subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dumps by mail

body:
At 11:50 -0500 13/10/05, Jeremy Dunck wrote:
>On 10/13/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  In particular, two people (Gordon Joly and Fernanda Viegas) have asked
>>  me in the last week if there were such an option.
>
>What would be an appropriate price markup for this?
>
>And where are those two folks?

I think I misunderstood this thread when I emailed SJ offlist....

:-)

No matter.

***

I am currently working with a general mysql database backup suite
written in PHP4, which does offer a "mail me the data" option, as
well as option to FTP the "backup archive" to distinct server.

However, the software is no longer being developed, as far as I can
see, and has the limitations of PHP (memory). It works well for small
datasets, but I am having a problem with larger datasets possibly due
to server configurations beyond my control.

Here is a flavour for what happens....

******************************************************************
MySQL database backup $Revision: 1.22 $
Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 by Alain Wolf, Zurich - Switzerland
Website: http://restkultur.ch/personal/wolf/scripts/db_backup/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PHP 4.3.2 - SAPI: apache2filter - OS: Linux - PHP Safe-Mode: Off
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting backup on www.dead-pubs-society.org.uk
Friday 14. October 2005 09:54 BST
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration Settings:
Backup to: /dead-pubs-society.org.uk/wiki_data
Weekly Backup: No
Monthly Backup: No
Keeping daily backups for 7 days
Keeping weekly backups for 4 weeks
Keeping monthly backups for 3 months
Archiving SQL files: Yes
Archive filename prefix:
Remove SQL-files after archiving: Yes
Compress archive-file: Yes
Send reports by email: Yes
Send backup archive by email: No
Send email message to: brew.master at dead-pubs-society.org.uk
Upload backup archive to FTP server: No
----------------------------------------------------------------------
09:54:29: Diskspace used by MySQL database backup files: 941.8 KB
----------------------------------------------------------------------
09:54:29: Beginning backup of MySQL database msx1db22a63 ...
-----------------------------------------------------------

******************************************************************

Here is the start of the README file

  -------------
     MySQL database backup is a database backup script written in PHP4.

     Most people will used it to have a daily snapshot of the dynamic data
     on their website. (e.g. content management systems, forums,
     guestbooks etc.)

     The script reads all tables in the MySQL databases you coose and
     exports (dumps) them in SQL files.

     The generated SQL files can be used to rebuild the tables on any
     other MySQL database or server or on the same server in case of data-
     loss.

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

See  http://restkultur.ch/personal/wolf/scripts/db_backup/

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
On 10/13/05, actionforum at comcast.net <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote:
> On the pages I watch, they seem to be anon proxies.  Sometimes they will legimately make good faith edits, after inserting some nonsense, remember to remove the nonsense at the time.  Using the proxies, usually implies some level of sophistation, unlike  a true novice.
>
> There are anon proxies that will switch to a new proxy on the list with practically every web access.  I've seen the IP address of the ANON change, yet the garbage get removed  within a minute or two, by the new IP, and the new IP only has that edit in their contrib list.  I think it would be a painful way to operate, because you'd either have to note what IP you used when you last visited the page, or perhaps see two anon edits in a row, and check to see if that diff, was consistent with what you would have done.  Then you could diff from that point to the current version to see the changes, since your last visit.

I think what you're seeing is AOL in action.  AOL users get a new IP
address just about every time they load a web page.  Makes blocking
vandals from there a bit tricky.

--
Mark Wagner
[[User:Carnildo]]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding page view restrictions

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

Moin,

On Friday 14 October 2005 01:30, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Sechan, Gabe wrote:
> > I'm using MediaWiki to create a corporate wiki, and need to allow
> > access to certain pages only to certain groups.  I don't see full
> > support for this in MediaWiki as of 1.4.11
>
> There is no support for that in MediaWiki; I recommend you use some
> other product which suits your requirements.

And why not add it to MediaWiki? *puzzled*

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Oct 14 10:10:54 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Firefox: What are you trying to tell me, that I can block pop-ups?
 Morpheus: I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have
 to.
   -- Skyshadow (508) on 2004-11-30 at /.

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from_name: Amruta Lonkar

subject: [Wikitech-l] adding pages to a namespace

body:
I am trying to add references in such a way that

1) i have added a button in the toolbar that should open a form for user to
enter the citation info, and enter a no for this info in the article. When the
user saves the page the citations will be added at the end in the order that
they appear in the article.

2)Each of thses will be links with their own page and talk page.

3) I think the 2nd part will be similar to working of the category namespace.

Can anyone please tell me how i can open a pop up form when a butotn in the
toolbar is clicked. I am stuck at that right now. Also how do i add pages to
the cctaegory namespace automatically?

Thanks,

--
Amruta


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: new CheckUser proposal up

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Yes, that's what I mean :-) Basically I have access because I have
>> some idea what the IP numbers mean, and Tim thinks I can be trusted
>> not to reveal data unduly (and I think I can too). As what we're
>> talking about is really a site maintenance/administration function
>> (which is OK within the privacy policy), we need people we can trust
>> that much.
>
> I would like to see any people who have access to this kind of
> information, IP addresses and the suchlike, to sign some kind of legal
> document saying they cannot reveal this information.
>
> Having a legal document between the Wikimedia Foundation and people
> with access to this data would increase people's confidence in the
> system, as there would be ways to prevent abuses, and people would be
> able to see that this kind of information is safe.

As much as I support the need and importance of protecting personal
privacy, I think that this request is totally unrealistic.  People will
respect that privacy because it's the right thing to do, and not because
of some legal document.

Those who want to reveal that information will do it without regard to a
legal document.  If they do what do you propose doing about it?  Are you
prepared to go halfway around the world to start some dubious lawsuit?
Such a document will only produce an illusion of safety.

Ec


from_name: Jonathan ILIAS

body:
Tels a ?crit :
>>>I'm using MediaWiki to create a corporate wiki, and need to allow
>>>access to certain pages only to certain groups.  I don't see full
>>>support for this in MediaWiki as of 1.4.11
>>
>>There is no support for that in MediaWiki; I recommend you use some
>>other product which suits your requirements.
>
>
> And why not add it to MediaWiki? *puzzled*

Here is the technical reason I identified :
- If page view can be deactivated, page inclusion is still possible as a
template like this : {{:MyPage}}. Maybe the way to forbid page inclusion
need less trivial hack than forbidding page view

I thnik the ethical reason why Mediawiki do not provide this feature is
that, as long as some pages needs to be unmodifiable, the "open" side of
the project require that nothing is hidden.

But, like you, I need the same feature. Mediawiki is popular in many
enterprises and organisation, maybe because it has a lot of features
(maybe the most of all wiki engines). But in the private area, some
requirements are really different than Wikimedia ones, of course. This
is why I understand Mediawiki developpers don't spend time on this. But
maybe you (mediawiki main developpers) already identified all
modifications that is needed to implement this feature.

This way, anybody that want this feature (maybe me at some time) would
do this work.

Regards
--
Jonathan ILIAS, assistant p?dagogique
http://www.eseo.fr/~jilias/
ESEO
4, rue Merlet de la Boulaye
BP 30926 - 49009 ANGERS cedex 01 - FRANCE
t?l : 02 41 86 67 60


from_name: MaPhi Werner

body:
Whoever is interested in this kind of feature might want to take a look
at the inofficial patch:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1924

Regards, MaPhi

Jonathan ILIAS wrote:
> Tels a ?crit :
>
>>>> I'm using MediaWiki to create a corporate wiki, and need to allow
>>>> access to certain pages only to certain groups.  I don't see full
>>>> support for this in MediaWiki as of 1.4.11
>>>
>>>
>>> There is no support for that in MediaWiki; I recommend you use some
>>> other product which suits your requirements.
>>
>>
>>
>> And why not add it to MediaWiki? *puzzled*
>
>
> Here is the technical reason I identified :
> - If page view can be deactivated, page inclusion is still possible as a
> template like this : {{:MyPage}}. Maybe the way to forbid page inclusion
> need less trivial hack than forbidding page view
>
> I thnik the ethical reason why Mediawiki do not provide this feature is
> that, as long as some pages needs to be unmodifiable, the "open" side of
> the project require that nothing is hidden.
>
>
> But, like you, I need the same feature. Mediawiki is popular in many
> enterprises and organisation, maybe because it has a lot of features
> (maybe the most of all wiki engines). But in the private area, some
> requirements are really different than Wikimedia ones, of course. This
> is why I understand Mediawiki developpers don't spend time on this. But
> maybe you (mediawiki main developpers) already identified all
> modifications that is needed to implement this feature.
>
> This way, anybody that want this feature (maybe me at some time) would
> do this work.
>
>
> Regards


from_name: Carl Witty

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 23:31 +0000, actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> On the pages I watch, they seem to be anon proxies.  Sometimes they will legimately make good faith edits, after inserting some nonsense, remember to remove the nonsense at the time.  Using the proxies, usually implies some level of sophistation, unlike  a true novice.
>
> There are anon proxies that will switch to a new proxy on the list with practically every web access.  I've seen the IP address of the ANON change, yet the garbage get removed  within a minute or two, by the new IP, and the new IP only has that edit in their contrib list.  I think it would be a painful way to operate, because you'd either have to note what IP you used when you last visited the page, or perhaps see two anon edits in a row, and check to see if that diff, was consistent with what you would have done.  Then you could diff from that point to the current version to see the changes, since your last visit.
>
> I think it occurs too often and is too stereotyped to just be newbies.
>
>                       -- Silverback

If these people really are coming through anonymizing proxies, maybe
they are double-checking that the anonymizing worked?

