subject:
[WikiEN-l] Articles about small religious sects, concern	about
	accuracy and NPOV

body:
On 02/07/04 12:38, Fred Bauder wrote:

> Excellent, but don't overdo it. Any campaign to straighten things out is
> hazardous and must proceed tactfully, giving reasonable credit to the
> virtues of these groups as perceived by their followers.

It's really not hard to go looking for these articles and do some
sensible and NPOV edits oneself. Some of them read like press releases,
but it's very easy to sprinkle the article with "it is claimed" and
add a section of common criticisms and critical links as well as
official ones. This gives a basic article it's quite hard to reasonably
object to the existence to, which serves as a template for filling out
the article.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: thumbing in 'de' defunct?

body:
On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 13:42:25 +0100, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> Full disc, TimStarling is already working on it.

Should have nfs running soon on gunther- larousse is pretty full as well,
the logs keep growing.

--
Gabriel Wicke


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rick

subject:
[WikiEN-l] It's not anarchy (was: unilateral bans of
	controversial users)

body:
Parliamentary democracy?

Did I miss a vote somewhere?

RickK

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
Tim,

I respectfully disagree: we DO NOT have anarchy.

It's a benevolent dictatorship, moving gradually to a parliamentary
democracy.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
<sarcasm> Sure.  People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted. </sarcasm>

Sunir Shah <sunir at sunir.org> wrote:Erik Moeller wrote:
>I banned Anthony after he repeatedly vandalized the same page, even though
>I had told him to stop. I immediately unbanned him after the matter was
>resolved. I am 100% positive that this was a perfectly appropriate action
>to take, with arbitration committee or without, and is backed up by
>precedent (BuddhaInside, RK etc.). Protection was not an option, because
>the page in question, a list of sites using our MediaWiki software, is
>supposed to be openly editable at any time so that sitemasters can add
>their site to the list.

A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while,
say a day or two, and then delete the problematic
text after the user had forgotten about the page.
Time is a more powerful weapon than banlists, and
it's free for everyone to use.

SS

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Cyan's departure

body:
I see that no one has noted that Lir has forced Cyan to leave the project.

RickK

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body:
On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 14:54:25 +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

Nfs didn't work out- Gunther is missing the modules for the running
kernel. But we're copying 7Gb backups over to Gunther, that should be
enough space for the next days.
--
Gabriel Wicke


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bureaucrat access

body:
On Feb 6, 2004, at 05:08, Tim Starling wrote:
> In response to the burden placed on developers in administering sysop
> access
> on the various wikis, and the dangerous nature of manual SQL queries,
> a new
> feature has been implemented, as proposed by Brion and implemented by
> E23
> (Snok). This feature creates a new level of access called "bureaucrat".
> Bureacrats are able to create sysops on any wiki, even if they do not
> have
> an account at the target wiki.

Unfortunately this part of the feature has spawned more rules and
bureaucracy, which is what we were trying to avoid. ;)

The intent is for the users of each wiki -- particularly the newer,
smaller projects -- to more effectively manage their own affairs by
eliminating the requirement to beg an outsider to review and perform
every change. As such we're taking out the ability to make sysops on
other wikis; worry over this lead to the creation of rules and red tape
that made it impossible for the target audience to be allowed to deal
with their own affairs.

There's also been some talk of just merging sysop-making into the
regular powers of a sysop. (As always, sysops are expected to follow
the community consensus rules on using their powers, which never EVER
confer editorial authority. Sysop powers are technical conveniences
ONLY.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Wikipedia downtime, 05:00 UTC

body:
So far nice and smooth; the initial copy took one hour, and we're back
online.

The copy is now being moved to the new server, and we'll be tweaking up
the new database tomorrow... hopefully all will continue smoothly. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Wikipedia downtime, 05:00 UTC

body:
So far nice and smooth; the initial copy took one hour, and we're back
online.

The copy is now being moved to the new server, and we'll be tweaking up
the new database tomorrow... hopefully all will continue smoothly. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [Wikitech-l] 'new' image syntax bugs

body:
Let me know if this is the wrong place to report this.

Are the image display bugs on my third sandbox
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Snoyes/sandbox3) known?

1. An image may under mysterious circumstances not display with the assigned
width

2. There is some strange display of html code when using both quotes (") and
apostrophes (') in the image comment area between the double-square brackets.

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


from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mark questionable modifications

body:
At 09:55 AM 2/6/2004, you wrote:

>Kelly Anderson <kelly at acoin.com> writes:
>
> > In the world of the Wiki, there is no economic advantage to vandalism
> > (that I can think of anyway) so perhaps it would not be as serious an
> > escalation as there is in the world of spam.
>
>One obvious action is adding URLs pointing to your shop.  I'd like to
>purge out those links without being forced to visit their site first.

I hope that when it's relevant that this is ok... since it's done on lots
of relevant pages including some I edited.

>Maybe, adding external links should be allowed for logged in users only;
>all the others can propose URLs to be included on the talk pages.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: support for <span> tags

body:
At 05:27 AM 2/7/2004, you wrote:

>Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>>It would be interesting if you could personalize your own style sheet
>>rather than pick one of the three provided, maybe there's  a way to do
>>this already... but I don't know what it is.
>
>You know what the "C" stands for in "CSS"? The whole purpose of CSS is
>that the user can override, with his own stylesheet, the style sheet
>supplied by the site.... How that is done in practice is a different matter....
>
>Rob

How it's done in practice is of course what I was referring to...

-Kelly


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

body:
Gabriel Wicke <groups at gabrielwicke.de> writes:

> On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 13:42:25 +0100, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>
>
>> Full disc, TimStarling is already working on it.
>
> Should have nfs running soon on gunther- larousse is pretty full as well,
> the logs keep growing.

Must not happen again ;)  Or you will have to catch this error and
display something reasonable to the reader.  These missing pictures
look very broken ;)  I don't blame you personally nor do I think it is
that bad in this early stage of the new implementation.  But please,
please: no software update all the time!  Updating the production
system twice the year is enough.

This picture and its description got lost:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-sebald-ostchor-v-so.jpg

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] outside evidence and arbitration

body:
I was going to bring this up to the arbitrators, but it seems to be a
general principle of wider interest, so I'm bringing it up here instead:

The current arbitration case, [[Wikipedia:Matter of Theresa knott and
Mr-Natural-Health]], has turned up some evidence that Mr. Natural Health
has participated in a good deal of flame-warring and whatnot on Usenet,
and has in some newsgroups been considered a "troll" and general
trouble-maker, at least by some people.  There is currently disagreement
over whether this should be taken into account, or considered relevant
at all.  See that page's edit history and talk page for more.

Off the top of my head, pros of taking it into account include an
ability to avoid dealing with known trolls and troublemakers (we don't
wait for someone to troll Wikipedia extensively if they've already
trolled a dozen forums and sites before).  Cons include possibly
carrying over unwarranted persecution from other forums to Wikipedia (we
can't always be sure of who the people making accusations are, and most
of us aren't familiar with the context and climate of these
non-Wikipedia forums).

Comments can go here on the mailing list or on the talk page referenced
above.  This seems like a general principle we ("we" here being
"Wikipedians") should decide on, not just for this particular case.

-Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Known Trolls

body:
I don't propose we start screening people before we let them edit. Just that
once they start trolling Wikipedia and it becomes so much of an issue that
it is before the arbitrators that then behavior in other forums becomes
relevant both for determining what kind of a person we are dealing with but
also for determining remedies, keeping in mind that there is little prospect
that a person with long-standing habitual habits of disruption will be able
to change or would want to.

Fred Bauder

> From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:08:05 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] outside evidence and arbitration
>
> pros of taking it into account include an
> ability to avoid dealing with known trolls and troublemakers (we don't
> wait for someone to troll Wikipedia extensively if they've already
> trolled a dozen forums and sites before).


in_reply_to:
<shvfmikzlf.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> (Karl Eichwalder's message
	of "Sun, 08 Feb 2004 04:41:00 +0100")

references:
<shu123m6sq.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<20040207124225.GA8845@tomk32.homelinux.org>
	<pan.2004.02.07.13.54.25.592538@gabrielwicke.de>
	<shvfmikzlf.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> writes:

> This picture and its description got lost:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-sebald-ostchor-v-so.jpg

Oops, my fault.  I confused it with
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-sebald-ostchor-v-so-klein.jpg
resp.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Nuernberg-sebald-ostchor-v-so-gross.jpg

Now we have it three times ;)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I propose a formula based on reverts

body:
> From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I propose a formula based on
> reverts
> CC:
> Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 16:20:42 +0000
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> > How about a simple formula, based on what
> percentage of a user's edits
> > are reverted by other users? (We might tweak this
> by discounting reverts
> > from a certain class of user.)
>
> What is a revert?
>
> Only sysops currently have an actual revert command
> ("rollback"). Normal
> users can only load and save older versions of a
> page; how do you know
> if it's a revert or just settling a dispute or any
> number of other
> things? How do you keep non-vandalism reverts from
> influencing the
> statistics?
>
> Additionally, even if this distinction was possible,
> this suggestion is
> leaving a rather foul taste in my mouth. People
> would get even more
> upset about being reverted than they already do.
> People would start
> accusing other people of being trolls solely because
> they reverted them
> and worsened their "revert statistics".
>
> Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea.
>
> Timwi

Anyone can revert pages. Just go to the edit history,
click on an older version, and then press edit. You
should be editing from an earlier version. Don't
change anything, just press save.

