I don't think multiple standards is something we should support.

> For example, several wikis use a "UseMod-like" syntax, and it would not
> be very difficult to standardize within that group. It would be much
> more difficult to get, say, both PhpWiki and MediaWiki to use a shared
> syntax. The practical difficulties with switching an entire wiki engine
> to a new syntax should not be underestimated.

Ok, I see your point.  But the right thing to do, I think, is to point
out that PhpWiki syntax is wrong and outdated and nonstandard.

--Jimbo


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
Which I think shows that there is a PROBLEM here. Waerth is
complaining, Montaia is asking, but who knows how many contributors
and potential contributors are simply giving up, or have no idea where
to ask?

Andre Engels

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 07:25:43 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ALe_Bistro#Utilisateur:Montaia_appelle_au_secours_.21
>
> A french editor, Montaia, would also like to be unblocked.
>
> Thanks for anyone who could help her. I told  her to register to wikitech-l.


body:
OK. Here's the thing I think you may be missing. People are not smart.
My students would not catch a link to Nihilartikle, or whatever the
name is. They would not think that it's April 1st. They would not
figure out the clues that you are suggesting we leave. They would miss
it. They would fall for the joke.

The problem is that they'd fall for misinformation in an article too.
They're not critical enough. They're not sharp enough to question
everything. And this isn't because they're stupid. It's because, well,
most people aren't smart enough to have well tuned bullshit detectors.

People think our articles have problems. People think Wikipedia is full
of misinformation, hoaxes, and lunacy.

Even if April Fool's articles weren't malicious vandalism, quite
frankly, it's not funny. It's too close to the perceived reality, and
it doesn't make any strides towards parody. of the perceived reality.

-Snowspinner

On Mar 30, 2005, at 2:14 PM, Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Participating in April fools and the phenomena you describe below
> really couldn't be more divorced in my opinion.
>
> Christiaan
>
> On 30 Mar 2005, at 8:48 pm, Snowspinner wrote:
>
>> I meant the suggestion in terms of reputability. I don't think we're
>> seen as having a neo-conservative agenda. But I think we're about as
>> trusted by a lot of people. In fact, I know we are. Five minutes ago,
>> sitting in my office, I heard another TA tell a student not to use
>> Wikipedia as a source because "anyone can edit it" so it must not be
>> reliable. She looked to me for affirmation, and I said that,
>> actually, it's very reliable and that false information gets removed
>> quickly. She wasn't convinced, and told the student not to use it
>> anyway.
>>
>> We can't afford to knowingly post false information. Too many people
>> think we do it already.
>>
>> -Snowspinner
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki redirects disabled

body:
Due to popular demand (I'm told consensus), I've disabled interwiki
redirects on all projects. Also, redirects to special pages are
disabled, which use the same mechanism and so are just as hard to revert.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
April Fool contest idea (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Friday's
	featuredarticle)

body:
I think it would be fun to redirect people to the wrong languages. it would
be both maddening and it would also promote Wikipedia's cross-language
reach.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Rick wrote:

>
>Fooling our readers is not "lightening up", it's
>perpetrating a hoax on them.
>
That's kind of the point of April Fool's, eh?

I think I have a few "strange but true" topics that I can post
on that day, see if any of the humorless have the temerity to
challenge them, sort of a reverse April Fool. Ideally something
with a chapter in a scholarly book but with no Google hits,
heh-heh. Too bad cookiecutter and megamouth sharks are already
done!

Stan


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
I, too, agree with Mav. "April Fools" is not particularly funny anyway and
is exactly the problem that we're trying to fight.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>There's another way:
>>* Agree on a XML standard for wikis
>>* Each wiki system writes a wiki-to-XML and XML-to-wiki function
>>
>>
>I think this doesn't resolve the main issue, which is end-user joy.
>What I hope to do is encourage at least a strong subset of syntax
>which is used universally, so that I can go to any wiki and do some
>basic normal things and have the result be what I want.
>
One of the recent tendencies in Wikimedia projects that strikes me as
hostile to the end user has been the proliferation of the use of
templates, often with multiple levels of nested brackets.

Ec


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 10:19:46AM -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Standard syntax is important for the entire wiki world so that as
> people become more accustomed to using wikis for all kinds of things,
> they can feel comfortable on a variety of platforms.

Another possibility is using a WYSIWYG in-browser editor, so that Wiki
syntax becomes more or less a moot point.

~Evan


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies

body:
Hello,

Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia servers
to block open proxies.

If someone is having troubles to edit now, here are the steps he can do
to solve the problem:
* he first has to determine the IP address wikipedia is blocking, that's
not too hard, it's on the blocking page
* then he has to get someone on another computer to check if it's an
open proxy. the procedure is described here:
http://www.sorbs.net/faq/proxy.shtml
* if it is, then he should complain to whoever controls the server to
fix the configuration
* if not, he should request a retest
(http://www.sorbs.net/faq/retest.shtml) to be taken out of the list. the
status of the proxy might have changed since it was last scanned.

Please translate/forward this to your project to inform people.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Info on SORBS, blocking of open proxies


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:45:45 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I totally agree with Andre here.
>
> I think it's important for us to take a middle path here.  (Big
> surprise coming from me, huh?)  We can't be complete cultural
> relativists and say "anything goes in any wikipedia as long as the
> participants agree" -- this would be the end of neutrality.  At the
> same time, we must not be complete cultural *imperialists* and assume
> that exactly identical decisions have to be made everywhere,
> particularly on sensitive matters that have a strong cultural
> component.

But is it imperialistic to say that one side of the issue does not
have the right to completely exclude the other side with the only
justification being that the one side believes they have a commandment
from god to rid the world of such ideas?

Is it imperialism to ask that others not use the project to suppress
the works of others to further their personal/cultural agenda?

> Andre wrote:
> > A policy that says that we will exclude the same on all languages,
> > says that we don't trust the Wikipedias to make their own choices.
>
> I think that's very well said.

