message_id:
<426953240026477D@n120.sc0.cp.net> (added by
	postmaster@bouncemessage.net)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
> In Jimbo's original article it says: "free bandwith". I do
> not understand what the problem is. The only thing that I do
> see is that we have to optimise as much as possible. It is
> free as in payed for. This means that you want to be thrifty
> about it anyway.
>
> I also do not understand your preoccupation with data centres
> in the USA. We are an international organisation. Our
> customers are all over this earth.

I totally agree!

Has anyone actually done a traffic study of where this traffic comes from.
If not, is anyone interested in working with me to do this?

//Eden


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 04:10:08AM -0400, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, May 07, 2005 at 05:46:29PM +0000, Dori wrote:
> > On 5/7/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > >
> > > Sj (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050508 00:53]:
> > >
> > > > The primary use I was thinking of was as a failover option, even if
> > > > all normal servers blow up, go down, etc. But as long as such a system
> > > > is set up, however, why shouldn't it be available all the time? For
> > > > instance, if I were to design a game that involved regularly querying
> > > > WP content (and needed quick response times for it not to slow down
> > > > gameplay)... it would be much easier to do that through a central
> > > > static site than by setting up an incrementally-updating local mirror.
> > > > No need for us to rely on third parties like factindex to provide fast
> > > > static mirrors of Wikipedia content when that is what 90% of our
> > > > visitors want to see. (Or perhaps there is such a need? Depending on
> > > > said potential issues.)
> > >
> > > You know, it occurs to me that serving the static version to anon visitors
> > > by default might also be a nice way to implement that time-delay that
> > > Jimbo
> > > asked for when our [[2004 Indian Ocean earthquake]] article became so
> > > popular.
> >
> > Static would be good for not just for anons, but for all those that choose
> > it (I wouldn't force it on people as that'll increase the edit barrier even
> > if edit links point back to editable version). I don't have much faith in
> > time delay as fixing vandalisms would also be delayed.
>
> That hints at one of my problems with the idea of using it as concurrent
> service.  I'll elaborate:
>
> 1.  Maintaining up-to-date realtime mirroring would be a HUGE SUCKING
> SOUND on bandwidth.  This, it seems to me, is not an option.

Currently we generate 1GB of mysql redo log per 10 hours, that's about
300 kbit/s or 72GB/Month. This is without using compression, which would
save some 50% of the above figures.

Regards,

	JeLuF


list: wikien-l

from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/8/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> I challenged an editor to come up with checkable sources once. He
> flatly refused. Slim here went screaming off when I proposed deleting
> any material for which no source was given.
>
> Seems the rules change if it's a mate.

Peter, for the record, you were trying to insert that Australia is a
republic, and wouldn't accept the hundreds of sources available that
contradict that.

Sarah


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 10:55:30PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> I see that the overwhelming majority of people here think that splitting
> different language wikis away from each other is a good idea?

The idea of splitting is to have the master DB for wikis in different
data centers. They would still replicate their content to the other
data centers.

E.g.:

English in Florida.
French, German, Polish, etc in the Netherlands.
Korean, Japanese, Chinese in South Korea.

All locations would have a slave copy of all the other languages.

If an anonymous user from Germany reads an English wiki page, it
will be fetched from the Netherlands data center. When he wants
to edit the page, the squids in the Netherlands will forward the
request to Florida.

> I guess I can kiss my vision of a unified cross-language watchlist
> good-bye then...

Since the data will be available in all datacenters, this should still
be possible in theory.

> Seriously, though: I do not understand how setting up colocations in
> other countries is going to accomplish anything that putting the same
> hardware into the Florida colo wouldn't already accomplish.

Smaller latency, higher redundancy. Do you remember the hurricane that
nearly hit Tampa? The power outage in the Tampa datacenter? The
switch failure?

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 5/7/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm
> <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > At least newspaper editors can be tracked and held
> accountable for
> > what they wrote. As for the trustworthiness.
> They're at least as
> > trustworthy as the attached newspaper (as far as
> they are), not being
> > published in the original sense has nothing to do
> with it. That last
> > line was my point with regard to being used a
> source.
>
> That's precisely the point: newspapers (and their
> websites) have a
> fact-checking infrastructure in place. A reporter
> writes a story, it's
> checked by the assigning editor, checked again by a
> copy editor, again
> by a page editor, and again by a proof reader, all
> of whom are looking
> for obvious legal and factual problems as well as
> style issues.
> Depending on the size of the newspaper, it might
> also be checked by a
> fact-checker. If it's a sensitive story, it might be
> looked at by the
> managing editor, the editor-in-chief, the publisher,
> the lawyers, and
> even the owners.
>
> We don't have the resources to do any of this, which
> is why we rely on
> sources that do. Usenet isn't one of them.
>
> Sarah

Sarah, I'm still at a loss to understand your
argument, and I'm  not saying that to be difficult, I
honestly don't understand your objections.  In this
particular case, we are discussing a Usenet newsgroup.
 This newsgroup "awarded" this guy with their "Kook of
the Millenium" award.  Would this newsgroup not be the
best source for information on to whom they they gave
the award?

RickK

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


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>Smaller latency, higher redundancy. Do you remember the hurricane that
>nearly hit Tampa? The power outage in the Tampa datacenter? The
>switch failure?
>
>
Is there smaller latency?  As an American end-user on a commercial ISP,
my ping times to U.S.-based sites are not consistently lower than my
ping times to Europe-based sites, and some testing from European shell
accounts I have access to shows the same in reverse.  In particular, it
seems the from the UK, ping times to the US are lower than to many parts
of continental Europe, and from Japan, ping times to the US are again
lower than to many other parts of Asia.

In either case, the transoceanic round-trip transmission times of
~80-150ms are dominated by Wikipedia's response time, which seems to be
measured in seconds rather than milliseconds.  (I certainly notice that
browsing German newspapers from the US is much faster than browsing
Wikipedia from the US, geographic location notwithstanding.)

-Mark


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] New/old database dump format

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

Brion Vibber schrieb:
> For some time I've planned to replace the cur+old dumps with a dump
> using the Special:Export XML stream format[1]. This is a simple XML
> wrapper around the page/revision model which reflects the data in our
> schema without being tied to the actual table layout itself.

This reminds me that I had a problem some time ago with the
Special:Export XML. Some XML parsers automatically remove
spaces/newlines, which are both essential for the wiki markup. While
that *can* usually be turned off, it is confusing and annoying.

I suggest that *for the Special:Export* XML format, we replace
* spaces with <sp/>
* newlines (ASCII 10/13) with <nl/>

At least, have it as an option.

An alternative would be to (optionally) run the wiki source through my
PHP-based converter. It generates roughly the same XML as Timwi's *real*
parser does (or would do), so there would be compatability if we ever
switch parsers.
Due to speed issues, running a complete dump through that converter is
not recommended, though.

Last not least, I remember there's a free compression algorithm that
specializes on XML compression, and claims to be more effective for XML
texts tham plain-text compression (which goes up to 10 times). Alas, I
forgot the name...

Magnus
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from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 09:27:02AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
>
> >I'd further recommend that a West Coast location NOT be in California,
> >for economic reasons (and, by extension, political reasons that affect
> >politics).  Washington state seems to provide a good balance of sorta
> >regional technological "savvy" and livable costs.  Plus, y'know, if it
> >turned out to be a good idea to move me to the new location, I'd really
> >like an opportunity to live in Washington for a while.
> >
> >
> Cool!  If you've been in Florida you'll appreciate Washington's lack of
> a state income tax.  Oregon has no state sales tax.  Some Washingtonians
> do complain about the Californians who have discovered the place and
> driven up property prices. :-)

Yes, I live in Florida now, lived in California before this, and have
visited Washington and Oregon a few times.  I find Oregonians to be
annoyingly insular, as a species, though of course there's a fair number
of individuals there with whom I've gotten along famously.

. . . and this is WAY off-topic, so I'll shut up about that.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
On May 8, 2005, at 12:14 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>>>>> To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything which is not
>>>>> specifically forbidden is allowed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ec
>>>>>
>>> It isn't a principle of law, the correct principle is "that which is
>>> not forbidden is allowed". The specifically changes the meaning
>>> entirely.
>>>
>> Perhaps, then, that should be rephrased "that which is not
>> 'explicitly'
>> forbidden is allowed" rather than "specifically".
>>
> I have no problem with that change.
>
> Ec
>

Which is a distinction without a difference.

Perhaps you need to go back over the difference between malum
prohibitum and malum in se, and why your formulation doesn't work very
well in light of that difference.


body:
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 04:17:08AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
> > Currently we generate 1GB of mysql redo log per 10 hours, that's about
> > 300 kbit/s or 72GB/Month. This is without using compression, which would
> > save some 50% of the above figures.
>
> 1.5 will reduce the binlog sizes somewhat. In 1.4, the bulk data is
> handled twice: it's saved into cur, then later loaded out of cur,
> gzipped and and saved into old. In any case, 72 GB/month is hardly a
> "huge sucking sound" on bandwidth, last month we sent 22 TB out of Florida.