Carl


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Is Wikip/media politic?

body:
Dori wrote:
> On 10/9/05, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
>> There is several distinct questions:
>> 1. Is Wikipedia politic?
>
> Yes it's political, and the policy is to spread free knowledge.

I don't totally agree since there are many other ways to spread
knowledge or free knowledge. Education is one of them for example.

Is wikipedia only a new tool for spreading free knowledge ?

I don't think so. What's make Wikipedia a real encyclopedia is that it
gives power to its readers and allow them to create knowledge instead of
only receiving it, and to be sure that this knowledge will survive for
later use.

Wikipedia does not only spread free knowledge, it allows people to
create it and it keeps the memory of it.

See my point here :

http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=71


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Is Wikip/media politic?


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dumps by mail

body:
>
>However, the software is no longer being developed, as far as I can
>see, and has the limitations of PHP (memory). It works well for
>small datasets, but I am having a problem with larger datasets
>possibly due to server configurations beyond my control.
>

There is a user level fix, I discover.

Add something like:

    php_value memory_limit 64M

to a relevant ".htaccess" file.

This may be problem with some versions of PHP, perhaps 4.2.2 or 4.3.3..

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] fixing postgresql support

body:
Robert Treat wrote:
> I have a copy of cvs 1.6 working on postgresql and would like to submit
> patches. The website says I should ask for CVS access, which I am comfortbale
> with, though I am also comfortable submitting patches if there is
> someone/place specific I should be sending them too. Thanks in advance.

The best place to submit patches is in our bugzilla:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

I don't know what website recommends that first-time patch submitters
ask for CVS commit access, but that doesn't sound very likely. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Live Preview and external editors (was: problems with
 external editor: bookmarklets)

body:
Hello Erik,

Using the javascript available in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pilaf/Live_Preview
I can preview my editing offline, however so far only with the
internal wiki editor, is there any possibility to combine it with your
perl script?

Thanks

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Kate's counter

body:
Hi!

 Why http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi
returned 404 error? Is it die?

	Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Kate's counter

body:
Try this:
http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits

;-)

Ciao,
Frieda

2005/10/14, Doro?y?ski Janusz <dorozynskij at poczta.onet.pl>:
> Hi!
>
>  Why http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi
> returned 404 error? Is it die?
>
>        Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
___________________________________________
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Frieda


from_name: Matt Adam

subject: [Wikitech-l] fixing postgresql support

body:
Robert Treat wrote:
> I have a copy of cvs 1.6 working on postgresql and would like to submit
> patches. The website says I should ask for CVS access, which I am comfortbale
> with, though I am also comfortable submitting patches if there is
> someone/place specific I should be sending them too. Thanks in advance.

A few of us have been working on the same problem and have working PG
wikis running.  There's no sense in duplicating effort, you should join
us in #mediawiki and we can figure out the best set of patches to submit.

Matt
(MattAdam on #mediawiki)


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Anthere wrote:

>I absolutely understand that David. I just want to point out that the
>fact sysadmins in the real world are extremely cautious with data does
>not necessarily mean the editors who will be given access to checkuser
>will be cautious.
>As for our *own* sysadmins (well, in our case, basically, our developer
>team with shell access), they could do destructive things, but they
>pretty much don't :-) And we trust them :-)

Yes, that's what I mean :-) Basically I have access because I have
some idea what the IP numbers mean, and Tim thinks I can be trusted
not to reveal data unduly (and I think I can too). As what we're
talking about is really a site maintenance/administration function
(which is OK within the privacy policy), we need people we can trust
that much.

That's what I mean by: We need to find people who we can trust with
confidential information, then trust them all the way.

There are lots of editors who could *almost* certainly be trusted with
confidential data to that degree, but I don't want to be making the
decision that they can be trusted all the way :-)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]

body:
I've started a user help page on Special:CheckUser at
[[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]. I've tried to write it neutrally for any
MediaWiki installation, not just Wikimedia. Clarifications and
additions are welcomed! I've been particularly cautious in my
assertions concerning the privacy policy ...

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]


from_name: Robert Treat

subject: [Wikitech-l] fixing postgresql support

body:
I have a copy of cvs 1.6 working on postgresql and would like to submit
patches. The website says I should ask for CVS access, which I am comfortbale
with, though I am also comfortable submitting patches if there is
someone/place specific I should be sending them too. Thanks in advance.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache *mediawiki* PostgreSQL


from_name: Anthere

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [051014 04:38]:
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>
>>>You can either try to Taylorise the process of trusting people, or you
>>>can get in people you trust. Sysadmins *could* do any destructive
>>>thing they want. But they pretty much *don't*. I wonder why that is.
>
>
>
>>Most of them do not do anything wrong because anything they do can be
>>easily seen by ANYONE (sysops and non sysops).
>>And aside from deleting an image, everything they do can be reverted.
>>If they block, someone else can unblock
>>If they delete a page, someone else can undelete
>>If they protect a page, someone else can unprotect
>
>
>
> I am not talking about Wiki admins/sysops, I mean the people who run the
> actual servers, i.e. [[system administrator]]s.
>
>
> - d.

I absolutely understand that David. I just want to point out that the
fact sysadmins in the real world are extremely cautious with data does
not necessarily mean the editors who will be given access to checkuser
will be cautious.

As for our *own* sysadmins (well, in our case, basically, our developer
team with shell access), they could do destructive things, but they
pretty much don't :-) And we trust them :-)


body:
Alphax wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>We need more people with access to CheckUser, because I don't scale,
>>and we're under a nasty vandalbot attack. Proposal at:
>>
>
> <snip>
>
>>    * _You have to pick people you can trust, and then trust them all
>>the way._ Various people are going to ask to have this logged seven
>>ways to Sunday to protect against possible abuses - but adding red
>>tape is just going to be a massive PITA and not actually affect
>>whether the CheckUser checker can be trusted to act with confidence.
>>Basically, we have to pick people we trust not to use the power for
>>evil. Like we do admins and bureaucrats, but more so.
>
>
> How about Stewards? They can set/remove the admin flag on users across
> all projects, so why not let them run IP checks as well?

I fear it would not satisfy most editors.
I had a look at the log some days ago, and basically, David use it
everyday (roughly). It certainly takes him a lot of time. I have no idea
whether it is really necessary to do so many checks, but if it is, he
should be helped by a couple more people.
If you ask stewards to do it, you will have to make a request each time,
then wait for a steward to carry on the task, then for him to report.
And only then can you block the person if needed.

On most projects, the needs are not very important (yet ?); so the
stewards carrying the task seems feasible. En has much bigger needs, and
has a group of editors already trusted by the community to handle such
issues as deciding who should be banned or not. It seems a logical move
that more arbitrators have check user access.

Ant


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
I remember working on the articles [[reality]], [[truth]], and
[[knowledge]], difficult subjects to be sure. What eventually
happened was that our philosophical academics decided these subjects
were part of [[philosophy]]. Today they are  incomprehensible
compendiums of philosophical jargon, completely worthless for the
ordinary reader.

Fred

On Oct 14, 2005, at 1:32 PM, Snowspinner wrote:

