body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Anthere wrote in part:
>
> >ah, you ring a bell here. I several times felt the
> >consuming desire just to create an empty page (or
> an
> >*horrible* stub) in english, just to link a french
> >page that existed.
<cut>
> My idea is that you should translate the first
> paragraph of the article.
> It's quite unreasonable that you should translate
> the whole thing,
> but translating the first paragraph will provide a
> good stub.
<cut>
> And you don't have to translate it *well*;
> use bad grammar and spelling, it'll get fixed.
<cut>

True. I can do that for sure. (I will :-))
But then, if I can do that in english, I certainly
cannot do it decently in any other language (it would
be mostly google translation, and these are often
terrible, plus they do not deal with every language).
So it would only be on the en.wiki.

You would probably say that makes sense since it is
the biggest; but it also make sense that some subjects
will be over time better covered on the french/german
wikis than on the english.

The other point is that, if I can do that, I'm not
sure every non-english speaking can do it. I doubt
very much english would appreciate being flooded with
google translation article introductions.

So it can only be a temporary solution (solving my
problem, but not the overall problem)

> Your proposal (snipped) is not a bad idea either,
> but it will take some programming work to happen.
> Translating the first paragraph can be done now.

True. Of course. These were just thoughts

anth?re

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Derek Ross

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere5 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 2:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

>
> --- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> > Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is
> > certainly not a portal. That's
> > > an *english* main page, with links to other
> > languages.  Sorry, but I like
> > > words to be used in their context.
> >
> > What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet
> > buzzword from about 1997)
>
> Is this type of question designed to make me sound as
> if I had absolutely no idea what I am talking about,
> or not worth listening because not using the best
> word, or designed to slow down any thinking process by
> drawing out a *detail*, or what ??
>
> If such is your concern, explain *yourself* what *you*
> think is a portal, or better, explain what should be
> www.wikipedia.org page to your opinion.
>

There's a good description of what makes a portal on the page
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal.  We probably don't want to
implement all of the features mentioned in the article but then again we
should implement most of them if we are going to the length of calling
http://www.wikipedia.org it a portal.

Cheers

Derek


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DW

body:
[just tried to send this from the wrong email address, apologies if it ends
up on the list twice]

At 16:00 12/10/2002 -0700, Jeronimo wrote:
>As some of you may have seen from the Recent Changes page, I've been
>involved in an edit war with user DW (also appearing as various IPs
>starting with 209) over [[List of famous Canadians]]. DW, who did most
>of the initial work on the page wants to keep off Canadians that in his
>eyes are not famous.
<snip>

DW is not the most affable chap in the world. To me, he comes across as
arrogant and self-important, and is wasting a lot of time at the Canadians
article. His comments suggesting that he is one of the few people
contributing useful content and that everyone else is out to sabotage his
wonderful prose do not sit well with me. And he has a history - he
questioned naming conventions in his usual charming way at
[[Talk:Henry_I_of_France]] and seems to have upset J Hofmann Kemp quite
seriously (see her archived talk at
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:J_Hofmann_Kemp&oldid=200626
if interested). Whether that had some effect on her deciding to leave, I
don't know, but it seems very possible.

As you say, he's also contributed a decent amount of good material,
although I don't have the historical knowledge to say whether his
historical articles are NPOV (JHK seemed to think some of them were not).
There also seems to be a copyright question over his article on [[Mavis
Gallant]]. But, all that said, I'm sure most of his contributions are fine,
and he does seem to have made quite a lot of them in the short time he's
been here.

My personal feeling is this: he's antagonistic, rude and disrespectful, and
he doesn't seem able to entertain the possibility that he might be wrong
about anything. But this is not enough for a ban. At the moment, at least,
he seems only to be causing trouble at the Canadians page, which is
something to be grateful for, anyway.

Probably he will become frustrated that nobody else wants to do things his
way, and he'll leave. Indeed, as I write this, he's threatening to leave
the project at the Canadians talk page. I don't like to see anybody leave
the project if they've added good content, and I'd much rather he settled
down and at least *tried* to get on with people, but if he went it would be
blessed relief.

This is my first post to the list; I'd've liked it to be about something a
bit more cheery, but there it is. I'm on the digest, so I've not seen any
other responses to Jeronimo's post - apologies if I'm duplicating stuff.

LP (camembert)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Anthere Wrote:
>In Wikipedia case, most people will only go to one of
>the links most of time. So a portal is not very
>interesting maybe? Except if on the second connexion,
>the user is directly brought to the right
>xx.wikipedia.org. Otherwise, it is a lack of time.
>
>But if on the second connexion the user is brought to
>the xx.wikipedia.org, he will rarely go to the
>www.wikipedia.org and maybe is it loosing something.
>No ?
>
>Besides, you will notice I used the word "partners". A
>portal tends to atomize things rather than to
>interlink  them.
>
>Does what I say make more sense now ? Do you think I
>am wrong in my feeling or not ?

You make some good points.  What would you have on the page to make it more consistently useful?

kq


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org
 and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Lightning wrote:
>
> > Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is certainly not a portal.
> That's
> > > an *english* main page, with links to other languages.  Sorry, but I
> like
> > > words to be used in their context.
> >
> > What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet buzzword from about 1997)
>
> Can I suggest what many other sites have done?
> ok i thought so
>
> A map of the world, click on a certain region, it takes you to whatever
> language is spoken there...
>
> and below the map, text links to each language
> like this:
>
> -------------------------
> |
> |         MAP
> |
> -------------------------
> [Espanol|English|Deutch|Francais.........]
>
> _NO TEXT_ Except for the language Links.. this takes you to an introduction
> page in your language and yadda yadda yadda or wherever you want it to take
> you

If you're really concerned about language barriers that sounds like the
way to go. The problem with the flag thing is then you have people
squabbling about which flag should go next to the name, and why has
theirs been left out etc etc... nobody can argue with a world map! Can
they?

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Search results, markup and readability

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>Lightning wrote:
>
>>another option i ould like would be this:
>>
>>Miami (1897 bytes)
>>City in the United States. For other uses see Miami.
>>---also available in Esperanto, Spanish ......
>>
>
>I think this option would be best.
>
For the well known city in Florida the entry should be under [[Miami,
Florida]]; the name alone should be the disambiguation page.  The format
[[Miami (disambiguation)]] should be reserved for exceptional circumstances.

Ec


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> >Can I suggest what many other sites have done?
> >ok i thought so
>
> >A map of the world, click on a certain region, it takes you to whatever
> >language is spoken there...
>
> What language do I get if I click on Canada?
>
> What language do I get if I click on mainland China?  (You of course
> know that there is no such language as "Chinese.")
>
> Where do I click if I want Esperanto or Latin?

Well, obviously, when you hold the cursor over a given area it tells you
what language it is linked to... and in some areas there would need to
be a choice. Bear in mind that this is not providing the ability to
start a wikipedia in any language of the world - it just has to link to
the 12 or 15 where the work has already begun. So Canada would give you
a choice of English or French... and China would take you to which ever
dialect has been chosen for the 'Chinese' wikipedia.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


from_name: Lightning

body:
> All right, now that you have expressed your contempt for my questions,
> called me and pain in the ass, and questioned my intelligence ... are
> you going to answer the questions?

Well, I guess I owe it to you.

>What language do I get if I click on Canada?

English in most of canada, french in quebec, or maybe it takes you to a page
that furthermore narrows it down. I think this is unneccessary, most people
can figure this out and IMSHO, its really not offensive if you dont please
every last person...

>What language do I get if I click on mainland China?  (You of course
>know that there is no such language as "Chinese.")

Whatever language we have that chinese people read. I think right now, there
is none.

>Where do I click if I want Esperanto or Latin?

The text links would list all the available languages, so you would look
under, or on top, (or both) of the map, and click on the language of your
choice if your language is not represented in the map


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving the English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org

body:
> Flags -- which ones to use? What to do for languages spoken in many
> countries? What to do for countries which speak several languages?
> World Map -- what about mixed areas? What about the load time for the
> image? It'll have to be pretty big to show the different areas of
> Switzerland, no?

I was thinking of a just black and white line copy png, that would be a
really small image, filesize wise, where ther is just enough distinction to
click on most countries, obviously it would be hard to represent sealand,
andorra, vatican luxemburg etc on this map..

OK map didn't work out.. how bout this
JUST the text links and the wikipedia logo in a fast loading splash page
that takes you to the appropriate language... too many people complaining
about not every single person being represented in the map.. sorry

Lightning


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
  www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
A language map might be a nice addition, but it shouldn't be the only
way to select a language. Usability includes access for the blind, and
the software they use can read lists--something that said "Deutsch,
English, Espanol, Francais" would work, but a clickable map won't.
(Pardon the lack of accents, please.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs  www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
> A language map might be a nice addition, but it shouldn't be the only
> way to select a language. Usability includes access for the blind, and
> the software they use can read lists--something that said "Deutsch,
> English, Espanol, Francais" would work, but a clickable map won't.
> (Pardon the lack of accents, please.)