Having been half-asleep at the time I composed that particular email,
and it now being some time later, I can only assume that I said
something about bandwidth when I meant to say something about latency
times, though I may not even have been thinking THAT clearly.  I disavow
anything I said unless and until someone figures out what I actually
meant.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 02:30:40PM -0400, Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
> On May 8, 2005, at 12:14 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> >>>>>To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything which is not
> >>>>>specifically forbidden is allowed.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Ec
> >>>>>
> >>>It isn't a principle of law, the correct principle is "that which is
> >>>not forbidden is allowed". The specifically changes the meaning
> >>>entirely.
> >>>
> >>Perhaps, then, that should be rephrased "that which is not
> >>'explicitly'
> >>forbidden is allowed" rather than "specifically".
> >>
> >I have no problem with that change.
> >
> >Ec
> >
>
> Which is a distinction without a difference.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the intricacies of the English
language.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
>>
>
> Perhaps you're not familiar with the intricacies of the English
> language.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin
> [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

You are clearly an expert on not being familiar with the intricacies of
language, so I will defer to your obviously superior ignorance.


body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

[snip quoted argument]

> Which is a distinction without a difference.
>
> Perhaps you need to go back over the difference between malum
> prohibitum and malum in se, and why your formulation doesn't work very
> well in light of that difference.

Having encountered Mr. Newberry on several other forums, I would urge
that people not waste their time arguing with him.  He generally resorts
to attacks on his opponents rather than attempts to make coherent points
[1].  The unexplained use here of several legal Latin phrases in passing
is characteristic of his typical "vocabulary-dropping, but doesn't know
what he's talking about" style.

(And yes, this counts as an ad hominem attack as well, but sometimes one
must point out the obvious.)

-Mark

[1] See, for example, this representative exchange with kuro5hin.org
founder Rusty Foster:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/10/15/212724/90/4#4


from_name: John Fader

subject: [Wikitech-l] user-configurable accesskeys

body:
Folks,
       Is there a way for a specific user (not a sysop or developer)
to set their own accesskey-xxx settings, or to disable accesskeys in
mediawiki pages altogether?
--
John Fader


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/8/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sarah, I'm still at a loss to understand your
> argument, and I'm  not saying that to be difficult, I
> honestly don't understand your objections.  In this
> particular case, we are discussing a Usenet newsgroup.
>  This newsgroup "awarded" this guy with their "Kook of
> the Millenium" award.  Would this newsgroup not be the
> best source for information on to whom they they gave
> the award?
>
> RickK
>
Hi Rick, I'm not sure I should post here much more on this, because
people must be getting fed up, but in brief (and because it's you):

The newsgroup *was* the best source of information about their Kook of
the Millenium award. I was only concerned about actually naming the
award winner because that person is a private individual who seems to
be upset about the whole thing. There are other award winners (Kook of
the Month or whatever) who are public figures: Bill Gates, Bill
Clinton, and so on, and it seems fine to name them (though a bit
silly). But I felt a line was crossed when Wikipedia named a private
individual who didn't want to be named in an article about a subject
with no encyclopedic merit, where we lose nothing by removing his
name. That's all. It was an argument-from-kindness, which obviously
didn't go down well.

It raises the larger issue of whether Usenet should ever be used as a
source in Wikipedia when it concerns individuals, or topics other than
the workings of Usenet itself, and my argument was that the name of
the award winner in this case counted as a non-Usenet topic.

If you're going to argue that individuals, once named and described in
a certain way on Usenet, become Usenet topics, where Usenet may be
used as a source, then anyone could create a WP article called
"Opinions about Jews on Usenet," or "Anti-Islam newsgroups" and could
proceed to repeat all the anti-Semitic or anti-Islam slurs you
routinely find in certain newsgroups, perhaps even naming individuals
and repeating what was said about them.  And why stop at naming them?
If the newsgroup gives out their home and work addresses, maybe we
could do that too, and claim only to be quoting Usenet, which the
article, after all, is about.

Do you see my point?  Slippery slope. Another editor discussing this
elsewhere used the phrase "garbage in, garbage out."

Sarah


body:
On May 8, 2005, at 3:07 PM, Delirium wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
> [snip quoted argument]
>
>> Which is a distinction without a difference.
>>
>> Perhaps you need to go back over the difference between malum
>> prohibitum and malum in se, and why your formulation doesn't work
>> very well in light of that difference.
>
> Having encountered Mr. Newberry on several other forums, I would urge
> that people not waste their time arguing with him.  He generally
> resorts to attacks on his opponents rather than attempts to make
> coherent points [1].  The unexplained use here of several legal Latin
> phrases in passing is characteristic of his typical
> "vocabulary-dropping, but doesn't know what he's talking about" style.
>
> (And yes, this counts as an ad hominem attack as well, but sometimes
> one must point out the obvious.)
>
> -Mark
>

My point was that Mark does not understand the language of debate, his
clear poisoning the well attack here is an excellent example of it.


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] North Frisian wikipedia - arbitrary mention

body:
Dear fellow list subscribers,

I just requested a North Frisian wikipedia. As the instructions on top of
the requests page demand, I am mentioning this request on the mailing list
now.

According to Aliter from the Westlauwer Frisian wikipedia, the creation of
Wikipedias for all three Frisian variants was on his and some others'
agendas, but didn't have a very high priority. As the Seeltersk wikipedia is
now in the early stage of development, I decided to request a Wikipedia for
the last remaining Frisian language. Please do not expect its short time
creation, unless unexpectedly some native speaker comes up doing a lot of
work.

I am well aware of its huge dialectical differences and we will certainly
have to take appropriate measurements to cope with these.

Regards,
Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: ABCD

subject: [WikiEN-l] Database lock

body:
On 5/8/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> any idea how long it takes to get back online?

~10 minutes (I hope)


body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

> My point was that Mark does not understand the language of debate, his
> clear poisoning the well attack here is an excellent example of it.

Since I have not been participating in this thread, I'm not sure to what
you mean to refer.  Your previous argument in this thread was with Ray
Saintonge, not with me.

-Mark


body:
On May 8, 2005, at 4:24 PM, Delirium wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> My point was that Mark does not understand the language of debate,
>> his clear poisoning the well attack here is an excellent example of
>> it.
>
> Since I have not been participating in this thread, I'm not sure to
> what you mean to refer.  Your previous argument in this thread was
> with Ray Saintonge, not with me.
>
> -Mark
>

You seem to think you are the only person who remembers other people.


body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

>
> On May 8, 2005, at 4:24 PM, Delirium wrote:
>
>> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>>
>>> My point was that Mark does not understand the language of debate,
>>> his clear poisoning the well attack here is an excellent example of it.
>>
>>
>> Since I have not been participating in this thread, I'm not sure to
>> what you mean to refer.  Your previous argument in this thread was
>> with Ray Saintonge, not with me.
>>
>
> You seem to think you are the only person who remembers other people.

While an interesting comment, I fail to see how you can sensibly have
said "my point was", when in fact you were not engaged in a discussion
with me.  How could you have been making a point about my understanding
of language in a discussion I was not party to?

-Mark


body:
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Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>> An alternative would be to (optionally) run the wiki source through my
>> PHP-based converter. It generates roughly the same XML as Timwi's *real*
>> parser does (or would do), so there would be compatability if we ever
>> switch parsers.
>
>
> Well, that does something completely different doesn't it? Here we're
> providing the 'transparent copy' which is the 'preferred format for
> editing', which is the source text. A transformed version for output
> could be useful in addition, but is a separate issue. Think program
> source and object code...

I'm aware that it's something different, but one can (without too much
hassle) reconstruct wiki text from XML. It might not be *exactly* like
it was, but wether there were one or five blank lines (for example)
doesn't really matter, does it?
The advantage of providing "real" XML would be that the wiki text is
already "pre-parsed", making it much easier for the end user to process
it. He *is* already using an XML parser...

Of course, for plain backup storage, it won't make much sense. Anyway, I
*did* include the word "optionally" :-)

>> Last not least, I remember there's a free compression algorithm that
>> specializes on XML compression, and claims to be more effective for XML
>> texts tham plain-text compression (which goes up to 10 times). Alas, I
>> forgot the name...
>
>
> The vast bulk of the dump is natural-language text (which is highly
> repetitive due to consecutively stored versions), so I'd be surprised if
> this would outweigh the benefits of using a standard tool like gzip.
> Might be good to know about it for reference though!

I'll try to find it again.

Magnus
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from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
I've just been over to Alt.Usenet.Kooks, and they're loving this, as you'd
expect.


from_name: Bill Konrad

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> On 5/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > > We don't have the resources to do any of this, which is why we rely on
> > > sources that do. Usenet isn't one of them.
> >
> > That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.  However, it is not
> > Wikipedia policy.
>
> Sean, I've asked three or four times if anyone can point me to any
> part of Wikipedia policy that states or implies that Usenet is an
> acceptable source, and so far, no one has done so. My understanding of
> the policy pages (e.g. WP:NOR) is that it's not, and I sent you a link
> to the section that seems to back me up. It doesn't mention Usenet
> explicitly, but the description of what type of source is acceptable
> would definitely exclude it. I'd say you're the one operating on the
> basis of your opinion only, not me. But if I'm wrong, show me.