> Following somewhat from Jimbo's discussion earlier, a trio of
> scenarios:
>
> A young student - perhaps in high school - by happenstance hears a
> lecture on physics. He grasps only a little of it, but what he
> understands seems exciting. One thing mentioned as very interesting
> by the lecturer is the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle." In a fit
> of exitement, he goes home and checks Wikipedia to understand this
> concept.
>
> A freshman is considering majors. He has heard of an English
> professor who is interesting and hip, and arranges to meet him in
> his office hours to hear about his class next semester. The
> professor is doing an intro class on something called "literary
> theory," and mentions one person in particular - Derrida - as
> someone who will "blow the student's mind." The student, intrigued,
> goes to look up Derrida.
>
> A man is finding himself more worried about the current political
> situation. He is reading the paper more. He happens upon a mention
> that Bush is not an "End of history" person, a phrase associated in
> some way with someone named Fukuyama. He goes to Wikipedia, and
> types in "End of History" to try to understand more about this
> theory that apparently informs the political discussion.
>
> All three of these people are going to be very, very disappointed.
> Not because [[Uncertainty principle]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and
> [[The End of History and the Last Man]] aren't there, or are
> excessively short, but rather because they are completely
> incomprehensible to people who are not already familiar with the
> topics. (And I say this about [[Jacques Derrida]] after spending
> two hours rewriting the thing)
>
> The problem with all of these articles is that they are not written
> for generalists. They are written for specialists and semi-
> specialists. Terms are regularly introduced without definition - in
> the End of History article, the main definition of the term is a
> quote from Fukuyama that refers to "the end point of mankind's
> ideological evolution," and then immediately goes into a bit on
> Marxism, particularly "historical materialism" and the "historical
> dialectic," as well as some references to Hegel, none of which are
> explained.
>
> Obviously these things cannot be explained fully in the article,
> but they need to be dealt with - a sentence or two, just enough to
> get the reader through to the next concept without totally losing it.
>
> The Derrida article, in its previous form, lacked sections
> explaining deconstruction and the Paul de Man controversy. These
> exist in other articles, to be sure, but they're also major
> concepts to anyone interested in Derrida, and their exclusion is a
> shocking omission - anyone looking for general information on
> Derrida would be misinformed if they did not know these two things.
> I've fixed that, but still - the article has an overwhelming focus
> on Derrida's interpretations of Heidegger - a fascinating topic on
> which books can be written, but not the most important information,
> nor the most understandable to someone who doesn't know a lot about
> Heidegger - something I will hazard a guess our Heidegger article
> isn't that helpful about either.
>
> And then there's the Uncertainty Principle, which is a sea of
> equations of tremendous use to someone versed in physics and
> mathematics, but of no use to someone who hears the phrase and
> wants to know what it's all about. Nowhere in the lead paragraphs
> is the common formulation that "You can never know, with absolute
> precision, the position and movement of an electron, and in fact
> the more you know about one, the less you can possibly know about
> the other." Nowhere. Yes, I know the UP is more complicated than
> that. And I'm not saying some, maybe even all of those equations
> shouldn't stay. But I am saying, that needs to be out there, first
> and foremost.
>
> Too much of the technical and academic writing in the encyclopedia
> reads like it was written for an MA paper, with the nuance, depth,
> and qualification that a professor expects from a student. These
> articles are not written for professors, nor for grad students -
> they are written for the uninformed. We cannot write for the
> uninformed in the language we use for experts.
>
> I don't know what can be done about this - particularly because the
> bloat Jimbo has identified as going on in articles like [[Bill
> Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] goes on in these articles as a sea of
> academics adds a paragraph or two about their pet interest in the
> subject, until the article has become unmanagable. But we have to
> do something - simply put, we're a crappy resource on a number of
> topics that, in order to maintain a wide level of respect, we need
> to be a good resource on.
>
> A quick approach, I think, is to remember the importance of phrases
> like "Simply put," "in the popular conception," "at its core," "in
> layman's terms," and the like - phrases that come before a
> distillation of ideas. You can qualify these distillations later -
> "Although this is a simplification of Derrida's thought," or
> "Although this reading is popular, it is also limited" both spring
> to mind as the sorts of things that can be said.
>
> But the fact remains, we have apparently completely forgotten the
> concept of the summary in our writing on Wikipedia.
>
> (And I blame the rush for sources for some of this - I frequently
> find myself sifting through articles and getting lost in a sea of
> block quotes from Derrida or Fukuyama. In most cases, if the reader
> could find Derrida or Fukuyama easy to read and comprehend on their
> own, they would not be looking them up in an encyclopedia. Citing
> sources is a tool for referencing and verifying - it cannot
> interfere with the readability and usability of an article. A
> meticulously referenced but utterly unreadable article helps nobody.)
>
> -Snowspinner
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Thanks for this.
>Important point to add would be that only 2 weeks logs are kept for
>wikipedia.

The length of time the data is kept in the recentchanges table is
actually highly variable. It's nominally one week, though I think en:
is currently set to 4 weeks. It depends what the database admins want
it at for whatever purpose, balanced against how much space it takes
up. The longer the more useful for our purposes, of course ;-)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> I've started a user help page on Special:CheckUser at
> [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]. I've tried to write it neutrally for any
> MediaWiki installation, not just Wikimedia. Clarifications and
> additions are welcomed! I've been particularly cautious in my
> assertions concerning the privacy policy ...
>
>
> - d.

Thanks for this.
Important point to add would be that only 2 weeks logs are kept for
wikipedia.

Ant

PS : I *loved* the "User:Querulous is doing something highly
antisocial", with the link below (though, in all fairness, being a dick
is not a garantee for being blocked...)


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
Following somewhat from Jimbo's discussion earlier, a trio of scenarios:

A young student - perhaps in high school - by happenstance hears a
lecture on physics. He grasps only a little of it, but what he
understands seems exciting. One thing mentioned as very interesting
by the lecturer is the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle." In a fit
of exitement, he goes home and checks Wikipedia to understand this
concept.

A freshman is considering majors. He has heard of an English
professor who is interesting and hip, and arranges to meet him in his
office hours to hear about his class next semester. The professor is
doing an intro class on something called "literary theory," and
mentions one person in particular - Derrida - as someone who will
"blow the student's mind." The student, intrigued, goes to look up
Derrida.

A man is finding himself more worried about the current political
situation. He is reading the paper more. He happens upon a mention
that Bush is not an "End of history" person, a phrase associated in
some way with someone named Fukuyama. He goes to Wikipedia, and types
in "End of History" to try to understand more about this theory that
apparently informs the political discussion.

All three of these people are going to be very, very disappointed.
Not because [[Uncertainty principle]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[The
End of History and the Last Man]] aren't there, or are excessively
short, but rather because they are completely incomprehensible to
people who are not already familiar with the topics. (And I say this
about [[Jacques Derrida]] after spending two hours rewriting the thing)

The problem with all of these articles is that they are not written
for generalists. They are written for specialists and semi-
specialists. Terms are regularly introduced without definition - in
the End of History article, the main definition of the term is a
quote from Fukuyama that refers to "the end point of mankind's
ideological evolution," and then immediately goes into a bit on
Marxism, particularly "historical materialism" and the "historical
dialectic," as well as some references to Hegel, none of which are
explained.

Obviously these things cannot be explained fully in the article, but
they need to be dealt with - a sentence or two, just enough to get
the reader through to the next concept without totally losing it.

The Derrida article, in its previous form, lacked sections explaining
deconstruction and the Paul de Man controversy. These exist in other
articles, to be sure, but they're also major concepts to anyone
interested in Derrida, and their exclusion is a shocking omission -
anyone looking for general information on Derrida would be
misinformed if they did not know these two things. I've fixed that,
but still - the article has an overwhelming focus on Derrida's
interpretations of Heidegger - a fascinating topic on which books can
be written, but not the most important information, nor the most
understandable to someone who doesn't know a lot about Heidegger -
something I will hazard a guess our Heidegger article isn't that
helpful about either.

And then there's the Uncertainty Principle, which is a sea of
equations of tremendous use to someone versed in physics and
mathematics, but of no use to someone who hears the phrase and wants
to know what it's all about. Nowhere in the lead paragraphs is the
common formulation that "You can never know, with absolute precision,
the position and movement of an electron, and in fact the more you
know about one, the less you can possibly know about the other."
Nowhere. Yes, I know the UP is more complicated than that. And I'm
not saying some, maybe even all of those equations shouldn't stay.
But I am saying, that needs to be out there, first and foremost.

Too much of the technical and academic writing in the encyclopedia
reads like it was written for an MA paper, with the nuance, depth,
and qualification that a professor expects from a student. These
articles are not written for professors, nor for grad students - they
are written for the uninformed. We cannot write for the uninformed in
the language we use for experts.

I don't know what can be done about this - particularly because the
bloat Jimbo has identified as going on in articles like [[Bill
Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] goes on in these articles as a sea of
academics adds a paragraph or two about their pet interest in the
subject, until the article has become unmanagable. But we have to do
something - simply put, we're a crappy resource on a number of topics
that, in order to maintain a wide level of respect, we need to be a
good resource on.

A quick approach, I think, is to remember the importance of phrases
like "Simply put," "in the popular conception," "at its core," "in
layman's terms," and the like - phrases that come before a
distillation of ideas. You can qualify these distillations later -
"Although this is a simplification of Derrida's thought," or
"Although this reading is popular, it is also limited" both spring to
mind as the sorts of things that can be said.

But the fact remains, we have apparently completely forgotten the
concept of the summary in our writing on Wikipedia.

(And I blame the rush for sources for some of this - I frequently
find myself sifting through articles and getting lost in a sea of
block quotes from Derrida or Fukuyama. In most cases, if the reader
could find Derrida or Fukuyama easy to read and comprehend on their
own, they would not be looking them up in an encyclopedia. Citing
sources is a tool for referencing and verifying - it cannot interfere
with the readability and usability of an article. A meticulously
referenced but utterly unreadable article helps nobody.)

-Snowspinner


subject: [Wikitech-l] fixing postgresql support

body:
On Friday 14 October 2005 15:22, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > I have a copy of cvs 1.6 working on postgresql and would like to submit
> > patches. The website says I should ask for CVS access, which I am
> > comfortbale with, though I am also comfortable submitting patches if
> > there is someone/place specific I should be sending them too. Thanks in
> > advance.
>
> The best place to submit patches is in our bugzilla:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
>
> I don't know what website recommends that first-time patch submitters
> ask for CVS commit access, but that doesn't sound very likely. :)
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker

"When you have a feature ready to go, press for CVS write access, so that you
can commit it. Posting patches can be frustrating, although you may have to
do it once or twice to demonstrate good faith."

