from_name: Anthere

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
>
>>Cafepress are very expensive to start with and to add another 5 quid on
>>top of their steep prices certainly doesn't help. Or look for an
>>alternative to Cafepress. But never worry folks -- at least the
>>Wikipaedia shop *IS* close to its first cheque. In my own shop, I've
>>had two sales in over a year -- earning me TWO quid!! Yay!!. (Then
>>again, my own website is not nearly as important as the Wikipedia. ;-)
>
>
> Yes CafePress is expensive but they do all the day-to-day work. How does the
> Wikipedia shop function? Who processes orders? How are payments made? What
> measures are taken to ensure that customer data are kept private?
>
> I'm all for finding a cheaper alternative to CafePress, but I'm not interested
> at all in processing orders (physically putting merchandise in boxes and taking
> those boxes to the post office - not to mention storing the merchandise). If
> and when we get paid staff, we might decide to do that. Until then I think that
> using services like CafePress (but not necessarily that particular company) is
> the only practical way to go.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I totally agree with Daniel on this.

There is something a bit bugging me, though I might be wrong.

I think anyone may any time begin to sell wikipedia related products
(such as tee shirts) and keep all profits for himself.

While this is okay with contents, I do not think it is okay with
side-products which are obviously meant to bring money to the object of
the promotion.

I of course, do not speak of cafepress here.

What can we do if people start selling wikipedia side products for their
own benefit ?

ant


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Hemanshu Desai

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads and other ramblings by Chris

body:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:20:02 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
> >
> > I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.
>
> We already have this:
> http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia
>
> It brings in very very close to nothing.  I believe Erik told me when
> I was in Berlin that we are getting close to the threshold for them to
> cut us our first check of $100.  Something like that anyway, I'm sure
> he'll clarify if this is materially wrong.
>
> --Jimbo
>

We already have it but not many know about it.

Hemanshu


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:11:30 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I agree - CafePress is expensive. But as you state, there really aren't any
> known good alternatives that are cheaper.

Random thought- you think ThinkGeek would be interested in some sort of a deal?

--
You keep using that word...
I do not think it means what you think it means.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bughunt day 4

body:
We just hit the daily goal of 169 open bugs out of 1106 total. That's
down 19 open bugs from yesterday.

The goal for day four is 169 - 15 = 154 open bugs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:
> I was wondering what the status of MathML support was. It is marked
> "experimental" in user preferences, but as far as I can tell no MathML
> is generated at all.

Not so much "experimental" as "totally unfinished". :)

Only like one or two tiny things are done; simple equations like
"y = x + 2" should work. But, unless the wiki is switched into XHTML
mime type mode it won't render as MathML in Mozilla anyway.

> Since Mozilla et al. are starting to have
> reasonable MathML support and there is a free plug-in for Explorere
> available I think it would be worth having this fully operational. Not
> to mention the fact that this would be a significant step towards
> getting away from the math-markup-mess that we are in right now.
>
> So. Is anyone working on this at the moment? Could I help?

If you can figure out the scary Objective Caml code in texvc, you can
try fleshing out the mathml conversion module (see html.ml and mathml.ml
in the 'math' subdirectory of MediaWiki source).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem of namespace (I think it's that)

body:
frederic.hubleur at urbanet.ch wrote:
> OK, I've set my first wiki up. And almost everything's OK.
> The only matter is with titles and standard textes. I got the titles first set up and then would have changed them, but it doesn't appear to change for real, even if I change the languagefr file (yes, I'm a French-speaker). On the French mailing-list, I was told to try that kind of thing :
> http://www.cpacon.com/~jaafir/atlasocarihos/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allm
> To go to the namespace and change there everything. But it says that is file is unknown on the server.  I don't want to have the "free encyclopedia" title on my website and would like to change the site's main title. What coud I do?

http://qube.cpacon.com/~jaafir/atlasocarihos/index.php/MediaWiki:Tous_les_messages

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Modifying mediawiki to be a frame rather than the
	whole page

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> I was trying to modify mediawiki so that an editing panel was in its own frame,
> and the menu at the side of the editing panel was in a different frame (so they could
> exist independent of each other).
>
> However, when I try to split them up and click on one of the buttons in the
> editing menu, the other frame closes...
>
> Any idea on what is going on here and how to modify it so that clicking on a editing
> button preserves the structure of the original page?

Did you already remove the anti-frame JavaScript from wikibits.js?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Fatal error: Class PHPTAL_DBResultIterator must
	implement...