Daniel Ehrenberg

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Articles about small religious sects,	concern about
	accuracy and NPOV

body:
On 02/07/04 17:51, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> the often slanderous statements of
> ex-members

Erm ... your POV is showing.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
Although I, personally rarely use my Watchlist (I tend to use it only to go back to pages whose names I forget all the time), there are many people who have made mention here on the mailing list, that they found it virtually impossible to work with Wikipedia without their Watchlists.  Perhaps they can shed some light on the why?

RickK

Sunir Shah <sunir at sunir.org> wrote:
In response to my suggestion,
>>A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while,
>>say a day or two, and then delete the problematic
>>text after the user had forgotten about the page.

Rick writes,
> Sure. People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make
> sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted.

In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the
winner.

One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to
babysit their own text on a collaborative work.

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

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from_name: Sunir Shah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
In response to my suggestion,
>>A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while,
>>say a day or two, and then delete the problematic
>>text after the user had forgotten about the page.

Rick writes,
> <sarcasm> Sure.  People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make
> sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted. </sarcasm>

In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the
winner.

One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to
babysit their own text on a collaborative work.

SS


subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
On Sunday 08 February 2004 02:09 pm, Sunir Shah wrote:
> In response to my suggestion,
>
> >>A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while,
> >>say a day or two, and then delete the problematic
> >>text after the user had forgotten about the page.
>
> Rick writes,
>
> > <sarcasm> Sure.  People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make
> > sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted. </sarcasm>
>
> In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the
> winner.
>
> One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to
> babysit their own text on a collaborative work.

Lots of vandalism and copyright violations sneak past the RecentChanges
patrol.

Characters whose single goal it is to insert their bias roam Wikipedia.

New additions of content are often accompanied by significant spelling or
grammar mistakes.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moderately successful day

body:
O.k., it's good to know that it wasn't my error.  And Brion said that
not much had been done on the drive (wisely!), so no loss, but I did
learn something potentially very important.  :-)

Ricky Beam wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >The bad news is, I either inevitably or stupidly (can't decide which
> >just yet) managed to wipe the existing hard drive in the process.
> >Almost surely someone a bit more clueful than me could have avoided
> >that, but I will say that I did my best and chose an option for raid
> >creation that promised me no data loss.  I probably screwed something
> >up.
>
> There's no way around this.  The information stored on drives being assembled
> into an array WILL be destroyed.  One can re-build a RAID in such a manner
> as to not damage any pre-existing (RAID formated) data -- I've done it
> hundreds of times with Mylex and DPT hardware, and once or twice with
> a NetApp.
>
> Backup, build RAID, and restore.  That's the only way to do it. (well,
> without a fourth hard drive.)
>
> --Ricky
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: 'new' image syntax bugs

references:
<200402080208.35753.sascha@pantropy.net>
	<c04sdh$om2$1@sea.gmane.org> <c0683f$3bl$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Sunday 08 February 2004 04:01 pm, Timwi wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > Sascha Noyes wrote:
> >>Let me know if this is the wrong place to report this.
> >>
> >>Are the image display bugs on my third sandbox
> >>(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Snoyes/sandbox3) known?
> >>
> >>1. An image may under mysterious circumstances not display with the
> >> assigned width
> >
> > That's a feature not a bug! It happens whenever the height is more than
> > 50% larger than the width.
>
> What's the exact mechanism? And what's the rationale behind it?
> Certainly using a different width than the one specified for an
> unobvious reason like this, could be taken to be a usability bug :)

I agree with the interpetration of this as a bug. If I clearly tell software
what to do and it doesn't do it, I always assume that there is something
wrong with the software and not with me. :)

I've already edited the image so that the length is less than 50% of the
width, but would like to avoid having to do that in the future.

Also, the other bug was fixed (thanks!), but not completely: Now
tags are displayed instead of italicising the text when using double
aphostrophes.

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


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: outside evidence and arbitration

body:
Quoth Mark:

 >The current arbitration case, [[Wikipedia:Matter of Theresa knott and
 >Mr-Natural-Health]], has turned up some evidence that Mr. Natural Health
 >has participated in a good deal of flame-warring and whatnot on Usenet,
 >and has in some newsgroups been considered a "troll" and general
 >trouble-maker, at least by some people.  There is currently disagreement
 >over whether this should be taken into account, or considered relevant
 >at all.  See that page's edit history and talk page for more.

One or two arbitrators have said they don't think their own real-world
identities should be publically known simply because they are arbitrators -
what they do and how they behave outside the Wikipedia is irrelevant to
what they do and how they behave on it. I agree with that. It seems to me
that this maxim should apply to all users, even those accused of being trolls.

I can understand why somebody's behaviour in fora other than the Wikipedia
might cause us to regard their work with a little more suspicion than the
work of other users, but I really don't think we should make any decisions
on what we do with them at the 'pedia on the basis of what they do
elsewhere. It's basically irrelevant whether Mr. NH (or anybody else) is
causing trouble outside the 'pedia, and I don't like the implication that
if you're to edit at the Wikipedia, you have to behave well elsewhere. If
somebody is a stirling Wikipedia user but likes to troll on usenet, well,
so what? Similarly, if somebody is a lousy Wikipedia user, but loves his
mum and is good to cats, so what?

And again, if somebody is a problem Wikipedia user and also a problem
elsewhere, so what? Our concern isn't that Mr. NH is at the centre of
trouble outside the Wikipedia, it's that he's at the centre of trouble
inside the Wikipedia. That's all that matters and is quite enough for us to
take action if we have to.

I am an arbitrator, by the way, but I'm sure I'd say the same things if I
wasn't.

All this is just my opinion, of course.
Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moderately successful day

body:
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>The bad news is, I either inevitably or stupidly (can't decide which
>just yet) managed to wipe the existing hard drive in the process.
>Almost surely someone a bit more clueful than me could have avoided
>that, but I will say that I did my best and chose an option for raid
>creation that promised me no data loss.  I probably screwed something
>up.

There's no way around this.  The information stored on drives being assembled
into an array WILL be destroyed.  One can re-build a RAID in such a manner
as to not damage any pre-existing (RAID formated) data -- I've done it
hundreds of times with Mylex and DPT hardware, and once or twice with
a NetApp.

Backup, build RAID, and restore.  That's the only way to do it. (well,
without a fourth hard drive.)

--Ricky


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reverse diff version control

body:
So, I've been thinking about the compressed storage of old versions of
MediaWiki articles, and I've been thinking about some other
ideas. I'll probably scribble them on meta soon; I wanted to float
them here first.

Some (most?) version control systems use a reverse diff storage
system to keep storage requirements down to a minimum, at the expense
of retrieval time for old versions.

The idea is pretty simple: you always keep a full copy of the current
version of a file -- let's call it version N. But instead of keeping a
full copy of version N - 1, you just keep the difference between that
copy and version N. Similarly, for version N - 2, you keep the
difference between N - 2 and N - 1.

If differences between versions are significantly smaller than the
versions themselves, there's a great reduction in storage requirements
for the entire system.

To generate a full copy of version N - 2, you have to first retrieve
version N, then the diff between version N - 1 and version N, and
apply that patch to make version N - 1, then retrieve the diff between
version N - 2 and version N - 1, and apply that patch to make version
N - 2. The idea, though, is that you retrieve old versions much, much
less frequently than the current version.

You could conceivably store all old versions as diffs against the
current version -- making retrieval time faster -- but it makes
storing slower, since you have to recompute the diffs each time you
save.

Another optimization is keeping an LRU cache of old versions that have
been retrieved.

Anyways, I think this would probably make storage much smaller for
MediaWiki databases. Even if compression reduces the size of old
versions to, say, 10% of their original size, storing a diff that's
just 1% of the old version is even more of an improvement. If storage
is at a premium, you could even compress the diffs... although this
probably wouldn't pay off for very small diffs.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:
> Let me know if this is the wrong place to report this.
>
> Are the image display bugs on my third sandbox
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Snoyes/sandbox3) known?
>
> 1. An image may under mysterious circumstances not display with the
assigned
> width

That's a feature not a bug! It happens whenever the height is more than 50%
larger than the width.

> 2. There is some strange display of html code when using both quotes (")
and
> apostrophes (') in the image comment area between the double-square
brackets.

Fixed.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Timwi

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Sascha Noyes wrote:
>
>>Let me know if this is the wrong place to report this.
>>
>>Are the image display bugs on my third sandbox
>>(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Snoyes/sandbox3) known?
>>
>>1. An image may under mysterious circumstances not display with the assigned
>>width
>
> That's a feature not a bug! It happens whenever the height is more than 50%
> larger than the width.