There's some other verbage on there that is more specific, but I've read that
general take in a few other spots too; no worry though, I'll get with the
Matt & Co on irc.  Thanks Brion.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Yes, that's what I mean :-) Basically I have access because I have
> some idea what the IP numbers mean, and Tim thinks I can be trusted
> not to reveal data unduly (and I think I can too). As what we're
> talking about is really a site maintenance/administration function
> (which is OK within the privacy policy), we need people we can trust
> that much.

I would like to see any people who have access to this kind of
information, IP addresses and the suchlike, to sign some kind of legal
document saying they cannot reveal this information.

Having a legal document between the Wikimedia Foundation and people with
access to this data would increase people's confidence in the system, as
there would be ways to prevent abuses, and people would be able to see
that this kind of information is safe.

Chris


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> As much as I support the need and importance of protecting personal
>> privacy, I think that this request is totally unrealistic.  People
>> will respect that privacy because it's the right thing to do, and not
>> because of some legal document.
>>
>> Those who want to reveal that information will do it without regard
>> to a legal document.  If they do what do you propose doing about it?
>> Are you prepared to go halfway around the world to start some dubious
>> lawsuit?  Such a document will only produce an illusion of safety.
>
> Privacy laws are quite strong in the European Union and divulging of
> personally-identifiable information related to European Union
> citizens, whether or not the organisation is based in the EU or not,
> is a criminal offence. An IP address may count as
> personally-identifiable information.

No piece of paper is going to change that.

> The Wikimedia Foundation has chapters based in the EU and has plans to
> create more. Organisations can be penalised for failure to comply with
> EU privacy standards. If the WF has a contract with people who have
> access to this functionality, if it ever does occur the WF will be
> devoid of responsibility. Yes, it's a remote probability. But that
> doesn't mean that it should not be insured against. It is not worth it
> to the Wikimedia Foundation if the case ever arises.

This is only about protecting Wikimedia in the case of a law suit; it
still is not a deterrent to inc=dividuals who have no qualms about
breaching privacy.

Ec


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]

body:
It was nice to see how the function actually works, I've never
actually seen the specifics of it before. Kudos! (which, as I  just
found out from [[Kudos]], means "fame and renown resulting from an act
or achievement". Don't know whether you need any more fame or renown
around here, but there you go)

--gkhan

On 10/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >Thanks for this.
> >Important point to add would be that only 2 weeks logs are kept for
> >wikipedia.
>
>
> The length of time the data is kept in the recentchanges table is
> actually highly variable. It's nominally one week, though I think en:
> is currently set to 4 weeks. It depends what the database admins want
> it at for whatever purpose, balanced against how much space it takes
> up. The longer the more useful for our purposes, of course ;-)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
> Do you know if it is just dial-up users going through AOL, or do
> broadband and DSL customers who add AOL on and use the AOL
> browser, end up going through the anonymizing proxy too?
>
> -- Silverback
>

Cable modem connection - I opened AOL (my wife has an account) - "you have
new messages" pops up, I click on it, it takes me to User talk:
205.188.116.72 <http://205.188.116.72>, with a new orange banner, which
takes me to User talk:205.188.116.132 <http://205.188.116.132>, which has a
new orange banner which takes me to User
talk:205.188.116.72<http://205.188.116.72>.
Very distracting - and I am just browsing.

Ian


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> As much as I support the need and importance of protecting personal
> privacy, I think that this request is totally unrealistic.  People will
> respect that privacy because it's the right thing to do, and not because
> of some legal document.
>
> Those who want to reveal that information will do it without regard to a
> legal document.  If they do what do you propose doing about it?  Are you
> prepared to go halfway around the world to start some dubious lawsuit?
> Such a document will only produce an illusion of safety.

Privacy laws are quite strong in the European Union and divulging of
personally-identifiable information related to European Union citizens,
whether or not the organisation is based in the EU or not, is a criminal
offence. An IP address may count as personally-identifiable information.

The Wikimedia Foundation has chapters based in the EU and has plans to
create more. Organisations can be penalised for failure to comply with
EU privacy standards. If the WF has a contract with people who have
access to this functionality, if it ever does occur the WF will be
devoid of responsibility. Yes, it's a remote probability. But that
doesn't mean that it should not be insured against. It is not worth it
to the Wikimedia Foundation if the case ever arises.

Chris


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> I think what you're seeing is AOL in action. AOL users get a new IP
> address just about every time they load a web page. Makes blocking
> vandals from there a bit tricky.

That could explain it, the repeated behaviors could be users
that know what they have and want to remain anonymous.
I don't recall AOL advertising an anonymizing proxy feature?  8-)

Do you know if it is just dial-up users going through AOL, or do
broadband and DSL customers who add AOL on and use the AOL
browser, end up going through the anonymizing proxy too?

                               -- Silverback


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
On Oct 14, 2005, at 5:18 PM, charles matthews wrote:
>
> I'm glad you've not gone overboard on de Man.  It's basically
> gossip, as is the Cambridge degree controversy.  The bust-up with
> Searle could be more illuminating than either (except I don't
> really have time for Searle ...).
>
>

Not going to go into the bulk of this here, but I think this is the
heart of the disagreement here - yes, the Cambridge degree and the de
Man controversy are, from an academic perspective, largely gossip.
But they're gossip that has generated a tremendous amount of
generalist interest, and it's irresponsible of us not to focus on them.

I could deal with seeing a lot of biography trimmed out, but the
philosophical sections were, honestly, incomprehensible garbage,
particularly the Heideggarian sections. The biography section is
somewhat superfluous, in that the biography of Derrida is not really
the most interesting pint. But I do think a chronological account of
his work needs to go towards the front of the article, along with a
summary of deconstruction, and then some major controversies. I think
the major controversies - de Man and Cambridge - are the sort of
thing that, when described in an NPOV manner, make the critics look
shoddy. I also think that they're matters that you just kind of have
to know about Derrida - even if they're not that important to a
mainstream academic understanding of Derrida, they're so well known.
As flawed as the NYT obituary was, it does need to be grappled with
as the mainstream understanding of Derrida, and if that voice is
silenced, that's bad NPOV writing. Better to let the popular
understanding weigh in, and then include information on where its
limitations are.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] new CheckUser proposal up

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

David Gerard wrote:
> We need more people with access to CheckUser, because I don't scale,
> and we're under a nasty vandalbot attack. Proposal at:
>
<snip>
>     * _You have to pick people you can trust, and then trust them all
> the way._ Various people are going to ask to have this logged seven
> ways to Sunday to protect against possible abuses - but adding red
> tape is just going to be a massive PITA and not actually affect
> whether the CheckUser checker can be trusted to act with confidence.
> Basically, we have to pick people we trust not to use the power for
> evil. Like we do admins and bureaucrats, but more so.

How about Stewards? They can set/remove the admin flag on users across
all projects, so why not let them run IP checks as well?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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Z0BJf+eoPBI9IWkX/09W+EF+IS59rvsBE0Z/FC68Ro2id+c4/VBiSY9meXz+gEP7
toXg5B+oqTiieVgKnop+W68twQrzlMa7iRJ0xaYMjMTbugVzPQGRKZvB4DPCzxmu
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Unicode high characters versus MySQL 5

body:
MySQL 5 is scheduled to come out of beta next month, and we're going to
be looking at upgrading sometime in the coming months. Among other
things we're probably going to want to start making use of the support
for Unicode collation, so we can get better sorting and perhaps use it
for case-insensitive matching.

There is however a compatibility issue: MySQL's Unicode support is
limited to the 16-bit character range (basic multilingual plane), both
for ucs2 and utf8 storage modes.

Characters beyond the BMP are relatively rare, but they do occur. Mostly
in there are ancient/dead scripts, some invented scripts, and a bunch of
rare Han characters which sometimes turn up in Chinese and Japanese.

This won't affect page _contents_; our content is stored in binary blobs
and can have any wacky characters we want. But to support these high
characters in page titles, usernames, and such might require jumping
through a lot of hoops.

It would be relatively simple to disable use of titles and usernames
with these high characters; to assess possible impact I did a check
through all our current wikis and found 99 extant pages:

43 in en.wiktionary.org
31 in got.wikipedia.org
10 in la.wiktionary.org
9 in zh.wikipedia.org
3 in so.wikipedia.org
1 in en.wikibooks.org
1 in ja.wikipedia.org
1 in nl.wikibooks.org

I've put the full list of pages here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Unicode_high_chars

Most of the en.wiktionary entries are individual letters in the Deseret
and Shavian alphabets (invented alphabets for English; historical
curiosities).

The Gothic alphabet is entirely in the high-character area, but it's a
long-dead language and not exactly an active wiki. Perhaps we should
just close it down...

Latin Wiktionary contains several Gothic terms...

The Chinese Wikipedia contains several apparently legitimate articles
(from what I can tell) using high characters; these might have to be
moved. The Japanese Wikipedia has one redirect with such a character.

The Somali Wikipedia contains three one-sentence stub pages pages using
the Osmanya script; Omniglot's article on it says this script is no
longer in use since adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1972.

English Wikibooks has a user account with a Gothic-script name, which
has edited a number of pages about the Gothic language and has a user page.