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Although it hasn't been thoroughly tested, it may be possible to use
> MediaWiki in PHP5 by disabling PHPTAL. This means you won't be able to
> use the new monobook skin, or any other PHPTAL skin. Add the following
> line to LocalSettings.php:
>
> $wgUsePHPTal = false;

As of current CVS, this mode will automatically be used when PHP 5.0 or
higher is detected for hassle-free installation.

As far as I know everything _else_ should work on PHP5, just the PHPTal
templates don't (yet). This is an annoyance, but PHP 5.0.0 was only very
recently released and isn't in general circulation yet, so it shouldn't
hit most people.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] meta

body:
What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
* 1 for organizational purposes
* 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
  and other stuff like that

Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them well.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: bombmaking information

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> Pity we don't have a [[Sherman Austin]], I think he's due to get out of
> prison on the 1st of September. From what I've read he was likely
> coerced into pleading guilty.

We should have an article about him, but I think he was just released
to a half-way house the other day.

I think it is unlikely that he was "coerced" into pleading guilty any
more than anyone ever is, i.e. threatened with the possibility of a
very long jail sentence if he fought, he accepted a plea bargain that
guaranteed him only 1 year in jail.

But, if Wikipedia had an article, we could find out.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] British copyright law != American copyright law

body:
On Thursday 05 August 2004 19:24, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Wednesday 04 August 2004 18:28, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> >>p.s.  I would be interested in gathering examples of content that (a)
> >>we ought to have in the encyclopedia on editorial grounds but that (b)
> >>would not be legal for us to host in the United States.
> >
> >In some countries, works enter public domain 50 years after author's
> > death. So, there are wagons of pictures and texts of authors who died
> > between 1934 and 1954 which are PD in those countries but not PD in the
> > US.
>
> All 1954 deaths are still have their works under copyright until the end

I did say between ;)

> of this year.  What you cite is the standard under international law.
> It is interesting to note that the countries that have or are pushing
> for longer copyright terms are rich ones with many businesses that are
> already heavily invested in their intellectual properties.  The artists
> that did the work more than 50 years ago have long since been paid off.

The point is, if the Wikimedia's servers, or perhaps only the image server,
would be in one of these countries, Wikipedia could use material which it
can't use now.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: meta

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski a ?crit:
> What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
> * 1 for organizational purposes
> * 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>   and other stuff like that
>
> Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them well.

I do not support this. Dividing is not a solution, more organisation is.
I agree however, that navigation is still not very easy.
I think it is slowly improving, and improved a lot thanks to categories.

Perhaps would it be necessary as well to define new namespaces within
the wiki ?

Perhaps a quicker access to some categories would help (such as the
categories being listed at the top in recent changes)

Internationalization of language definitly would help to navigate more
quickly

Perhaps should we think over the tool bar to propose new items ?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: meta

body:
Guillaume Blanchard a ?crit:
> From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"
>
>
>>What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
>>* 1 for organizational purposes
>>* 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>>  and other stuff like that
>>
>>Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them
>
> well.
>
> What about use wikimedia site as a Wiki for projects organistion ? (and Meta
> for all other purposes)
>
> Aoineko

I do not think this is the goal of the foundation website at all.


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
	images on Wikipedia website]

body:
On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Matt Brown wrote:

> Exactly; and he's hoping we name someone we got them from that he CAN sue.
>
> Out of curiousity; does anyone know the status under English law of
> this type of thing?  There is US case law saying that a mere
> photographic reproduction of a public-domain artwork does not have
> sufficient expressive / creative content to create a new copyright
> claim.  However, this may not be true worldwide.
>
> One must be aware that owners of artworks (such as the NPG) routinely
> claim rights under copyright law that they do not have, or at least
> are based on readings of copyright law that currently have no actual
> cases to back them up.
>
IMHO, the whole matter couldn't be any more in a mess than it currently is.

My personal library contains about 20-30 museum or exhibit catalogs, &
notice of copyright in them is entirely inconsistent & baffling for those
of us who want to observe ownership rights. For example, my copy of the
(U.K.) National Gallery catalog has a copyright notice in the front by the
3rd party who selectd the works pictured & wrote the text: obviously, they
do not own the copyright to the works shown, but by omitting any mention
of the National Gallery's copyright on these works of art, this suggests
that they are in the Public Domain.

My catalog for the Tate was written by them & is copyrighted by this
institution, so it is fair to then assume they own the copyright on the
works shown. Unless per the case quoted here, the law indicates otherwise.