What's the exact mechanism? And what's the rationale behind it?
Certainly using a different width than the one specified for an
unobvious reason like this, could be taken to be a usability bug :)

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Change committed

body:
Hi,

since nobody answered my question, I went forward and committed my
change (that removes self-links and displays the link's text in bold
instead), but I have no real idea what branch I committed it to.

If I shouldn't have done this, then hopefully someone will tell me now
what I should have done instead.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>>From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
>>
>>Only sysops currently have an actual revert command
>>("rollback"). Normal
>>users can only load and save older versions of a
>>page; how do you know
>>if it's a revert or just settling a dispute or any
>>number of other
>>things?
>
> Anyone can revert pages. Just go to the edit history,
> click on an older version, and then press edit.

If you read the above, you will see that I am very much aware of that.

> You should be editing from an earlier version. Don't
> change anything, just press save.

The software does not prevent people from editing from an earlier
version. Nor should it. Besides, that doesn't have anything to do with this.

Timwi


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Articles about small religious sects,
	concern about accuracy and NPOV

body:
On Feb 7, 2004, at 12:51 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Andries Krugers Dagneaux wrote:
>
>> I know a lot about gurus, small sects
>> and cults. I noticed that the articles here in this wikipedia are
>> often
>> written by the followers of these gurus, sects and cults or the
>> information on the webpages of these religious organization is
>> uncritically accepted by other members and written down as a NPOV
>> article in wikipedia.
> What the groups believe is what they believe, and who better to
> describe that than the cult's leaders?  This does not imply that we
> accept these as truth, or that we are uncritical about their claims.

Precisely.  We do not accept beliefs necessarily as fact.  We *do*
necessarily accept the believing as fact.  One simply *must* admire the
English language...

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change committed

body:
Timwi-

> Hi,

> since nobody answered my question, I went forward and committed my
> change (that removes self-links and displays the link's text in bold
> instead), but I have no real idea what branch I committed it to.

You committed to HEAD (default branch), which is the unstable branch. It's
all good. Our branch setup is very very simple. Unless you specify the
stable branch with -r stable, you are using the unstable one. And you
shouldn't really be messing with the stable branch anyway unless you're
committing security fixes or preparing a new stable release. For users we
provide tarballs whenever there's a new stable release.

So for most people, most of the time, knowing nothing about branches is
perfectly OK.

See also:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy

And if you really want to know how this branching stuff works, take a few
minutes of time and read this:
http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.12/cvs_5.html

It's really all much simpler than it sounds.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Switching servers - Tuesday?

body:
Suda's got a full database up and seems to be maintaining
synchronization with the master. Logins for the developers should be
set up, and most of the infrastructure is there or ready to be put in
place.

Unless anyone's got a better idea I'm planning to switch the master
database server and the web servers to Florida on Monday night /
Tuesday morning. I'll be off work Tuesday so I can sit and tweak things
all day if necessary.

We should be able to switch the squid cache on larousse to point at the
new web servers and make it transparent to end users except for a few
minutes of downtime as the database is reconfigured from slave to
master. Once we're sure it's working, we can finish setting up the DNS
to point at the new squids in Florida and they'll update when they
update.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Change committed

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>since nobody answered my question, I went forward and committed my
>>change (that removes self-links and displays the link's text in bold
>>instead), but I have no real idea what branch I committed it to.
>
> You committed to HEAD (default branch), which is the unstable branch. It's
> all good.

PHEW! :-)

> Our branch setup is very very simple. [...] See also:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy

Thanks. That clears up a lot of things. In particular, it mentions that
test.wikipedia.org is updated from the unstable branch regularly, albeit
manually. Would it be possible for someone to do that tonight so that I
can go to bed in peace knowing that I will be able to test my new
feature thoroughly tomorrow? :>

> And if you really want to know how this branching stuff works, take a few
> minutes of time and read this:
> http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.12/cvs_5.html

Thanks a lot, that looks really useful. I'll read it tomorrow.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: sannse

body:
Camembert wrote (in part):

> I can understand why somebody's behaviour in fora other than the Wikipedia
> might cause us to regard their work with a little more suspicion than the
> work of other users, but I really don't think we should make any decisions
> on what we do with them at the 'pedia on the basis of what they do
> elsewhere. It's basically irrelevant whether Mr. NH (or anybody else) is
> causing trouble outside the 'pedia, and I don't like the implication that
> if you're to edit at the Wikipedia, you have to behave well elsewhere. If
> somebody is a stirling Wikipedia user but likes to troll on usenet, well,
> so what? Similarly, if somebody is a lousy Wikipedia user, but loves his
> mum and is good to cats, so what?
>
> And again, if somebody is a problem Wikipedia user and also a problem
> elsewhere, so what? Our concern isn't that Mr. NH is at the centre of
> trouble outside the Wikipedia, it's that he's at the centre of trouble
> inside the Wikipedia. That's all that matters and is quite enough for us
to
> take action if we have to.

I agree totally.  I don't think behavour outside Wikipedia should be
relevant in Wikipedia arbitrations.

--sannse


body:
I wrote:

> Camembert wrote (in part):
>
> > I can understand why somebody's behaviour in fora other than the
Wikipedia
> > might cause us to regard their work with a little more suspicion than
the
> > work of other users, but I really don't think we should make any
decisions
> > on what we do with them at the 'pedia on the basis of what they do
> > elsewhere. It's basically irrelevant whether Mr. NH (or anybody else) is
> > causing trouble outside the 'pedia, and I don't like the implication
that
> > if you're to edit at the Wikipedia, you have to behave well elsewhere.
If
> > somebody is a stirling Wikipedia user but likes to troll on usenet,
well,
> > so what? Similarly, if somebody is a lousy Wikipedia user, but loves his
> > mum and is good to cats, so what?
> >
> > And again, if somebody is a problem Wikipedia user and also a problem
> > elsewhere, so what? Our concern isn't that Mr. NH is at the centre of
> > trouble outside the Wikipedia, it's that he's at the centre of trouble
> > inside the Wikipedia. That's all that matters and is quite enough for us
> to
> > take action if we have to.
>
> I agree totally.  I don't think behavour outside Wikipedia should be
> relevant in Wikipedia arbitrations.
>
> --sannse

I've just thought - what *would* be relevant is if someone were to say
something elsewhere that directly relates to their editing on Wikipedia.  I
mean, if someone were to say on slashdot that their sole purpose on
Wikipedia was to cause as much trouble as possible, then that would be
relevant to arbitration.

The difficulty would be in knowing whether the comment actually came from
the Wikipedian in question or someone using their name.

--sannse


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
RickK writes:
>Although I, personally rarely use my Watchlist (I tend to use it
>only to go back to pages whose names I forget all the time), there
>are many people who have made mention here on the mailing list,
>that they found it virtually impossible to work with Wikipedia
>without their Watchlists.? Perhaps they can shed some light on the
>why?

For me, personally:

1. Stuff on my watchlist (since I have my preferences set to put on the
watchlist everything I edit) is the stuff I know about, and thus the
stuff I'm knowledgable enough to detect vandalism on.
2. My watchlist tracks the articles I'm working on and in most cases
those that need some work.  If there's collaboration, one needs to keep
track of the work of one's collaborators.
3. Talk pages only really work with watchlists, otherwise you never know
when an issue has been raised or answered.
4. I'd rather the pages I've put effort into continue to improve.  I
don't get the idea that I should just cast my words out into the wild
and never check back on them.  I'm not invested in my personal text; I
do care that my work not be 'undone' in the sense of the article
becoming a worse, rather than better, treatment of the topic.  I'd love
my text replaced anywhere -- IF the replacement is better.

Probably a few more reasons too, and I'm sure others have their own
reasons as well.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Cyan's departure

body:
Well, it's a little more complicated than that; though if you've looked
at Cyan's talk page, a number of us DID notice.

Cyan was foolish enough to make a promise to Lir that he would leave
Wikipedia if Lir provided sources for an assertion which Cyan disputed.
Lir did provide such a source (though it's uncertain whether he found
the source before or after he made the original assertion) and Cyan
decided that pride was more important and left, it seems.  I hope not
permanently.

-Matt (User:Morven)

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rick
Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 3:56 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Cyan's departure

I see that no one has noted that Lir has forced Cyan to leave the
project.

RickK

  _____

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=22055/*http:/taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html>
your refund fast by filing online
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is officially a virus

body:
This story from China's official Xinhua news agency was found by ChrisO
and posted to en:'s Village Pump:
http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-09/26/content_267731.htm

The first two paragraphs read:

"When Yan Bincheng wearing a heavy glass mask, a shield to cover his
surgical clothe and two sets of gloves, the Chinese volunteer looked
more like a bio-chemical expert than a doctor from Chinese medical team
in Mozambique.