I do not see any explicit reference barring the use of Usenet as a source. I
suspect that you may have a much stricter interpretation of NOR than at
least some other Wikipedians. I think most of us would agree that individual
postings on Usenet would not be of much value as a citation for any
particular claim made about a specific subject (other than documenting what
that poster said at a particular point in time). However, many usegroup have
FAQs and other moderated documentation which are produced in a similar
manner as the Wiki model and are roughly about as accurate as much of the
content in Wikipedia. I see no basis for barring such content
indiscriminately. Like most everything else on Wikipedia, determining the
merits of any particular claim and the references supporting such a claim is
a matter of open-ended discussion and revision.

The worthwhileness of any citation in Wikipedia is dependent on having
multiple readers, where if the citation is being used to support a
controverisal claim, some of those readers are willing to examine the source
and provide a separate evaluation. You say we don't have the resources to do
any of this, but I thought that was precisely the strength of the Wiki
editing model--hundreds, thousands, or even potentially millions of
readers/editors, some of whom have the interest and motivation to cull out
the worst crap and revise and improve that which is worth keeping. I've seen
numerous attempts to use mainstream sources to support claims that upon
closer examination were not actually supported by the sources. Without
someone willing to examine the sources and evaluate the merits, anyone can
make up citations that "look" good.

Bkonrad


from_name: Alphax

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 05:52:42PM -0400, Delirium wrote:
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Delirium wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged
>>>>>in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
>>>>>interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
>>>>>old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
>>>>>trafficked articles, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Those sound like plausible numbers, but I think your methodology is
>>>>somewhat overstating the cohesiveness: The "drive-by editors" who are
>>>>the least associated with an identifiable Wikipedia community are the
>>>>users who haven't even bothered to go so far as to create a user
>>>>account, which you explicitly exclude from your count.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Users who aren't logged in make only around 18% of all edits.  It
>>>doesn't change the results materially.
>>>
>>
>>How about when bots are excluded?  Just RamBot is a non-negligible
>>proportion of the total edits on en:, and obviously what bots do isn't
>>really a good measure of the social aspects of how humans edit Wikipedia...
>
>
> Why not?  Bots are part of what humans do.  I agree that they need to be
> counted separately for many metrics when making statistical analyses of
> the social interactions on Wikipedia, but they are a social phenomena in
> that they are created, targeted, and enacted by humans as a result of
> their desires and needs within the larger social circumstances of the
> Wikipedia project as a whole.
>

I think bots *are* important - look at the impact RamBot has had, with
the "Free the RamBot articles" project.

(Whoever replies next should snip some of the quoted stuff :))

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: El C

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
In this case, though, this private individual has chosen to speak
publicly (i.e. within the public realm that is usenet) and it was his
choice to face all the potential vicissitudes therein. Yes, I think we
need to be careful with usenet entries, but I reviewed the record of
the individual in question and I do not believe his protests should be
taken into account, as per WP/Usenet notability. Next time (heh, next
time), he should stick to posting anonymously (and he's been using
premium usenet services, plural - it's not as if he could'nt do that),
or refrain from even touching that send message button in his
newsreader.

El_C

>I was only concerned about actually naming the award winner because
that person is a >private individual who seems to be upset about the
whole thing.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with a dodgy source, properly identified?

body:
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dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> I don't get it. Journalism follows one practice, academic research
> another. I think Wikipedia follows a modified version of latter.
>
> In journalism, stories are published with no indication of the source
> other than the reporter's name (or the name of the wire service).
> _Sources are not cited_. We rely on the newspaper's editorial staff, the
> newspaper's reputation, and the reporter's responsibility to the
> profession of journalism to follow appropriate standards to insure that
> most of what we read is true. We usually have no way of directly
> evaluating what's behind any story.
>

And that it why you shouldn't trust them :)

> In academic research, every source is cited in a way that allows the
> reader to verify it personally. Every fact that appears in a paper is
> either the personal testimony of the author of the paper, we did thus
> and such, we saw thus and such, we concluded thus and such. _Or, it is a
> source citation._ These source citations are usually journal references,
> but may occasionally be "personal communications." The journals and
> sources are simply _named._ Sez who? Sez Frotz and Glotz 1989,
> Zeitschrift f?r Krankschaft und Geerschift, 22(6):116-122. In most cases
> the reader can easily verify that the Zeitschrift exists and that pages
> 116-122 of that number have that article and that it says what the
> paper's author says it says.
>

Yes, that it good...

> _It is left completely up to the reader to know whether or not the
> Zeitschrift is a peer reviewed journal or not, what its reputation is,
> and whether Frotz and Glotz are competent_.
>

That will depend on where you read what Frotz and Glotz have written. If
it is a peer-reviewed journal, book etc. the editors /should/ have
checked all that.

> I completely fail to see _any problem in general_ in citing USENET as a
> source, provided an actual citation is given so the reader can verify
> that the posting says what the article says it says.
>

Neither do I. If we have an article saying "Linus talked to Fred", and
we got that off USENET, it is OK. It is a *fact* that a person called
Linus posted something to Fred via USENET.

> That does not mean that a statement citing USENET should necessarily go
> in an article, or that citing USENET, or The New York Times, or
> _Nature_, waves a magic wand over a passage that protects it from
> criticism, discussion, replacement, or deletion.
>

But if the article is about USENET, we take USENET as the source... if
the article is about NYT, take NYT as a source... if the article is
about /Nature/, take /Nature/ as a source. USENET is possibly more
reliable in this sense because the archives are obtainable so easily. To
check a fact in a NYT article, I need to travel 30km to a library, see
if they have the relevant edition, and then use a microfiche/film reader
to see it. *Perhaps* the library has a hard copy, or the content is
available online, but I don't know for certain. USENET is *more*
reliable in this case.

> A good example of what I think to be an entirely appropriate use of
> USENET is in tracking the approximate time when phrases or neologisms or
> memes became current in the Internet community.
>

Up until 1994, yes.

> Conversely, The Boston Globe might carry a story quoting sources
> criticizing a judge. That would be a very reliable source. That does NOT
> mean that it would automatically be appropriate for a Wikipedia article
> to say ANY of these things:
>

You trust what commercial newspapers (or any commercial new sources)
say? I don't.

> *Judge so-and-so lacks proper judicial demeanor.
>
> *Judge so-and-so was criticized for lacking proper judicial demeanor.
>
> *On day so-and-so, page so-and-so, the Boston Globe quoted so-and-so as
> saying Judge so-and-so is "a very passionate woman, and is not afraid to
> go and dance and have a couple of glasses of wine and have a good time.
> She's not your typical judge."
>
> The third form is a valid citation, but may or may not be appropriate to
> the context of an article.
>

That would be removed for being dodgy english, not a defamatory
statement. If we said "USA Today published claims that Judge so-and-so
was a dirty scoundrel", *and* it was relevant, I think it could stay in.
Remember, Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, not a lonely housewifes
ramblings on the world. NPOV means facts, which are axiomatically
neutral, not opinions, which are axiomatically biased.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mediation Committee Overhaul

body:
There have been some recent comments in Arbitration regarding the lack of
any meaningful mediation going on and that cases that do go to mediation
seem to be abandoned or loiter there without any attention.  After
discussion with a lot of people it appeared to me that this was the time for
a new proposal on overhauling mediation.

Inter did a good part of the initial work on this but I added the informal
mediation portion which I think is a key part of the proposal.  I have the
proposal up and active but it is very much under construction.  Comments are
encouraged!!

The proposal can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_%282005%29

Thanks!

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> My point was that Mark does not understand the language of debate,
>> his clear poisoning the well attack here is an excellent example of it.
>
> Since I have not been participating in this thread, I'm not sure to
> what you mean to refer.  Your previous argument in this thread was
> with Ray Saintonge, not with me.

Fantastic!  ... and I thought I was arguing with Jean-Baptiste Soufron.
I suppose if I worked hard at it I could make a distinction between
"explicitly" and "specifically", but the former may indeed be a superior
choice.

The question that set us off in this direction was whether someone had
the right to put his work into the public domain.  I maintain that he
does.  To put this in terms of the distinction between "malum
prohibitum" and "malum in se" is absurd in the absence of a "malum" of
any kind in such an act.  Is Stirling proposing that someone should be
fined for putting his writings in the public domain?

Ec


from_name: Leif Knutsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of blocking privileges

body:
User:Jtdirl blocked me (Leifern) for allegedly violating the 5 reverts in 24 hour rule.  This is both unreasonable and an abuse of his admin privileges, for the following reasons:
- There are actually 4 reverts in about 4 hours
- The reversions were of deletions of graphs - since it's simply not possible to reword images, I had little option besides reverting the deletions
- The person who kept deleting the graphs did very little to justify them besides saying that they were irrelevant
- My adversary (Geni, also an admin) reverted three times, but this apparently didn't bother Jtdirl
- Jtdirl has an axe to grind - we had an editing dispute that he lost about heirs apparent - I can't help but think this is a vindictive act.
- Jtdirl gave no warning, made no effort to mediate, simply went ahead and blocked

I don't know what the remedy for this is, but I would propose that both Jtdirl and Geni lose their admin privileges.  If I am not unblocked immediately, I am happy to find another hobby.  I believe my contributions speak for themselves - that would be a great loss for the WP community.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Database lock

body:
What is a replication lag and any idea how long it takes to get back online?

--Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Bill Konrad wrote:

> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Sean, I've asked three or four times if anyone can point me to any
>> part of Wikipedia policy that states or implies that Usenet is an
>> acceptable source, and so far, no one has done so. My understanding of
>> the policy pages (e.g. WP:NOR) is that it's not, and I sent you a link
>> to the section that seems to back me up. It doesn't mention Usenet
>> explicitly, but the description of what type of source is acceptable
>> would definitely exclude it. I'd say you're the one operating on the
>> basis of your opinion only, not me. But if I'm wrong, show me.
>
> I do not see any explicit reference barring the use of Usenet as a
> source. I suspect that you may have a much stricter interpretation of
> NOR than at least some other Wikipedians. I think most of us would
> agree that individual postings on Usenet would not be of much value as
> a citation for any particular claim made about a specific subject
> (other than documenting what that poster said at a particular point in
> time). However, many usegroup have FAQs and other moderated
> documentation which are produced in a similar manner as the Wiki model
> and are roughly about as accurate as much of the content in Wikipedia.
> I see no basis for barring such content indiscriminately. Like most
> everything else on Wikipedia, determining the merits of any particular
> claim and the references supporting such a claim is a matter of
> open-ended discussion and revision.
>
> The worthwhileness of any citation in Wikipedia is dependent on having
> multiple readers, where if the citation is being used to support a
> controverisal claim, some of those readers are willing to examine the
> source and provide a separate evaluation. You say we don't have the
> resources to do any of this, but I thought that was precisely the
> strength of the Wiki editing model--hundreds, thousands, or even
> potentially millions of readers/editors, some of whom have the
> interest and motivation to cull out the worst crap and revise and
> improve that which is worth keeping. I've seen numerous attempts to
> use mainstream sources to support claims that upon closer examination
> were not actually supported by the sources. Without someone willing to
> examine the sources and evaluate the merits, anyone can make up
> citations that "look" good.

I have never used Usenet as a source of information, and, given the
controversy that it engenders, I would only do so with extreme caution.
I would make no absolute rule against using it, but a critical reader
needs to be aware that its use as a reference will taint the credibility
of the material.  The value of an article depends on the combined
credibility of its sources and integrity of its contributors.

As a person who is a manic book collector I am not lacking in obscure
sources.  I could correctly cite an issue of the "Strand Magazine" to
say that Queen Victoria enjoyed mountain climbing and reached the top of
several of the highest peaks in Scotland, but I would be wrong to cite
the same reference to say that she broke her leg during one of these
climbs?  Good scholarship would require that these facts be checked, but
who is going to do that kind of checking even when I make it easy by
giving the date and page number for the information.  If people do that
checking, and find that I am consistently adding fraudulent information
my reputation will suffer.  In the absence of checking the wrong
information could remain there for years.

Ec


from_name: Tân Pektiong

body:
Hi Wouter,

Are you talking about this language?
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=frr

This info is from the 15th edition of the SIL's Ethnologue.
The 3-letter language code used in this edition will be almost
identical to the
upcoming ISO/DIS 639-3 which has passed the first round of balloting to
attain the status of Draft International Standard.

 From http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp
"The three-letter language identifiers in this edition of the
Ethnologue are thus the codes of ISO/DIS 639-3."

I would suggest to use the SIL's newest language code when necessary
(and before ISO 639-3 is finalized). So http://frr.wikipedia.org/ (?)

best
Pektiong

On May 8, 2005, at 10:07 PM, Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

> Dear fellow list subscribers,
>
> I just requested a North Frisian wikipedia. As the instructions on top
> of the requests page demand, I am mentioning this request on the
> mailing list now.
>
> According to Aliter from the Westlauwer Frisian wikipedia, the
> creation of Wikipedias for all three Frisian variants was on his and
> some others' agendas, but didn't have a very high priority. As the
> Seeltersk wikipedia is now in the early stage of development, I
> decided to request a Wikipedia for the last remaining Frisian
> language. Please do not expect its short time creation, unless
> unexpectedly some native speaker comes up doing a lot of work.
>
> I am well aware of its huge dialectical differences and we will
> certainly have to take appropriate measurements to cope with these.
>
> Regards,
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Pochung Chen

body:
Hi Wouter,

Are you talking about this language?
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=frr

This info is from the 15th edition of the SIL's Ethnologue.
The 3-letter language code used in this edition will be almost
identical to the
upcoming ISO/DIS 639-3 which has passed the first round of balloting to
attain the status of Draft International Standard.

 From http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp
"The three-letter language identifiers in this edition of the
Ethnologue are thus the codes of ISO/DIS 639-3."

I would suggest to use the SIL's newest language code when necessary
(and before ISO 639-3 is finalized). So http://frr.wikipedia.org/ (?)

best
Pektiong

On May 8, 2005, at 10:07 PM, Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

On May 8, 2005, at 10:07 PM, Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

> Dear fellow list subscribers,
>
> I just requested a North Frisian wikipedia. As the instructions on top
> of the requests page demand, I am mentioning this request on the
> mailing list now.
>
> According to Aliter from the Westlauwer Frisian wikipedia, the
> creation of Wikipedias for all three Frisian variants was on his and
> some others' agendas, but didn't have a very high priority. As the
> Seeltersk wikipedia is now in the early stage of development, I
> decided to request a Wikipedia for the last remaining Frisian
> language. Please do not expect its short time creation, unless
> unexpectedly some native speaker comes up doing a lot of work.
>
> I am well aware of its huge dialectical differences and we will
> certainly have to take appropriate measurements to cope with these.
>
> Regards,
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> As a person who is a manic book collector I am not lacking in obscure
> sources.  I could correctly cite an issue of the "Strand Magazine" to
> say that Queen Victoria enjoyed mountain climbing and reached the top of
> several of the highest peaks in Scotland, but I would be wrong to cite
> the same reference to say that she broke her leg during one of these
> climbs?  Good scholarship would require that these facts be checked, but
> who is going to do that kind of checking even when I make it easy by
> giving the date and page number for the information.  If people do that
> checking, and find that I am consistently adding fraudulent information
> my reputation will suffer.  In the absence of checking the wrong
> information could remain there for years.

You don't have to go even that far. Most people don't have easy access
to checking something as mainstream as a New York Times article from
ten years ago. Most wouldn't even bother checking.

...UNLESS it was incommensurate with another network of facts. I know
next to nothing about Queen Victoria, but if you posted some obscure
reference about one of the characters I knew about, I'd probably try
to track it down if it didn't harmonize with my previous knowledge.

References can be faked for academic papers, too. But as a network of
eyes, they become less problematic. Not every reference will be
checked, but not every reference warrants checking (as a somewhat
related humorous note: I read a very poor book today where the author
had cited FOUR separate sources to back up the claim that "Charles
Darwin was born to a wealthy family.").

In the end, attribution of sources works in all cases. Sometimes a
disclaimer is necesary. But I don't see why Usenet is any worse than
any other source, assuming the attribution is done correctly. I
wouldn't cite Usenet for information about the speed of light. But I
would cite it for information about how a well-known Usenet figure is
portrayed on Usenet. Which seems to be what this is all about. This
seems fairly obvious to me.

FF


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Speaking of 639-3: I, for one, hate it.

They should've taken more time to get input from people. I would
submit corrections, but I know there is no point as there are so many
of them I can spot alone, it's just not worth it.

For one, Havasupai, Hualapai, and Yavapai are officially considered
separate languages and have different written forms. I can tell you
from experience that, while mutually intelligible to a certain degree,
I would not consider them to form a single language.

Similarly, some people may want a code for Voro, which the Ethnologue
says is a dialect of Estonian but which Voro speakers say is a
language in its own right.

There are also languages which are totally excluded - I can't think of
an example right now, but I noticed some.

In the meantime, they should add a language-family code to 639-2 for
Austronesian: there is none currently that covers Formosan languages.
Some will tell you Malayo-Polynesian, but this is simply incorrect:
Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian are both _subbranches_ of Austronesian.

Mark

On 08/05/05, T?n Pektiong <pektiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Wouter,
>
> Are you talking about this language?
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=frr
>
> This info is from the 15th edition of the SIL's Ethnologue.
> The 3-letter language code used in this edition will be almost
> identical to the
> upcoming ISO/DIS 639-3 which has passed the first round of balloting to
> attain the status of Draft International Standard.
>
>  From http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp
> "The three-letter language identifiers in this edition of the
> Ethnologue are thus the codes of ISO/DIS 639-3."
>
> I would suggest to use the SIL's newest language code when necessary
> (and before ISO 639-3 is finalized). So http://frr.wikipedia.org/ (?)
>
> best
> Pektiong
>
> On May 8, 2005, at 10:07 PM, Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>
> > Dear fellow list subscribers,
> >
> > I just requested a North Frisian wikipedia. As the instructions on top
> > of the requests page demand, I am mentioning this request on the
> > mailing list now.
> >
> > According to Aliter from the Westlauwer Frisian wikipedia, the
> > creation of Wikipedias for all three Frisian variants was on his and
> > some others' agendas, but didn't have a very high priority. As the
> > Seeltersk wikipedia is now in the early stage of development, I
> > decided to request a Wikipedia for the last remaining Frisian
> > language. Please do not expect its short time creation, unless
> > unexpectedly some native speaker comes up doing a lot of work.
> >
> > I am well aware of its huge dialectical differences and we will
> > certainly have to take appropriate measurements to cope with these.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Wouter
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> > http://messenger.msn.nl/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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


body:
On 5/8/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> _It is left completely up to the reader to know whether or not the
> Zeitschrift is a peer reviewed journal or not, what its reputation is,
> and whether Frotz and Glotz are competent_.