As I said in my reply to Andre, then why do we have rules at all?
It is acceptable to set the ground rules, and ask those who do not
wish to play by the rules to go start their own game... and I think
that a tremendous rule that is baked into wikipedia is the idea of
neutrality, a rule that is violated when we allow some editors to deny
the ability of other editors to contribute useful information due to
personally held ideas on goodness/evilness of the information rather
than reasons not forbidden by our basic rules.

If we accept a group of authors in France erasing the works of other
french wikipedia authors because the majority find the idea
acceptable, then will we allow for the exclusion of evolution when the
larger part of the US biblical literalists movement finally find
wikipedia?


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Walter van Kalken said:
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia
>> servers to block open proxies.
>>
>> If someone is having troubles to edit now, here are the steps he can
>> do to solve the problem:
>> * he first has to determine the IP address wikipedia is blocking,
>> that's not too hard, it's on the blocking page
>> * then he has to get someone on another computer to check if it's an
>> open proxy. the procedure is described here:
>> http://www.sorbs.net/faq/proxy.shtml
>> * if it is, then he should complain to whoever controls the server to
>> fix the configuration
>> * if not, he should request a retest
>> (http://www.sorbs.net/faq/retest.shtml) to be taken out of the list.
>> the status of the proxy might have changed since it was last scanned.
>>
> So we have to go to another project to get unblocked on wikipedia. This
>  is unbelievable and sickening
>

Why do you find this sickening?  This is the internet.  The SORBS
identifies open http proxies, which are usually *not* open through any
choice of the owner, but because the owner has not made them secure.
Using SORBS protects Wikipedia from the negligence of your ISP.


body:
Rick wrote:

> Britannica is online. Does their online version
>
>indulge in foolishness?
>
Yes, they try to compete against us. :-)

Ec


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Syntax standardization effort

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:19:46 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> At ETech in San Francisco, I met with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, and
> we discussed the idea that there should be a central core set of
> standard wiki syntax.  Ross was quite keen on the concept.
>
> Standard syntax is important for the entire wiki world so that as
> people become more accustomed to using wikis for all kinds of things,
> they can feel comfortable on a variety of platforms.
>
> It seems natural to me that as the largest wiki project (and we are
> probably the wiki engine with the most installations, although I have
> no actual way of knowing that), we should take a leadership role in
> this.
>
I would think that you might be correct. Our position would be
improved if we could get an actual (modular) parser running for
MediaWiki wikitext. (MediaWikiText?).

Of course, saying that is not even close to helping to make it happen
... it would be nice to be able to live without sleep, wouldn't it?

-- Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


body:
Andre Engels said:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:29:44 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
> <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>> Why do you find this sickening?  This is the internet.  The SORBS
>> identifies open http proxies, which are usually *not* open through any
>> choice of the owner, but because the owner has not made them secure.
>> Using SORBS protects Wikipedia from the negligence of your ISP.
>
> With the happy side effect of also protecting us from Waerth and a few
> million Thais. Great!</sarcasm>
>

Presumably this is due to the activities of the Thai government rather
than Wikipedia.
I still don't see why it should be regarded as "sickening" that Wikipedia
doesn't provide a one-stop proxy doctoring service.  The developers and
systems people are run off their feet just keeping the servers running.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

body:
Viajero said:
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
>> HOWEVER, I would beg folks not to make it "subtly marked" but rather
>> *obviously marked* at the end.
>>
>> An April Fools joke is only fun when you can blame the reader for
>> missing an obvious doozie that gives it away. Right now, it does not
>> have such a kicker or punchline to let people in on the secret. If we
>> do not, it would amount to devious and malicious intent, which would
>> do a disservice to Wikipedia's reputation.
>
> Wow, this is an amazingly cautious attitude. You are saying we should
> take into account that on *April 1* some naive soul might read the
> text,  miss all the inconguities and jokes, arrive at the bottom, not
> be  explicitly told it is a joke, and blame Wikipedia for deceiving
> them?
>
> I'm ...ah... speechless.

I've been watching this conversation with mounting disbelief.  Somebody
please tell me that the seeming loss of sense of humor on the part of a
number of Wikipedians is all part of a prolonged jape, to be brought to a
hilarous conclusion this Friday.  No?
April fools jokes are traditional.  People reading a joke article on April
1 will not feel unduly put out.  Most of them.  We can just laugh at those
who are. That's the whole point of the exercise--to puncture pretensions,
confound expectations and--dare I say it--have a laugh!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050331 07:10]:
>
>
>>On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:23:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
>><jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Is every editorial disagreement a test of "moral rightness"?  I really
>>>don't see it that way.  Maybe the communication difficulty we are
>>>having surrounds your use of that phrase?
>>>
>>>
>>No, it's only a test of moral rightness if that is the basis behind an
>>editors decisions.. We can't always tell from the outside, but we can
>>ask.  If there is no justification from the large set that we consider
>>valid reasons for changes to the article that can be discussed, then
>>we must assume that the reasoning is based on good/evil judgements.
>>
>>
>Indeed. I really, really doubt that all the people claiming the
>autofellatio pic MUST be a copyright violation therefore MUST be deleted
>NOW would get away with that level of copyright paranoia about *anything*
>else on Wikipedia, and oddly enough I suspect them of other motivations.
>Particularly since, as I understand it, despite much searching no-one has
>actually found anything it's actually a copy of.
>
Assuming that there is a proper owner, I wonder how the courts would
view an action over copyright infringement for use of that picture.

Ec


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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

Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Another possibility is using a WYSIWYG in-browser editor, so that Wiki
> syntax becomes more or less a moot point.

What you see is not always what you get. I prefer editing the source
rather than using a WYSIWIG editor because those tend to add lots of
bloat to files, sometimes to the point where they're unreadable.