Dutch Wikibooks has one Gothic-titled redirect.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> I've started a user help page on Special:CheckUser at
> [[:meta:Help:CheckUser]]. I've tried to write it neutrally for any
> MediaWiki installation, not just Wikimedia. Clarifications and
> additions are welcomed! I've been particularly cautious in my
> assertions concerning the privacy policy ...
>
>
> - d.

by the way, the current proposal is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_CheckUser_Policy


from_name: Amruta Lonkar

body:
Ya i thought over it again and what you are saying is making more sense. SO
what i have decided no is create a new references namespace and all references
will then be within this namespace.

Now i did manage to add the button and call the form that i wanted to. So now
am thinking that i will create a table for references similar to the images
tables. But am still a little confused about how does a pgae get associated
with a particular namespace.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Amruta

Quoting Michael Keppler <Michael.Keppler at gmx.de>:

> Amruta Lonkar schrieb:
> > 2)Each of thses will be links with their own page and talk page.
> >
> > 3) I think the 2nd part will be similar to working of the category
> namespace.
>
> I can't tell you how to do the button magic, but I want to comment on
> your idea about the categories. In my opinion the pages for your foot
> note references should _not_ be in the category namespace because they
> have a completeley different semantic meaning than categories.
> >From my point of view there are two different options:
> * Create a new namespace for all your foot note pages. That way you have
> them all in a separate namespace like with your category approach, but
> they do not mix with the real categories.
> * Create the foot note reference pages as sub pages of the article. E.g.
> if you have a page "Article", call your cited reference page
> "Article\Reference ABC" and so on.
> Which way is better suited, depends on what you want to do with the
> references. If you only need them in the context of the article, where
> they are used, you should probably take the sub page approach. If
> several articles might use the same reference and you want to look at
> all the references independent of the articles referring to them, then
> the approach using an own namespace might be more useful.
>
> Ciao, Michael.
>
> --
> www.GetFirefox.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Amruta


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vandalbot range block

body:
On 10/13/05, Stefan Sittler <kiaparowits at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to second this. Oh, and a page for Treason, who crops up
> with the same sort of notriety.
>

[[User:Mr. Treason]]

--
geni


from_name: Michael Keppler

body:
Amruta Lonkar schrieb:
> 2)Each of thses will be links with their own page and talk page.
>
> 3) I think the 2nd part will be similar to working of the category namespace.

I can't tell you how to do the button magic, but I want to comment on
your idea about the categories. In my opinion the pages for your foot
note references should _not_ be in the category namespace because they
have a completeley different semantic meaning than categories.
>From my point of view there are two different options:
* Create a new namespace for all your foot note pages. That way you have
them all in a separate namespace like with your category approach, but
they do not mix with the real categories.
* Create the foot note reference pages as sub pages of the article. E.g.
if you have a page "Article", call your cited reference page
"Article\Reference ABC" and so on.
Which way is better suited, depends on what you want to do with the
references. If you only need them in the context of the article, where
they are used, you should probably take the sub page approach. If
several articles might use the same reference and you want to look at
all the references independent of the articles referring to them, then
the approach using an own namespace might be more useful.

Ciao, Michael.

--
www.GetFirefox.com


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> MySQL 5 is scheduled to come out of beta next month, and we're going to
> be looking at upgrading sometime in the coming months. Among other
> things we're probably going to want to start making use of the support
> for Unicode collation, so we can get better sorting and perhaps use it
> for case-insensitive matching.

(snip)

> It would be relatively simple to disable use of titles and usernames
> with these high characters; to assess possible impact I did a check
> through all our current wikis and found 99 extant pages:
>
> 43 in en.wiktionary.org
>
> Most of the en.wiktionary entries are individual letters in the Deseret
> and Shavian alphabets (invented alphabets for English; historical
> curiosities).

I've put this into the en:Wiktionary deletion process.  Most of our
material is the responsibility of one person [[User:Vladisdead]], who
has not been active lately.

For some people, having this stuff available is the ONLY reason they
need for using it. ;-)

Ec


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
Snowspinner wrote

> All three of these people are going to be very, very disappointed.  Not
> because [[Uncertainty principle]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[The  End of
> History and the Last Man]] aren't there, or are excessively  short, but
> rather because they are completely incomprehensible to  people who are not
> already familiar with the topics. (And I say this  about [[Jacques
> Derrida]] after spending two hours rewriting the thing)

Let's talk about Jacques, then.

Sorry to be picky, but you have actually destroyed the short sections after
the lead.  I had worked quite hard on these.  That means that, unlike the
favoured style where the reader gets told, told again, then told what
they've been told - you think after the lead they should get the full-on
biography.  Not helpful, in my book.

> The Derrida article, in its previous form, lacked sections explaining
> deconstruction and the Paul de Man controversy.

I'm glad you've not gone overboard on de Man.  It's basically gossip, as is
the Cambridge degree controversy.  The bust-up with Searle could be more
illuminating than either (except I don't really have time for Searle ...).

>These exist in other  articles, to be sure, but they're also major concepts
>to anyone  interested in Derrida, and their exclusion is a shocking
>omission -  anyone looking for general information on Derrida would be
>misinformed if they did not know these two things.

Right only on the first point, in my view.

<snip>

> Too much of the technical and academic writing in the encyclopedia  reads
> like it was written for an MA paper, with the nuance, depth,  and
> qualification that a professor expects from a student. These  articles are
> not written for professors, nor for grad students - they  are written for
> the uninformed. We cannot write for the uninformed in  the language we use
> for experts.

> I don't know what can be done about this - particularly because the  bloat
> Jimbo has identified as going on in articles like [[Bill  Gates]] and
> [[Jane Fonda]] goes on in these articles as a sea of  academics adds a
> paragraph or two about their pet interest in the  subject, until the
> article has become unmanagable.

Edit.

Part of the trouble with le feu Jacques is that User:Buffyg is camped on the
doorstep saying what can be said how.  Now, Jacques has undoubtedly been the
target of slurs.  Slurs have no place in WP. Ergo, the article needs to be
closely watched.  I pointed out long ago that the French article on Derrida
was rather different.  But what do they know?  (Actually, not in such good
shape right now.)

<snip>

>  You can qualify these distillations later -  "Although this is a
> simplification of Derrida's thought," or  "Although this reading is
> popular, it is also limited" both spring to  mind as the sorts of things
> that can be said.

Yeah, but try shoehorning them in and you get a knee in the academic groin
...

<snip>

> Citing  sources is a tool for referencing and verifying - it cannot
> interfere  with the readability and usability of an article. A
> meticulously  referenced but utterly unreadable article helps nobody.)

Now you're talking.  Agree 100% on that.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
Fred Bauder wrote

>I remember working on the articles [[reality]], [[truth]], and
>[[knowledge]], difficult subjects to be sure. What eventually  happened was
>that our philosophical academics decided these subjects  were part of
>[[philosophy]]. Today they are  incomprehensible  compendiums of
>philosophical jargon, completely worthless for the  ordinary reader.

[[Reality]] does seem to be a toxic compound of the New Age and the
philosophical.

Charles


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] dumps failing for en.wp

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> Several en dumps have failed due to the backup.lock file already existing.

That's because I run it on a separate pass from the others due to its
size; the main pass sees the lock when it gets to enwiki and skips over it.

Now, *those* dumps failing, if they do, are for entirely different
reasons. :P

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
>Hence, LOGIN! ;) And yet some anons think they are "more anonymous"
>using an IP. GARGH!!!!!
>
>- --
>Alphax                      |   /"\
>Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
>OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
>http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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>1jNo2aeTqpUWXsLN2y3EzL3R1A5gQw1WdJ+rEp9qlILOkblkP4JVOKOfe6XwhrjD
>lpil9o4ntHw7QmtZBeVRKDBJ7tIFo4VTEYl4/QT2cnAUzJ+xlfVgDRkzIuCocv3O
>BeVTyJ2R47DNqeYhQGML7mReSiRmxKVoVPAxK10Iay3o/EKMQ/FerT6Qs5h0h+Cx
>H/+lfMueCnpWhqQdcVfRFScBOV/NjJkAw+iF/Vwm8Zmvg2+c9iQiS9/9xwNlucX1
>kD1oAbcjQNbyayDuEiOYVG5Apw2thPoHeuTLRjchv2LnShWupqfY/A==
>=gbio
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
If you are even pseudo anonymous using an IP and it isn't because you're
using AOL or NTL or another ISP that uses sick and twisted router
techniques you should immediately send an email to an admin with your ip
address and any other IP addresses in the same system that you know of
so we can block it for being an open proxy since any IP that can't be
readily traced back to an ISP or a school is very likely an open proxy.

-Jtkiefer


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
Only you can prevent open proxy fires.

-Jtkiefer


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] dumps failing for en.wp

body:
Several en dumps have failed due to the backup.lock file already existing.

Just FYI...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: A Gibraltarian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gibraltar

body:
Hello, I would like to bring to your attention a situation where there are
clear violations of the principles of WP, and abuse of power by some sysops.
There are some members (mainly Spanish) who have embarked upon a campaign of
vandalism on the Spanish version of the ?Gibraltar? article. They are using
this article to spread Spanish anti-Gibraltar propaganda, lies, and insults
to the people of Gibraltar. Even when posts are true, they are as far from
NPOV as they can get.

Gibraltarians have been accused variously of being smugglers, money
launderers, we all live from illegal and/or illicit activity, we ignore EU
law, we have stolen land from Spain (and territorial waters, and airspace),
the British troops have even been accused of ethnic cleansing!