One interesting case is an anthology of photographs, _Oregon then and Now_,
which includes a selection of photographs taken around Oregon in the first
decade of the 20th century, with contemporary photos of the same subjects --
a fascinating example of how the local landscape has changed. In this case,
there is _no_ copyright notice! Obviously the 100+ year-old photgraphs are
PD, yet there is the suggestion that the author wanted to release into the
PD his newer photgraphs. (The prudent rule for reuse would be to assume that
the author retains copyright on these newer photos pending a clarification
from the author.)

Scanning these materials for Wikipedia -- & allowing their reuse for one
& all -- is a thorny issue!

And I'm not even considering scanning my materials from German museums, as
I have no sense what the copyright law is in _that_ country. (Is there a
summary of copyright laws for various countries on Wikipedia somewhere?)

Geoff


from_name: Edward Peschko

body:
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 03:01:37AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
> >I was trying to modify mediawiki so that an editing panel was in its own
> >frame,
> >and the menu at the side of the editing panel was in a different frame (so
> >they could
> >exist independent of each other).
> >
> >However, when I try to split them up and click on one of the buttons in
> >the editing menu, the other frame closes...
> >
> >Any idea on what is going on here and how to modify it so that clicking on
> >a editing button preserves the structure of the original page?
>
> Did you already remove the anti-frame JavaScript from wikibits.js?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

yeah, I saw that -- after I posted. Removed it and it worked like a charm.
perhaps I should rethink my order of operations and look first, *then* post.

thanks much,

Ed


from_name: Marc Hennemeyer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Commercial glossary using Wikipedia articles

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:

> Unfourtunaltely you have to download their software, that will expire
> after a period of time, two read the glossary. I wonder If the glossary
> contains 5 authors or a link to the version history and if they modified
> anything. If they modified parts of the articles, they have to publish a
> transparent copy that is readable without they proprietary software. Can
> anybody check this? There is no publically available list of which
> articles they collected. At least this should be done.

In the articles of the glossary there is only written down, that they base on informations
of the wikipedia article "Olympic_Games", together with the URL to the article page in
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_games). There is NO list of authors or
anything similar, but they refer to the GNU FDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html).
That's all.

Marc (Barbarossa)


body:
On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 07:35:43 +0200, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> The point is, if the Wikimedia's servers, or perhaps only the image server,
> would be in one of these countries, Wikipedia could use material which it
> can't use now.

I don't know. The foundation itself might be subject to restrictions
if it is to operate in the United States- anything from legal
liabilities to issues with its tax-exempt status (speaking of which,
what's the status of that status?) Of course, there's always the
ability to have some sort of local chapter manage the images in one of
those countries.

--
You keep using that word...
I do not think it means what you think it means.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
Anthere wrote:
> But for an american foundation, it makes sense to give priority to
> english language.

I don't want to disagree with Anthere, but I did want to add that I
always think of the foundation as being international and located in
the U.S. only due to me happening to live here.  I think that however
we do approach the homepage issue (I have no strong opinion), we want
to make sure not to be any more English-centric than absolutely
necessary for whatever reasons.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Unless we can get everyone translated accurately pretty quickly, we
> might want to still give English primacy as the language in which
> Foundation business is conducted.

Yes, this is particularly true where there is something "official" or
"business" related.

--Jimbo


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
On 5 Aug 2004, at 10:32 pm, Jens Ropers wrote:

> _Lower our margin_, I'd say.

It's worth at least trying. It's highly likely to not only bring in
more money but get far more shirts on backs. 5 is a huge margin. I use
2 or 3 on my obscure shop and sell a product at least every month.

Christiaan


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Olympic Games Glossary / Transparente Kopie / GNU FDL
	compliance

body:
Sehr geehrter Herr Enders,

herzlichen Dank f?r Ihren R?ckruf. Wie telephonisch vereinbart,
?bersende ich Ihnen meine Kontaktdaten und der Punkt, der mir derzeit am
Herzen liegt.

Auf welcher Seite auf babylon.com ist die transparente Kopie des
Glossars im Sinne der GNU FDL abrufbar?

Mit freundlichen Gr??en,

Mathias Schindler
neubau at presroi.de
(+49) 069 94598623


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: bombmaking information

body:
Pity we don't have a [[Sherman Austin]], I think he's due to get out of
prison on the 1st of September. From what I've read he was likely
coerced into pleading guilty.