- --
Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
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dX6vXmPye/TvYSP2AykLqU4=
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from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] [[tlh:]] language code [[tlh:Special:Recentchanges]]

body:
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 10:43:17 +0100, Reinhardt Wiewe
<reinhardt.wiewe at lenauschule.de> wrote:

> The tlh language code does not generate corectly the "In other languages" links

I believe this was a deliberate (though highly controversial)
compromise in a debate about whether artificial languages - in this
case Klingon, a language originally created for a work of fiction -
should have equal status with "real" languages. (See, for instance,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Artificial_languages_equal_rights)

This e-mail is not intended as an endorsement of any particular view
within that debate, but merely to point out that enabling that
language code should be thought of as a policy issue, rather than a
merely technical one, and therefore only on-topic on this list if and
when a new consensus is reached by the wider community.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Due to popular demand (I'm told consensus), I've disabled interwiki
>redirects on all projects. Also, redirects to special pages are
>disabled, which use the same mechanism and so are just as hard to revert.
>
>-- Tim Starling
>
Just in time! We had a massive page-move vandal attack on cy:wikipedia
between 0203 and 0232 UTC this morning, when users cy:Defnyddiwr:SPUI
and cy:Defnyddiwr:OldakQuill managed to screw up a considerable number
of pages - moving them, then deleting and recreating original  page
names with redirects to en:Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>A few people have hoped that I would weigh in with an opinion.
>
>I'm torn.  I think it's really fun, but we're also a very serious
>project.  So I gave it some thought and I have this idea...
>
>Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
>alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
>our April Fool's Page."
>
>And on that page, we have fun with ourselves... nothing mean spirited
>against each other, but gently having some fun with our quirks.  So
>yes, the feature article can be the european toilet paper page.  But
>we also could have an article about Gdansk
>^h^h^h^hDanzig
>^h^h^h^hGdansk!
>Danzig, dammit!
>
>
A little timid, but not bad. It would require some policing so
that the disgruntled didn't use it to air grievances ("Gdank vs
Danzig? - that's not funny").

There could be a section "Articles We'd Like to See" - I was
thinking of a Tree of Life type article on the [[god-king]],
complete with taxobox showing dual nature, automotive habits
("known to drive Hyundais"), comparing with the closely related
god-emperor, and of course illustrated with a picture of
you-know-who.

Not the true April 1 hoax, but it's well-known that even
Swiftian wit on the net still needs the appended emoticon.

Stan


body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:40:47 +1000, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Almost all of our bot-driven vandalism and spam comes from open proxies.
> And the same open proxies are often used for email, IRC and IM spam. The
> SORBS list only contains proxies which have been used for email spam, so
> next time you see a complaint, think of all the spam you may have
> received from that person. I'd rather encourage the people who run these
> servers to secure them, and only unblock them as a last resort. It's in
> Wikipedia's interests, as well as the interests of the general Internet
> community.

I don't agree. In my opinion, it is more in Wikipedia's interest to
have contributors for Wikipedia than to have people complain about
email spam.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:33:10 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Again, really, this is just extremely over the top.  Tell you what, if
> you go out and find someone in the wikipedia community who says "I
> have the right to complete exclude the other side because I have a
> commandment from god to rid the world of such ideas" then by all means
> drag them in here to the mailing list so we can make fun of them.
>
> It'll be great fun.

It's not over the top, it's calling a spade a spade. There are a
number of people that go around trying to remove images like the
clitoris picture.  I'm sure you've seen some of the edit wars... They
might not directly tell you that they believe they've been commanded
by god, but that is basically what they are saying when their basis is
in their scripture.

... and we already do laugh at them, some of those talk pages and edit
summs are a laugh a minute.

I think the issues have been handled well thus far, at least on the
English wikipedia (the only one I am able to read, since I am multi
linguistically handicapped).  Which is why I'm not bringing in
boatloads of concrete examples the generally process on the bigger
wikipedias appears to be working pretty well.

If we were to say that we will not treat neutrality in other languages
as less important just because fewer people in that language advocate
neutrality,  then I think we are in agreement as this was the heart of
my initial complaint.

> In the meantime, let's try to address the arguments of people who are
> actually engaged in this discussion.  I think that virtually everyone
> comes down along a spectrum in the broad middle which says: (a) there
> are universal standards and (b) there are local cultural
> considerations as well, so that (c) we expect some things to be more
> or less universal, but we can also have some local flavor.

When you say standard here you are talking about a standard that says
which material is good/bad and thus should be included an excluded.

It sounds like you divorce this from keeping a neutral point of view,
but I don't see how that is possible.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:23:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Is every editorial disagreement a test of "moral rightness"?  I really
> don't see it that way.  Maybe the communication difficulty we are
> having surrounds your use of that phrase?

No, it's only a test of moral rightness if that is the basis behind an
editors decisions.. We can't always tell from the outside, but we can
ask.  If there is no justification from the large set that we consider
valid reasons for changes to the article that can be discussed, then
we must assume that the reasoning is based on good/evil judgements.

>From below it seems we're pretty much in agreement on this stuff now.

> Yes, of course.  That appears to be not at risk here at all.  I
> haven't seen anyone say that it's ok to make these decisions based on
> "imposing" a "point of view", nor to say that such decisions need have
> no articulable basis.

When it was discussed at the begining of the thread why we must have
better bounds betwen languages the reasoning given was that what is
offensive in one culture can be offensive in another.

Am I missing something by assuming that "offensive" implies that
someone is imposing a point of view?

If there is another image that can be substuted which provides the
same information, then we can make the substutition based on keeping
the article focused.  If the image is not topical, we can remove it
because it is non-topical.  I don't believe "offensive" is ever useful
as a valid reason to exclude content.

Lets talk about that stupid autofellatio image... I'd been wanting to
avoid it, because I think the concepts here are more interesting than
the practice, but I think it might actually turn out to be a
reasonable example.