In Maputo Central Hospital, the largest public hospital in Mozambique,
Yan with his colleagues must wear these "uniforms" in everyday operation
to avoid unexpected dangers from patients for some of them might be HIV
carrier or even the deadly Wikipedia virus carrier."

That's right, we're worse than HIV folks!  Don your masks.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
Viajero,
> Sorry, but have you ever gotten involved in an edit-war
> here? Sometimes they last for days. Not everyone forgets.

I've been in dozens of edit wars on many wikis. My solution
is to wait a month and then do the right thing. A few days
is nothing. Remember, you will be around longer than they
will.

If you aren't going to be, then you will have to sit down
and negotiate in good faith with the person. They may actually
have a legitimate point, just not a good way of expressing it.
Teach them what to do so next time they don't resort to
something as crass as an edit war.

Most edit wars I have been in are the result of two people
with different points of view that refuse to collaborate
on a single text. But if you act first with integrity, you
will usually come out ahead. Wikis are all about consensus,

    http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?OneText

without forcing consensus.

Other edit wars I have been in are pages that are casualities
of a wider conflict between an individual and the community.
You have to do a lot of active listening to get to the heart
of the matter. It does no good to say, "Edit wars are bad,
so that's why you are bad, so you are wrong" as that is missing
the point. Why was there an edit war in the first place? Ok,
an edit war is a stupid thing to do, but it's cheaper to
teach the smart thing to do. It's not an easy solution, but
it's the easiest.

And finally there are the impossible that want to torch
the place. Then we put surge protectors in place and they
can waste their bandwidth until they lock themselves out.

    http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SurgeProtector

(Actually I'm in discussions with Tim Starling about
building a better surge protector.)

SS


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reverse diff version control

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> If we store full versions within a reasonable interval the performance
> impact should not be noticeable, perhaps even smaller than the gzip
> decompression. We've operated under the "diskspace is infinite" assumption
> for a long time, but aside from the fact that it isn't true, an
> inefficient storage system makes things a lot more cumbersome for
> downstream users who have to download gigabytes of tarballs to get the
> revision histories.

I agree with this.  Diskspace has not been our most pressing issue, but
there are two important ways in which it is finite.

1.  Disk space gets (a lot) cheaper all the time.  However, the price
of new hard drives for us is a lot more than just the actual cash
price, which is always quite low.  It's the disruption that is
'costly'.

In a for-profit context, calculating the "cost" of various things is a
lot easier.  In a non-profit, volunteer context, it's more perplexing.

Brion's time is free to the project in one sense, but in another sense
every *moment* that he spends doing something that isn't just pure joy
to him is *very* costly to us, because it brings closer the day that
he'll get tired of it, etc.  With employees, I can assign tasks and
proceed towards a goal in a much different way than with volunteers,
where I depend on making good decisions that keep volunteers doing
stuff that's interesting and enjoyable.

Of course, volunteers do a lot of drudge work that isn't *in and of
itself* enjoyable, because they share my passionate belief in the good
that we're doing on an abstract big-picture level.  Even so, there are
limits.

So, given that our disks are a certain size today, and given that it's
a big of a rigamarole to move to bigger disks in the future...

2.  Erik said it very simply -- even if disk space isn't at a premium,
for us or for re-users, bandwidth generally is.  It's a pain in the
neck for a lot of people to download huge inefficient files.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
Sascha Noyes writes:
> Lots of vandalism and copyright violations [and other
> unethical editing] sneak past the RecentChanges patrol.

Sure; the real issue is that RecentChanges is too
overwhelming for effective peer review. I think it
should be divided up so it might be conquered. I
disagree with watchlists as they are perhaps too
individualistic to encourage people to watch things
they have not seen. Rather, you need RecentChanges
to remain the Commons.

The most obvious way to split it is by subject focus.
I recognize categorization is philosophically problematic,
but I have what I think is a better idea called
DigestedChanges. I apologize this is still in sketch
form, but you might get the gist from

    http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DigestedChanges

Essentially I propose making 'weblogs' of Wikipedia's
changes. Each group might build its own group weblog if
they wish, although that is simply better watchlists
again, it may attract people to read collaborated
digests if they are interested in a particular subject
field. If that fails, you can restrict which and how
many digests there are.

At least that would better organize the information
so it is 'digestable'.

SS


subject: [WikiEN-l] Publishing IPs, an alternative

body:
Just to throw this out there, there is a lot of talk
on #wikipedia about asking developers to identify IPs
to identify sock puppets of trolls. I recognize the
privacy concerns of Wikipedia. I propose a solution:

    http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?NetworkDistance

Thanks to TimStarling, Hephaestos, pakaran, and jeronim
for sounding it out. You know who you are.

SS


body:
The question is: In the case of someone who is definitely not behaving
themselves here, can other internet activities be considered as we try to
deal with them? Especially in evaluating whether we are dealing with a
lifestyle as opposed to limited situational offenses.

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 09:35:03 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] outside evidence and arbitration
>
> Delirium raises the "track record" question rather eloquently.
>
> My own view is:
>
> * Trouble caused elsewhere should ALERT US that it might spread here.
> * Generally, users should get a clean slate (see AssumeGoodFaith).
>
> So I'd say the committees should avoid bringing up "outside activities"
> and using them against Wikipedians. No matter how they act elsewhere, as
> long as they behave themselves here.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

> Some (most?) version control systems use a reverse diff storage
> system to keep storage requirements down to a minimum, at the expense
> of retrieval time for old versions.

Do we really have to do that? I always thought storage space is
incredibly cheap (at least that's what LiveJournal always say ;-) ). I'm
finding it somewhat irritating that you want to slow down Wikipedia even
more, just to save some disk space.

Timwi


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] It's not anarchy

body:
RickK asked...

> Parliamentary democracy?
> Did I miss a vote somewhere?

Yes, Rick. You forgot to program your time machine for January, 2005.
That's when the first votes for Mediation & Arbitration Committees took
place (or "will take place", if you want to be picky).

(signed)
Herbert George Wells
Robert Anson Heinlein
Hermione Granger
The Time Travel Committee (Democratic)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.org

body:
Hi,

I just tried to go to test.wikipedia.org, and I was forwarded to
http://larousse.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and received the following
error message:

	ERROR
	The requested URL could not be retrieved

	While trying to retrieve the URL:
	http://larousse.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

	The following error was encountered:

	    * Access Denied.

	      Access control configuration prevents your request from
	being allowed at this time. Please contact your service
	provider if you feel this is incorrect.

	Your cache administrator is webmaster.
	Generated Mon, 09 Feb 2004 09:32:33 GMT by wikipedia.org
	(squid/2.5.STABLE4)

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Delirium raises the "track record" question rather eloquently.

My own view is:

* Trouble caused elsewhere should ALERT US that it might spread here.
* Generally, users should get a clean slate (see AssumeGoodFaith).

So I'd say the committees should avoid bringing up "outside activities"
and using them against Wikipedians. No matter how they act elsewhere, as
long as they behave themselves here.

Ed Poor


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Delirium raises the "track record" question rather eloquently.
>
>My own view is:
>
>* Trouble caused elsewhere should ALERT US that it might spread here.
>* Generally, users should get a clean slate (see AssumeGoodFaith).
>
>So I'd say the committees should avoid bringing up "outside activities"
>and using them against Wikipedians. No matter how they act elsewhere, as
>long as they behave themselves here.
>
I support this view.  In many courts the record of previous convictions
is not admissible as evidence for establishing current guilt.

If the general population on these other sites are at all like
Wikipedians they're probably very argumentative.  Thus, to deal with
that kind of evidence fairly our arbitrators would need to review the
entire argument that took place on the other site.  Are the arbitrators
willing to wade through this stuff, and are we willing to put them
through such an ordeal?

Ec


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

body:
> The idea is pretty simple: you always keep a full copy of the current
> version of a file -- let's call it version N. But instead of keeping a
> full copy of version N - 1, you just keep the difference between that
> copy and version N. Similarly, for version N - 2, you keep the
> difference between N - 2 and N - 1.
>
> If differences between versions are significantly smaller than the
> versions themselves, there's a great reduction in storage requirements
> for the entire system.
>
> To generate a full copy of version N - 2, you have to first retrieve
> version N, then the diff between version N - 1 and version N, and
> apply that patch to make version N - 1, then retrieve the diff between
> version N - 2 and version N - 1, and apply that patch to make version
> N - 2. The idea, though, is that you retrieve old versions much, much
> less frequently than the current version.

Yes, but there is some problem. If you really try to find a very old
version, you (approximatly) never get a result. But you can store more
than just the last version full (may each 5th).