Christiaan

On 5 Aug 2004, at 5:46 pm, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> There is the case of Sherman Austin, who was convicted in the U.S. for
> posting bombmaking information on the web.  The law in question is not
> some post-9/11 Republican thing, it's a 1997 law championed by Dianne
> Feinstein (D-Calif) and signed into law by then-President Bill
> Clinton.
>
> Mr. Austin pled guilty rather than fighting it, which may or may not
> have been a sensible thing to do under the circumstances.  (I tend to
> think that it was not a sensible thing to do, but I'm not in a
> position to judge.)
>
> It is unclear to me whether such a law would be upheld as being
> constitutional, because the law requires an element of criminal
> intent, that is, it is illegal to post information about bombmaking to
> the Internet _with the intent that readers commit a Federal crime of
> violence_.  In a recent case, the Supreme Court upheld a law against
> burning a cross _with the intent to intimidate_.
>
> In any event, such a law would clearly not apply to Wikipedia, because
> our intent would never be that people commit crimes of violence.  At
> the same time, of course, I would find it extremely unpleasant to be
> faced with a bogus prosecution for such a thing.  I have a little girl
> at home, and I don't intend _at this point in my life_ to sit in
> Federal prison to make a point about freedom of speech.  (I very much
> respect people who would, though, if their life circumstances are
> appropriate.)
>
> --Jimbo


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Babylon,
	part 3 or so /wikipedia content used by babylon.com

body:
Hi,

A guy from the German Babylon company just called me back and he said
that they were just given the order by the headquarter to send out this
press release.

He asked me to send an email to him regarding my questions to a
transparent copy.

I think it's better that the English folks or our wikipedians in Israel
are contacting the HQ.

Babylon Ltd. Headquarters

10 Hataasiya Street
Or-Yehuda, 60212
Israel
Tel: Int +972 (3) 538-2111
Fax: Int +972 (3) 533-4080

Thanks,
Mathias


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] meta

body:
From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"

> What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
> * 1 for organizational purposes
> * 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>   and other stuff like that
>
> Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them
well.

What about use wikimedia site as a Wiki for projects organistion ? (and Meta
for all other purposes)

Aoineko


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to Jayjg's claims

body:
Jayjg writes:
> I've had a chance to briefly peruse RK's lengthy
> complaints about me regarding the
> [[Relationships between segments of Judaism]] article.
> Needless to say, I dispute their accuracy and veracity.

So what? One man's disputation of facts is no excuse for
forgery and libel. You have publicly attacked the
leadership of Reform Judaism as haters of Orthodox Jews, by
falsely claiming that they view Orthodox Jews as 9/11-style
terrorists. Yet the text you keep inserting is a series of
proven libels based not on fact, and not on quotes. There
are zero Reform sources which back up your claims.

Rather, your text is based on the claims of one Rabbi Avi
Shafran, a fantic ultra-Orthodox rabbi who has publicly
stated that all Reform and Conservative rabbis are heretics
that should be put to death. (Quote below) The quotes and
positions Shafran states about Reform Jews DO NOT EXIST
ANYWHERE. He is making them up. In contrast, you
disingenuously keep deleting actual verifiable quotes from
the leadership of Reform Judaism. How you can delete
verifiable quotes, and substitute paranoid claims from a
fanatic person who admits to hating the subject?

By the way, most of us here agree that incitement to murder
non-Orthodox Jews mark one as a most unreliable source.
(Shafran's quote is included below.)

Jayjg's claims about the founding documents and principles
of Conservative Judaism are equally false. THE QUOTES AND
BELIEFS HE MENTIONS DO NOT EXIST in any of those documents
or principles of the movement. The quotes do not exist on
any of the websites of Conservative Judaism. They do not
exist in any of the official publications or classroom
materials of the Conservative Jewish movement. His repeated
claims are provably wrong.

I myself own a large library of documents and books related
to Conservative Judaism, and have access to the library of
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. I have never
found any official or quasi-official teachings of the
Conservative movement which take the position you attribute
to them. No textbooks have them either.

Perhaps Jayjg's rabbi may somehow believe that Conservative
Jews teach that Orthodox Jews are "stupid" (your own words)
and that Reform Jews are "insane". But the Conservative
movement simply doesn't teach this, and never has.  Thus,
NPOV could allows us to write that "According to a few
right-wing Orthodox rabbis, the Conservative moevement
views Orthodoxy as "stupid" and Reform as "insane"; However
Conservative rabbis and leaders dispute this, and no
official documents, wesbites, books, or classroom materials
contain any such teachings."