My suggestion called for a map AND text links.. here's a wack looking
diagram of how it might look:

[English|Espanol|Francais|Deutch....]
---------------------------
|
|  THIS IS A MAP :-)
|
---------------------------
[English|Espanol|Francais|Deutch....]

and ideally should be compact enough to be displayed without scrolling at
all


from_name: Thesmelialichu at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] policy suggestion: don't create pages for everything

body:
<PRE>I personally think it depends on whther one author is owrking throughi t, or
descriptions have grown over time. If it is one author then they may well be
planning to expand their description etc, and so would be annoyed if people
interfered.


from_name: tarquin

body:
Flags & Maps -- both far too complicated. And they're contentious issues
just waiting to explode in our faces.

Flags -- which ones to use? What to do for languages spoken in many
countries? What to do for countries which speak several languages?
World Map -- what about mixed areas? What about the load time for the
image? It'll have to be pretty big to show the different areas of
Switzerland, no?

What is the *basic, driving* idea behind these suggestions? to make it
simple for people to find their language on the portal page.

The simplest thing is still to have the name of each language, in words.


body:
> Sealand ? Do you mean that platform in the sea by England?

you know it


body:
> For the well known city in Florida the entry should be under [[Miami,
> Florida]]; the name alone should be the disambiguation page.  The format
> [[Miami (disambiguation)]] should be reserved for exceptional
circumstances.
>

yes i know i left a comment in the talk page saying just that, but i got no
replies so far

Lightning


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] International wikipedias and phase 3 software

body:
Lightning wrote:
> Shouldn't wikipedias that have not been started be moved to the new
> software? I mean, there is nothing to change so it seems to me, right now
> would be the best time to do something like that since there is no content
> and It'd be easier to start them in the new software rather than in the old
> and then convert them....
> there seems to be a lot of them.. look here:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_list_of_language_wikis_avai
> lable
>
>
> Also can some pass this on to the international list, i suspect they might
> have some more views on this, but i really dont need the traffic from that
> list in my inbox.

I'll repeat what I said on the talk page:

   Yes, but volunteer labor is scarce and setting up a few dozen wikis
   that aren't being used and will have to be converted again the next
   time we make a major software change* isn't my idea of fun at the
   moment either. Any language that you want to use, mention it and I'll
   move it over. Anything else will wait until it's gotten around to.

For example, Xaos recently made noises about the unused -- and unusable
-- Korean wiki, where the old software wasn't set up to handle an
appropriate encoding. I set up a blank ko.wikipedia.org configured for
Unicode support, and localization is ongoing.

*What I refer to here is the oft-suggested ability to combine views of
multiple languages (and the meta wiki) into one interface; for instance,
'Recentchanges' optionally showing changed articles in all the languages
you work in plus the meta discussion; being able to select the interface
language separately from the content language; having a single login
work across all languages without having to separately set up accounts &
log in all the time. This may require merging everything together into a
single database, and the less databases to deal with at the time, the
smoother it'll go.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] International wikipedias and phase 3 software


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] International wikipedias and phase 3 software

body:
--- Lightning <lightning at chaos-productions.com> wrote:
> Shouldn't wikipedias that have not been started be
> moved to the new
> software? I mean, there is nothing to change so it
> seems to me, right now
> would be the best time to do something like that
> since there is no content
> and It'd be easier to start them in the new software
> rather than in the old
> and then convert them....
> there seems to be a lot of them.. look here:
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_list_of_language_wikis_avai
> lable
>
>
> Also can some pass this on to the international
> list, i suspect they might
> have some more views on this, but i really dont need
> the traffic from that
> list in my inbox.

Lightning,

Must say, some of your emails are fresh air...

I am sure Brion and others will help moving the next
wikis, but they need time to do everything. Only 2
hands each.

Taking the content of the sevilla serveur is for sure
an idea...I would say it would probably not be very
diplomatic right now :-) If you want to know more
about the fork, you'll have to go to the archives of
the int list, and archives from this list for the last
month or so.

Right now, the int list is mostly a duplication of the
main list. Most people put the two lists in the to:
field, unless we forget. But if you wonder about int
issue, you should check that list anyway (go tho the
archives if you want to avoid cluttering). Also, I
would say if you want to make something known from the
int list, post to the int list, don't ask others to do
for you, that's inefficient.
You may register to the int list, but say you don't
want to receive mail from it from what I remember.

cheers

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
--- koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>
> Anthere Wrote:
> >In Wikipedia case, most people will only go to one
> of
> >the links most of time. So a portal is not very
> >interesting maybe? Except if on the second
> connexion,
> >the user is directly brought to the right
> >xx.wikipedia.org. Otherwise, it is a lack of time.
> >
> >But if on the second connexion the user is brought
> to
> >the xx.wikipedia.org, he will rarely go to the
> >www.wikipedia.org and maybe is it loosing
> something.
> >No ?
> >
> >Besides, you will notice I used the word
> "partners". A
> >portal tends to atomize things rather than to
> >interlink  them.
> >
> >Does what I say make more sense now ? Do you think
> I
> >am wrong in my feeling or not ?
>
> You make some good points.  What would you have on
> the page to make it more consistently useful?
>
> kq

I can't see right now more than what I tried to
explain here
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000900.html

with additional answers to comment and suggestions in
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000904.html
and
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-October/000903.html

in short, good info from several langages, being
either
* background info for current events (eg, earth
summits, palestinian conflict...),
* or current event info (celebrities death, festival
de cannes)
* or a couple of "brillant prose" we are especially
proud of (dunno, global warming ?), either one
article, or full coverage of a special point

Most info would probably be in only one langage, but
maybe not, depending on the subject, it can be covered
by one or several articles in different langages, each
*leading* to the specific wikipedias.

It can be rather easy to differenciate langages when
it is supported by a small sentence introducing the
subject (or even a couple of words).

It will maybe slightly overlap with the front page
currents events of each wiki, but given the number of
subjects which likely will be covered, I don't think
it will really be a terrible strain to maintain a
couple of links in two different places.

The important things would be to provide good,
comprehensive and well-balanced articles that will
make us proud to show, and will make people *wonder*
how wonderful things Wikipedia can produce.

mes deux centimes d'euros :-)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: elian

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> Flags & Maps -- both far too complicated. And they're contentious
> issues just waiting to explode in our faces.
>
> Flags -- which ones to use? What to do for languages spoken in many
> countries? What to do for countries which speak several languages?
> World Map -- what about mixed areas? What about the load time for the
> image? It'll have to be pretty big to show the different areas of
> Switzerland, no?
>
> What is the *basic, driving* idea behind these suggestions? to make it
> simple for people to find their language on the portal page.
>
> The simplest thing is still to have the name of each language, in words.

Just what I wanted to say. Let's take us an example from the success of
Google in contrast to other search engines.

One search field + button, a wikipedia logo and below the different
language wikipedias ("La encyclopedie libre fran?aise (5000 articles)",
"Die deutsche freie Enzyklop?die (5800 Artikel)" and so on)

People don't like to read too much on a front page. They prefer a simple
and fast-loading interface - then they will stay.

greetings,
elian
--
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it,
chances are you won't either.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Hi elian, hi list!

> One search field + button, a wikipedia logo and below the different
> language wikipedias ("La encyclopedie libre fran?aise (5000
articles)",
> "Die deutsche freie Enzyklop?die (5800 Artikel)" and so on)
>
> People don't like to read too much on a front page. They prefer a
simple
> and fast-loading interface - then they will stay.

I also don't see much gain in flags, maps, or any other kind of images.
We have 25 Wikipedia language subprojects (or whatever they should be
called, now that things are growing together), so you can find the one
you want easily when you skim over the page.

Kurt


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC

body:
I simply see no need to use it. But I never want to
use IRC for anything. :)

Stephen G.

--- Khendon <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:
> Is the IRC channel underused because nobody wants to
> use it, or
> because nobody bothers because it's underused?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:
>
> > When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about
> little flags for the different
> > languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
> en.wikipedia.com...
>
> I think you mean GB / US / AUS / NZ / CAN ... well,
> you get the picture.
> Either the Flag of St. George (yuck), or nothing,
> I'd say.

No flags, please. Language and nationality are not
interchangable.

Stephen

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Giskart

body:
Lightning wrote:
[cut]

>obviously it would be hard to represent sealand,
>
>
Sealand ? Do you mean that platform in the sea by England?

There was this week a item on the Dutch and Flemish television about
"The Principality Sealand"

Giskart


from_name: Andre Engels

in_reply_to:
<3DA84F15.6030705@telus.net> from Ray Saintonge at "Oct 12, 2002
 09:34:29 am"

body:
> I very much believe that Winnie the Pooh could be treated in a single
> page.  Someone who wants to learn more about Winnie should have all the
> basic information available on that page without having to click on
> links to stubs.  Of the different character pages the one for
> Christopher Robin is the only one to exceed 500 bytes in length.  The
> main Winnie the Pooh page at 2470 bytes is still fairly modest in
> length.  They should be recombined.
>
> Although my numbers are fairly arbitrary, I would still favour as
> general rules of thumb:
>     1. Avoid creating dependent stub articles with fewer than 500 bytes.
>     2. When considering whether to sub-divide an article
>         a) Don't bother if it has fewer than 10,000 bytes,
>         b) For articles between 10,000 and 20,000 bytes sub-divide if
> there are reasonable place to sub-divide,
>         c) Actively look for reasonable ways to sub-divide if the
> article is more than 20,000 bytes long.