A more advanced way would use a logarithmic scheme and store the diff
beetween versions 2^n-1 and 2^n for instance (you may can change the base?).
Thus you can use something similar as binary search to genereate each
version. The scheme looks like this

version  what to store

  1        diff 2-1
  2        diff 4-2
  3        diff 4-3
  4        diff 8-4
  5        diff 6-5
  6        diff 8-6
  7        diff 8-7
  8        diff 16-8
  .
  .
  .
  n        full version

Thus most time you have diffs beetween very similar versions (-> reduce space)
and need logarithmic time to recreate an old version (-> reduce time to get
an old version)

There are still some problems you have to think of. For instance the example
above. If n is smaller than 16 there is no version 16 and so no diff beetween
16 and 8. So you have to store version 8 complete. If you reach a version,
which can be devided by 2^n you create the n diffs you couldn't create until
this moment. Since this happens very seldom for large n this also should
reduce the time to store new versions...

> You could conceivably store all old versions as diffs against the
> current version -- making retrieval time faster -- but it makes
> storing slower, since you have to recompute the diffs each time you
> save.

That does not make sence, since the diffs beetween an article started as stub
and the actual 23 KB-version has size 23 KB and not just that few bytes of
the stub.

--Ivo K?thnig


body:
Timwi-
> Do we really have to do that? I always thought storage space is
> incredibly cheap (at least that's what LiveJournal always say ;-) ). I'm
> finding it somewhat irritating that you want to slow down Wikipedia even
> more, just to save some disk space.

If we store full versions within a reasonable interval the performance
impact should not be noticeable, perhaps even smaller than the gzip
decompression. We've operated under the "diskspace is infinite" assumption
for a long time, but aside from the fact that it isn't true, an
inefficient storage system makes things a lot more cumbersome for
downstream users who have to download gigabytes of tarballs to get the
revision histories.

A simple diff algorithm could still lead to plenty of wasted space for
edit wars. An advanced system with pointers to prior versions would be
even more efficient. One way to implement this would be to verify on
saving if the user has edited an old revision and if so, if they have
changed its content -- if they haven't, a pointer would be inserted
instead of a diff. For existing revisions a script could weed out
duplicates.

Of course none of this is likely to happen anytime soon, as it's quite
tricky to implement and gives no immediately visible (bragworthy) benefits
(and lots of flames if it doesn't work exactly right). This is the kind of
code that gets written on long winter afternoons to see if it can be done.
Winter is almost over, so ...

Regards,

Erik


body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 10:44, Peter W?hrer wrote:
> If compression is applied In A Clever Way - meaning compressing ALL
> versions of
> an article at once, not each version for itself - it should give equal
> or even
> better compression combined with a quick way to retrieve it.

Tim's done some quick testing of this and it does save a lot of space
to compress multiple revisions together. gzip does pretty well; bzip2
compresses even better but at much greater CPU cost.

My primary worry is just maintainability; any of these schemes are
fragile, and require a lot of fiddling to make sure that consistency is
maintained. Compressing individual revisions only gives 60% savings but
it's dead easy (the code's already in, waiting to be turned on.)

Things to think about, sure, but not a priority.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dan Carlson

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Documentation and the GFDL

body:
I've been reading around a little bit more on some of the other
MediaWiki-powered websites that are out there, since I've been starting
a new wiki with a few other people for "Star Trek"-related topics,
Memory Alpha.  So far, we've frequently been copying the documentation
pages from Wikipedia (for example, [[Wikipedia:Help]] and
[[Wikipedia:How_to_start_a_page]]) -- and we've kept the proper
attributions, of course!

However, after some discussion among ourselves and with a couple of
Wikipedia contributors on the side, we decided a month or so ago to
convert Memory Alpha to a Creative Commons License instead.  It was my
understanding that this was compatible with the Wikipedia GFDL, but
then I read a WikiTravel page which suggests otherwise
(http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:
Why_Wikitravel_isn%27t_GFDL).

What options are currently available, or could be made available, given
the current Wikipedia copyright and the probability of other
MediaWiki-powered websites using different copyright licenses but
wishing to use the same documentation as far as the site's
functionality is concerned?

(I apologize if this isn't entirely the proper mailing list to post
this message on, but I feel it could/should be addressed here because
it's a good idea to provide some documentation that can be available
for everyone who uses the software -- and you guys make the software!)

Thanks,
Dan Carlson, Administrator
Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki
http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

body:
Sunir Shah wrote

> Sure; the real issue is that RecentChanges is too
> overwhelming for effective peer review. I think it
> should be divided up so it might be conquered. I
> disagree with watchlists as they are perhaps too
> individualistic to encourage people to watch things
> they have not seen. Rather, you need RecentChanges
> to remain the Commons.
>
> The most obvious way to split it is by subject focus.

<snip>

I find myself not greatly in agreement with Sunir's description of a
'solution'; though what he says feels like the correct direction.  I may
exist as Wikipedian in some of the more placid parts; but I think the idea
of topic lists+use of RelatedChanges is about as good as it will get *on
average* across WP.  That is, such sub-communities as come together to
maintain lists and police changes to pages thus listed are going to be the
best warranty for the content, over most of the Wikipedia.  It's a kind of
nucleation and aggregation process, and works mostly on the basis of keeping
people who care coming back.

Charles


from_name: Kelly Anderson

body:
I suppose rather than inventing something entirely new, someone could
translate the appropriate diff algorithms from the CVS code base...

I don't know if you can call C from your environment, but that would make
it all the easier...

-Kelly


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Fred Bauder wrote:

> The question is: In the case of someone who is definitely not behaving
> themselves here, can other internet activities be considered as we try to
> deal with them? Especially in evaluating whether we are dealing with a
> lifestyle as opposed to limited situational offenses.
>
I agree with Fred on this (although I'd use the phrase "a clear pattern of
behavior" rather than "lifestyle"). If it can be shown that a given
individual who is causing problems on Wikipedia has in the past consistently
engaged in trouble-making behavior, then it should be considered by the
arbitration committee.

What I think I see a number of people get hung up on concerning this point
is the nature of "evidence". It's possible a given person can have a history
like the one we're hypothesizing, yet is trying to start afresh; but I
feel an important step in starting afresh is for that person to acknowledge
that she/he did do wrong, rather than to deny or want to exclude it from
consideration.

In other words, this should not be the only evidence, or the decisive piece
of evidence in deciding an arbitration.

Geoff


from_name: Jake Nelson

references:
<c07jat$22r$1@sea.gmane.org> <92Y2kYuxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<20040209134250.GB2382@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> If we store full versions within a reasonable interval the performance
> impact should not be noticeable, perhaps even smaller than the gzip
> decompression. We've operated under the "diskspace is infinite" assumption
> for a long time, but aside from the fact that it isn't true, an
> inefficient storage system makes things a lot more cumbersome for
 > downstream users who have to download gigabytes of tarballs to get the
 > revision histories.

Idea- perhaps we should store a full version instead of a diff whenever more
than x% of the article text changes. I'm thinking x= 60 or so. Unless it's a
revert, of course, which should be a pointer. Should cut down on the stated
issue where the tiny starting stub has a huge diff, etc...

-- Jake


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] HI

body:
Mydoom

> From: Peter Jaros <rjaros at shaysnet.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 15:06:13 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] HI
>
> On Feb 9, 2004, at 3:20 AM, jwales at bomis.com wrote:
>
>> The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been
>> sent as a binary attachment.
>>
>> <doc.pif>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> Er, was this a worm?
>
> Peter
>
> -- ---<>--- --
> A house without walls cannot fall.
> Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
> -- ---<>--- --
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Evan Prodromou

in_reply_to:
<c07jat$22r$1@sea.gmane.org> (timwi@gmx.net's message of "Mon,
	09 Feb 2004 09:19:04 +0000")

body:
>>>>> "T" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

    Me> Some (most?) version control systems use a reverse diff storage
    Me> system to keep storage requirements down to a minimum, at the
    Me> expense of retrieval time for old versions.

    T> Do we really have to do that?

No, we don't _have_ to do it. That's why it's posted as a technical
proposal and not a court order.

    T> I always thought storage space is incredibly cheap (at least
    T> that's what LiveJournal always say ;-) ).

Storage space is cheap. _Database_ space can be expensive, though, in
terms of maintenance and performance.

It's also conceivable, although I haven't tested it, that it's
comparable or even _faster_ to get a small diff and apply it to a
cached version than it is to fetch a full version.

    T> I'm finding it somewhat irritating that you want to slow down
    T> Wikipedia even more, just to save some disk space.

Well, it's mostly because I hate Wikipedia and I want to abuse
Wikipedia contributors as much as possible. The whole disk space thing
is just a facade.

~ESP

P.S. And, yes, it's me who's been slipping the sleep(10) calls into
various parts of the MediaWiki code. Bwahahaha!

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about small religious sects,
	concern about accuracy and NPOV

references:
<BC4A2A49.1027%fredbaud@ctelco.net> <402527BE.3020206@telus.net>
	<vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-vS0l7deCz32Z@localhost>

body:
Dan Drake wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Taking writings out of context, and trying to direct the reader into an
>>interpretation of those texts in a manner contrary to what the original
>>author intended would be a reprehensible imposition of your own POV.
>>
>Unless the original author was in fact asserting things as fact that are
>questioned by oneself and other persons not certifiably loony, in which
>case presenting an interpretation that questions that of hte author is or
>can be a highly desirable editing out of POV. (I'm not defending things
>taken improperly out of context (Duh).)
>
>Perhaps we should not _assume_ that all these articles are good NPOV work?
>Perhaps we should not assume that they are not?
>Perhaps this is pretty elementary stuff about NPOV to be spendint the time
>of this list on?
>
What a lot of cult leaders express is a matter of doctrine rather than
fact, and in that regard they can believe whatever they want and express
whatever they want.  If their expression is far removed from reality,
they will prove their case far better than you ever can.