That would phrase the same information in accord with our
NPOV policy. The problem is that Jayjg is not writing in an
NPOV way. He is taking ultra-Orthodox propaganda and
presenting it as if that was the POV of Reform and
Conservative Judaism, and is deleting actual quotes from
the movements! That is unjustifiable as well as dishonest.

> In some cases I am simply baffled; for example,
>  he has insisted on inserting numerous quotes
> from Haredi Rabbis into the article,

You aren't baffled; you are just trying to hide the
discussion of these events within their historical context.
Our NPOV policy demands that we not only present a
position, we are obligated to try and present such
positions within context. (e.g. What chain of events led to
a particular position?)  You keep removing any and all
discussion of chains of events and historical context, thus
destroying the article.

Jayjg writes:
> I have pleaded with RK to work with me on the
> article. I have on many occasions requested that
> RK support his edits in the Talk: page, with limited
success.

That is outrageously false. As anyone can see, I have spent
a month patiently working with him, spending a vast amount
of time writing in the Talk page of this article and many
others. I have even complimented him and worked
productively with him on many articles.

Jayjg responds by reverting all quotes and verifiable
sources from articles, and inserting unsourced
ultra-Orthodox propaganda as if it were fact.

And now, as promised, here are words from one major source
of many of Jayjg's claims about Reform and  Conservative
Judaism, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi Avi Shafran, author of
"JewThink: A Guide to Real Judaism for the Thinking
Individual" (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1977).

Shafran states that Conservative and Reform leaders
"qualify for the infamous titles of min and apikoros" and
"are the followers of Korach;" Shafran states that "these
man-made 'religions' [Conservative and Reform] are the most
destructive forces in the history of the Jewish people and
all those who seek to spread their noxious heresies are
mesisim, instigators whose aim is to lead astray the
masses;"

Shafran writes about Conservative and Reform leaders that
there is "a law which orders loyal Jews to kill these types
of people if at all possible," a law which was declared
inapplicable today by the Chazon Ish but which "remains
valuable for the light it sheds on the way Real Judaism"
regards such people.

Rabbi Shafran then elaborates "These people are not so much
meant to be hated as enemies and wished dead for the sake
of 'revenge' or to see them dead. The way we hate such
people is not like the 'cat hates the mouse,' but rather
like the 'storekeeper hates the vermin' which infest his
store, not hating the vermin themselves but wanting them
gone in order to arrest the damage they are causing. We
resent their existence. So, in lieu of the fact that we are
not allowed to physically harm these people today, we
should still treat them with utter contempt and disrespect,
avoiding contact with them as one would with any
destructive fiend."

(These quotations are from Chapters 15 and 18 of the book,
which is available on an out-of-print basis through
Amazon.com. )

Does any of this sound familiar?  His identity of
"non-Orthodox Jews" with "vermin" that should be
exterminated should cause readers to pause and consider who
else has such violent teachings.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
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from_name: frederic.hubleur at urbanet.ch

body:
Hello,

OK, I've set my first wiki up. And almost everything's OK.
The only matter is with titles and standard textes. I got the titles first set up and then would have changed them, but it doesn't appear to change for real, even if I change the languagefr file (yes, I'm a French-speaker). On the French mailing-list, I was told to try that kind of thing :
http://www.cpacon.com/~jaafir/atlasocarihos/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allm
To go to the namespace and change there everything. But it says that is file is unknown on the server.  I don't want to have the "free encyclopedia" title on my website and would like to change the site's main title. What coud I do?

Fred


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Hello all,

I was wondering what the status of MathML support was. It is marked
"experimental" in user preferences, but as far as I can tell no MathML
is generated at all. Since Mozilla et al. are starting to have
reasonable MathML support and there is a free plug-in for Explorere
available I think it would be worth having this fully operational. Not
to mention the fact that this would be a significant step towards
getting away from the math-markup-mess that we are in right now.

So. Is anyone working on this at the moment? Could I help?

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Only like one or two tiny things are done; simple equations like
>> "y = x + 2" should work. But, unless the wiki is switched into XHTML
>> mime type mode it won't render as MathML in Mozilla anyway.
>
>
> Ok. I assume that this is not set for the English Wikipedia, right?
> Would there be a problem if you did? I'm just asking to see if there are
> other problems that keep Wikipedia from generating MathML.