I disagree on this point. I think sources which are regarded as
questionable should be flagged as such in as NPOV a way as possible.
On articles where there are sources which are in contradiction with
one another, I think attribution of source info is useful for all
parties.

The textbook example is for articles on various evolution/creationism
disputes. If the matter is a factual statement I think it should be
noted if the source is not peer reviewed or at least has an
over-reaching agenda. Something as simple as (Creationist journal) is
enough and not perjorative. If anybody gets irritated at that then we
can label the non-Creationist, mainstream science sources as
(Mainstream scientific journal).

(This might be a good place to note that "mainstream" is a very
convenient way to turn an "ontological" statement into a
"sociological" one. It allows you to very quickly stop arguing about
the truth of something and instead turn it into a question of
community consensus. Those who disagree with the mainstream opinion
are usually more than happy to see it identified as such -- for them
"mainstream" means "cow-like", for everyone else, "mainstream" means
"reliable". In any event, such a "sociological" approach means you
don't have to make WP conclude either way on an answer. I think it is
one of the easiest ways to make NPOV work. Facts and opinions do not
just exist by themselves in space; they are constructed and maintained
by humans, and should be attributed to humans whenever possible.)

Additionally, there are a lot of things published in scientific and
academic journals which are considerably controversial and not
representative of the consensus of the community as whole. If they are
noteworthy to the article they should of course be mentioned, but
their "controversial" status should be noted. (Again, a "sociological"
term, although this one is more easily conflated with "fringe" which
can be interpreted as a pejorative).

Other than that, I agree with what you have said for the most part...
there is nothing wrong with including "dodgy" sources, though we
should not feel unhampered to give the reader neutral hints as to how
they should feel about the source (noting whether it is peer-reviewed
or not does not pass judgment, it is simply a statement of
methodological fact, the reader may make of it what they will).

FF


body:
7000 is very, very, very wrong..

If I recall corectly, some islands has over 5000 on their own??

Even so, I will not support a unified North Frisian Wikipedia.

And please do not go around asking for new Wikipedias without at least
nominal support from a native speaker.

Mark

On 09/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Wouter,
> >
> >I have a major issue with this request.
> >
> >That is: Do you have /any/ native speakers who have expressed interest?
>
> No, not yet, but I am confident it will succeed, for unlike with
> Saterlandic, there seems to be a well developed infrastructure of devoted
> users, some of which will certainly be willing to contribute. There is at
> least one known example of a non-quotation North Frisian on Wikipedia,
> probably left by a (near-)native speaker.
>
> >Also, I am a firm believer in North Frisian dialectal solidarity. I do
> >not think there can or should be a single North Frisian Wikipedia. We
> >should start with one for Mainland North Frisian, then we can have
> >another for S?l`ring, one for Ferring, Oomram, etc.
> >
> >Now, I will lift a quote from an e-mail in response to me on
> >"lowlands-l" regarding North Frisian:
> >
> >//begin quote//
> >You and I and other language "geeks" (and I mean this in the best possible
> >way of course) would not find the North Frisian varieties all that
> >different
> >from each other.  We would think they are fairly easily mutually
> >intelligible.  However, apparently the average person that not think so,
> >and
> >this seems to be mainly because some of the shifts, especially vowel
> >shifts,
> >are rather dramatic.  Some people talk about "Frisian *languages*."
>
> You're right: the differences are big. On the other hand, people have to
> cope with similar problems on li:, nds: and als:, covering a very broad
> spectrum of quite dissimilar but somehow coherent dialects. If North Frisian
> were still spoken by nearly all of the population, two or more North Frisian
> Wikipedias would be a possibility, albeit that it would be problematic to
> convince the wikipedia gurus of its necessity, but since the language has
> only some 7,000 speakers (estimates vary), we can't afford spiltting it up.
> I was planning to use two variants of North Frisian, Fering-??mrang and
> B?kingharder dialect, on the most important pages, f.i. the Main Page and of
> course redirects can solve a lot of the problem. Finally, while the mainland
> and insular dialects may be mutually unintelligible for many when spoken,
> written text allows much more mutual understanding. And don't forget that
> all native speakers learnt Frisian, Low Saxon and High German all in their
> childhood, so they are more focused on language variants then most of us
> are.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
> http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia widget for new Macintosh OS release

body:
On 5/7/05, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> Unfortunately, the WikityWidget only supports the CamelCase link
> style, and I think Wikipedia's syntax is much more powerful and
> flexible.
>
> It would be great if someone could develop a WikityWidget-like tool
> that supports the Wikipedia syntax. I've been using a local
> installation of MediaWiki on my laptop to keep various notes for my
> personal use, but it would be easier to have the same functionality
> available on my dashboard. Also, it would help to further popularize
> the Wikipedia syntax, which I'd like to see become the basis for a
> standard wiki syntax even outside of MediaWiki.

No kidding. I find myself taking notes in text editors and separating
new sections with =='s and bolding things with apostrophes. I think if
someone made a robust and simple personal database creator of this
sort -- which one could also store files in and categorically index --
it would be a great boon to us all.

I wonder how hard it would be? The most difficult time would be
putting something together that did a good job of blending the coding
and viewing aspects of it -- in a personal environment I think a
program that made you "submit" a form would be tedious. You could get
around it with simple tabs, I suppose, but it would be even more
amazing if one could both apply and code  in Wiki syntax in realtime.
Oh, but to dream...

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Michael P. Hopcroft wrote:
>>>> I have no idea what 'scientism" is, but I do know that the idea that
>>>> randomly placed thermonuclear reactors dozens, hundreds and thousands
>>>> of light-years away have a direct influence on what happens to human
>>>> beings on Earth is illogical to the point of delusion. Even if they
>>>> were capable of thought, which is insanity in itself, how could they
>>>> possibly care?
>>>
>>> According to Oxford scientism is the "excessive belief in the power of
>>> scientific knowledge and techniques."  In many instances it takes on the
>>> characteristics of a religion.
>>>
>>> You began by making a wild comment about astrology and astrologers, and
>>> now you want to compound the issue with your creationist premise that
>>> someone has been going around placing thermonuclear reactors just so
>>> that you can set up some kind of straw man argument.
>>>
>>
>> Firstly, the fact that Michael wrote "random" is anti-creationist;
>> secondly, you might want to see [[Star]].
>>
> Ahh, but the verb "to place" is creationist.  And if we accept the idea
> of a creator it logically follows that that entity should be capable of
> placing things randomly.  Why shouldn't God have the right to
> participate in a crap game?
> There's no mention of astrology in [[Star]], which is just as well,
> despite the etymology of the word "astrology".  The word "random" does
> not appear in the article either.  On the other hand, astrologers in
> general are not likely to be interested in thermonuclear reactors.
>

See [[Star]] as to what all the pseudo-randomly /located/ thermo-nuclear
reactors are :)

>> With all the traffic on this subject, I'm not sure if this page has come
>> up before, but in case it hasn't:
>>
>> http://www.petitmorte.net/phoenix/wollmann.html
>>
> That's one of those unfortunate yellow on black pages that are always a
> problem to read.  The whole thing seems like one interminable flame war
> with not much being said that has any value.  In that sort of context
> anything which it says for or against astrology is not going to be very
> convincing or credible.
>

Did you try disabling styles? It becomes black on white when you do.
Still horribly formatted though; however, the number of contradictions
that Wollmann allegedly made are -  well, they make Sollog look rational.

Oh, and we should probably add Mr. Ennis to the list of "Kook of the
..." winners.

>> I suggest you have a bit of a look around the rest of the site as well.
>> "Kook of the Millenium" wasn't the only award he won.
>>
> I'm not interested in the debate over the individual kook's behaviour at
> all.  Such matters appear all too frequently on the list.  The phrase
> "the man is an ASTROLOGER" with the word in all capitals did catch my
> eye.  That is irrelevant to the man's status as a kook.
>

I looked up alt.usenet.kooks on Google Groups, and they now have an
award named after Mr. Astrological Consulting - the EDMOND WOLLMANN
"RUBBER TURKEY" AWARD.

Incidentaly, this mailing list has been mentioned on AUK.