If the author was factually wrong, editing out his POV is substituting
your POV for his, which puts us no further ahead.  That's not NPOV; it's
censorship.  I don't support directed interpretations; I like to give
credit to the reader for being able to have his own interpretation of
what he reads.  If a text is too liberally sprinked with phrases like
"He claims..." or "He alleges..." I start to question the motives of the
interpreter.  Even a favorable interpreter can distort doctrines.  St.
Paul was notorious for doing that.  Any interpretation is a second hand
statement.

It is much fairer if a section of such an article is devoted to a fair
presentation is made of a group's doctrines as presented in their own
writings and statements.  There is always adequate room in following
sections for opponents to present their case.

Where there are allegations of abusive behaviour, these are often not
part of the doctrine, but doctrine is often used to justify such
actions.  This kind of claim should be treated separately from the
doctrine.  Those who extricate themselves from these cults tend to lose
objectivity in their comments when they deprecate the theology at a time
when their problem was (with or without cause) personally in relation to
those interpreting the doctrines.  It is often impossible to evaluate
their claims.  We have seen this sort of problem here with certain
people who are too quick to take issue with the casual comments of
another Wikipedian.

Before I read an article I should begin with the presumption that it
will contain good NPOV work.  To read otherwise would be to put POV in
my reading.  Of course I know from experience that much writing will not
be NPOV, but I can't honestly reach that evaluation until I have read at
least some of the article.

As for being too elementary for spending time on the list, I again
disagree.  These elementary discussions are at the heart of the matter.
 If NPOV were to become too rigidly defined, it would be lost.  That is
both the blessing and the frustration of NPOV.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] HI

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I didn't come from me, I'm quite sure.  I don't use any email system
>that's remotely vulnerable to such stuff.
>
>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>>On Feb 9, 2004, at 3:20 AM, jwales at bomis.com wrote:
>>
>>>The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been
>>>sent as a binary attachment.
>>>
>>><doc.pif>
>>>
I've received quite a high number of  messages with this and other
similar messages inviting me to open the attachment.  I've also received
messages from people to whom I've never written saying that I sent it to
them.  When I look at the page source I find that they were sent from
somebody else who has said that they were from me, but has a different
IP address.  It will pick up your name from somebody else's files and
send this worm on your behalf.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Known Trolls

body:
On Feb 8, 2004, at 8:37 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> I don't propose we start screening people before we let them edit.
> Just that
> once they start trolling Wikipedia and it becomes so much of an issue
> that
> it is before the arbitrators that then behavior in other forums becomes
> relevant both for determining what kind of a person we are dealing
> with but
> also for determining remedies, keeping in mind that there is little
> prospect
> that a person with long-standing habitual habits of disruption will be
> able
> to change or would want to.

One problem with bringing up a person's pre-Wikipedia history is that a
reformed troll is likely to be, shall we say, tact-impaired.  Such a
person is *more* likely to be falsely accused of trolling (remembering
that trolling includes intent).  On the other hand, this history can
greatly help arbitrators to decide how to deal with a user.  Many
people are simply bad at garnering sympathy for their point; it's a
skill not everyone has.  Simply accusing such people of trolling is
likely to make matters worse and make the arbitrators' job harder.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] HI

body:
I didn't come from me, I'm quite sure.  I don't use any email system
that's remotely vulnerable to such stuff.

Peter Jaros wrote:

> On Feb 9, 2004, at 3:20 AM, jwales at bomis.com wrote:
>
> >The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been
> >sent as a binary attachment.
> >
> ><doc.pif>
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> Er, was this a worm?
>
> Peter
>
>                                  -- ---<>--- --
>                        A house without walls cannot fall.
>           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
>                                  -- ---<>--- --
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: test.wikipedia.org

body:
On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 09:32:58 +0000, Timwi wrote:

o go to test.wikipedia.org, and I was forwarded to
> http://larousse.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and received the following
> error message:
>
> 	ERROR
> 	The requested URL could not be retrieved
>
> 	While trying to retrieve the URL:
> 	http://larousse.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> 	The following error was encountered:
>
> 	    * Access Denied.
>
> 	      Access control configuration prevents your request from
> 	being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you
> 	feel this is incorrect.
>
> 	Your cache administrator is webmaster. Generated Mon, 09 Feb 2004
> 	09:32:33 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4)
>
> Thanks,
> Timwi

Test.wikipedia.org isn't updated at them moment, we used it to test the
squid setup, the changes done to the apache config aren't undone yet. It's
still working when accessed as http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
Squid.conf now allows access to wikimedia.org, but this won't kick in
until one of the roots reload the Squid config.

I might be able to update the code test.wp.org is running, but i don't
know where it is on ursula.

My own test wiki at http://wiki.aulinx.de/ is running cvs HEAD including
your change, feel free to test it there.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: test.wikipedia.org

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> Test.wikipedia.org isn't updated at them moment  [...]

OK, thanks for the info.

> My own test wiki at http://wiki.aulinx.de/ is running cvs HEAD including
> your change, feel free to test it there.

Thanks. I've tested the self-link behaviour, and it works perfectly.

However, you have disabled the MediaWiki namespace stuff, so I can't
test it with {{msg:}}. In order to enable it, set $wgUseDatabaseMessages
to true.

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems accessing Wikipedia using LWP::UserAgent

body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 14:30, Timwi wrote:
> 	      Access control configuration prevents your request from
> 	being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider
> 	if you feel this is incorrect.

That user-agent string is blocked. Please pick an application-specific
user agent string, and also please respect robots.txt.

If you plan to not follow robots.txt, please ask us to add a section to
our robots.txt which will allow your bot. (robots.txt works on the
honor system, but please don't get lazy.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug with image thumbnails

body:
On Monday 09 February 2004 12:56 pm, Timwi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have discovered the following bug in the image thumbnails feature.  It
> occurs when the thumbnail is left-aligned, and there is a list next to
> it.

This also occurs without the new syntax. I.e. when using <div> tags to allign
the image at the left. IIRC this is an old & known problem.

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Problems accessing Wikipedia using LWP::UserAgent

references:
<c091nd$gl6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<C0436EDD-5B50-11D8-AE32-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>
	<c092qu$j8b$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 14:49, Timwi wrote:
> Also, it says:
>> # Friendly, low-speed bots are welcome viewing article pages, but not
>> # dynamically-generated pages please.
> and yet you're not blocking Special:Recentchanges or stuff like that :)

Plain old recentchanges now and then is fine. Iterating through ten
billion possible combinations of result sets for display, edit, history
lists, contribs, and diffs for every page? That's not fine.

> Well, your robots.txt seems to disallow access to /w/ for all
> User-Agents. This would mean I would disrespect robots.txt if I were
> to submit edits, right?

That's right.

> Then I would humbly like to ask to be allowed to run my little script
> on your server. The sole purpose of the script is to replace
> occurrances of one text with another. Most of the time, I use it for
> common spelling corrections, or fixing links like [[Kurt Godel]] where
> someone omitted the diacritic marks.
>
> So what User-Agent string should I use? "Timwiscript"? (I don't like
> calling it a bot, it really isn't... it still requires a great deal of
> manual interaction, and doesn't wildly do stuff automatically.)

Rather then building yet another set of editing tools from scratch you
may want to see: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] HI

body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 3:20 AM, jwales at bomis.com wrote:

> The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been
> sent as a binary attachment.
>
> <doc.pif>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Er, was this a worm?

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 08:11, Dan Carlson wrote:
> I've been reading around a little bit more on some of the other
> MediaWiki-powered websites that are out there, since I've been
> starting a new wiki with a few other people for "Star Trek"-related
> topics, Memory Alpha.  So far, we've frequently been copying the
> documentation pages from Wikipedia (for example, [[Wikipedia:Help]]
> and [[Wikipedia:How_to_start_a_page]]) -- and we've kept the proper
> attributions, of course!

The neat thing about web sites, wikis included, is that you can make
links between them instead of copying data! For instance to:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide

(Yeah, it sucks. Feel free to improve it.)

Just a thought.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Dan,

> [Note to moderator, if any: I don't know what the dickens is going
> on with my registration. If this passes your way for approval
> because of some claim that I'm not registered, please contact me. My
> attempt to contact you has failed.]

You are subscribed to the list, but somehow a checkbox appeared in your
"nomail" option. I cleared it for you.

> nomail -- Is delivery to the member disabled? If so, an abbreviation
> will be given describing the reason for the disabled delivery:
>
> U -- Delivery was disabled by the user via their personal options
page.