This still leaves the question of what to do once the great amount of pages
has been created. The preferable option seems to be (to me) to move the
text of the 'sub-pages' to the main page, and change the latter into redirects.
However, if there is _one_ page that would reasonably be expected to link to
these pages, it is the main page itself. But doing so in this way of combining
things, would make these links self-links.

So should we:
* just accept that the pages are created, saying "I would not do it, but as
  they're there, we'll just keep them"
* make links on the main page to the characters, even though they will become
  self-links
* not make links on the main page, with the risk that when someone comes and
  de-redirects the page, the most logical page to do so will not be linking
  to the page, or
* decide that it's better to delete the pages rather than turning them into
  redirects?

They all have their pros and cons. Anyone a clear preference?

Andre Engels


body:
Shouldn't wikipedias that have not been started be moved to the new
software? I mean, there is nothing to change so it seems to me, right now
would be the best time to do something like that since there is no content
and It'd be easier to start them in the new software rather than in the old
and then convert them....
there seems to be a lot of them.. look here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_list_of_language_wikis_avai
lable

Also can some pass this on to the international list, i suspect they might
have some more views on this, but i really dont need the traffic from that
list in my inbox.

Lightning


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sevilla university wikipedia db

body:
Has anyone ever considered importing the db from the sevilla university
wikipedia? they have a lot more stuff, why not?  Or is there a specific
reason? Ist here a discussion about this that can be read somewhere, i
really couldnt find much info on the whole fork ordeal.

Lightning


body:
> I'll repeat what I said on the talk page:
>
>    Yes, but volunteer labor is scarce and setting up a few dozen wikis
>    that aren't being used and will have to be converted again the next
>    time we make a major software change* isn't my idea of fun at the
>    moment either. Any language that you want to use, mention it and I'll
>    move it over. Anything else will wait until it's gotten around to.
>
> For example, Xaos recently made noises about the unused -- and unusable
> -- Korean wiki, where the old software wasn't set up to handle an
> appropriate encoding. I set up a blank ko.wikipedia.org configured for
> Unicode support, and localization is ongoing.
>
> *What I refer to here is the oft-suggested ability to combine views of
> multiple languages (and the meta wiki) into one interface; for instance,
> 'Recentchanges' optionally showing changed articles in all the languages
> you work in plus the meta discussion; being able to select the interface
> language separately from the content language; having a single login
> work across all languages without having to separately set up accounts &
> log in all the time. This may require merging everything together into a
> single database, and the less databases to deal with at the time, the
> smoother it'll go.
>

ahh makes sense, thanx for clearing it up. The whole Idea of combining the
interface seems really cool.

Lightning


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No more double redirects

body:
I am happy to announce that we have no more double redirects anymore (in
the article namespace, that is). While that doesn't sound like a big
thing, a double redirect could be an annoyance for newcomers. So, keep
it that way ;-)

Magnus


body:
Exactly. Why do we need anything other than the name
of the language? It's the clearest, easiest way.

I hate to try to click a world map trying to get to
the Basque language....

Stephen G.

--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> Flags & Maps -- both far too complicated. And
> they're contentious issues
> just waiting to explode in our faces.
>
> Flags -- which ones to use? What to do for languages
> spoken in many
> countries? What to do for countries which speak
> several languages?
> World Map -- what about mixed areas? What about the
> load time for the
> image? It'll have to be pretty big to show the
> different areas of
> Switzerland, no?
>
> What is the *basic, driving* idea behind these
> suggestions? to make it
> simple for people to find their language on the
> portal page.
>
> The simplest thing is still to have the name of each
> language, in words.
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Anthere wrote in part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Anthere wrote in part:

>>>ah, you ring a bell here. I several times felt the
>>>consuming desire just to create an empty page (or an
>>>*horrible* stub) in english, just to link a french
>>>page that existed.

>>My idea is that you should translate the first paragraph of the article.
>>It's quite unreasonable that you should translate the whole thing,
>>but translating the first paragraph will provide a good stub.

>True. I can do that for sure. (I will :-))
>But then, if I can do that in english, I certainly
>cannot do it decently in any other language (it would
>be mostly google translation, and these are often
>terrible, plus they do not deal with every language).
>So it would only be on the en.wiki.

But [[en:]] is the only wiki besides [[fr:]] that you use, right?

>You would probably say that makes sense since it is
>the biggest; but it also make sense that some subjects
>will be over time better covered on the french/german
>wikis than on the english.

I certainly don't mean to suggest an idea that's special to [[en:]].
But if you can't write in, say, German,
then why would you want to create a page on [[de:]] anyway?
I'm not sure that I understand what you want to do.

>True. Of course. These were just thoughts

I think that we're brainstorming here.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] No more double redirects

body:
Congratulations!

Any news on the feature to freshen up the redirects to a page that is
being moved? -- that will prevent the creation of new ones!

Magnus Manske wrote:

> I am happy to announce that we have no more double redirects anymore
> (in the article namespace, that is). While that doesn't sound like a
> big thing, a double redirect could be an annoyance for newcomers. So,
> keep it that way ;-)
>
> Magnus


body:
> Exactly. Why do we need anything other than the name
> of the language? It's the clearest, easiest way.
>
> I hate to try to click a world map trying to get to
> the Basque language....
>
> Stephen G.

We don't, it was just for looks,  I thought it would look kinda cool,
otherwise the first page would seem kind of empty. thats why i suggested
replacing it with the wikipedia logo

Lightning


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>This still leaves the question of what to do once the great amount of pages
>has been created. The preferable option seems to be (to me) to move the
>text of the 'sub-pages' to the main page, and change the latter into redirects.
>However, if there is _one_ page that would reasonably be expected to link to
>these pages, it is the main page itself. But doing so in this way of combining
>things, would make these links self-links.
>
>
>
I suggest:
* make the character pages into redirects. remove links from the main
article. In the talk page of the main article, list the removed links,
with a note to the effect that those topics do not yet have enough
material to have articles to themselves


body:
Lightning wrote:

>Shouldn't wikipedias that have not been started be moved to the new
>software? I mean, there is nothing to change so it seems to me, right now
>would be the best time to do something like that since there is no content
>and It'd be easier to start them in the new software rather than in the old
>and then convert them....
>there seems to be a lot of them.. look here:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_list_of_language_wikis_avai
>lable
>
>
Good idea but disabel the "upload" function on those empty wikipedias
and place a notice to contact wikitech-l for this function.
This for preventing the misuse of a empty wikipedia. Or do we want a
"Pornopedia"? :-)

>Also can some pass this on to the international list, i suspect they might
>have some more views on this, but i really dont need the traffic from that
>list in my inbox.
>
>
>
I have the same problem that there are is a lot of  mulipost. This seems
the most "on-topic" for wikitech-l.

I send this to wikipedia-l and Intlwiki-l and wikitech-l  but please
change the adress when replying to only wikitech-l.

[folowup-to: wiktech-l at nupedia.com]

giskart


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [declan@well.com: FC: Steal This Paper: Spanish daily newspaper goes "copyleft"]

body:
This is really interesting.  I have no idea if "the Michael Stultz
DSL" is GNU FDL compatible.

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----

From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 10:43:39 -0400
To: politech at politechbot.com
Subject: FC: Steal This Paper: Spanish daily newspaper goes "copyleft"

Background on copyleft:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html

---

From: =?Windows-1252?Q?Jos=E9_Cervera?= <jcervera at 20minutos.es>
To: <declan at well.com>
Subject: Newspaper gone copyleft
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 19:13:17 +0200

Hi, Declan. we met last year, in Huesca (Spain); I thought this can be
interesting for you. Our daily free (as in beer) newspaper, 20 minutos, has
launched a web version. And we have made it copyleft, with a special
licence derived from the Michael Stultz DSL and adapted to the spanish
legislation. As far as I know we are the first professional newspaper gone
copyleft. You can read more on E-Media Tidbits
( http://www.poynter.org/tidbits/ , sixth story) or Boing Boing
(http://boingboing.net/2002_10_01_archive.html#85548077).

See you.

Jose Cervera, 20minutos

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: RFC on a few feature requests

body:
A few days ago I wrote:
> There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd
> like some comments from other developers and power users before I go
> trashing the code on my own...
>
> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
> of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
> Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
> might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
> listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
> that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
> This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
> SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

Everybody seems to like the idea of couting each page that links only once.

> * On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by
> username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by
> sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP
> addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
> usernames to be blocked?