I had pointed out to Anthere elsewhere in the thread that the image
conveys knowledge that can not easily be brought out through other
means:  An image shows you that such an act is actually possible. A
drawing doesn't carry the same value.   She agreed that in principal,
I might have a good point... and perhaps we should replace the image
with a similar one which improves upon it in a number of ways (that I
never considered because I don't find it objectionable).   It seems
that there may be a possible solution that improves the situation
without excluding a photograph of a man with his penis in his mouth
from the encyclopedia.

This would remove my concerns about censorship and imposing points of
view... but I strongly doubt it would satisfy even a small percentage
of those that have complained so strongly.

> Yes, I don't think anyone really disagrees with any of this.
>
> At the same time, I don't think anyone would support banning people
> who vote based on "nudity is bad".  It's too big a risk of trouble on
> _other_ grounds if we start declaring that people may not vote or
> discuss unless they give right reasons.  :-)

Well it should be a part of the dispute process... if you can't
support why your position doesn't create NPOV in a matter where it is
accused that your edit creates NPOV, then you should lose the dispute
and be asked not to make those edits.

If someone is unable to follow such a decision, what choice do we have
but to ban?  At that point the editor has become a vandal.

> > work, a standard unlikely to be met for the matters we are
> > discussing... at least in the case where the contributor is honestly
> > trying to enhance the value of the encyclopedia, rather than a troll.
>
> Yes, of course.
>
> But the point is, the decision taken in the end might differ across
> different wikipedias for reasons of culture, or perhaps even for
> reasons very very local to that editing community's history.  We need
> not impose uniformity everywhere.

Uniformity of outcome or uniformity of procedure and requirements?

There might be differing outcomes, but I think we should uniformly
reject actions based only on pushing a POV.

To get to this goal we must hold all languages to the same standard of
neutrality, and make sure that the idea of neutrality is well
explained in every language.  For this we have be currently left
largely at the mercy of those who are interested in each of the
languages... but the basic rules are a project matter, not a language
matter.   It would make sense to ask participants in every culture and
language to occasionally check on all the others to keep everyone
honest with respect to the basic rules.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] incidently, talking about big principles...

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:48:23 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I thought I was working for a project trying to gather
> free content so as to make free knowledge available ?
>
> So why are we using copyrighted pictures ?
>
> "This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder
> allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that
>  the copyright holder and image provider are credited.
>
> Image provided by hornyboy.com and copyright held by
> RudeBox Media, Inc."

"The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose,
provided that  the copyright holder and image provider are credited."

That is, the image is freely usable when giving the name of the
copyright holder. That's about as free as it gets without getting into
public domain. If we do not use copyrighted pictures, we should remove
those pictures under the GNU/FDL too. They are also copyrighted, but
the author allows their usage under certain preconditions. The same is
going on here, only the preconditions are less stringent.

Andre Engels


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Viajero said:
>
>>Andrew Lih wrote:
>>
>>
>>>HOWEVER, I would beg folks not to make it "subtly marked" but rather
>>>*obviously marked* at the end.
>>>
>>>An April Fools joke is only fun when you can blame the reader for
>>>missing an obvious doozie that gives it away. Right now, it does not
>>>have such a kicker or punchline to let people in on the secret. If we
>>>do not, it would amount to devious and malicious intent, which would
>>>do a disservice to Wikipedia's reputation.
>>
>>Wow, this is an amazingly cautious attitude. You are saying we should
>>take into account that on *April 1* some naive soul might read the
>>text,  miss all the inconguities and jokes, arrive at the bottom, not
>>be  explicitly told it is a joke, and blame Wikipedia for deceiving
>>them?
>>
>>I'm ...ah... speechless.
>
>
> I've been watching this conversation with mounting disbelief.  Somebody
> please tell me that the seeming loss of sense of humor on the part of a
> number of Wikipedians is all part of a prolonged jape, to be brought to a
> hilarous conclusion this Friday.  No?
> April fools jokes are traditional.  People reading a joke article on April
> 1 will not feel unduly put out.  Most of them.  We can just laugh at those
> who are. That's the whole point of the exercise--to puncture pretensions,
> confound expectations and--dare I say it--have a laugh!

Indeed, there seems to be a po-faced faction who delight in removing any
vestige of humour from Wikipedia, even though it is appropriate in many
places, [[Official Monster Raving Looney Party]] for example. Does
anyone remember the argument about the minor joke in a picture caption
in [[London Congestion Charge]] a year or two ago?

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


body:
Violet/Riga wrote:

>May I remind people that the hoax must be done before midday otherwise
>"you become the fool".  That might lessen the impact of the hoax.
>
>
On the net, April Fools effectively lasts about 48 hours, since
companies and other organization often time their joke press
releases to be sent out at specific local times.

The net-savvy stay on their toes for an additional couple days too,
because of propagation delays in some channels (such as mail digests).

Stan (who remembers being suspicious that a national figure like
Chernenko had even heard of Usenet, let alone sent it a note...)


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote

> Given the controversial
> nature of our reliability, this stunt will likely harm us more than it is
> worth.

Or make the point that our articles, by their openly-editable nature, have
always to be read critically rather than passively.

Well, I don't feel strongly that an April Fool _should_ be tried; but I
think it would speak to WP's self-confidence, rather than anything else.

Charles


body:
Daniel Mayer said:
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> April fools jokes are traditional.
>
> And what evidence do you have that respected encyclopedias have done
> this? I see no tradition there but please prove me wrong.

You're being unreasonable by demanding that a tradition cannot apply to
Wikipedia unless it also applies to "respected encyclopedias."
There are no encyclopedias like Wikipedia.  Britannica and Encarta don't
change from one day to the next.

> Given the
> controversial nature of our reliability, this stunt will likely harm us
> more than it is worth.

Nonsense. The European toilet paper holder article proposed is a
transparent hoax and quite harmless.  That Wikipedia cannot ever be more
reliable than its latest edit is intuitively understood by all readers, so
let's not foster the false impression that the situation is otherwise.


body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:14:05 +0700, Walter van Kalken
<walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> So we have to go to another project to get unblocked on wikipedia. This
> is unbelievable and sickening

Actually, in your case you need to first singlehandedly change
Thailand's biggest ISP and THEN go to another project.