Ed Poor
Wikien-l List Administrator


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about small religious sects,
	concern	about accuracy and NPOV

references:
<BC4A2A49.1027%fredbaud@ctelco.net>	<402527BE.3020206@telus.net>	<vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-vS0l7deCz32Z@localhost>	<4027FBD9.5020009@telus.net>
	<402822C0.1080300@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> On 02/09/04 21:30, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> If the author was factually wrong, editing out his POV is
>> substituting your POV for his, which puts us no further ahead.
>> That's not NPOV; it's censorship.  I don't support directed
>> interpretations; I like to give credit to the reader for being able
>> to have his own interpretation of what he reads.  If a text is too
>> liberally sprinked with phrases like "He claims..." or "He
>> alleges..." I start to question the motives of the interpreter.  Even
>> a favorable interpreter can distort doctrines.  St. Paul was
>> notorious for doing that.  Any interpretation is a second hand
>> statement.
>> It is much fairer if a section of such an article is devoted to a
>> fair presentation is made of a group's doctrines as presented in
>> their own writings and statements.  There is always adequate room in
>> following sections for opponents to present their case.
>
> See [[Talk:GNU General Public License]] for discussions of why that
> article
> doesn't just contain the text, as the original did.

I just read it several times, and couldn't see the relevance.  Are you
somehow saying that by not making direct quotes you are trying to
protect the cult leader's copyrights?

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia is officially a virus

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Question of the day:
>
> How many people have you infected today?

It's on a par with the Iraqi propaganda during the first Gulf War that
was trying to convince the troops that their wives were back home
seeking to have an affair with Bart Simpson. :-)

Ec


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] outside evidence and arbitration

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>What I think I see a number of people get hung up on concerning this point
>is the nature of "evidence". It's possible a given person can have a history
>like the one we're hypothesizing, yet is trying to start afresh; but I
>feel an important step in starting afresh is for that person to acknowledge
>that she/he did do wrong, rather than to deny or want to exclude it from
>consideration.
>

I agree with that.  A simple statement by the person that they are
legitimately interested in bettering the encyclopedia, and do not desire
problems to continue, would go a long way, if it seemed geniuine.  They
don't even have to necessarily be contrite (depending on the situation),
but they also ought not to be confrontational and give the impression
that unless we take forceful action, they'll continue causing problems
and not make any effort to mitigate them.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug with image thumbnails

body:
Hi,

I have discovered the following bug in the image thumbnails feature.  It
occurs when the thumbnail is left-aligned, and there is a list next to
it.  I have uploaded the following screen shot of the problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ListBugScreenshot.png

The relevant page revision is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Golden_Eagle&oldid=2346074

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
>>>>> "DC" == Dan Carlson <minutiaeman at st-minutiae.com> writes:

    DC> What options are currently available, or could be made
    DC> available, given the current Wikipedia copyright and the
    DC> probability of other MediaWiki-powered websites using
    DC> different copyright licenses but wishing to use the same
    DC> documentation as far as the site's functionality is concerned?

So, we have the same issue at Wikitravel, as you mentioned.

One possibility might be having another namespace (ANOTHER
NAMESPACE!?!) along the lines of "Documentation:" or such. Such a
namespace might be hardwired to be always under the GFDL, with a
special gnunote area.

The downside of this is that, instead of just having to warn
contributors from copying from other GFDL sites, we now have to warn
them not to copy between parts of the same site itself! Talk about
headaches...

We started documentation from scratch on Wikitravel, and although it
took me several nights to figure out the differences between "cur",
"last", "diff" and "hist", we now have a halfway-tolerable guide to
MediaWiki, albeit pretty Wikitravel-oriented. It's under the CC by-sa
1.0, and you're welcome, of course, to exercise your rights to
redistribute and create derivative works under that license.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Question of the day:

How many people have you infected today?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Peter Wöhrer

references:
<c07jat$22r$1@sea.gmane.org> <92Y2kYuxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<20040209134250.GB2382@joey.bomis.com>
	<003c01c3ef37$c71f68b0$d6c0c3cf@Darkblade>

body:
As I understand it, both savings diffs and compressing do essentially the same
thing: Reduce redundancy to cut down the space needed to store information.

The method is different though:
Storing diffs works form step to step of changing versions, which means that
this is a very fast and easy way to store each version and it gives rather good
"compression" by leaving out unchanged pieces. It is however rather costly to
retrieve a certain version, because you have to go through each and every diff
(unless you employ a rather clever scheme which reduces the "compression" ratio
to some degree for the sake of speed).

Compressing is another matter. It cuts out redundancy as well but does this by
storing unchanged parts only once. Other than storing diffs, this works on the
whole data at once. The algorithm can analyze the whole range of data to
determine the best way to compress ist. This means that it is rather complex to
add new information but gives a very good compression ratio and makes it fairly
easy to retrieve any given data.

If compression is applied In A Clever Way - meaning compressing ALL versions of
an article at once, not each version for itself - it should give equal or even
better compression combined with a quick way to retrieve it.

I recognize that all depends very much on the kind of the used algorithm but
theoretically I think this is how it works.

Just my 2c.

PeterW


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Switching servers - Tuesday?

body:
On Feb 9, 2004, at 17:26, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> I would propose to do some more tests before switching:
>
> * overload tests of the load balancing setup to determine icp queries
> on/off
> * heart beat takeover tests for the Squids
> * NFS/ DB server heart beat setup
>
> These things are harder or impossible to test in production without
> disrupting the service. The current setup holds up good enough to allow
> for a day or so of additional testing, and if there are problems it
> should
> be an advantage to discover them now.

No sense rushing into things; we'll hold off until we're all satisfied
then.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 16:43, Fred Bauder wrote:

    The question is: In the case of someone who is definitely not behaving
    themselves here, can other internet activities be considered as we try to
    deal with them? Especially in evaluating whether we are dealing with a
    lifestyle as opposed to limited situational offenses.

    Fred

IMO, you should consider outside behaviour, but always to the benefit
of the user in question.

For someone with a stellar record outside wikipedia, it should serve
as an indication that something with their interaction with wikipidia
may be to blame, and the remedy should try to reflect that.

For someone with less than a stellar record outside wikipedia, the
remedy (if any is conceivable) should reflect that fact, to the effect
that the remedy be realistic, and not merely a trap.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
(speaking as a private Wikipedian)
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from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
Timwi,

it seems like you've coded your toolkit in Perl (unlike the existing
Python toolkit). If so, I'm sure there are more than a few people that
would like to have it available; would you be willing to post your source
somewhere?

Thanks,
Ivan.

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 00:04:39 +0000, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Rather then building yet another set of editing tools from scratch
>
> I already have. :-)


from_name: Dan Drake

body:
[Note to moderator, if any: I don't know what the dickens is going on with
my registration. If this passes your way for approval because of some
claim that I'm not registered, please contact me. My attempt to contact
you has failed.]

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004 18:00:30 UTC, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>
> Taking writings out of context, and trying to direct the reader into an
> interpretation of those texts in a manner contrary to what the original
> author intended would be a reprehensible imposition of your own POV.

Unless the original author was in fact asserting things as fact that are
questioned by oneself and other persons not certifiably loony, in which
case presenting an interpretation that questions that of hte author is or
can be a highly desirable editing out of POV. (I'm not defending things
taken improperly out of context (Duh).)

Perhaps we should not _assume_ that all these articles are good NPOV work?
Perhaps we should not assume that they are not?
Perhaps this is pretty elementary stuff about NPOV to be spendint the time
of this list on?

--
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banning for bad edits

body:
On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 20:01:49 UTC, Sascha Noyes
<sascha at pantropy.net> wrote:

> On Sunday 08 February 2004 02:09 pm, Sunir Shah wrote:
> >...
> >
> > One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to
> > babysit their own text on a collaborative work.
>
> Lots of vandalism and copyright violations sneak past the RecentChanges
> patrol.
>
> Characters whose single goal it is to insert their bias roam Wikipedia.
>
> New additions of content are often accompanied by significant spelling or
> grammar mistakes.

Quite true -- but in addition, how about good reasons that involve no
actual wrong-doing on anyone's part? People do sometimes insert stuff that
one doesn't consider up to par sometimes with the best of intentions. If
other people never created sub-standard stuff, why would you ever make
revisions on an existing piece? (Stubs and your own creations would be the
only things you'd work on.) When I've put effort into a piece, I know more
about it than I do about a Random Article, and probably more than does a
random WIkipedia editor; and it's not _just_ ego that inspires me to keep
track of whether improvements to it are actually improvements.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Call me crazy (you wouldn't be the first;-) but why don't we go "back to
the roots" and store the old table in the file system, and just keep the
appropriate filenames in the "old" table?

Maybe we could keep the last five versions in the old table for
reverting vandalism and diff'ing to the last version. If you're more
than five levels from the current version, off you go to good 'ol hard
drive land :-)

Even better - all old versions farther than five edits and at least 24h
are archived in this fashion on disk. This way, everyone can have fast
access to the latest edit war!