There is some support for internally recording IP addresses of logged-in
users and allowing admins to block based on them, without necessarily
showing the IPs in general.

> * The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
> and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying
> a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

Opinions are mixed on changing the links in the text; everyone who's
mentioned it seems in favor of automatically fixing double-redirects
created by a move. I'll plan on implementing the latter.

> * While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel"
> etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence
> monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly
> hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most
> annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English
> name of the function which implements the special page. A table of
> equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable
> localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

There's desire for this from non-Anglophone wikipedians, but mav brought
up a good point -- when visiting another language to do something (like
updating interlanguage links or checking for images), you need to be
able to find your way around. The special page names being in English in
the popups gives some consistency...

The ideal thing to do, I think, is to make it possible to select the
user interface language separately from the content language. ie, I
should be able to surf the Korean entries with Esperanto menus or the
English with Arabic if I'm comfortable that way.

That'll need some work to extract content-affecting code (names of log
files etc) from the interface and be able to handle them separately, and
to make sure charset encoding is handled sanely. But, it's something
that's been occasionally suggested and I think it's the way to go
ultimately.

The special page links can then use local names, and perhaps the
internal English names can also be available as aliases (see below).

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
> "Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
> namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
> intend to fix,

(now fixed)

> but additionally one tester asked:
>
>   'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>   be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>   into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
>   equal in the namespace portion?'
>
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

There seems to be general nodding about this. I plan to implement it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RFC on a few feature requests


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No more double redirects

body:
Thanks, Magnus. I for one appreciate this VERY MUCH :-)

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]

I am happy to announce that we have no more double redirects anymore (in
the article namespace, that is). While that doesn't sound like a big
thing, a double redirect could be an annoyance for newcomers. So, keep
it that way ;-)


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:

> --- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> > Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > > But, from a conceptual point of view, that is
> > certainly not a portal. That's
> > > an *english* main page, with links to other
> > languages.  Sorry, but I like
> > > words to be used in their context.
> >  What the hell *is* a portal (besides a internet buzzword from about 1997)
>
> Is this type of question designed to make me sound as if I had absolutely no
> idea what I am talking about

No.  Its the sort of question designed to make me sound as if I had absolutely
no idea what you are talking about.  I don't know what a "portal" is in this
context.

--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
Tarquin said:
<I suggest:
* make the character pages into redirects. remove links from the main
article. In the talk page of the main article, list the removed links,
with a note to the effect that those topics do not yet have enough
material to have articles to themselves>

Which gives me an idea for an ice feature, that would be the ability to link
to a heading using a html anchor. I'm not sure how it would work, but I guess
something like [[The Simpsons::Bart]]  would work?

Alex Bradbury


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Don't create pages for everything - allow subhead links

body:
How about giving the ability to link TO A HEADING OR SUBHEADING WITHIN A PAGE?

When I make a new article by cutting and pasting from an old article, it's generally because I want the reader to be able to find, say, Faramir, with a single click. If he's buried half way down a 10 KB article, it's going to be hard to find him. But if the user clicks on _Faramir_ and the page that comes up starts with F A R A M I R -- well, it makes the reading experience f-l-o-w better, if you see what I mean.

Ed Poor


body:
Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Okay. Most of the time a portal is defined as a site which is a convergence
> of various entities. A Web site being useful like starting point, a door
> open to a world of information.

But usually, in my experience, web portals are a link to external content.
This is explicitly listed among the many things that wikipedia is not.
Wikipedia's definition of "Web portal" is different again.

> (by providing little services, such as emails accounts, news, weather...).

As I understand if, this is orthogonal to wikipedia's aims.

> It is certainly following this open directory definition. It is providing
> lots of info on very various subjects.

If you want dmoz.org, you know where to find it.

> http://www.agriculture.com/worldwide/index.html
> - Just provides a dozen of digested hit news from Reuters.
> - links to different partners sites (all ag sites from all over the world)
> - and somewhere hidden behind, some more stuff to try to keep people up a
>   little bit longuer

i.e. Almost no original content.  Again, orthogonal to wikipedia's aims.

> * quick information (characteristics of the project, number of "partners",
> when each started, maybe the number of articles we are currently having in
> the base...)

This bears no resemblance to any of the definitions/examples given above.
What that is, is a front page.

> See? it is just a portal!

Only if you totally redefine "portal".
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


from_name: Mark Christensen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] please don't allow subhead links

body:
> BUT PLEASE: No anchors adressable from outside! There is nearly no
difference to subpages.

I think I understand your point, but I don't follow your argument.
Accessibility from outside was never an important problem with subpages.
The key problem with subpages is that they created a "hardcoded" link
hierarchy, and that they create ambigous and overlaping logical
namespaces.   Should Chess be it's own article, or should it be
Boardgames/Chess, or Strategy games/Chess?  It's not at all obvious that
allowing HTML anchors would create these problems.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'd like to be able to see how
--exactly-- anchors are "nearly indistinguishable" from subpages.  If
you see this more clearly than I, could you please explain it to me.

Yours
Mark Christensen


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

body:
>> When writing on Phase II, I was thinking about little flags for the
>> different languages. We'd just need a merged GB/US flag for
>> en.wikipedia.com...

> I don't like flags, and I guess many others also don't like them.
> If we really need some kind picture to represent a language, then
> please let's choose an image of a famous person who used this
> language to produce something important/famous/extraordinary/...

I don't like the idea of a "portal" page at all, and the idea
of using flags is even worse; flags represent /countries/, and
the very concept of "country" is something I want nothing to do
with.

I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: es.wikipedia.org

body:
On Monday 14 October 2002 12:01 pm, intlwiki-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> Is es.wikipedia going to get upgraded soon?
> The people at EL are not coming back soon, though
> they consider it possible for the future. Leaving
> es.wikipedia with the old software is crippling it,
> I might as well change the main page for "Por favor,
> vaya a Enciclopedia Libre".
>
> AstroNomer

Could we at least officially offer them the opportunity to come back first?
Several people, including myself, have put one /hell/ of a lot of work in
trying to make reunification possible. As a result I believe Wikipedia has
changed for the best by trying to address their major concerns (at least the
ones we know about).

Setting up a test server is fine, but Brion PLEASE DO NOT CONVERT THE LIVE
DATABASE TO PHASE III until we have either given-up on reunification efforts
or EL decides to come back into the Wikipedia family as a full member (on our
server).

We need to draft a letter to them that is both in English and in Spanish. Some
notes on this are already at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter_to_the_Enciclopedia_Libre_group
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric49/commentary

It is the start of the work/school week so I won't have much time for this
until Friday but I encourage others to work on this.

The Spanish Wikipedia needs users. There already are a bunch of users over at
EL. Why not try to woo them back? Transferring their database here is trivial
but transferring their users is a different matter alltogether.

If negotiations break down we can still transfer their database here so that
we could at least get some of their users.

I just wish my Spanish wasn't so dang terable.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Monday 14 October 2002 12:01 pm Brion wrote:
> The ideal thing to do, I think, is to make it possible to select the
> user interface language separately from the content language. ie, I
> should be able to surf the Korean entries with Esperanto menus or the
> English with Arabic if I'm comfortable that way.

Hm. I think this is a /very/ good idea for Metapedia which is multilingual and
a place that is used by all language projects.

However, I am a bit hesitant about making it too easy for non-native speakers
to contribute to languages they know little about. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but
I fear we might begin to have some pretty badly written material popping-up
in each language space -- or worse material submitted that isn't in the right
language.

It really should be obvious to people where they are at at all times; making
the German wiki look almost exactly the same as the English one doesn't help.
Also, would this require more permissive charsets to be enabled on each wiki?
It would be a bad idea to allow some page titles in the English Wikipedia
since not allowing it helps to enforce naming conventions (why would we ever
want a Madarin page title). Therefore the current en.wiki charset is fine
as-is IMO.

If "where am I?" could somehow be made blatantly obvious with the interface
/and/ have this be a not-so-obvious user only-set option then I would feel
better about it.  But then I get paranoid over the oddest things. ;-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org

body:
>>> de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll
>>> agree with me:-)

>> Is he immediately recognisable in the German speaking world?

> Should be, but if we go for popularity, Schwarzenegger might
> be better ;-)

Ah, but he speaks Austrian, as any Austrian will tell you...


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote in part:

>In short: Anchors are subpages through the backdoor. If an article is so
>long that it really needs anchors: split it! Shorten it and put the
>delailed parts in their own articles.

I agree with Kurt, for the reasons that he gave in the post following this one.

>If we (hmm, I mean: the coders) decide to implemented the index function
>and everybody is still unhappy, then we could think about anchors
>*inside* an article (but I doubt that it's worth another tag).

However, I think that these internal anchors would be a very good idea.
There's many a time that I've wanted to use them, but never external anchors.

-- Toby


body:
LDC wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>However, I think that these internal anchors would be a very
>>good idea.  There's many a time that I've wanted to use them,
>>but never external anchors.