WP is not a discussion forum, certainly less an anti-Gibraltar forum. If
this is what these people want they should find another forum for it. When I
have edited text I have been accused of ?vandalism? simply because I do not
share the Spanish ?vision? (or delusion). They act as if they had formed a
?tribe? or bully group, and between them seem to think that they somehow
?own? the article and only those editions that match their views are
allowed.

As if this wasn?t enough 3 sysops in particular, Dodo, Ecemaml, & Sanbec are
abusing their position and blocking my access. Their attitude and behaviour
is totally unacceptable.

I request help from anyone able to, as serious violations of WP policy are
being committed by them. I request that these people be told that they do
not have the right to ?own? WP articles, nor unjustifiably block a user just
because he shares differing views to you. No doubt they will invent some
excuse to justify their actions, but there is no justification.

I thank you for your help.

A Gibraltarian

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: "Jørgen G. Bosoni"

subject: [Wikipedia-l] requests for new languages/Lombard

body:
Cf. the discussion at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/Lombard#Lombard_.287.29

I would like to ask an Administrator to set up a test Wikipedia for Lombard.

Best regards,

J?rgenGB


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
On Oct 15, 2005, at 4:22 AM, charles matthews wrote:
>
> I mean, 'populist' is _not_ necessarily well written.  Jimbo's
> point about the Gates and Fonda articles was not that that they
> were arcane and highbrow, but that they were done in such a poor
> style that you wouldn't want to tread in them, let alone read in them.
>

Which is why I didn't simply append this to Jimbo's discussion - it
is a separate one. This isn't just a matter of writing style - it' a
matter of focus. As a general encyclopedia, we need to be targetted
at a general audience - that means that, if nothing else, what the
New York Times identifies as major events in someone's life are, for
our purposes, major events. I'm not saying those are the only ones
worth paying attention to - but then, I'd support an article on each
of Derrida's publications, so I'm not worried, in the big picture,
about crowding out the academic stuff. I don't think Cambridge and de
Man should be the main focus of the article at all. I do think they
each need their little sections, and that it would be irresponsible
of us to exclude them.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Kate's counter

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Frieda Brioschi
| Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 1:12 PM
/
| Try this:
| http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits

Alleluia, it works :-)

Thanks, Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
On 10/15/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 15, 2005, at 4:22 AM, charles matthews wrote:
> >
> > I mean, 'populist' is _not_ necessarily well written. Jimbo's
> > point about the Gates and Fonda articles was not that that they
> > were arcane and highbrow, but that they were done in such a poor
> > style that you wouldn't want to tread in them, let alone read in them.
> >
>
> Which is why I didn't simply append this to Jimbo's discussion - it
> is a separate one. This isn't just a matter of writing style - it' a
> matter of focus. As a general encyclopedia, we need to be targetted
> at a general audience - that means that, if nothing else, what the
> New York Times identifies as major events in someone's life are, for
> our purposes, major events. I'm not saying those are the only ones
> worth paying attention to - but then, I'd support an article on each
> of Derrida's publications, so I'm not worried, in the big picture,
> about crowding out the academic stuff. I don't think Cambridge and de
> Man should be the main focus of the article at all. I do think they
> each need their little sections, and that it would be irresponsible
> of us to exclude them.

Is Wikipedia simply a general encyclopedia? I always thought it was more
than that. I think the goal is really to include general information and
specific information, and let the user navigate easily between the two.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, though. It's an interesting question.

-Snowspinner

Anthony


body:
On 10/14/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
> > Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >> As much as I support the need and importance of protecting personal
> >> privacy, I think that this request is totally unrealistic. People
> >> will respect that privacy because it's the right thing to do, and not
> >> because of some legal document.
> >>
> >> Those who want to reveal that information will do it without regard
> >> to a legal document. If they do what do you propose doing about it?
> >> Are you prepared to go halfway around the world to start some dubious
> >> lawsuit? Such a document will only produce an illusion of safety.
> >
> > Privacy laws are quite strong in the European Union and divulging of
> > personally-identifiable information related to European Union
> > citizens, whether or not the organisation is based in the EU or not,
> > is a criminal offence. An IP address may count as
> > personally-identifiable information.
>
> No piece of paper is going to change that.

A piece of paper will certainly clarify the situation, and leave out
ignorance as an excuse.

> The Wikimedia Foundation has chapters based in the EU and has plans to
> > create more. Organisations can be penalised for failure to comply with
> > EU privacy standards. If the WF has a contract with people who have
> > access to this functionality, if it ever does occur the WF will be
> > devoid of responsibility. Yes, it's a remote probability. But that
> > doesn't mean that it should not be insured against. It is not worth it
> > to the Wikimedia Foundation if the case ever arises.
>
> This is only about protecting Wikimedia in the case of a law suit; it
> still is not a deterrent to inc=dividuals who have no qualms about
> breaching privacy.

So you think all written contracts are completely useless? I mean, if people
are just going to do whatever they want whenever they want to, then a piece
of paper isn't going to change that, according to your argument? Or is there
something different about privacy as compared to any other agreement that
people might come to?

What about people who have some qualms about breaching privacy? What about
people who don't think this information is private in the first place?

What about Mark Wagner? Does he have no qualms about breaching privacy? He
did, after all, release the IP block of the Vandalbot. Is that OK? Assuming
so, what other breaches of privacy are OK? Shouldn't we make this clear to
all people with access to this information, instead of just trusting that
everyone's ethics are exactly in line with what we want them to be?

Ec

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
Snowspinner wrote

> Not going to go into the bulk of this here, but I think this is the  heart
> of the disagreement here - yes, the Cambridge degree and the de  Man
> controversy are, from an academic perspective, largely gossip.  But
> they're gossip that has generated a tremendous amount of  generalist
> interest, and it's irresponsible of us not to focus on them.

Agenda slip! Agenda slip!

I mean, 'populist' is _not_ necessarily well written.  Jimbo's point about
the Gates and Fonda articles was not that that they were arcane and
highbrow, but that they were done in such a poor style that you wouldn't
want to tread in them, let alone read in them.

_Just adding in 'what everyone knows'_ to an article does not make for good
writing.  This is entirely clear with celebs.  It is trivially easy to
research stuff about high-profile people and munge it all together.  That's
the enemy here.

So, I think 'irresponsible' is off-beam here.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ANON watchlist?

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Guettarda wrote:
>>Do you know if it is just dial-up users going through AOL, or do
>>broadband and DSL customers who add AOL on and use the AOL
>>browser, end up going through the anonymizing proxy too?
>>
>>-- Silverback
>>
>
>
> Cable modem connection - I opened AOL (my wife has an account) - "you have
> new messages" pops up, I click on it, it takes me to User talk:
> 205.188.116.72 <http://205.188.116.72>, with a new orange banner, which
> takes me to User talk:205.188.116.132 <http://205.188.116.132>, which has a
> new orange banner which takes me to User
> talk:205.188.116.72<http://205.188.116.72>.
> Very distracting - and I am just browsing.
>

Hence, LOGIN! ;) And yet some anons think they are "more anonymous"
using an IP. GARGH!!!!!

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Unicode high characters versus MySQL 5

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> It is that MySQL 5 cannot support characters outside the BMP at all, or
> just that it can't collate them properly? If it just handles > BMP UTF-8
> sequences as binary data, might it simply sort them in Unicode code
> point order?
>
> Or does it do something worse, and actively convert the Unicode
> characters into a 16-bit range, thus nuking characters outside the BMP.
> rather than storing, and largely processing, them as binary-encoded data
> for purposes other than collating?

I tested this yesterday, hence my post. To summarize the results:

Using a literal UTF-8 4-byte character in SQL statement, with connection
on 'SET NAMES utf8' mode:
* utf8 column: string is truncated at the problem character
* ucs2 column: "????" is stored in place of problem character
* blob column: works just fine (but no collation)

Using pseudo-UTF-8 with UTF-16 surrogate pair halves individually encoded:
* utf8 column: works, but now we have bad encoding
* ucs2 column: works, but now we have bad encoding
* blob column: works, but now we have bad encoding

They won't be properly collated I'm sure, either.

In theory we could apply this tranformation but this will add a bunch of
unnecessary and unreliable junk to the code. Automatically applying the
transformation on all data could badly break binary storage (eg
compressed text, the stuff we Really Don't Want To Lose).

If we apply it to page titles only, we might be able to get away with
adding the transformation in eg the Title class:

* $title->getText() -> proper UTF-8, with spaces
* $title->getUrl() -> proper UTF-8, with underscores
* $title->getDbKey() -> fake UTF-8, with underscores

This of course means there's a nasssssty database dependency in the
database-independent code, and could still break other things.

My preference, if possible, would be to get MySQL to fix their Unicode
support to allow for either storage of full UTF-8 or proper
transformation of UTF-8 to UTF-16. UCS-2 collation with UTF-16
conversion semantics would be "good enough" for us, I think, and avoids
the 4-byte-per-character index bloat of extending the UTF-8 support.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted revs

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> I've got a dump of simple loaded.
>
> When revision.rev_delete = 1, is there a way to tell both when the rev
> was created and when the rev was deleted?

rev_deleted is not yet used, so the only time this will come up is if
you manually set the field to 1. :)

Deleted revisions are removed from the revision table and copied to the
archive table. The only record of deletion time is in the logging table,
and that won't tell you which revision was deleted when.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
Snowspinner wrote

> Which is why I didn't simply append this to Jimbo's discussion - it  is a
> separate one.