Andre Engels


body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:29:44 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:

> Why do you find this sickening?  This is the internet.  The SORBS
> identifies open http proxies, which are usually *not* open through any
> choice of the owner, but because the owner has not made them secure.
> Using SORBS protects Wikipedia from the negligence of your ISP.

With the happy side effect of also protecting us from Waerth and a few
million Thais. Great!</sarcasm>

Andre Engels


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:32:27 -0500, Mark Pellegrini
<mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> After seeing what some people have said WRT other major media
> orgainzations doing April Fools hoaxes (the NYT and BBC) I've softened
> my position a bit. I'll go along with it if Mav does -- I'm still wary
> of putting a hoax article up, but as long as it is
> subtly marked as such, I'm OK with it (someone suggested putting it up
> as 'Today's featured [[nihilartikle]]")

Seems the consensus on Talk:FAC is to have the European Toilet Paper
Holder be the April 1 article. Personally, the idea of planned
disinformation in Wikipedia gives me the creeps (I'm with Mav and
Raul), but if it's time limited, it could be tolerated.

HOWEVER, I would beg folks not to make it "subtly marked" but rather
*obviously marked* at the end.

An April Fools joke is only fun when you can blame the reader for
missing an obvious doozie that gives it away. Right now, it does not
have such a kicker or punchline to let people in on the secret. If we
do not, it would amount to devious and malicious intent, which would
do a disservice to Wikipedia's reputation.

As an aside, the EPTH article takes way too long to get to the joke.

{{spoiler}}
Other media outlets do partake of this tradition. Scientific American
did a piece this year for April 2005, and at the end they made it very
clear at the end of the piece by saying they'll start something "April
1." If you want to see it: http://tinyurl.com/3kf3e. Otherwise, don't.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

PS: /me goes to add the obligatory, "But of course, the Chinese
invented it first" line to the EPTH article, regardless of whether I
believe it being a FA

>
> I'd also like to hear Jimbo weigh in on this.
>
> --Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:27:38 +1000, David Gerard
> Indeed. I really, really doubt that all the people claiming the
> autofellatio pic MUST be a copyright violation therefore MUST be deleted
> NOW would get away with that level of copyright paranoia about *anything*
> else on Wikipedia, and oddly enough I suspect them of other motivations.
> Particularly since, as I understand it, despite much searching no-one has
> actually found anything it's actually a copy of.

Yea, I already tried pushing copyright paranoia. No one buys it. ;)

Since were now all claiming that it isn't a censorship or neutrality
thing, I think I will endeavor to make a replacement photograph to
test this theory.


body:
Gregory Maxwell said:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:30:35 -0500, Evan Prodromou <evan at bad.dynu.ca>
> wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 03:21:13PM +0200, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>>
>> > Since yesterday the blocklist of SORBS is used on the wikimedia
>> > servers to block open proxies.
>>
>> SORBS is for email proxies, isn't it?
>>
>> What's the advantage of blocking open email proxies from using
>> Wikimedia sites?
>
> SORBS also maintains a list of open web proxies.. since web based
> spamming has become a large issue as well.. (think blogs and wikis)

The FAQ URL that someone cited seems to demonstrate a technique that can
be used by a spammer to use an open http proxy to get trusted access to an
email server on the same system, bypassing the relay rules and
compromising the mail server.  This is pretty serious stuff.  Web proxies
*should not* be open.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:40:25 -0500, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:27:38 +1000, David Gerard
> > Indeed. I really, really doubt that all the people claiming the
> > autofellatio pic MUST be a copyright violation therefore MUST be deleted
> > NOW would get away with that level of copyright paranoia about *anything*
> > else on Wikipedia, and oddly enough I suspect them of other motivations.
> > Particularly since, as I understand it, despite much searching no-one has
> > actually found anything it's actually a copy of.
>
> Yea, I already tried pushing copyright paranoia. No one buys it. ;)
>
> Since were now all claiming that it isn't a censorship or neutrality
> thing, I think I will endeavor to make a replacement photograph to
> test this theory.

Oh, never mind! I see that there is already a free one!

Thank you mr. anonymous penis sucker.


from_name: Viajero

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> HOWEVER, I would beg folks not to make it "subtly marked" but rather
> *obviously marked* at the end.
>
> An April Fools joke is only fun when you can blame the reader for
> missing an obvious doozie that gives it away. Right now, it does not
> have such a kicker or punchline to let people in on the secret. If we
> do not, it would amount to devious and malicious intent, which would
> do a disservice to Wikipedia's reputation.

Wow, this is an amazingly cautious attitude. You are saying we should
take into account that on *April 1* some naive soul might read the text,
miss all the inconguities and jokes, arrive at the bottom, not be
explicitly told it is a joke, and blame Wikipedia for deceiving them?

I'm ...ah... speechless.

V.


from_name: Huikeshoven, A.H.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia projects in Papiamentu en Sranang Tongo

body:
The Dutch are progressing in creating a chapter of the Wikimedia
Foundation. A Wiki-site to support the initiative is live for a week now
at http://nl.wikimedia.org/ The domain wikimedia.nl has been squatted by
Sam van Buuren on January 25th, 2005. We'll have to reclaim that.

The Netherlands Antilles are still a country of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands (as is Aruba). Their official language is Papiamentu,
ISO-639 code is PAP. Surinam is a former colony of the Netherlands. Half
their population is living in the Netherlands. Their tongue is Sranang
Tongo, ISO-639 code presumed to be SRN. The Dutch Wikimedia chapter to
be incorporated will have as mission to support all projects run by
people in the Netherlands regardless of language. Frysian and Limurgian
projects (fy and li) have already been started. There are no projects in
Papiamentu or Sranang Tongo yet.

We would like to establish an initial framework for these two languages
to provide a head start to these communities. Waerth pushed me to take
the first step.