>It is simply not possible to have one without the other.
>We can only code what the standards allow; and HTML only has
>one kind of link target.  If it exists at all, it will be just
>as linkable from the outside as from the inside.

They will be linkable as "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo#bar bar]",
as well as from outside Wikipedia; you're right that this is unavoidable.
But we don't have to provide support for it in the "[[...]]" markup.
That is, we don't have to support "[[foo#bar]]" on [[Baz]];
we only need to support "[[#bar]]" on [[Foo]].

-- Toby


subject: [Intlwiki-l] [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <intlwiki-l>.
        Or perhapse it was posted separately; I'm not sure.]

Gareth Owen wrote:

>Anthere wrote:

>>Okay. Most of the time a portal is defined as a site which is a convergence
>>of various entities. A Web site being useful like starting point, a door
>>open to a world of information.

>But usually, in my experience, web portals are a link to external content.
>This is explicitly listed among the many things that wikipedia is not.
>Wikipedia's definition of "Web portal" is different again.

Fine, so your experience with portals differs from Anthere's.
The fact remains that what Anthere is proposing is
a link to several *related* entities: the individual Wikipedias.

>>(by providing little services, such as emails accounts, news, weather...).

>As I understand if, this is orthogonal to wikipedia's aims.

Wikipedia does sort of provide news, in the form of background stories,
hence Anthere's proposal to place current events links on the portal.
(There has also been past discussion of providing email accounts.)

>>http://www.agriculture.com/worldwide/index.html
>>- Just provides a dozen of digested hit news from Reuters.
>>- links to different partners sites (all ag sites from all over the world)
>>- and somewhere hidden behind, some more stuff to try to keep people up a
>>  little bit longuer

>i.e. Almost no original content.  Again, orthogonal to wikipedia's aims.

I don't see how it's a betrayal of Wikipedia's aims
to have <www.wikipedia.com> provide no original content
if it provides links to all of the <**.wikipedia.com>s that do.

>>* quick information (characteristics of the project, number of "partners",
>>when each started, maybe the number of articles we are currently having in
>>the base...)

>This bears no resemblance to any of the definitions/examples given above.
>What that is, is a front page.

This is information about the pages that it links to,
which fits in with what Anthere said above.

But who cares if Anthere's proposal is for a bona fide portal or not?
Let's consider the proposal itself.

-- Toby


body:
> However, I think that these internal anchors would be a very
> good idea.  There's many a time that I've wanted to use them,
> but never external anchors.

It is simply not possible to have one without the other.
We can only code what the standards allow; and HTML only has
one kind of link target.  If it exists at all, it will be just
as linkable from the outside as from the inside.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] JW edit war

body:
The talk page for "Jehovah's witnesses" had 909 accesses just now. Is that a record for a talk page?

What's all the fuss about?

Ed Poor
Family Federation for World Peace (aka Unification Church, aka The Moonies)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slow and buggy

body:
I got no response from www.wikipedia.org for the last 10 minutes, until finally clicking Recent Changes got me a redirect to "Gerald Ford".

Why are we slow? And what's up with the random article?

Ed Poor (not impatient, just concerned)


body:
Thesmelialichu at aol.com writes:

> I'm not sure how it would work, but I guess
> something like [[The Simpsons::Bart]]  would work?

How about [[The Simpsons/Bart]] ?


body:
The Free Software Foundation doesn't mention anything
about the Design Science License being compatible with
the FDL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses

That generally means it isn't.

Stephen G.

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> This is really interesting.  I have no idea if "the
> Michael Stultz
> DSL" is GNU FDL compatible.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
--- Mark Christensen <mchristensen at humantech.com>
wrote:
> > BUT PLEASE: No anchors adressable from outside!
> There is nearly no
> difference to subpages.
>
> I think I understand your point, but I don't follow
> your argument.
> Accessibility from outside was never an important
> problem with subpages.
> The key problem with subpages is that they created a
> "hardcoded" link
> hierarchy, and that they create ambigous and
> overlaping logical
> namespaces.   Should Chess be it's own article, or
> should it be
> Boardgames/Chess, or Strategy games/Chess?  It's not
> at all obvious that
> allowing HTML anchors would create these problems.
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'd like to be
> able to see how
> --exactly-- anchors are "nearly indistinguishable"
> from subpages.  If
> you see this more clearly than I, could you please
> explain it to me.

I don't see the "anchors are subpages" argument
either. I'm reworking the FAQ, and I was wishing for
anchors so that I could create a clickable index of
questions. Spinning each individual question into a
separate page is a bad idea.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
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body:
> > I'm not sure how it would work, but I guess
> > something like [[The Simpsons::Bart]]  would work?
>
> How about [[The Simpsons/Bart]] ?

Thanks Gareth, you were faster then me with this answer. But I see that
Ed is also suggesting this anchor thing again.

We've had this discussion before, please take a look at
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-July/002791.html
and all others titled "page fragment links" (and some of the "Numbered
section headings" may contain discussion about this, too).
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-July/thread.html

I short: Anchors are subpages through the backdoor. If an article is so
long that it really needs anchors: split it! Shorten it and put the
delailed parts in their own articles.

We've hat some kind of compromise that an index function could be
implemented, that shows the headlines at the beginning of an article.

(This is mostly pasted from a mail on wikitech-l I wrote some weeks
ago.)

If we (hmm, I mean: the coders) decide to implemented the index function
and everybody is still unhappy, then we could think about anchors
*inside* an article (but I doubt that it's worth another tag).

BUT PLEASE: No anchors adressable from outside! There is nearly no
difference to subpages.

Thanks for listening :-)
Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: es.wikipedia.org

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Could we at least officially offer them the opportunity to come back first?

We've been doing that for months.

> Several people, including myself, have put one /hell/ of a lot of work in
> trying to make reunification possible. As a result I believe Wikipedia has
> changed for the best by trying to address their major concerns (at least the
> ones we know about).

And we should continue doing so; making the improved software available
to all languages is supposedly one of the concerns we're addressing...

> Setting up a test server is fine, but Brion PLEASE DO NOT CONVERT THE LIVE
> DATABASE TO PHASE III until we have either given-up on reunification efforts
> or EL decides to come back into the Wikipedia family as a full member (on our
> server).

I'm happy to wait (but neither you nor I are the ones trying to *use*
the thing) however I'm ready to do a final conversion from the
es.wikipedia dtabase (and/or the EL database) as soon as it's agreed upon.

Either way, the interface needs to be ready and working on the current
software... and we can always import pages from the EL server later. As
you yourself have said, it's getting the _users_ that counts. All
waiting on the upgrade does is show how little interest "we" have in
actually maintaining the Spanish section of the 'pedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> > BUT PLEASE: No anchors adressable from outside! There is nearly no
> difference to subpages.
>
> I think I understand your point,

That's good :-)

> but I don't follow your argument.
> Accessibility from outside was never an important problem with
subpages.
> The key problem with subpages is that they created a "hardcoded" link
> hierarchy, and that they create ambigous and overlaping logical
> namespaces.   Should Chess be it's own article, or should it be
> Boardgames/Chess, or Strategy games/Chess?  It's not at all obvious
that
> allowing HTML anchors would create these problems.

Okay, that another (maybe even more important) argument against
subpages. But we could have kept all the Articlename/History pages then
(an others where the subpage is _only_ related to the subjetpage).

> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'd like to be able to see how
> --exactly-- anchors are "nearly indistinguishable" from subpages.  If
> you see this more clearly than I, could you please explain it to me.

I'll try :-)
First I just had a bad feeling then I heard of the idea, because in most
suggestions they even looked like subpages. Than I started thinking why.
My main point is: They make the Wikipedia-web more static. You don't
know if there are links from outside to a certain anchor word, so you'll
think twice before changing the text. But if you do so you need a "which
pages link to this anchor word" function to correct all pages that point
to the word. Maybe it's a bit easier if only heading can be anchors, but
you might want to change them, too - or even restructure the whole
article.
Maybe we'll need anchors that redirect to other anchors. And a "most
wanted anchor" function. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating now, but I hope
this was a bit clearer.

Could someone with better English write an article on meta: "Why anchors
are evil"? - Of course after we have discussed this out.

But maybe I'm too pesimistic and it would be a great feature. But I have
a really bad feeling about it.

Kurt


subject:
[Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org
 and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
>> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
>> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
>> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
>> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.
>>
> de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)

Something like this?

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selige_linguam_Wikipediae_maestro_literaturae

;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC underused

body:
Hello all,

Please consider joining only a few Wikipedians on Wikipedia
channel #wikipedia.

I use irc.openprojects.net.

Let's discuss Wikipedia issues live.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] List of WOSM members

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Can someone fix [[List of WOSM members]]? It contains two names of countries
> with invalid characters where apostrophes should be (People's Republic of
> China and Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and at least one typo (Sao
> Taome).

Done.