Don't get me wrong - I welcome a chance to talk about content on this list.

So far I have marked my card as

-J. Wales - celeb articles can be awash with facts and factoids but not add
up to a good read at all
-D. Gerard - The Economist's style rocks

>This isn't just a matter of writing style - it' a  matter of focus. As a
>general encyclopedia, we need to be targetted  at a general audience - that
>means that, if nothing else, what the  New York Times identifies as major
>events in someone's life are, for  our purposes, major events.

POV!  Sorry, for Derrida, some of us really don't accept that he was born
again in Yale.  That is, he is a European philosopher (the French WP defines
him as 'major French philosopher') and I'll take the [[Vincent Descombes]]
view over those unreliable rascals at the NYT any day.

 >I'm not saying those are the only ones
> worth paying attention to - but then, I'd support an article on each  of
> Derrida's publications, so I'm not worried, in the big picture,  about
> crowding out the academic stuff. I don't think Cambridge and de  Man
> should be the main focus of the article at all. I do think they  each need
> their little sections, and that it would be irresponsible  of us to
> exclude them.

Well, I actually know some of the Cambridge non placets.  Do they know from
Derrida?  Actually, what they know is what they hate about deconstruction.
Which is partly disowned by Derrida himself.

Anyway, much of the problem has been caused by the article being over-long,
and not too much fun to edit.  Perhaps things will improve.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted revs

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On 10/15/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>Deleted revisions are removed from the revision table and copied to the
>>archive table. The only record of deletion time is in the logging table,
>>and that won't tell you which revision was deleted when.
>
>
> So, deleted revs aren't included in dumps at all?

Right.

> Deletes are relatively rare (sysop) occurrences, right?

Relatively.

> Also, I see through testing that when a revert is done, a new text
> record is created (as opposed to ref'ing the same text record as the
> revision being reverted to).  Will this be changing?

Using the rollback button or manual reverts? I thought I'd already done
this for rollback, but I could be wrong. Manual reverts would require
some checking but is doable.

Note that if you're looking at a database imported from an XML dump,
that's a totally different matter; at the moment the dump importers
aren't smart enough to merge common text entries. (The XML dumps include
plain text in order to isolate the public-consumable data from our
ever-shifting implementation details.)

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

body:
> There is however a compatibility issue: MySQL's Unicode support is
> limited to the 16-bit character range (basic multilingual plane), both
> for ucs2 and utf8 storage modes.

I can't believe you are seriously suggesting to allow this to limit us
so badly that we would even have to close down an entire wiki (Gothic)
and may possibly not be able to re-open it again in years. The same
applies to high characters in article titles on Wikipedias such as
Chinese that are actually active and may actually *need* them! If they
are using them already, and they are working fine, and now you're taking
it away from them, I don't think they are going to like you. I hope for
strong opposition to such artificial limitations.

If MySQL's Unicode support is not up to the task, then DON'T USE IT.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted revs

body:
I've got a dump of simple loaded.

When revision.rev_delete = 1, is there a way to tell both when the rev
was created and when the rev was deleted?

Thanks!


body:
The reason i want to create the database is because when a user enters a
reference i wnat to store it in the database, i added the new namespace
according to the custom namespaces thing.

So when a user will add a reference it will get associated with that article
and get entered into the database. This has really helped me out a lot. I am
glad am getting this help.

Thanks,
Amruta

Quoting Michael Keppler <Michael.Keppler at gmx.de>:

> Amruta Lonkar schrieb:
> > Now i did manage to add the button and call the form that i wanted to. So
> now
> > am thinking that i will create a table for references similar to the images
> > tables.
>
> Don't do that. You only need to do some little configuration for
> additional namespaces, but no changes within in the database are
> required. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces
>
> > But am still a little confused about how does a pgae get associated
> > with a particular namespace.
>
> Just by calling it "MyCustomNameSpace:PageName" instead of only
> "PageName" (but you must create the namespace before as told above).
> That's just the same like with "Category:PageName" or "Image:PageName".
>
> Ciao, Michael.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Amruta


body:
Amruta Lonkar schrieb:
> Now i did manage to add the button and call the form that i wanted to. So now
> am thinking that i will create a table for references similar to the images
> tables.

Don't do that. You only need to do some little configuration for
additional namespaces, but no changes within in the database are
required. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces

> But am still a little confused about how does a pgae get associated
> with a particular namespace.

Just by calling it "MyCustomNameSpace:PageName" instead of only
"PageName" (but you must create the namespace before as told above).
That's just the same like with "Category:PageName" or "Image:PageName".

Ciao, Michael.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Idea for faster,
	cheaper access to Wikipedia in poorer countries

body:
My idea for faster, cheaper access to Wikipedia in poorer countries:

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

It requires patching squid and extending the HTCP protocol. The latter
should be no big deal, the protocol is only in the "experimental" phase
after all.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 10/14/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> There is however a compatibility issue: MySQL's Unicode support is
> limited to the 16-bit character range (basic multilingual plane), both
> for ucs2 and utf8 storage modes.
...
> It would be relatively simple to disable use of titles and usernames
> with these high characters; to assess possible impact I did a check
> through all our current wikis and found 99 extant pages:
...

While I understand the reluctance of others to settle for content loss
or missing collation, I just wanted to thank you for doing such a
thorough analysis of the situation.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted revs

body:
On 10/15/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Deleted revisions are removed from the revision table and copied to the
> archive table. The only record of deletion time is in the logging table,
> and that won't tell you which revision was deleted when.

So, deleted revs aren't included in dumps at all?

Deletes are relatively rare (sysop) occurrences, right?

Also, I see through testing that when a revert is done, a new text
record is created (as opposed to ref'ing the same text record as the
revision being reverted to).  Will this be changing?


from_name: Jamie Bliss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Adding page view restrictions

body:
Sechan, Gabe wrote:
> I'm using MediaWiki to create a corporate wiki, and need to allow
> access to certain pages only to certain groups.  I don't see full
> support for this in MediaWiki as of 1.4.11 (although there is stub
> support-  you can do this for moderators).  Unless this has already
> been implemented for 1.5 or there is already a 3rd party patch, I'm
> going to implement this myself, and will be pushing for (and almost
> will certainly get) permission to give this change back to the
> community.  While Wikipedia may not use it, it would be a nice
> feature for the wiki in general.  And if it brings in more corporate
> users, those users may always contribute back more useful changes.

Use 1.5 for dev. 1.4 is no longer recieving real updates. I'll be
refering to the 1.5 schema in this e-mail.

By the sound of it, you are needing only per-page-per-group
restrictions. (As opposed to per namespace and/or per user.)

I also noticed there is not a list of permissions in this e-mail.
(Sometimes called actions in the code.) Do you have one?

> This brings me to how to implement this.  I have a few ideas, if
> anyone can comment on them.
>
>
> Part 1-  storing restrictions
>
> I can either use the cur_restricted field of the cur table, or create
> a new table that has a pair (pagename,group).  If the pagename has
> restrictions, you would need to be in one of those groups.  If there
> were no restrictions, it would default to open.  Which of these ways
> sounds preferable?  I sort of like the new table, since then lookups
> on old versions wouldn't need to access the cur table for
> restrictions data.

Page/group/action (Actions requiring a certain group, stored per page)
are stored in the page_restrictions in the page table. It is parsed by
Title::loadRestrictions() and can be accessed by
Title::getRestrictions(). (It appears to operate on a strict system,
which you must be in the group to perform the action.)

Negative assertions (ie, saying a group may /not/ perform an action)
appears to be unsupported.

> Part 2- storing groups
>
> A new table with pairs (user id, groupname).  A user can be in any
> number of groups.

Already done: user_groups.

> Part 3- applying restrictions
>
> Any time someone tries to access cur_text, they need to check against
> permissions.  If they fail, they should not actually read the text.
> Do only Article and EditPage need this protection, or will it need to
> go elsewhere as well?

Per-page viewing is difficult due to templates and transclussion. You
basically have two opptions with that:
- Add some restriction checks to the parser
- Disallow inclussion from namespaces other than Template

> I'm thinking of implementing this as a new class (Permission) with a
> two methods- checkPermission($user,$title) that will return TRUE if
> user can access the title, and FALSE if not  On a FALSE, the calling
> code will need to push an error up the call stack in whatever way is
> appropriate.  Probably a web page saying that the page is protected,
> and listing the groups.

Check current methods of the User, Article, and Title objects.
(User::isAllowed(), User::isAnon(), User::isBlocked(),
User::isBlockedFrom(), User::getGroupPermissions(), User::getGroups(),
User::getEffectiveGroups(), Article::protect(), Article::insertOn(),
Title::userCan(), Title::getRestrictions(), plus many others.)

If you want to implement per-namespace permissions, start hacking the
Namespace object.

> The other function is groupList($title) that will return the list of
> groups with permission to read it.  Its there to allow callers to get
> allowed groups for the error page.  (Alternatively, Permission could
> generate an error page, but that sounds messy).