Dedalus

_________________________________________________________

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This message shall not constitute any obligations.

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body:
Daniel Mayer said:
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> You're being unreasonable by demanding that a tradition cannot apply
>> to Wikipedia unless it also applies to "respected encyclopedias."
>> There are no encyclopedias like Wikipedia.  Britannica and Encarta
>> don't change from one day to the next.
>
> You are the one that said this was a tradition. I called you on that.

Clearly you misunderstood me.  April Fools is a longstanding tradition.
The fact that "respected encyclopedias" do not have the opportunity to
indulge in it is neither here nor there.
[...]

>
> That is not an article. If I find it or any other hoax in the article
> namespace, then I'll delete it on sight (might move it to BJAODN).
>

Then the joke is on you.  Lighten up.


body:
Richard Holton said:
>
> When I first saw the article, as a result of Viajero's original post, I
> was not thinking about April Fool's. I *glanced* at the article, and
> saw what appeared to be a very detailed, well-documented article about
> a very obscure subject -- just the sort of thing we want Wikipedia to
> have. Had I known someone with an interest in this arcane topic, I
> might have pointed them to the page, or printed a copy and handed it to
> them. Would they have immediately known this to be an April Fool's
> joke? On reading it, they would conclude that it was not a serious
> article, but would they know it was intentionally included in
> Wikipedia as a joke for all to see? Or would they assume that some
> knucklehead had added the article and no one had yet discovered it to
> remove it?

If you care to read the article in question you'll see that it's a pretty
blatant joke article.  It wouldn't be a joke if it wasn't superficially
serious with absolutely ludicrous innards.


body:
Alphax said:
>>
> Agree with above. I think having a *very* obvious link to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer (with a
> section "Anything you see on April 1st could be a joke", or similar")
> would be a good idea.

Too broad.  Just pop a datestamp at the top of the article and protect it
from editing.  The nonstandard appearance may also help to distinguish it
from real articles.


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
On 3/30/05 4:21 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> Just for fun, why don't we have a game on Friday to create an
>> alternative main page, linked from the main page?  "Click here to see
>> our April Fool's Page."
>
> I think that is a great idea. :)
>
I think it's profoundly lame.

An April Fool's joke that can't fool anybody is not an April Fool's joke.

Thus the word "fool".


from_name: Andreas Hoerstemeier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Interwiki redirects disabled

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:
> Just in time! We had a massive page-move vandal attack on cy:wikipedia
> between 0203 and 0232 UTC this morning, when users cy:Defnyddiwr:SPUI
> and cy:Defnyddiwr:OldakQuill managed to screw up a considerable number
> of pages - moving them, then deleting and recreating original  page
> names with redirects to en:Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg
And probably the same vandal also created a lot of chaos on the Klingon
Wikipedia, many changes now need an admin to delete the pages blocking
the simple move back. Apparently that vandal now prefers the small WPs,
where he can do his sick work without being disturbed by admins lurking
the recent changes.

And yes, it was time to switch off this feature, even though the vandals
will find new ways of creating havoc.

[[en:User:Ahoerstemeier]]


from_name: Mark Williamson

references:
<d2dape$d4u$1@sea.gmane.org> <424ABEDF.20507@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<20050330211154.GJ23009@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<424B2AC3.9090100@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
Arwel: It's a good idea. Do you already have it enabled in Welsh
though (ie bilingual), or are they all in English currently?

I think that would massively cut down on the amount of redirect vandalism.

Similarly, if the interface of aa.wikipedia were actually in Afar,
people would stop using it for their stupid tests.

Speaking of which, a lot of people who make new pages on inactive
Wikipedias seem to have typed the URL wrong. For example, if somebody
meant to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa, they might
accidentally go to http://dz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzlapaapa and then not
realise they're actually at the Druk Yul (dragon language) Wikipedia.

Mark

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:40:03 +0100, Arwel Parry
<arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050331 00:59]:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Just in time! We had a massive page-move vandal attack on cy:wikipedia
> >>between 0203 and 0232 UTC this morning, when users cy:Defnyddiwr:SPUI
> >>and cy:Defnyddiwr:OldakQuill managed to screw up a considerable number
> >>of pages - moving them, then deleting and recreating original  page
> >>names with redirects to en:Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >By the way, I've put up what appears to be the first ever mirror site for
> >cy: Wikipedia: http://factsite.co.uk/cy/ . I plan to mirror all the British
> >native languages. Currently having fun wrestling with the en: SQL dump ...
> >
> >
> >- d.
> >
> >
> >
> Nice! :)  By the way, it's Wicipedia Cymraeg, not Cymraeg Wicipedia -
> the subject comes before any qualifiers.
>
> After spending five hours straightening out cy.wikipedia today, Deb and
> I were wondering if it would be worthwhile / possible to remove the
> #redirect command in English, so that potential non-Welsh-speaking
> vandals would at least have to learn what the Welsh for "redirect"
> actually is before they try to screw up the database.
>
> --
> Arwel Parry
> http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
They'd have to stop laughing first.