Any reason you couldn't fix it yourself, or discuss the problem in the
article's talk page?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:

> de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)

Is he immediately recognisable in the German speaking world?


body:
On Monday 14 October 2002 06:16 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> I don't see the "anchors are subpages" argument
> either. I'm reworking the FAQ, and I was wishing for
> anchors so that I could create a clickable index of
> questions. Spinning each individual question into a
> separate page is a bad idea.
>
> Stephen G.

They may not be subpages but they will most certainly lead to the creation of
needlessly long pages. There is nothing more intimidating to edit than a huge
page therefore we shouldn't encourage their creation.

What is wrong with the format I established for the Naming conventions page?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions

I think having a title, very brief description and then a link to a more
complete description on a separate page is the best thing to do.

There is also the issue of people on dial-up modems and other people who use
browsers that can't edit large pages.

If a page is so long that it needs an index, then it should be broken-up into
more digestible pieces.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DW again

body:
On Monday 14 October 2002 06:16 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> Given the fact this is not the first time he ignores rules and insults
> others (the examples of JHK and Montr?alais were posted earlier), I
> _strongly_ feel that he should be banned for 24 hours, or at least be
> summoned to discuss things at the mailinglist here. As I said before, he
> made valuable contributions to Wikipedia, but that doesn't make it
> allright to ignore all rules and insult other, good-willing, Wikipedians.
>
> Jeronimo

I say a 24 hour block would be a good place to start. Jimbo doesn't seem to be
monitoring the list right now so he is probably the bottleneck. So I don't
know if he would support even a temporary block at this point.

If this were a voting situation then I vote for the 24 hour block. But I'm not
sure if this is such a situation. We did form a new policy to more strictly
enforce our etiquette policy, no? Does this mean an individual Admin can
decide, needs to have confirmation by one other, two others, the whole list,
Jimbo, what?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slow and buggy

body:
On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 03:29:23PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I got no response from www.wikipedia.org for the last 10 minutes, until finally clicking Recent Changes got me a redirect to "Gerald Ford".
>
> Why are we slow? And what's up with the random article?
>
Happened to me too, but seems to be working again. Same bug as two days ago
probably.

	JeLuF


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
>of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
>lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
>Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
>I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.
>
>
de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)

Magnus


body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> writes:
>
>
>
>>de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)
>>
>>
>
>Is he immediately recognisable in the German speaking world?
>
>
Should be, but if we go for popularity, Schwarzenegger might be better ;-)


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] List of WOSM members

body:
Can someone fix [[List of WOSM members]]? It contains two names of countries
with invalid characters where apostrophes should be (People's Republic of
China and Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and at least one typo (Sao
Taome).

phma


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW again

body:
Today, DW returned to the discussion at [[List of famous Canadians]].
Even though several others have jumped in to calm him down and also
several supporters of his view (with respect to the contents of the
list, that is) have contributed to the discussion, he keeps on insulting
me, and a number of others, at least including AxelBoldt, GWO and
Eclecticology. Furthermore, he fails to discuss any solutions to the
problem at hand except for him being the "owner" of the page, which is
of course not acceptable in Wikipedia.

Given the fact this is not the first time he ignores rules and insults
others (the examples of JHK and Montr?alais were posted earlier), I
_strongly_ feel that he should be banned for 24 hours, or at least be
summoned to discuss things at the mailinglist here. As I said before, he
made valuable contributions to Wikipedia, but that doesn't make it
allright to ignore all rules and insult other, good-willing, Wikipedians.

Jeronimo


body:
On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 10:38:37PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> >I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
> >of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
> >lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
> >Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
> >I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.
> >
> >
> de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)
>
Au contraire! I'd vote for the [[Brothers Grimm]], them writing both
fairy tales and the German Dictionary.

OK, just trolling. Goethe will be fine :-)

	JeLuF


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect detector

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> On Lee's test site (http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml), I have
> patched the stub detector so that /when the stub detector is active/, it
> will also show links to redirects with a yellowish background.
>
> Should I use that on the live software
> 1. not at all
> 2. only when the stub detector is activated
> 3. for all logged-in users as an user option, off by default
> 4. for everybody

It's cute, and I can see it being handy at times. But, I think in
general I'd find it very distracting; the only time it matters to see if
a link goes via a redirect is when you're moving pages (or cleaning up
after old botched moves).

The stub detector, on the other hand, tells me something very basic and
always applicable: whether the link I'm following goes to a page that's
so small it might be useless (if I'm looking for detailed info, maybe
I'll skip it; if I'm looking to edit, I know it needs work).

They should be separately configurable; I would vote for #3 if it's kept.

Oh -- another thing; I notice the stub link marker doesn't do its magic
in Recentchanges. I suppose it would add a teensy bit to the db lookup,
but it might be nice.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Gareth Owen wrote:
> >Anthere wrote:
>
> >>Okay. Most of the time a portal is defined as a
> site which is a convergence
> >>of various entities. A Web site being useful like
> starting point, a door
> >>open to a world of information.
>
> >But usually, in my experience, web portals are a
> link to external content.
> >This is explicitly listed among the many things
> that wikipedia is not.
> >Wikipedia's definition of "Web portal" is different
> again.
>
> Fine, so your experience with portals differs from
> Anthere's.
> The fact remains that what Anthere is proposing is
> a link to several *related* entities: the individual
> Wikipedias.
>
> >>(by providing little services, such as emails
> accounts, news, weather...).
>
> >As I understand if, this is orthogonal to
> wikipedia's aims.
>
> Wikipedia does sort of provide news, in the form of
> background stories,
> hence Anthere's proposal to place current events
> links on the portal.
> (There has also been past discussion of providing
> email accounts.)
>
> >>http://www.agriculture.com/worldwide/index.html
> >>- Just provides a dozen of digested hit news from
> Reuters.
> >>- links to different partners sites (all ag sites
> from all over the world)
> >>- and somewhere hidden behind, some more stuff to
> try to keep people up a
> >>  little bit longuer
>
> >i.e. Almost no original content.  Again, orthogonal
> to wikipedia's aims.
>
> I don't see how it's a betrayal of Wikipedia's aims
> to have <www.wikipedia.com> provide no original
> content
> if it provides links to all of the
> <**.wikipedia.com>s that do.
>
> >>* quick information (characteristics of the
> project, number of "partners",
> >>when each started, maybe the number of articles we
> are currently having in
> >>the base...)
>
> >This bears no resemblance to any of the
> definitions/examples given above.
> >What that is, is a front page.
>
> This is information about the pages that it links
> to,
> which fits in with what Anthere said above.
>
> But who cares if Anthere's proposal is for a bona
> fide portal or not?
> Let's consider the proposal itself.

Thanks Toby.

I did not propose that "portal" page in the first
place. I merely proposed to improve/enrich its
contents, in case this one should be the final choice.
There is no point in defending my proposition for it
is clear the mother proposition (www.wikipedia.org) is
*not acceptable* to some wikipedians (a minority ;-).
The use of fallacious arguments against what I
proposed (eg "portal" word) or diversions, is just a
way to express rejection of the mother proposition.
And indeed, defense, (such as systematic criticism
instead of voicing constructive options) is probably
the best choice in this case, since what is desired is
what is already in place (ie en.wikipedia.org being
the central place for the wikipedia project).

I think wikipedia gain from open exchange and flying
ideas, rather than use of destructive techniques to
break discussion; but, that's probably too classical a
technique not be used here :-) See, that works :-))

So, let's drop the matter for now. Some steps were
climbed anyway.

Amha, a neutral article is not one where minorities
point of view is made proeminent. It is not necessary
an article where their point of view is presented as
the "right" one for the benefit of "correctness". It
is an article where minorities point of view is
reported. No ? Yes ?

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


in_reply_to: <200210142034.g9EKYCu32006@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 01:34:12PM -0700

body:
I totally agree about the flags -- I'm against them.  Flags are for
countries, not languages.

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.

I don't like even this idea.  My reason is that I wouldn't know what
Hugo and Cervantes looked like if they were in my bathtub.  It's hard
to know what image could universally represent various languages, and
this is especially true for "smaller" languages.

What one person or image would be universally recognized as German,
for example?  (Hitler, but he's not a good choice for obvious
reasons!)

I like the idea of visual representations, but I think words are best
for this.  My mind could be changed if someone clever came up with an
obvious set of symbols that I felt would be inoffensive in every
respect and instantly recognizable.  But I think that's unlikely.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <3DAB2F15.6080406@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 10:54:45PM +0200

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> >>de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll agree with me:-)
> >
> >Is he immediately recognisable in the German speaking world?
> >
> Should be, but if we go for popularity, Schwarzenegger might be better ;-)

I'm only joking, of course, but I think that by far the most instantly
recognizable German is Hitler, with that funny moustache and all.  I
think almost everyone on the planet would know Hitler instantly.

The point of my joke is just that I don't think the mapping from famous people
into languages is a very easy thing to do correctly.

Even Magnus's joke helps to show this: Schwarzenegger is most commonly
thought of as an American with a funny accent, not a German.  If I saw
icons with Shakespeare, Schwarzenegger and PePe LePew, I wouldn't
automatically think "English, German, and French", I would think "Fine
arts, action films, and cartoons".