It would completely break Internet Explorer and would cause some pages
to refuse to load in other browsers (those that are not 100% pure XML).
Not quite ready for prime time yet. :)

> I also checked if my sourceforge account still works, and it does, and
> it even seems I'm still listed as one of the developers of Wikimedia.
> :-)  So would it be Ok with the main developers if I had a go at this? I
> cannot promise anything soon because it's been a while and I don't even
> have a running system at home anymore, but it looks very much like a fun
> (relatively little) project to me.

Awesome, please do!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Status of MathML support

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
>> Timwi wrote:
>>> I see your point, and it's a good point, but what's currently
>>> stopping me from inserting <math> everywhere is that it's hard to
>>> type and hard to read. If we had something easy and simple, like
>>> LaTeX's $, that would make all the difference.
>>
>>
>> I certainly agree that it would make a difference. But do you think
>> changing the mark-up is a realistic option? Or even adding an extra
>> shorter notation?
>
>
> It is only unrealistic in the sense that most of the Wikipedia community
> is against it (as evidenced by a poll held some time ago). Their
> reasoning I've never understood.

Is:

"Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."

equivalent to:

"Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."

?

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English

body:
On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 07:16:32PM -0400, James R. Johnson wrote:
> The goal *is* to create content in Anglo-Saxon.  Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Out of curiousity, and due to the lack of information in [[Anglo-Saxons]]
and [[Old English language]] (*hint* *hint*): how large is the speaker base
of the language, are there any native speakers?

I wonder who is the target of this encyclopedia. Don't take me wrong: I am
not against it, just wonder whether it going to be write-only or not. :)

[Sometimes I wonder who wants to read about, say, voting systems or the
Vietnam war in Latin. :) But it's surely fun to write. :-)]

peter

ps: <wicked>what is the anglo-saxon phrase for microwave radio transmitter?
;-> </wicked>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
S.Vertigo wrote:

>Like any US business, Wikipedia must either conform to
>an existing particular protectionist system (hence
>entering into an implicit agreement to somewhat
>conform to a particular cultural imperialism) or
>choose to defy it, in the hope that the means of
>enforcing its protections elsewhere are impractical.
>WP can continue to skirt indefinitely around the issue
>of violating various "laws," as long as it complies
>with 'US law.' But at some point, US law may come to
>excessively test WP's conformity to its implied
>contract to conform, and may have to find somewhere
>else to go.
>
A certain amount of conformity is needed to protect our sanity.  The
issues that could be a basis for a stand are too numerous. An
organization can only offer passive support to others with compatible
but different goals.  For an encyclopedia the goals revolve around the
more general concepts of free speech.  Even if we all feel that the
right to publish bomb-making instructions or porn should be recognized,
such issues are peripheral to our purpose. Expending our energies there
would be a waste of our resources. It is more important to promote the
continued free access to information that by right we already all own.

We are already big enough to be noticed.  Encarta and EB are still
pumping the urban myth that the work of recognized experts will always
produce a more reliable product.  Lack of imagination will be their big
millstone.  Skirting around issues never solves them.  One problem with
implied contracts is that nobody ever reads them.  If such contracts
fall withing a national scope we can certainly go somewhere else, but
then we would just be "signing" a new implied contract in a new
jurisdiction; so that alone does not really advance anything.  In
theory, a truly free project will have a diffuse leadership, but I
despair of seeing that accomplished in a population that has signed its
implicit contracts without reading them.

In a "law-abiding" society where there are copious statutes there can
also be a mind-boggling tendency to comply with laws that never existed
outside of the implicit contract.  Copyright paranoia is only one aspect
of that.  Not surprisingly in that environment the winners play a little
closer to the legal line, and the honest ones readily admit when they
have inadvertently crossed that line, abandon the offending position and
carry on with life.  For a large successful corporation juggling
lawsuits may be a part of everyday business.

>Considering some of the methods by which the RIAA for
>example (a much-coddled entity) has excercised its
>"authority" to enforce IP rights in the cyberworld,
>its perhaps only on the continued disbelief in the
>wiki model that WP is not being legally challenged.
>IMHO its worth the effort to just imagine a future
>wherein WP can exist and function outside of all
>"legal" restrictions; and yet, as an entity in good
>faith with human goals, still prosper.
>
I doubt that the politicians have fully grasped the implications of the
cyberworld.  One does not or cannot become a legislator without adhering
to a significant portion of the impled contracts.  This leaves out a lot
of people who are not a part of that clique. Maybe that explains poor
voter turnouts.  A Sonny Bono can turn his POV into law because he is
working with like-minded colleagues.  By the time the rest of us figure
out what is going on it is very difficult to undo the damage.