> The persistence of astrology through the ages suggests to me that there
> are underlying germs of truth within it, but these are obscured by a
> tremendous amount of unfounded claims.  Thus, specific claims that can
> be scientifically supported are very few, and some would even say that
> there are none at all.  But failure to prove is not disproof.
> Unfortunately, people who claim to be promoting science make contrary
> statements that are even more preposterous than the claims made by
> astrologers.  They impute ideas to astrology that were never expressed
> by the astrologers.  They than make the perfectly accurate comment that
> the idea in question is ridiculous, and use that as evidence that all of
> astrology is nonsense.  That's a straw man argument.  It is falacious
> and unscientific.  The use of imputed ideas seems typical of people who
> have no clue about the subject.
> Ec
>

Statement of facts:
 - There are such things as stars and planets
 - Stars and planets can influence what happens on Earth. Sol gives us
light, and the moon gives us tides.

The persistance of astrology throughout the ages is caused by people
searching for something bigger than themselves. Of all the possible
things that one could believe in, people choose astrology because it
/has/ been around so long, and it "worships" something mystical and
(until the 20th century) unknown - stars and planets.

As for what is bunk about astrology, attributed to it correctly or not,
people can always read [[Astrology]] :)

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 04:58:10PM -0400, Delirium wrote:
> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
> >You seem to think you are the only person who remembers other people.
>
> While an interesting comment, I fail to see how you can sensibly have
> said "my point was", when in fact you were not engaged in a discussion
> with me.  How could you have been making a point about my understanding
> of language in a discussion I was not party to?

This is an interesting demonstration of an ongoing dynamic of
disagreement, but I'd like to point something out, Mark:

You're not taking your own advice.  Don't waste your time continuing the
"debate" with him.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 05:07:10AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> Putting half your hardware on one grid and half on another means you
> lose half your capacity if the power goes off. There is no need for
> this. There is already a diesel generator on site, we just need to cover
> various kinds of short-term failure. We've seen two short-term failures:
> a main circuit breaker trip and a power strip circuit breaker trip. The
> power strip failure could have been prevented by having a proper PDU
> with independent breakers, I believe one is now on order. Various
> threats to the main power, including the main circuit breaker, can be
> dealt with by supplying the DB servers with a UPS, and negotiating with
> the colo to ensure that their supply is fully redundant. The main power
> failure apparently only lasted for a matter of seconds, if they don't
> intend to guard against such short failures, then we need to make our
> own arrangements.

Mention of PDUs reminds me of something: In conversation with one of the
people at the colo on Friday, I was informed that once the move is
accomplished (some of you should already know what I'm talking about,
and it's to them I speak) we'll be using circuits with lower amperage,
but will have more circuits per rack.  Instead of 33 amp circuits (or
was it 30?), we'll be using 20 amp circuits -- and I think he said we'll
have three circuits per rack.  This gives better power redundancy so
that less machines are affected by a failure on a single circuit and
less daisy-chaining of PDUs goes on (of course, we're talking about
fixing that daisy-chain thing anyway, at this point).

With that in mind, I don't know (since I'm not really in the loop on the
hardware-ordering side of things) whether that affects the ideal
situation for ordering PDUs.  I know that we're interested in having all
network administrated PDUs so that we can use them for restarting
machines remotely, and I know we were looking at those "zero U" PDUs
that would basically fit two per rack.  Should we be looking into
different PDUs if we'll have three circuits per rack, or should we just
get two of the zero U PDUs and get a couple of in-rack PDUs to hook up
to the third circuit?

Something to think about, I guess.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
When I suggested a state-machine-based parser, people laughed.  I
guess history counts for something, after all.

Possibly the best word I'd use to describe the current codebase (and
the technologies used) is "sophomoric."  This is not to belittle those
responsible for phase3, but like you say, it's a hack.  When you're
forced to scale faster than the abilities of the handful of people on
tap, you can't always do everything right, and it's been a bang-up job
of everyone involved to ensure that everything works to this day with
practically zero downtime.

Personally (and this almost always incites a riot when proposed in a
public forum), I'd like to see MediaWiki rewritten in a language other
than PHP, or at least have the critical parsing functions moved to
something more efficient than calling preg_replace inside recursive
functions (that is to say, anything).  Yes, people have proposed this
since the beginning of time, to the point that developers habitually
roll their eyes and crack jokes about "the benefits of [language of
the week]" at the mere suggestion, but Wikimedia (read: Wikipedia)
won't scale automagically.

I understand a real object store is in the works, and if done right,
that's a huge hurdle overcome.  Table-based SQL servers can only scale
so far, especially when you're using the same one you used for your
high school bulletin board project.  Special care has to be paid to
issues like replication, of course, or the ultimate benefit is nil or
negative.

There are myriad issues to consider, and I'd like to see everything on
the table.  The WMF development cliche has long been "you can't just
keep throwing resources at the problem," but mantras don't solve
problems by themselves.

Flame away, guys.

--
main(){char*s="2)$%\3404(%\3407!,253\312",i=0;
while(i["]&&down==!up&&s["]&&putchar('@'+(i++)
[s]));return!i;} // http://www.austinhair.org/


body:
On 5/8/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
...
> > I would suggest suggest that any new major backup colo in North America
> > should be in a different power grid area.  This would protect from the
> > possible consequences of a major blackout such as occurred in 2003.  As
> > I understand the situation North America has two major power grids, one
> > in the East and one in the West.  Only Texas and Quebec have independent
> > grids.

While both Texas and California are very well connected, this solves a
non-problem.  The entire east coast power grid did not fail in 2003,
and never has.  If it ever did, we'd have bigger problems on our hands
than not being able to edit Wikipedia articles.

> I was thinking more along the lines of battery backup to tide us over
> until the generator comes online, and a redundant network uplink to
> guard against switch failure. As I tried to explain, a second US colo
> would lead to reduced performance, unless it was within 100km of the
> current colo.

Any commercial generator solution includes battery support for the
transition.  Generators are worthless if you lose power for five
minutes while the motors warm up.

Redundant network uplinks are a must, and along with them a proper
load balancing solution.  This isn't difficult, as we both know.  I
concur with the prediction of reduced performance for a second
American colo, *given the current scheme*.

> Putting half your hardware on one grid and half on another means you
> lose half your capacity if the power goes off. There is no need for
> this. There is already a diesel generator on site, we just need to cover
> various kinds of short-term failure. We've seen two short-term failures:
> a main circuit breaker trip and a power strip circuit breaker trip. The
> power strip failure could have been prevented by having a proper PDU
> with independent breakers, I believe one is now on order. Various
> threats to the main power, including the main circuit breaker, can be
> dealt with by supplying the DB servers with a UPS, and negotiating with
> the colo to ensure that their supply is fully redundant. The main power
> failure apparently only lasted for a matter of seconds, if they don't
> intend to guard against such short failures, then we need to make our
> own arrangements.

Agreed on all counts.

> -- Tim Starling

--
main(){char*s="2)$%\3404(%\3407!,253\312",i=0;
while(i["]&&down==!up&&s["]&&putchar('@'+(i++)
[s]));return!i;} // http://www.austinhair.org/


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/8/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That's precisely the point: newspapers (and their websites) have a
> fact-checking infrastructure in place. A reporter writes a story, it's
> checked by the assigning editor, checked again by a copy editor, again
> by a page editor, and again by a proof reader, all of whom are looking
> for obvious legal and factual problems as well as style issues.
> Depending on the size of the newspaper, it might also be checked by a
> fact-checker. If it's a sensitive story, it might be looked at by the
> managing editor, the editor-in-chief, the publisher, the lawyers, and
> even the owners.

I challenged an editor to come up with checkable sources once. He
flatly refused. Slim here went screaming off when I proposed deleting
any material for which no source was given.

Seems the rules change if it's a mate.

> We don't have the resources to do any of this, which is why we rely on
> sources that do. Usenet isn't one of them.

If it's a Usenet story, Usenet is a good source. You want to see who
received Net-Kook of the Year award, there's no other source.
Britannica is silent on the matter.

Just common sense, really.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
Alphax wrote:

> Since I seem to kill every thread I post to, I'll end this one.

That's a bloody arrogant attitude.

> I used {{MultiLicenseMinorPD}} until about 2 days ago, when I say the
>
>following on it's talk page:
>
>
>>Because it's actually legally impossible to grant one's own works
>>into the public domain in the U.S. and U.K., and this creates serious
>> potential legal problems, I will deprecate this tag if there is no
>>dissent for 4 days. Please see [[Wikipedia:You can't grant your work
>> into the public domain]] for a full explanation along with some
>>authoritative sources, including the U.S. Copyright Office. I have
>>created the tags {{TextLicenseMinorFreeUse}}, which reflects the
>>intent of this template. [[User:Dcoetzee|Deco]] 03:34, 8 Apr 2005
>>(UTC)
>>
>>
>As I read it (IANAL), you can't place your work into the public domain
>because:
>
Quoting yourself as an authority is a nice trick if you can get away
with it.

Your statement that it is impossible to grant one's works into the
public domain is patently false.  Copyright is an intellectual property
right, and it is fundamental to property rights that the owner have the
right to dispose of his property in whatever manner he sees fit.

I looked at the page which you mentioned and the only thing that
purports to be from the copyright office is a single unverifiable
sentence from a letter received by User:Dcoetzee.  It is completely out
of contest.  For that sentence to be credible one would need to see the
entire letter, as well as the letter from the user showing the questions
that he asked.