Similarly, Shakespeare and Goethe represent 'literature' to me, not 'langugages'.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW again

in_reply_to: <3DAB41FF.3050708@stud.tue.nl>; from j.heijmans@stud.tue.nl on Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 12:15:27AM +0200

body:
Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
> Today, DW returned to the discussion at [[List of famous Canadians]].
> Even though several others have jumped in to calm him down and also
> several supporters of his view (with respect to the contents of the
> list, that is) have contributed to the discussion, he keeps on insulting
> me, and a number of others, at least including AxelBoldt, GWO and
> Eclecticology. Furthermore, he fails to discuss any solutions to the
> problem at hand except for him being the "owner" of the page, which is
> of course not acceptable in Wikipedia.

Can you invite him to the list?  Can you point him to a policy page that
explains that there is no such thing as "ownership" of a page?  He could
make such a page in his user space, I suppose.

> Given the fact this is not the first time he ignores rules and insults
> others (the examples of JHK and Montr?alais were posted earlier), I
> _strongly_ feel that he should be banned for 24 hours, or at least be
> summoned to discuss things at the mailinglist here.

I think "summon" is too strong of a word.  But, he should be invited.

--Jimbo


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
If I saw
> icons with Shakespeare, Schwarzenegger and PePe
> LePew, I wouldn't
> automatically think "English, German, and French", I
> would think "Fine
> arts, action films, and cartoons".
>
> Similarly, Shakespeare and Goethe represent
> 'literature' to me, not 'langugages'.

I don't know who is exactly pepe lepew; and I
certainly don't know how he looks like. Another french
famous in america but not in his native country ???

May I suggest Coluche or Desproges ? I supposed these
are not known by canadians ? I don't see why french
langage would be represented by a French man. By the
way, we write "fran?ais" for the language and
"Fran?ais" for the french man. These two words are
absolutely not interchangeable. That's both grammar
flaw and countrycentrism.

I disagree both with faces and flags use.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: DW again

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> I say a 24 hour block would be a good place to start. Jimbo doesn't seem to be
> monitoring the list right now so he is probably the bottleneck. So I don't
> know if he would support even a temporary block at this point.

I was out for the weekend, but I'm back now.  Also, I was hiding from
the DW issue, hoping that it would sort itself out without me.  :-)

> If this were a voting situation then I vote for the 24 hour block. But I'm not
> sure if this is such a situation. We did form a new policy to more strictly
> enforce our etiquette policy, no? Does this mean an individual Admin can
> decide, needs to have confirmation by one other, two others, the whole list,
> Jimbo, what?

I don't think any policies have changed, actually.  And in terms of
blocking ips, we're only supposed to block outright vandalism, unless
after a long and agonizing process, I issue an edict otherwise.
Someday we might loosen this, or institutionalize it rather than keep
it with me, or even abolish it (doubtful, because it does seem to be
necessary in some rare instances).

What I really very strongly want to avoid is the use of banning in
content fights.  This doesn't sound like that kind of case -- the
problem here is insults, not the content fight.  But banning people
for mere insults is a bad idea.  (Banning them for repeated, longterm,
extraordinary failure to co-operate, including failure through a
pattern of insults, is not such a bad idea.)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] List of WOSM members

body:
On Tuesday 15 October 2002 00:56, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Any reason you couldn't fix it yourself, or discuss the problem in the
> article's talk page?

Sorry for not explaining why - it was late and I wasn't thinking clearly. I
couldn't fix it myself because the page is too big for my browser's editbox.

phma


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the  Wikipedia family

body:
--- Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't know who is exactly pepe lepew; and I
> certainly don't know how he looks like. Another
> french
> famous in america but not in his native country ???

*ahem*

Pepe Lepew is a Loony Toons cartoon character. He is a
French skunk. Sort of. In Pepe Lepew cartoons,
"french" is spoken by adding "le" to English words. In
every cartoon, a hapless black cat somehow gets a
white stripe of paint on her back, and Pepe falls in
love with her, thinking she is a "petite femme skunk".
She does not, however, reciprocate his amorous
feelings, especially since his smell is rather
offensive to all of God's creation.

I can understand why he isn't famous in France...

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #753 - 16 msgs

body:
> >> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
> >> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
> >> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
> >> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
> >> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.

This is my favourite suggestion just for the flair it shows ;) It would
probably work better in the French wikipedia, in which language expressions
like "langue de Shakespeare" are more common. (The usual people, as far as I
can tell, are Moli?re, Cervantes, Goethe, Cic?ron, Hom?re, and Zamenhof -
seriously, I read a Le Devoir article that called it "la langue de
Zamenhof"... :)

Seriously, though, I think the plainest solution - simple text links - are
best. Perhaps for completeness we could include both foreign and
own-language forms in different contexts. I don't think there's anything
wrong with just saying French - Spanish - German in an article head in the
English wiki (and of course Anglais - Espagnol - Allemand on the French one,
etc.), and then on the front page saying French - fran?ais, Spanish -
espa?ol, German - Deutsch. IOW, exactly what we have now, as far as I can
tell.

> May I suggest Coluche or Desproges ? I supposed these
> are not known by canadians ? I don't see why french
> langage would be represented by a French man. By the
> way, we write "fran?ais" for the language and
> "Fran?ais" for the french man. These two words are
> absolutely not interchangeable. That's both grammar
> flaw and countrycentrism.

?a me semble que dans une liste on devrait mettre une majuscule comme ?a:

- Anglais
- Fran?ais
- Espagnol
- Latin
- Esp?ranto

n'est-ce pas? Mais de toute fa?on, in English we try not to say "the
Frenchman" if referring to an indefinite person; that's sexist. We say "a
French person." But I don't think you were trying to be sexist - all this to
say that we should cut each other a little slack when dealing with languages
not their own.

Matt (Montrealais)
Montreal, Quebec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect detector

body:
On Lee's test site (http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml), I have
patched the stub detector so that /when the stub detector is active/, it
will also show links to redirects with a yellowish background.

Should I use that on the live software
1. not at all
2. only when the stub detector is activated
3. for all logged-in users as an user option, off by default
4. for everybody

The most simple implementation is #2, and it doesn't require an
additional database query. That's what I will do if I don't here good
arguments against it ;-)

Magnus


body:
>lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>> I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
>> of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
>> lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
>> Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
>> I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.

>I don't like even this idea.  My reason is that I wouldn't know what
>Hugo and Cervantes looked like if they were in my bathtub.  It's hard
>to know what image could universally represent various languages, and
>this is especially true for "smaller" languages.

True, but you'd know your own, and I'm only suggesting that
these be used as "decorative" illustrations rather than flags
to /accompany/ plain text, not replace it.  And of course you're
right that many would be very unobvious.


body:
>Pepe Lepew is a Loony Toons cartoon character. He is a
>French skunk. Sort of. In Pepe Lepew cartoons,
>"french" is spoken by adding "le" to English words. In
>every cartoon, a hapless black cat somehow gets a
>white stripe of paint on her back, and Pepe falls in
>love with her, thinking she is a "petite femme skunk".
>She does not, however, reciprocate his amorous
>feelings, especially since his smell is rather
>offensive to all of God's creation.
>
>I can understand why he isn't famous in France...

What, you don't think the French would appreciate the
fine American humor of stereotyping the French as sexual
predators with poor bathing habits?  I'm sure there must
be some equally offensive English-speaking cartoon
character popular over there.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the Wikipedia family

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00706DF@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 01:41:49PM -0400

body:
We should get back to wikipedia.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How about Beavis and Butthead? Heh heh heh-heh.
> Or, more subtly offensive, Homer Simpson? D'oh!

Of course, it was on the Simpsons that the famous insult of the French
as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" first aired.  You can count on the
Simpsons to insult everyone.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apache restarted

body:
I just restarted apache to eliminate the random page problem.

For now.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] DW again

body:
I think LDC has reached peace with DW. I created a WikiProject page (needs renaming).

But the big problem is Opera Browser's 128 KB textbox limitation. Can someone revert talk:list of famous Canadians for me?

Please? I have to go to a meeting now and can't wait for the slow server response.

THANSK!!

Ed Poor


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the
	Wikipedia family

body:
On 10/15/02 11:21 AM, "Stephen Gilbert" <canuck_in_korea2002 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>
> --- Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I don't know who is exactly pepe lepew; and I
>> certainly don't know how he looks like. Another
>> french
>> famous in america but not in his native country ???
>
> *ahem*
>
> Pepe Lepew is a Loony Toons cartoon character. He is a
> French skunk. Sort of. In Pepe Lepew cartoons,
> "french" is spoken by adding "le" to English words. In
> every cartoon, a hapless black cat somehow gets a
> white stripe of paint on her back, and Pepe falls in
> love with her, thinking she is a "petite femme skunk".
> She does not, however, reciprocate his amorous
> feelings, especially since his smell is rather
> offensive to all of God's creation.
>
I've incorporated your write-up into the excellent [[Pepe le Pew]] entry.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Possible clue to the cause of random page error

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>The following URL goes successfully to the desired article:
>>* http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Insomnia&redirect=no
>>
>>The "random page" error occurs for me only when I follow a link by
>
> clicking on it:
>
>>* http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia
>>
>>Maybe this behavior difference of the 2 forms of the same URL will
>
> provide a hint of the bug's cause.
>
> Thanks, and yes, that's a clue.  I just rebooted the server
> since Jimbo said that fixed it last time, but I'll look into
> it more closely now--maybe mod_redirect is dying for some reason?