>The authority
>of courts to enforce their juristiction ultimately
>comes down to means of enforcement, and hence the
>extension of Constitutional principle (free speech,
>habeas corpus, etc.) to international matters is on
>the cutting edge of current legal issues; which is why
>in Iraq for example, dominant enforcement system
>without the extension of Constitutional juristiction
>and citizen protections, is an ethical anomaly which
>calls to explanation the very basis of US legal
>authority in an international context.
>
>
For courts to enforce jurisdiction a case must first be put before the
judges.  This is why I feel that when it comes to take-down orders the
person seeking the order must first have standing.  We don't know where
the project legally stands because there have not yet been any serious
legal threats.

The "Constitutonal principles" that you mention did not spring magically
out of nowhere when the US Constitution was written.  You are viewing
cutting edge legal issues with American glasses.  The current Iraqi mess
did not begin with Saddfam Hussein, but with the 1919 Treaty of
Versailles.  Hussein was very successful at keeping a lid on the
problems, and managed to maintain one of the most secular states in an
Islamic world that has more than its share of fanatics.  There have been
other coups in Iraq since 1919.  I would be surprised if the person who
emerges as the new Iraqi president out of the current democratization
process lasts five years without being assassinated or overthrown in a
coup.  I doubt that Iraqi citizens would accept any extension of US
"Constitutional jurisdiction and citizen protection".  It's not theirs;
they're not indigenous.  This is an area that has also resisted
fundamentalism since the 7th century despite the influence of a large
southern neighbour. Can a nation from the other side of the world
persevere that long.

Ecv


from_name: Vít Zvánovec

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Czech month abbreviations - just discussion with Ray
	Saintonge

body:
	Dear colleague,
	now it is more clear.

Jan. =  "led."
Feb. = "?n."
Mar. = "b?ez."
Apr. = "dub."
May = "kv?t."
Jun. = "?erv."
Jul. = "?erven."
Aug. = "srp."
Sep. = "z???"
Oct. = "??j."
Nov. = "list."
Dec. = "pros."
	Yes, this is possible, because in theory you can shorten every word.
It may be a little bit confusing since July is "?erven." and ?erven
(June) is "?erv.". (?erv is in Czech a "worm"). But this system is
not used in the Czech Republic, because no Czech writes months in the
first place. 5. 1. is therefore only 5th January and never 1st May.

> All begin with lower case letters as shown.
	In Czech language the month names are always written like that. Only
first word of a sentence is natural exception: "?erven je ?est?
m?s?c."

> My personal preference remains to have the ISO standard format for
> dates (YYYY-MM-DD) but I have no illusion about this idea finding
> acceptance from most English speakers.
	It is possible for storing dates, but for viewing we use only 2
systems:
a) 1. ?nora 2004 (month is in genitiv, therefore ended with -a)
b) 1. 2. 2004

> Arguments can be made for both abbreviated and numeric representations
> for months
	I don't agree. Abbreviated months are not used.

> and in the former Czechoslovakia numbers would have avoided any
> requirements to choose between different Czech and Slovak forms.
	Czech and Slovak are two different languages. It something like
English and French in Canada (if you don't care that Czech and Slovak
are very close to each other which is not the case of English and
French). Therefore the difference in month names in Czechoslovakia
was the one of many more important differences.

> For you the abbreviations might be most useful in dealing with
> confused expatriates who are now living in the United States. :-)
	In which sense?

>	<http://games.tiscali.cz/flashpoint/news.asp?r=2003&m=1>
	Yes, there are some computer lists which use this strange system.

							V. Z.


body:
Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Timwi wrote:
>>> It is only unrealistic in the sense that most of the Wikipedia
>>> community is against it (as evidenced by a poll held some time ago).
>>> Their reasoning I've never understood.
>>
>>
>> Is:
>> "Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."
>> equivalent to:
>> "Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."
>
>
> I don't know if you're being like this just to annoy me, Brion, but I
> would like to ask you to rethink your writing before you post it.