>>Any work receives copyright by default and copyright law generally
>>doesn't provide any special means to "abandon" copyright so that a
>>work can enter the public domain
>>
While it's true that a work receives a copyright by default as a
requirement of the Berne Convention, the absence of "special means is
not a barrier to putting a work into the public domain.

>>Some claim that under many jurisdictions, a statement absolving a
>>copyright or "granting" a work into the public domain has no legal
>>effect whatsoever, and that the owner still retains all rights to the
>>work not otherwise released. This person would then have the legal
>>right to prosecute people who use the work under the false impression
>>that it was in the public domain. It is certainly true that under
>>some jurisdictions, it is impossible to release moral rights, though
>>that is not the case in the United States.
>>
Moral rights are another matter, and I realize that they are not a part
of the US law on this.  For the moment let's stick to US law.  Once the
situation there is clear it will be easier to consider the matter in the
light of the law in other countries.

Please do one of two things:
    1. Cite the section of US statute law which explicitly denies the
right to abandon all one's rights in a work, or
    2. Cite a judicial decision which has clearly denied a person's
right to abandon his copyright.

In the absence of this I would conclude that you don't know what you're
talking about.

>*However*, you /can/ release things under a free-for-any-use licence,
>like {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}, {{NoRightsReserved}}, {{cc-sa}}, etc.
>
These are alternative ways of doing things.

>(Hopes flame war will end now)
>
:-D

Ec


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> That's an awful lot to proclaim without a supporting argument.  I'm
>>>>>> interested in details of why you think so.
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, my PhD is on the emergence of Law and I am using wikimedia
>>>>> and wikipedia as demonstrations for my arguments :)
>>>>>
>>>>> But you're right, I should write something on it !
>>>>
>>>> A simpler response would be to cite the clause in the statute that
>>>> says this.  To me a fundamental principal of law is that anything
>>>> which is not specifically forbidden is allowed.
>>>>
>>>> Ec
>>>
>>> Hoi,
>>> It may be a fundamental principal of law. However, I am
>>> uncomfortable with it as it leads to all kinds of weasely people do
>>> things and argue: "reading the law I can interpretet it in such a
>>> way so it should be allowed" while it is totally against what the
>>> law is about. It works both ways as this is also used to prevent
>>> people from doing things because some people are great in bending
>>> the rules.
>>
>> Without fundamental principles the law is meaningless. Reading the
>> law in a way that doing something should be allowed is perfectly
>> fine; it is neither weasely nor against what the law is about.
>> Bending rules is a part of the normal legal game.  Big companies like
>> Microsoft will do whatever they can to have the law work the way they
>> want it to work.  If it's right for them it's right for the little
>> guy, and until the little guy learns that he will forever be a
>> loser.  The principle as I expressed it does not prevent people from
>> doing anything.  If something is not mentioned in the law then doing
>> it is not a violation of the law.  The converse principle, that what
>> is not specifically allowed is forbidden, would lead to the absurdity
>> that any kind of innovation is illegal.
>>
>>> When it comes to our projects, it must be clear that they have their
>>> rules, they invoke an image of what they are to mean.
>>
>> The fewer rules the better.  To me an image or vision of what the
>> project is about determines what rules are necessary.
>>
>>> When the language is deemed to be unclear and that is used as an
>>> excuse to do what is manifestly against the spirit of our projects,
>>> I would not excuse this.
>>
>> Who does the deeming?  If the rules are contrary to the spirit of the
>> project I would change the rules.
>>
>>> The guiding principle of what we do is, we write an encyclopedia, a
>>> dictionary, news, training material whatever that is free[,] NPOV
>>> and with we do this with respect for our fellow editors.
>>
>> There's nothing wrong with this, but then it has nothing to do with
>> the topic.
>>
>>> We are not a debating club.
>>
>> Who said that we are?
>>
>>> We have people active as member of our community in practically all
>>> legal entities of this world and therefore there is not only one law
>>> and one law's principles that we have to take into account.
>>
>> So a balance is required, and this only proves my point.  If
>> something is clearly allowed in one country, but requires a slight
>> "bending" of the rules in another country we go ahead and bend those
>> rules.  This is not the same as an outright violation of the rules.
>> We do not need to strive for the lowest common legal denominator.  If
>> we did that we would be bowing to the whims of a government like the
>> one in China which might shut the project down for anything that it
>> felt was an insult to their government.
>>
>>> Our rules are different from project to project, it is the spirit of
>>> the Wikimedia Foundation that binds us all. It must be clear, that
>>> rules within a project that are against the spirit of the WMF are
>>> not acceptable, neither are practices that violate what the WMF
>>> stands for.
>>
>> The separate rules of different projects are not an issue here.
>>
>> Ec
>
> Hoi,
> Commenting on each line in isolation, you have lost what is meant. If
> we were a debating club you would have scored a point but as we are
> not, it is a pity. You lose sight of the fact that I wrote that I and
> many with me, are disgusted by the way the interpretation of the law
> in order to make a position "acceptable". It being a practise held by
> some does not make this any less true. This was intended as an
> introduction to what followed. As you may have missed this and then
> continue commenting line by line I miss the added value of what you
> try to say. You come to a conclusion that baffles me; as you think it
> important to talk about principles of law. I concluded with stating a
> principle; that the spirit of the WMF charter binds us all, a
> principle that in my opinion should rule all projects and as such is
> an issue. It is, as I bring it to the attention of us all.

I have no problem with the concept that there are common ideas that bind
the WMF projects.  My comments could have as easily been about any
project or all of them.  Your conclusion was a non sequitur. The thread
was about legal issues.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 02:38:41AM -0500, Austin Hair wrote:
>
> Personally (and this almost always incites a riot when proposed in a
> public forum), I'd like to see MediaWiki rewritten in a language other
> than PHP, or at least have the critical parsing functions moved to
> something more efficient than calling preg_replace inside recursive
> functions (that is to say, anything).  Yes, people have proposed this
> since the beginning of time, to the point that developers habitually
> roll their eyes and crack jokes about "the benefits of [language of
> the week]" at the mere suggestion, but Wikimedia (read: Wikipedia)
> won't scale automagically.

Based on my understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of a few
programming languages, I'm inclined to agree -- some of the
functionality of MW should be rewritten in another language.  I have no
idea how realistic it is to wish for that at any point in the forseeable
future, though, due (among other things) to the fact that all code
development for MW is, as far as I'm aware, (almost?) entirely
volunteer-basis.  This lends itself to a lot of work on what needs
fixing to keep things afloat now, but not much to any work on long-view
stuff except in cases of isolated pet projects.

Now, if only we could get a quick pet project rewriting of MW in the
"right language" for long-term scalability without sacrificing a low
entry bar and ease of development. . . .

>
> I understand a real object store is in the works, and if done right,
> that's a huge hurdle overcome.  Table-based SQL servers can only scale
> so far, especially when you're using the same one you used for your
> high school bulletin board project.  Special care has to be paid to
> issues like replication, of course, or the ultimate benefit is nil or
> negative.

Don't take this to mean anything other than what it appears to be at its
most naive: I ask only because I don't really know much about database
design and implementation.

What are the limitations of table-based SQL solutions that limit
scalability?  What's the alternative you'd recommend (and why)?

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> Currently we generate 1GB of mysql redo log per 10 hours, that's about
> 300 kbit/s or 72GB/Month. This is without using compression, which would
> save some 50% of the above figures.

1.5 will reduce the binlog sizes somewhat. In 1.4, the bulk data is
handled twice: it's saved into cur, then later loaded out of cur,
gzipped and and saved into old. In any case, 72 GB/month is hardly a
"huge sucking sound" on bandwidth, last month we sent 22 TB out of Florida.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of blocking privileges

body:
Leif-
> - There are actually 4 reverts in about 4 hours

It's called the three-revert-rule, not the five-revert-rule. You made
more than 3 reverts, so you violated it; the other user did not. It's
generally considered good form to educate users about the rule before
blocking them when they are in violation of it, which is the reason you
were unblocked fairly quickly. I see no evidence of bad faith on
Jtdirl's part.

As for the graphs, I have responded on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vaccine_controversy

Erik


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> We can put other wikis in other colos. The small size of the subsidiary
>> colos will limit their usefulness as a redundant backup if the Florida
>> colo goes down, but that's OK. We have to consider our goals. I think in
>> the worst case scenario of an extended failure of the Florida colo, a
>> reasonable goal is to expect:
>>
>> * Read-only service after a few hours, using the other colos
>> * Limited (i.e. slow) read/write service a few hours after that
>> * Permanent data loss on the order of a few transactions
>> * Full read/write service after repair or replacement
>>
>> Currently the main vulnerable points appear to be network and power, and
>> we've experienced problems with both in the last 6 months. I'm not an
>> expert on either, but I'm assured securing these services to a
>> reasonable degree is possible.
>>
> I would suggest suggest that any new major backup colo in North America
> should be in a different power grid area.  This would protect from the
> possible consequences of a major blackout such as occurred in 2003.  As
> I understand the situation North America has two major power grids, one
> in the East and one in the West.  Only Texas and Quebec have independent
> grids.