As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty sure it's the encoding hack I set
up to keep ampersands in titles _in_ the titles instead of as raw
ampersands that indicate the beginning of the next variable in the query
string:

     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteMap urlencode prg:/usr/local/bin/urlencode
     RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=${urlencode:$1} [L]

If the hackish little external program should die or get out of sync, we
end up with the wrong URLs. But this ugliness *shouldn't* be needed. We
*should* be able to use the internal function that Apache provides for this:

     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteMap urlencode int:encode
     RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=${urlencode:$1} [L]

but that function doesn't encode ampersands (%26), so it misses the
entire point of the exercise.

If anyone knows a cleaner way to do this, do speak up. I've gotten eerie
silence on alt.apache.configuration.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect detector

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>> They should be separately configurable; I would vote for #3 if it's kept.
>>
>> Oh -- another thing; I notice the stub link marker doesn't do its
>> magic in Recentchanges. I suppose it would add a teensy bit to the db
>> lookup, but it might be nice.
>
> That's why I didn't put it into the function for existing links
> (makeKnownLink) but rather in the "rendering" part. I suppose the
> database would be stressed too hard if many people would use it.
>
> I patched Recent Changes at the test site so it displays stubs, without
> additional database queries. That should work.

Cool!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving the wikis (en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org/xx/)

body:
tarquin wrote:
>At any rate, have we agreed on the move
>from www. to en. ?

I kinda like the idea of doing the reverse now; have
all the language wikis at www.wikipedia.org via the
syntax www.wikipedia.org/xx/ where xx is the language
code. Brion is floating a similar idea over at the
meta
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_language_integration
. However his proposal leaves-out the www which I
think is a mistake since www.foobar.org is universally
recognized as an Internet address whereas forbar.org
is not. I like this idea because every language will
then have the promotional benefit of being at the
www.wikipedia.org address and no language is left at
the rather odd looking, IMO, xx.wikipedia.org. This
also improves the url for the English Wikipedia;
instead of being at the redundant
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ it will be at the cleaner
www.wikipedia.org/en/

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] apache restarted

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Restarting doesn't fix the bug. The bug is in the source code. It has to be found -- and fixed.

Apparently no one listens to me; I already explained the bug last time:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006053.html

(the fragile feature was implemented in response to this problem:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-October/000996.html )

and have asked for help fixing it:
news://news.dfncis.de:119/aoab9j$khdp8$1 at ID-114427.news.dfncis.de
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikitech-l/2002-October/001011.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> tarquin wrote:
>
>>At any rate, have we agreed on the move
>>from www. to en. ?
>
> I kinda like the idea of doing the reverse now; have
> all the language wikis at www.wikipedia.org via the
> syntax www.wikipedia.org/xx/ where xx is the language
> code. Brion is floating a similar idea over at the
> meta
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_language_integration
> . However his proposal leaves-out the www which I
> think is a mistake since www.foobar.org is universally
> recognized as an Internet address whereas forbar.org
> is not.

(anything).com is universally recognized as an internet address. Is .org
really so unknown? Never been to slashdot.org?

 > I like this idea because every language will
> then have the promotional benefit of being at the
> www.wikipedia.org address and no language is left at
> the rather odd looking, IMO, xx.wikipedia.org. This
> also improves the url for the English Wikipedia;
> instead of being at the redundant
> www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ it will be at the cleaner
> www.wikipedia.org/en/

Still got the redundant www. Www provides nothing that http:// doesn't,
and in today's webcentric Internet little that .com, .org, .de, .foobar
doesn't.

But, if everyone loves the wuh wuh wuh, I can't complain too much. Both
ways can be allowed whichever one is canonical.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
-----Original Message-----
From: lcrocker at nupedia.com [mailto:lcrocker at nupedia.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 5:06 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com; Magnus Manske
Subject: Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] en.wikipedia.org vs
www.wikipedia.org

>>> de chooses Goethe (I didn't ask, but I'm sure they'll
>>> agree with me:-)

>> Is he immediately recognisable in the German speaking world?

> Should be, but if we go for popularity, Schwarzenegger might
> be better ;-)

Ah, but he speaks Austrian, as any Austrian will tell you...

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
I sent Lee Crocker an e-mail saying the same thing.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Harris [mailto:usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 1:02 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikipedia server is displaying random pages
again

The Wikipedia server is displaying random pages again: same pattern as
the previous behaviour.

Neil

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Random Pages -- feature not bug

body:
On second thought, I'm highly impressed by the quality of the last half-dozen articles that came up with the new "Random Pages" thing. Bug or feature, it has highlighting how well we are doing:

* Fergus McDuck
* Poison ivy rash
* Hypoglycemia
* Von Hippel-Lindau Disease
* Great Fire of London
* List of colleges and universities starting with B (okay, this one's a dog)
* Wikipedia:Copyrights
* India

Maybe we shouldn't fix it... ;-)

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Possible clue to the cause of random page error

body:
Lee and Brion,

The following URL goes successfully to the desired article:
* http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Insomnia&redirect=no

The "random page" error occurs for me only when I follow a link by clicking on it:
* http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia

Maybe this behavior difference of the 2 forms of the same URL will provide a hint of the bug's cause.

Ed Poor


body:
> What, you don't think the French would appreciate the
> fine American humor of stereotyping the French as sexual
> predators with poor bathing habits?  I'm sure there must
> be some equally offensive English-speaking cartoon
> character popular over there.

How about Beavis and Butthead? Heh heh heh-heh.
Or, more subtly offensive, Homer Simpson? D'oh!

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Redirect detector

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> They should be separately configurable; I would vote for #3 if it's kept.
>
> Oh -- another thing; I notice the stub link marker doesn't do its
> magic in Recentchanges. I suppose it would add a teensy bit to the db
> lookup, but it might be nice.

That's why I didn't put it into the function for existing links
(makeKnownLink) but rather in the "rendering" part. I suppose the
database would be stressed too hard if many people would use it.

I patched Recent Changes at the test site so it displays stubs, without
additional database queries. That should work.

Magnus


body:
> As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty sure it's the encoding hack
> I set up to keep ampersands in titles _in_ the titles instead of
> as raw ampersands that indicate the beginning of the next variable
> in the query string:
>
>     RewriteEngine On
>     RewriteMap urlencode prg:/usr/local/bin/urlencode
>     RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/wiki.phtml?title=${urlencode:$1} [L]
>
> If the hackish little external program should die or get out of
> sync, we end up with the wrong URLs. But this ugliness *shouldn't*
> be needed. We *should* be able to use the internal function that
> Apache provides for this...

You are mistaken that Apache is doing the wrong thing: ampersands
are /not/ supposed to be urlencoded--they are valid and meaningful
characters needed for URLs.  But ampersands do need to be messed with
for Wikipedia-specific reasons: since article titles must appear as
values in the query string (which is separated by ampersands), they
must be escaped somehow for that function.  Also, the
non-escaped ampersands in the URL must be HTML-escaped when they
appear as attribute values, such as HREFs.  These are both entirely
separate issues, and the code formerly dealt with them correctly,
although in a way that you didn't like.  We may have to compromise;
accept the double-encoding for ampersands that you removed for other
characters.  Either that, or come up with some other escaping
mechanism for ampersands in titles.


from_name: tarquin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Language icons (was: en.wikipedia.org vs www.wikipedia.org and the
 Wikipedia family)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I totally agree about the flags -- I'm against them.  Flags are for
>countries, not languages.
>
That seems to be emerging as a consensus.

>
>lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>
>>I do, however, like the idea of representing languages with images
>>of famous contributors in that language; this could be used in
>>lots of places writing about Wikipedia.  I'd suggest Shakespeare,
>>Hugo, Cervantes as the obvious English/French/Spanish ones.
>>I don't know who would be appropriate for the others.
>>
>>
This idea is neat, but several problems have been pointed out:
1. not all of these people are recognisable
2. it's a bit simplistic to reduce an entire language to one person
3. (not yet been raised, but...) they're all male.
4 (another not-yet raised) they're all literary figures. The scientists
might complain. The Two Cultures and all that!

Despite the above, I think it's a nice idea, *IF* we don't depend on it
for comprehension -- that is, have the name of the language in words,
and a small thumbnail image to make the portal page a bit more interesting.

Further, I suggest we have several people for each language, and rotate
them on a regular basis.

At any rate, have we agreed on the move from www. to en. ?