Mark

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:48:37 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050331 07:10]:
> >
> >
> >>On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:23:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
> >><jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Is every editorial disagreement a test of "moral rightness"?  I really
> >>>don't see it that way.  Maybe the communication difficulty we are
> >>>having surrounds your use of that phrase?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>No, it's only a test of moral rightness if that is the basis behind an
> >>editors decisions.. We can't always tell from the outside, but we can
> >>ask.  If there is no justification from the large set that we consider
> >>valid reasons for changes to the article that can be discussed, then
> >>we must assume that the reasoning is based on good/evil judgements.
> >>
> >>
> >Indeed. I really, really doubt that all the people claiming the
> >autofellatio pic MUST be a copyright violation therefore MUST be deleted
> >NOW would get away with that level of copyright paranoia about *anything*
> >else on Wikipedia, and oddly enough I suspect them of other motivations.
> >Particularly since, as I understand it, despite much searching no-one has
> >actually found anything it's actually a copy of.
> >
> Assuming that there is a proper owner, I wonder how the courts would
> view an action over copyright infringement for use of that picture.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Walter van Kalken said:
>
>>compromising the mail server.  This is pretty serious stuff.  Web
>>proxies *should not* be open.
>>
>>
>>
> In your rosy world yes. Now try real world Millions of people are in
> countries were their providers do not care about this. Nor will they
> care because they do not have to listen to normal people. Thailand is
> such a country. Count the rest of SEA and China in there as well. Not
> all will be using open proxies though. But fact is as opposed to
> Western  countries, in most Asian countries you cannot complain to
> companies as  they'll tell you to shove it. Even western companies like
> JW Marriott do  the same. They have double roomrate one if your Asian
> one if your white.  It is common practice here. People complained to JW
> Marriott in
> Thailand. They told them to shove it. So people threatened lawsuit
> against parentcompany than they bowed down. But JWM is foreign owned so
>  you can threaten with that. Most IP's in this region are not.
>

All of the above is no reason for Wikipedia to permit compromisable
proxies to post.  We'd be just spreading the problem outside Thailand and
into the rest of the net.  Believe me, there's nothing rosy about my view,
I'm just determined not to permit bad practises in one or two countries to
degrade the whole internet.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd:technical problem

body:
> Forwarded from WikiEN-l
 >
> For the past few days, whenever I hit "user contributions" I am taken to my
> user contribution page, BUT the most recent contribution listed is from
> 19:05, 27 Mar 2005 (I have made many edits since then).  Also, it seems to
> have logged me out in the process, as "create an account/log in" appears in
> the upper right-hand corner of my screen (in place of the usual choices:
> Slrubenstein My talk Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log
> out).  When I log back in, and try to go the "user contributions," the same
> thing happens.

I see contributions up through March 30 at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Slrubenstein

Tell the good professor to try clearing his web browser's cache and see
if it makes a difference...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Store third party extensions in MediaWiki CVS?

body:
Michael Keppler wrote:
> I have written an extension to give sysops the ability to change user
> passwords as our intranet doesn't allow mails from other applications
> than Lotus Notes, so password mailing is not possible.
>
> I'd like to know if it is possible to have the source of such a "third
> party" extension stored in the MediaWiki CVS if it is published under
> GPL and/or contributed to the MediaWiki project. I could also make that
> a sourceforge project but I guess that an extension is more easily found
> and used by others if it is contained in the official CVS. If there are
> additional conditions (like code reviews, certificate of no criminal
> record :) I'd be happy to check if I can fulfill them.

Sure, a GPL-family or BSD/MIT-family license would be fine. We've got a
number of extensions in the extensions module in our CVS, some written
by the main MW devs and some not.

I do like to make sure that anything in our extensions module is safe to
have sitting around when not in use (eg if the whole module is checked
out and sitting in the web root, even if none of them are enabled in the
wiki's configuration) so expect at least a light code review for basic
security.

> I'm also in the process of converting my external "wikifyer" script into
> an extension. It makes suggestions which words on a page can be wikified
> (based on which other page titles exist in the wiki) and edits pages
> based on the users decision which links to add. The current script can
> already be used from an external page for the German wikipedia. I'd like
> to contribute that extension to the MediaWiki project too. Anybody
> interested in such a thing?

[[I]] don't [[know]] [[about]] [[that]]; [[we]] [[have]] [[so]] [[many]]
[[pages]] [[in]] [[our]] [[Wikis]]. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia == Fox News (was: Friday's featured article)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [050331 04:37]:
>
>
>
>>Did Wikinews plan to run a story about such a merger for April 1? :-)
>>
>>
>
>Presumably also merging with the Guardian for appropriate transatlantic and
>political balance. And fairness!
>
>
>
No, just Fox. Why would Wikinews want to merge with some
foreign-language European thing anyway? All the articles would need to
be translated into English, such a waste of effort.


body:
Richard Holton wrote:

> When I first saw the article, as a result of Viajero's original post,
> I was not thinking about April Fool's. I *glanced* at the article, and
> saw what appeared to be a very detailed, well-documented article about
> a very obscure subject -- just the sort of thing we want Wikipedia to
> have.

I purposely didn't mention that this coming Friday was April 1, for this
very reason. ;)

V.


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day

body:
Bishonen wrote:

>Andy Roberts wrote on 2005/03/31 01:25:
>
>
>>Reading this thread reminds me of the fact that the american
>>dictionary doesn't have an entry for the word irony.   Very sad.
>>
>>--
>>Andy Roberts
>>
>>
>
>Not getting it, sorry.
>
The joke, if I may spoil it by explaining (now that everyone's probably
read it by the time they reach this email in their inboxes) is that
American dictionaries _do_ have an entry for the word "irony". Andy just
made a silly statement in a totally deadpan manner, and the point of the
humor is to have the reader pause for a moment going "wait... is that
right? That can't be right. Nah, of course not, that's silly."

I think the point is that this is the sort of  joke that is considered
"proper" for April Fool's Day, and if that's the point then I quite
agree. A link that explicitly says "click here for wacky zany silliness
that we made up for April Fool's Day!" spoils the joke before it's even
made, IMO, and while I wouldn't object to something like that I'd also
be uninterested in contributing to it. An April Fool's article doesn't
have to be subtle, take a look at some of the classics like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_tree for example, but it should
at least be played straight.


body:
Daniel Mayer said:
> The process by which we create the encyclopedia this encyclopedia is
> irrelevant.

Obviously not.  This is the only encyclopedia in which it's possible for a
random editor to create an article with the name "Daniel Mayer needs to
remember that this is a Wiki".  I don't know how long you expect to get
away with this odd pretense that Wikipedia is like other encyclopedias.


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > How many "respected encyclopedias" are updated on a day-by-day basis
> > like Wikipedia is, with a front page that shows current events within
> > minutes of their happening and then the next day replaces them with
> > something else newer?
>
> The process by which we create the encyclopedia this encyclopedia is
> irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is an encyclopedia (the mass majority
> of our users never edit).