Magnus

Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2004, at 10:44, Peter W?hrer wrote:
>
>> If compression is applied In A Clever Way - meaning compressing ALL
>> versions of
>> an article at once, not each version for itself - it should give equal
>> or even
>> better compression combined with a quick way to retrieve it.
>
>
> Tim's done some quick testing of this and it does save a lot of space to
> compress multiple revisions together. gzip does pretty well; bzip2
> compresses even better but at much greater CPU cost.
>
> My primary worry is just maintainability; any of these schemes are
> fragile, and require a lot of fiddling to make sure that consistency is
> maintained. Compressing individual revisions only gives 60% savings but
> it's dead easy (the code's already in, waiting to be turned on.)
>
> Things to think about, sure, but not a priority.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Banning for bad edits

body:
On Mon, 9 Feb 2004 10:38:50 UTC, "Matthew Brown"
<morven at byz.org> wrote:

> For me, personally:
>
> 1. Stuff on my watchlist (since I have my preferences set to put on the
> watchlist everything I edit) is the stuff I know about, and thus the
> stuff I'm knowledgable enough to detect vandalism on.
> 2... [other good reasons snipped]

What he said.

Also, there's the delight, when one has just created an article or
expanded on a stub, in seeing that somebody has picked up on it within the
hour, and made a real improvement. Makes a person feel good about
Wikipedia.


body:
Hi,

I'm having the following problem. I know it's not a configuration
problem because the same machine can access Wikipedia using Lynx.

I'm trying to access Wikipedia using the Perl module LWP::UserAgent:

	perl -e 'use LWP::UserAgent; use HTTP::Request;
	my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
	my $request = HTTP::Request->new (GET =>
            "http://en.wikipedia.org/");
	my $response = $ua->request ($request);
	print $response->content;
	'

The response I get is an HTML document which I've plaintexted here for
your viewing pleasure:

	ERROR
	The requested URL could not be retrieved

	While trying to retrieve the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/

	The following error was encountered:

	    * Access Denied.

	      Access control configuration prevents your request from
	being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider
	if you feel this is incorrect.

	Your cache administrator is webmaster.
	Generated Mon, 09 Feb 2004 22:27:15 GMT by wikipedia.org
	(squid/2.5.STABLE4)

Looks like the same error message like the one I get on
test.wikipedia.org, except that this one only occurs when I use
LWP::UserAgent.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Feb 9, 2004, at 14:30, Timwi wrote:
>
>>           Access control configuration prevents your request from
>>     being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider
>>     if you feel this is incorrect.
>
> That user-agent string is blocked. Please pick an application-specific
> user agent string,

OK.

> and also please respect robots.txt.

Your robots.txt lists HTTrack twice. :-)

Also, it says:
> # Friendly, low-speed bots are welcome viewing article pages, but not
> # dynamically-generated pages please.
and yet you're not blocking Special:Recentchanges or stuff like that :)

> If you plan to not follow robots.txt, please ask us to add a section to
> our robots.txt which will allow your bot. (robots.txt works on the honor
> system, but please don't get lazy.)

Well, your robots.txt seems to disallow access to /w/ for all
User-Agents. This would mean I would disrespect robots.txt if I were to
submit edits, right?

Then I would humbly like to ask to be allowed to run my little script on
your server. The sole purpose of the script is to replace occurrances of
one text with another. Most of the time, I use it for common spelling
corrections, or fixing links like [[Kurt Godel]] where someone omitted
the diacritic marks.

So what User-Agent string should I use? "Timwiscript"? (I don't like
calling it a bot, it really isn't... it still requires a great deal of
manual interaction, and doesn't wildly do stuff automatically.)

Timwi


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User HectorRodriguez

body:
User HectorRodriguez has gone onto a rampage to remove the word "terrorist" in all September 11 related pages, causing a massive spaghetti-ing of the pages which I tried to revert, but have probably made more of a mess of things.  Can somebody look at his contributions and help me to fix things?

Please note that Wik has now jumped on the bandwagon and is reverting my revrsions.  One wonders of Hector might not be Wik in a new role.

Rick K

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
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body:
Many user-agent strings aren't allowed to access wikipedia, same with no
user agent at all.
Make sure you send a common UA string. test.wikipedia.org shouldn't throw
an error anymore, snok reloaded the config this afternoon.
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Plain old recentchanges now and then is fine. Iterating through ten
> billion possible combinations of result sets for display, edit, history
> lists, contribs, and diffs for every page? That's not fine.

True. But I imagine that Recentchanges is nevertheless pretty heavy on
the database. You're also not blocking any other Special pages, such as
Whatlinkshere (though I imagine that the vast majority of links to
Whatlinkshere are through /w/wiki.phtml).

> Rather then building yet another set of editing tools from scratch

I already have. :-)

> you may want to see: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/

I know that tools like that exist, but I like to write my own from time
to time simply because I enjoy programming and because I can learn from
it. And because I then know how to use them. ;-)

So, can I still use it then? :-)

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about small religious sects,	concern
	about accuracy and NPOV

references:
<BC4A2A49.1027%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<402527BE.3020206@telus.net>	<vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-vS0l7deCz32Z@localhost>
	<4027FBD9.5020009@telus.net>

body:
On 02/09/04 21:30, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> If the author was factually wrong, editing out his POV is substituting
> your POV for his, which puts us no further ahead.  That's not NPOV; it's
> censorship.  I don't support directed interpretations; I like to give
> credit to the reader for being able to have his own interpretation of
> what he reads.  If a text is too liberally sprinked with phrases like
> "He claims..." or "He alleges..." I start to question the motives of the
> interpreter.  Even a favorable interpreter can distort doctrines.  St.
> Paul was notorious for doing that.  Any interpretation is a second hand
> statement.
> It is much fairer if a section of such an article is devoted to a fair
> presentation is made of a group's doctrines as presented in their own
> writings and statements.  There is always adequate room in following
> sections for opponents to present their case.

See [[Talk:GNU General Public License]] for discussions of why that article
doesn't just contain the text, as the original did.

- d.


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: It's not anarchy (oh yes it is)

body:
RickK asked...

> Parliamentary democracy?

Ed answered...

> You forgot to program your time machine for January, 2005. That's when the first
> votes for Mediation & Arbitration Committees took place

Ahem. I signed up to be an arbitrator in order to arbitrate, not to govern.

Y'all are free to run Wikipedia how you like it, and I'm not going to get in the way. If
you suddenly decide that all pages shall henceforth be in American English, don't
expect me to stand in the way. I don't have any relevant experience in cat herding,
and I don't think I want any.

-Martin


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Known Trolls

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>Personally, I think Wikipedia should try to
>move away from deterrence strategies like
>bans, IP blocks and arbitration committees,
>and toward a reputation-management
>system like they have at Slashdot or Kuro5hin
>or eBay.

Oh god no!  Slashdot and *especially* Kuro5hin are a haven for trolls, rude
behavior, and giving the feeling to newbies that the deck is stacked against
them. We don't want to replicate that!

>[a system based on trust]...

A developer mentioned trust matrices once and I thought that was a neat idea.
But having an RC that only had anon edits and edits by new logged-in users
would be a very helpful start. We could even reset the accounts of certain
problem users so that their edits would go into that RC as well.

That combined with a more cooperative way to search for vandalism and other
problem edits would be enough for some time, IMO. As it is now many people
waste a lot of time rechecking edits that have already been checked by other
people.

>I think it would also be a good idea to set some kind
>of limit on the number of contributions accepted per
>day from each anonymous IP number -- a fairly small
>number, such as 5. Five contributions is enough for
>someone to get a feel for how Wikipedia works.

Please no. For a while my browser and Slashdot just didn't get along. So I
posted as an anon. After 10 posts I got a message saying to "Slow down cowboy -
you need to log in to post more". I was a bit pissed.

But anons and new users do have a tendency to save without first previewing. I
would therefore support the removal of the Save button from the initial edit
screens presented to anons. Only after they previewed once would they be
presented with the save button.

That alone should cut down on much of the simple vandalism from anons without
putting any real limit on their ability to edit.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Known Trolls

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> I think it would also be a good idea to set some kind of limit on the
> number of contributions accepted per day from each anonymous IP number
> -- a fairly small number, such as 5. Five contributions is enough for
> someone to get a feel for how Wikipedia works. After that, the
> software should tell them to register if they want to make further
> contributions. This way the Wikipedia would remain inviting to newbies
> but would add encouragement to enter the reputation-tracking system.
> It wouldn't entirely stop anonymous vandalism, but it would make it
> more difficult and would probably eliminate most of it.

I don't think anonymous vandalism is actually a big problem, in
practice.  Most gets reverted quickly with relatively little effort, and
persistent vandals are IP-banned (and can be IP-banned by any sysop
without prior authorization).  The really sticky issues seem to be
problem users with accounts, especially those who are not doing simple
vandalism, but are causing problems in other ways.

-Mark