I was thinking more along the lines of battery backup to tide us over
until the generator comes online, and a redundant network uplink to
guard against switch failure. As I tried to explain, a second US colo
would lead to reduced performance, unless it was within 100km of the
current colo.

Putting half your hardware on one grid and half on another means you
lose half your capacity if the power goes off. There is no need for
this. There is already a diesel generator on site, we just need to cover
various kinds of short-term failure. We've seen two short-term failures:
a main circuit breaker trip and a power strip circuit breaker trip. The
power strip failure could have been prevented by having a proper PDU
with independent breakers, I believe one is now on order. Various
threats to the main power, including the main circuit breaker, can be
dealt with by supplying the DB servers with a UPS, and negotiating with
the colo to ensure that their supply is fully redundant. The main power
failure apparently only lasted for a matter of seconds, if they don't
intend to guard against such short failures, then we need to make our
own arrangements.

-- Tim Starling


list: foundation-l

from_name: tomk32 at gmx.de

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: document

body: Please read the document.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: document

body: Please read the document.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050509 07:33]:

> The newsgroup *was* the best source of information about their Kook of
> the Millenium award. I was only concerned about actually naming the
> award winner because that person is a private individual who seems to
> be upset about the whole thing. There are other award winners (Kook of

Again, mixing the specific and the general. Edmond Wollmann has worked hard
to make a public figure of himself by making a public nuisance of himself,
loud, long and hard, for many years.

While applying due consideration in the general case to private individuals
would almost certainly be an appropriate consideration, in this specific
case it isn't. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

- d.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of blocking privileges

body:
> I don't know what the remedy for this is, but I would propose that both Jtdirl and Geni lose their admin privileges.

Again? Can you show where I have abused my admin powers?

--
geni


body:
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 03:27:56AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >As I read it (IANAL), you can't place your work into the public domain
> >because:
> >
> Quoting yourself as an authority is a nice trick if you can get away
> with it.
>
> Your statement that it is impossible to grant one's works into the
> public domain is patently false.  Copyright is an intellectual property
> right, and it is fundamental to property rights that the owner have the
> right to dispose of his property in whatever manner he sees fit.

Copyright isn't a property right.  The term "intellectual property" is a
form of colloquial shorthand rather than a legal term indicating actual
status as a form of "property".  I don't know whether this affects one's
ability (or inability) to pass something willfully into the public
domain, but it does affect the relevance of your statement to the
discussion at hand.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibreak from JAWP

body:
-- Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> I am very sorry to hear all of this happening to you Britty.

Me too. :(

> Unfortunately trolls seem to be very active and winning in a number of
> languages.

This is not good. Perhaps setting up arbitration committees or something
similar in those projects will help. Jimbo would need to give that type of
thing the authority its needs to function.

-- mav

Discover Yahoo!
Find restaurants, movies, travel and more fun for the weekend. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/weekend.html


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibreak from JAWP


from_name: David A. Desrosiers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
> Come on, stupid, this is free software.  Writing running code is
> everything, making suggestions is nothing.  People laugh at anybody
> who writes suggestions instead of code.

	While that may be true to an extent, making suggestions also
gets the coders to think in different directions, possibly to the
extent of adding new features or enhancing existing features.

	I know I've personally be thanked many times for my ideas on
many OSS projects where I didn't have the resources to contribute
code, but did have the resources to contribute ideas, follow them
through, and test them when/if they were implemented.

	And I _am_ a coder.

	Don't knock the "idea" people, they're not all bad.

David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/9/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/8/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/8/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > That's precisely the point: newspapers (and their websites) have a
> > > fact-checking infrastructure in place. A reporter writes a story, it's
> > > checked by the assigning editor, checked again by a copy editor, again
> > > by a page editor, and again by a proof reader, all of whom are looking
> > > for obvious legal and factual problems as well as style issues.
> > > Depending on the size of the newspaper, it might also be checked by a
> > > fact-checker. If it's a sensitive story, it might be looked at by the
> > > managing editor, the editor-in-chief, the publisher, the lawyers, and
> > > even the owners.
> >
> > I challenged an editor to come up with checkable sources once. He
> > flatly refused. Slim here went screaming off when I proposed deleting
> > any material for which no source was given.
> >
> > Seems the rules change if it's a mate.
>
> Peter, for the record, you were trying to insert that Australia is a
> republic, and wouldn't accept the hundreds of sources available that
> contradict that.

Smoke and mirrors, dear. Please don't try to wriggle away. You can
hardly claim to promote integrity and journalistic standards if you
don't practice what you preach.

On an issue entirely separate to whether Australia is a republic or
not, I asked Adam Carr to provide checkable sources for his
statements.

He flatly refused, with vile abuse.

You defended him and went running off in search of support in case I
made good on my proposal to remove anything that wasn't properly
sourced. Your statements, Adam's and mine are all a matter of record,
and I don't think it will be too difficult to pull them out. Do you
remember the incident now?

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/9/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Peter, for the record, you were trying to insert that Australia is a
> republic, and wouldn't accept the hundreds of sources available that
> contradict that.

"Hundreds of sources?" Hyperbole on top of hypocrisy. As I recall, the
only sources provided were a couple of dictionary definitions. In fact
most dictionaries provide multiple definitions of republic. Most
definitions include Australia, some don't.

I can see I'm going to have to spend more time on Wikipedia, now that
I'm home again.
--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>Wouter,
>
>I have a major issue with this request.
>
>That is: Do you have /any/ native speakers who have expressed interest?

No, not yet, but I am confident it will succeed, for unlike with
Saterlandic, there seems to be a well developed infrastructure of devoted
users, some of which will certainly be willing to contribute. There is at
least one known example of a non-quotation North Frisian on Wikipedia,
probably left by a (near-)native speaker.

>Also, I am a firm believer in North Frisian dialectal solidarity. I do
>not think there can or should be a single North Frisian Wikipedia. We
>should start with one for Mainland North Frisian, then we can have
>another for S?l`ring, one for Ferring, Oomram, etc.
>
>Now, I will lift a quote from an e-mail in response to me on
>"lowlands-l" regarding North Frisian:
>
>//begin quote//
>You and I and other language "geeks" (and I mean this in the best possible
>way of course) would not find the North Frisian varieties all that
>different
>from each other.  We would think they are fairly easily mutually
>intelligible.  However, apparently the average person that not think so,
>and
>this seems to be mainly because some of the shifts, especially vowel
>shifts,
>are rather dramatic.  Some people talk about "Frisian *languages*."

You're right: the differences are big. On the other hand, people have to
cope with similar problems on li:, nds: and als:, covering a very broad
spectrum of quite dissimilar but somehow coherent dialects. If North Frisian
were still spoken by nearly all of the population, two or more North Frisian
Wikipedias would be a possibility, albeit that it would be problematic to
convince the wikipedia gurus of its necessity, but since the language has
only some 7,000 speakers (estimates vary), we can't afford spiltting it up.
I was planning to use two variants of North Frisian, Fering-??mrang and
B?kingharder dialect, on the most important pages, f.i. the Main Page and of
course redirects can solve a lot of the problem. Finally, while the mainland
and insular dialects may be mutually unintelligible for many when spoken,
written text allows much more mutual understanding. And don't forget that
all native speakers learnt Frisian, Low Saxon and High German all in their
childhood, so they are more focused on language variants then most of us
are.

_________________________________________________________________
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
Austin Hair wrote:

> When I suggested a state-machine-based parser, people laughed.  I
> guess history counts for something, after all.

Come on, stupid, this is free software.  Writing running code is
everything, making suggestions is nothing.  People laugh at
anybody who writes suggestions instead of code.

> Personally (and this almost always incites a riot when proposed
> in a public forum), I'd like to see MediaWiki rewritten in a
> language other than PHP,

Yes, and the keyword is "proposed".  When is your implementation
ready?  I propose you write it.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> I also do not understand your preoccupation with data centres in the
>> USA. We are an international organisation. Our customers are all over
>> this earth.
>
> I do not understand everybody's preoccupation with data centres around
> the world. Our "customers" are exclusively Internet users, and the
> Internet is global. That servers are faster when they are
> geographically closer is a wide-spread myth.

Having data centres around the world is probably more political and
economic than technical.  Some valid technical arguments can probably be
made but the non-technical ones tend to influence people much more.  For
some people just having things anywhere but the US can be a very
powerful argument.  Chirac has already complained about American
domination in the Google project to digitize material in libraries.
Economically it makes good sense to have donations tax deductible in
one's own country, and the laws that deal with that do not look kindly
on the exportation of charitable donations.

Ec


body:
> You say that coding is everything, but you are clearly not seeing
> that people are not likely to code something unless they have reason
> to believe that the outcome will be welcome.

	This reminds me of a great quote:

	"People bitch at me, Mark, and others for 'not working
	 hard enough' on Project Foo. I work on it in _my_ time,
	 and people telling me what I ought to be doing with
	 _my_ time usually causes me to go do something else
	 entirely."

	And of course, the famous HOWTO:

	"HOWTO Pay for Free Software"

	http://users.puzzling.org/users/mary/HOWTO/Free/

David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com