The process is entirely relevant. Wikipedia would be a very poor encylopedia
indeed without its Wiki-based community -- Nupedia? Your argument here makes
little sense -- you might equally say that we should remove the "Edit this
page" link because "no other reputable encyclopedia has it".

Fun brings the community together, and the community builds the encyclopedia.
If the joke is harmless and transient, I don't see how we lose here.

-- Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Brian Ingerson

body:
Hi all,

I work for Ross Mayfield at Socialtext (and also created Kwiki). Ross
asked me to comment on this thread.

I'm new to this list but i read through the thread. I would closely
align with Eric's thoughts below and have a few things to add...

> Jimmy,
>
> I think a combined approach is the most promising:
>
> 1) a single XML exchange format

This is the key. The key is to have a standard semantic model, and be
able to roundtrip documents in any given syntax through that model.

And it really has nothing to do with XML per se. It just so happens that
XML and XML/Schema (or DTD) is a well understood way to define such a
model.

You need to have a model before you can seriously think about moving to
a WYSIWYG option. The nice thing about plain text is that it is easy to
see when the underlying semantics are going south and to refactor. With
WYSIWYG the semantics of a document are very much hidden since the WYS
part is just the resultant presentation. The WYG part can become a
tangled mess. And that means you can't do anything interesting with the
page except look at it in your browser.

But once you have a model and you can validate that a page in any syntax
(including a WYSIWYG one) fits the standard semantic model (the one we
should be defining here) then you are all set. The syntax side becomes
nearly irrelevant, since you can flip between any of the compliant
dialects without losing any information.

I can imagine a new wave of wikis that allow each user to chose the
syntax that they edit documents in. And they can change to any other
syntax at anytime. How the data is actually stored is not important.

> 2) multiple wikitext standards based on families of existing wiki
> syntaxes sharing the largest similarities.
>
> For example, several wikis use a "UseMod-like" syntax, and it would not
> be very difficult to standardize within that group. It would be much
> more difficult to get, say, both PhpWiki and MediaWiki to use a shared
> syntax. The practical difficulties with switching an entire wiki engine
> to a new syntax should not be underestimated.

Right.

If any wiki implementors are going to budge in regards to migrating
towards a standard syntax, there must be many choices at first. You'll be much
more inclined to budge towards something that is close to what you already
have.

Think about standarding the natural languages of the world. It will never
happen. The best you could hope for is combining similar ones.

> Once we have these group standards sorted out, we could try to merge
> them further.

Right. And if users can select their own interoperable dialect then maybe
we'll just see folks migrating towards a best one rather than having it
mandated to them by some powers that be...

Cheers, Brian


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
> > I just think it's quite unfortunate if Wikipedia
> > takes itself so seriously that it fears to do what institutions like, say,
> the BBC
> > are quite happy to do.
>
> Again, I have not seen a single example of a respected encyclopedia doing this.
> Give me one example and I'll stop complaining. Wikipedia in particular needs to
> be sensitive to this type of thing due to our high profile and given the many
> misgivings about our reliability.
>
> -- mav

Britannica is proud of its new articles but these are long overdue.
The whole point of Wikipedia is listing stuff as it changes. Real life
"book-encyclopedias" can't do April Fool's jokes because they don't
update daily.


body:
Stan Shebs wrote

> Now to be serious about April Fools.

To do that, I suggest a [[Saturnalia]].  Just for a day we give admin powers
to 400 anons.  Real sysops can't use them.  Inclusionists will be forced to
vote to delete important pieces of fancruft.  We all treat Jimbo like a
newbie, the rest of us are God-Kings and God-Queens for a day.  No one is
allowed to edit their own User page.  The Village Pump will flow with wine.
All pages based on Larry's Text will be reverted to the originals ...

Need I go on?  The AF suggestions so far have been quite modest.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Deathphoenix wrote:

> Or perhaps [[exploding whale]]. There are plenty of articles we could
> use. The problem is, with an article like that posted on April Fool's,
> we run the risk of people actually believing that the article is a
> fake, when in fact, it's not.

Yeah, the "did you know" section taken entirely from
[[Wikipedia:Unusual_articles]] is a good idea along these lines
(exploding whale was already a featured article in November 7, 2004 so
we'd want to pick a new one anyway). People believing they're fake could
almost be a sort of meta-hoax, even. Wonder if we could add a poll for
new readers at the end of each - "do you believe this article?" - to
gage our street cred. :)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...

body:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468147969 at N01/7565188/

:-)

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Our beloved leader...


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] graphviz extension -- can we have this ?

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

Moin,

On Tuesday 29 March 2005 21:09, Thomas Gries wrote:
> http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension#How_to_make_au
>tolinks_.28all_nodes.29
>
>
> Graphviz is well known in the community of "Graph Drawing".

But that might not be the people who add/edit graphs on wikipedia :)

> It allows "auto-linking" for all nodes in a graph, which do not have an
> URL tag given by the page editor: because all nodes X, Y, Z ...
> automatically become links to wiki pages X, Y, Z ... Very useful for
> mediawikis and wikipedia.

<graph> does allow just the same:

Please see: http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/test.html#syntax_0240.txt

 <graph>
 # Clickable links and mouse-over titles:
 graph { linkbase: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ }
 node { autolink: label; autotitle: label; }

 [ Bonn ] --> [ Berlin ]
 </graph>

 :o)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Mar 30 19:29:53 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "...pornographic images stay in the brain forever." -- Mary Anne Layden;
 "That's a feature, not a bug." -- God

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body:
Phil Sandifer a.k.a. Snowspinner wrote:

 > A lot of people still see us as Fox News.

Does anyone else find this a deeply disturbing suggestion? I for one
would disassociate myself from this undertaking sooner rather than later
if I thought this assertion was true. Can Mr Sandifer cite any evidence
to support this exceedingly provocative statement?

V.