See the partial list of methods above. I think it's User::getGroups() or
User::getEffectiveGroups() is what you want. (Note that you should
instead pass a method  a permission/action and a determinator (Title for
User, User for Title).)

> Part 4- editing permissions
>
> An extra box on the edit page, with a list of groups.  Add a group to
> add it to the restricted to list.  You must have edit permissions (in
> other words, you must be in one of the previously allowed groups or
> be an admin/beauracrat) to add or remove a group.

Shouldn't this be a seperate page? Also, what about a global 'editperms'
permission?

> Part 5- adding people to groups
>
> Basicly, this is a special page.  I'll probably allow, as a basic
> method, any admin, beauracrat, or existing group member to add you to
> a group.  I'm not as interested in this part of the problem, as I'll
> be getting my groups from /etc/group.

Special page is probably the way to go. Just make sure you have a
permission for it (so a user can't add themselves to the sysop group).

> Any comments on how I plan to implement this?  Or if it already
> exists and I'm being a moron (or missing a 3rd party patch
> somewhere), please help me out.

One thing that's missing in the current system implemented in MW is that
there's no way to link a group with a global permission (w/o editting
LocalSettings.php).

-- Jamie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://endeavour.zapto.org/astro73/
Thank you to JosephM for inviting me to Gmail!
Have lots of invites. Gmail now has 2GB.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Agree wholeheartedly with Timwi.

A small note, though... the proper name isn't "high characters" but
rather "plane 1" characters or "supplementary characters" or...
there's another more appropriate name for them, but I don't remember
it.

It also seems to me that developers in general tend to write off Plane
1 nowadays just as they may have once for Unicode in general.

Osmaniyyah is not _official_, but then again in Somalia "official"
doesn't mean much because they don't have a government. The country
exists only /de jure/, de facto it is a number of smaller countries,
territories under rival warlords, and vast areas of "no man's land".
The Somali government exists pretty much only in the context of
international organisations.

I made an Osmaniyyah font (MPH 2B Damase), and I got a few e-mails
about it from Somalia, and those people certainly sounded like it
would be useful in an everyday context.

Also, the BMP is nearly full now. Most _living_ writing systems added
to Unicode from here on out will be coded outside of the BMP. This
includes, possibly, such still-used scripts as Modi, Meithei Meeyek,
CIS2, Paiute, Lisu, Mundari scripts, West African scripts, Tulu...

Mark

On 15/10/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > There is however a compatibility issue: MySQL's Unicode support is
> > limited to the 16-bit character range (basic multilingual plane), both
> > for ucs2 and utf8 storage modes.
>
> I can't believe you are seriously suggesting to allow this to limit us
> so badly that we would even have to close down an entire wiki (Gothic)
> and may possibly not be able to re-open it again in years. The same
> applies to high characters in article titles on Wikipedias such as
> Chinese that are actually active and may actually *need* them! If they
> are using them already, and they are working fine, and now you're taking
> it away from them, I don't think they are going to like you. I hope for
> strong opposition to such artificial limitations.
>
> If MySQL's Unicode support is not up to the task, then DON'T USE IT.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Saturday 15 October 2005 14:34, Timwi wrote:
> > There is however a compatibility issue: MySQL's Unicode support is
> > limited to the 16-bit character range (basic multilingual plane),
> > both for ucs2 and utf8 storage modes.
>
> I can't believe you are seriously suggesting to allow this to limit us
> so badly that we would even have to close down an entire wiki (Gothic)
> and may possibly not be able to re-open it again in years. The same
> applies to high characters in article titles on Wikipedias such as
> Chinese that are actually active and may actually *need* them! If they
> are using them already, and they are working fine, and now you're
> taking it away from them, I don't think they are going to like you. I
> hope for strong opposition to such artificial limitations.
>
> If MySQL's Unicode support is not up to the task, then DON'T USE IT.

I have to agree - I thought that we left the
"nobody-needs-more-than-X-characters"-age past us with Unicode. Please do
not add in artificial contraints again.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sat Oct 15 14:45:03 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Spammed if you do, spammed if you don't." - Murphy's Law

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted revs

body:
On 10/15/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Using the rollback button or manual reverts? I thought I'd already done
> this for rollback, but I could be wrong. Manual reverts would require
> some checking but is doable.

Manual.  But your point is good; it's so easy to edit on a manual
revert that the overlap of identical text might not be that large.

> Note that if you're looking at a database imported from an XML dump,
> that's a totally different matter; at the moment the dump importers
> aren't smart enough to merge common text entries. (The XML dumps include
> plain text in order to isolate the public-consumable data from our
> ever-shifting implementation details.)

Right, I'm going off of a loaded XML dump, but was doing my own local
manual reverts here to see how the DB behaved.

And isolation from impl details are appreciated.  ;-)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Clarity and Generalists

body:
charles matthews wrote:

>> This isn't just a matter of writing style - it' a  matter of focus.
>> As a general encyclopedia, we need to be targetted  at a general
>> audience - that means that, if nothing else, what the  New York Times
>> identifies as major events in someone's life are, for  our purposes,
>> major events.
>
>
> POV!  Sorry, for Derrida, some of us really don't accept that he was
> born again in Yale.  That is, he is a European philosopher (the French
> WP defines him as 'major French philosopher') and I'll take the
> [[Vincent Descombes]] view over those unreliable rascals at the NYT
> any day.

That's certainly an opinion which can be represented.  But that
presented by the NYT is also a major mainstream opinion on the subject.
It can of course be said that European Derrida scholars think the NYT
sucks, but simply pretending the NYT's view does not exist and is not
held by millions of other people is strange.

-Mark


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Am Samstag, den 15.10.2005, 13:34 +0100 schrieb Timwi:
> I can't believe you are seriously suggesting to allow this to limit us
> so badly that we would even have to close down an entire wiki (Gothic)
> and may possibly not be able to re-open it again in years. The same
> applies to high characters in article titles on Wikipedias such as
> Chinese that are actually active and may actually *need* them! If they
> are using them already, and they are working fine, and now you're taking
> it away from them, I don't think they are going to like you. I hope for
> strong opposition to such artificial limitations.
>
> If MySQL's Unicode support is not up to the task, then DON'T USE IT.

Maybe we can use MySQL5 Unicode support on all *but* Gothic and Chinese?
I doesn't seem like, for example, en.wikipedia would be severly limited
by the lack of high Unicode chars.

Magnus


from_name: jmerkey

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Infinite Block by Abusive
 Admin/Extortion/Harassment/Fraudulent use of Wikipedia Abuse Emails

body:
Hello All,

Frank V Waveren has been using his wikipedia admin powers to extort
content removal on other websites.  Legal Threats have been withdrawn
and I have been editing pages on the Cherokee Culture.  I was contacted
by Comcast, my ISP indicating Fvw was emailing threats to them and bogus
abuse reports.  They have restored my home service and are blocking
Fvw's ability to send any more emails.  He has now blocked my accounts
and set them to Infinite on Wikipedia in a childish fit of rage.

This constitutes abuse and interference with my editing and other
projects.  While wikipedia can limit user access to its site based on
abuse, I have committed no such abuse.  What I have done is offend an
abusive and childish admin.  His blocks were an attempt to stop me from
filing against him with the Arbcom.

I have not made any legal threats, nor have I engaged in disruption, or
harassment on this site.  Only Fvw has been doing any harassing
conduct.  It's immoral and illegal to revoke or block my accounts on
this site as a form of "extortion" to get me to take down other sites on
the internet and filing false reports on behalf of wikipedia to my ISP
and account providers.  I have received several emails from Fvw
threatening to block my accounts permanently unless I take down other
websites on the internet which discuss his conduct.  These websites are
not wikipedia or affiliated with them.  I

This admin needs revocation of his admin status for abuse, and I have
more articles to complete on the Cherokee culture.  I would like for him
to leave me alone on this site.

I would appreciate a response from this site about what you plan to do
about this abusive person.

Thanks

Jeff V. Merkey
Gadugi
67.137.28.187
67.177.35.211
67.177.35.25


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Agree wholeheartedly with Timwi.
>
> A small note, though... the proper name isn't "high characters" but
> rather "plane 1" characters or "supplementary characters" or...
> there's another more appropriate name for them, but I don't remember
> it.

"Plane 1" characters would refer only to plane 1, and not to plane 2, 3,
4, 5... 15. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> My preference, if possible, would be to get MySQL to fix their Unicode
> support to allow for either storage of full UTF-8 or proper
> transformation of UTF-8 to UTF-16. UCS-2 collation with UTF-16
> conversion semantics would be "good enough" for us, I think, and avoids
> the 4-byte-per-character index bloat of extending the UTF-8 support.

Bug filed: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=14052

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Neil Harris

body:
It is that MySQL 5 cannot support characters outside the BMP at all, or
just that it can't collate them properly? If it just handles > BMP UTF-8
sequences as binary data, might it simply sort them in Unicode code
point order?

Or does it do something worse, and actively convert the Unicode
characters into a 16-bit range, thus nuking characters outside the BMP.
rather than storing, and largely processing, them as binary-encoded data
for purposes other than collating?

-- Neil