I'm asking a simple question about compatibility of a proposed syntax
change with existing text. If you can't answer it, please just leave it
for someone who is interested.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: phpbar at webvector.de

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Although it hasn't been thoroughly tested, it may be possible to use
>> MediaWiki in PHP5 by disabling PHPTAL. This means you won't be able
>> to use the new monobook skin, or any other PHPTAL skin. Add the
>> following line to LocalSettings.php:
>>
>> $wgUsePHPTal = false;
>
>
> As of current CVS, this mode will automatically be used when PHP 5.0
> or higher is detected for hassle-free installation.
>
> As far as I know everything _else_ should work on PHP5, just the
> PHPTal templates don't (yet). This is an annoyance, but PHP 5.0.0 was
> only very recently released and isn't in general circulation yet, so
> it shouldn't hit most people.

Hi,
thanks for the hint. After deactivating PHPTal everything is back to
normal apart from the skin, but this is kinda logical.
I install MediaWiki under PHP 4.x, so I guess that's why PHPTal was not
disabled. :-)

bye
Daniel


body:
Thanks a lot ;-)

frederic.hubleur at urbanet.ch wrote:
> OK, I've set my first wiki up. And almost everything's OK.
> The only matter is with titles and standard textes. I got the titles first set up and then would have changed them, but it doesn't appear to change for real, even if I change the languagefr file (yes, I'm a French-speaker). On the French mailing-list, I was told to try that kind of thing :
> http://www.cpacon.com/~jaafir/atlasocarihos/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allm
> To go to the namespace and change there everything. But it says that is file is unknown on the server.  I don't want to have the "free encyclopedia" title on my website and would like to change the site's main title. What coud I do?

http://qube.cpacon.com/~jaafir/atlasocarihos/index.php/MediaWiki:Tous_les_messages


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: bombmaking information

body:
I tell a lie, we so have a [[Sherman Austin]]
Christiaan

On 6 Aug 2004, at 10:51 am, Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> Pity we don't have a [[Sherman Austin]], I think he's due to get out
> of prison on the 1st of September. From what I've read he was likely
> coerced into pleading guilty.
>
> Christiaan
>
> On 5 Aug 2004, at 5:46 pm, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> There is the case of Sherman Austin, who was convicted in the U.S. for
>> posting bombmaking information on the web.  The law in question is not
>> some post-9/11 Republican thing, it's a 1997 law championed by Dianne
>> Feinstein (D-Calif) and signed into law by then-President Bill
>> Clinton.
>>
>> Mr. Austin pled guilty rather than fighting it, which may or may not
>> have been a sensible thing to do under the circumstances.  (I tend to
>> think that it was not a sensible thing to do, but I'm not in a
>> position to judge.)
>>
>> It is unclear to me whether such a law would be upheld as being
>> constitutional, because the law requires an element of criminal
>> intent, that is, it is illegal to post information about bombmaking to
>> the Internet _with the intent that readers commit a Federal crime of
>> violence_.  In a recent case, the Supreme Court upheld a law against
>> burning a cross _with the intent to intimidate_.
>>
>> In any event, such a law would clearly not apply to Wikipedia, because
>> our intent would never be that people commit crimes of violence.  At
>> the same time, of course, I would find it extremely unpleasant to be
>> faced with a bogus prosecution for such a thing.  I have a little girl
>> at home, and I don't intend _at this point in my life_ to sit in
>> Federal prison to make a point about freedom of speech.  (I very much
>> respect people who would, though, if their life circumstances are
>> appropriate.)
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Czech month abbreviations - just discussion with
	Ray	Saintonge

body:
V?t Zv?novec wrote:

>	Dear colleague,
>	now it is more clear.
>
>Jan. =  "led."
>Feb. = "?n."
>Mar. = "b?ez."
>Apr. = "dub."
>May = "kv?t."
>Jun. = "?erv."
>Jul. = "?erven."
>Aug. = "srp."
>Sep. = "z???"
>Oct. = "??j."
>Nov. = "list."
>Dec. = "pros."
>	Yes, this is possible, because in theory you can shorten every word.
>It may be a little bit confusing since July is "?erven." and ?erven
>(June) is "?erv.". (?erv is in Czech a "worm").
>
It's amusing to hear that my idea is full of worms. :-)

>>All begin with lower case letters as shown.
>>
>>
>	In Czech language the month names are always written like that. Only
>first word of a sentence is natural exception: "?erven je ?est?
>m?s?c.".
>
Of the 28 languages in the place where I found the list only 7
capitalize the month names.

>>My personal preference remains to have the ISO standard format for
>>dates (YYYY-MM-DD) but I have no illusion about this idea finding
>>acceptance from most English speakers.
>>
>>
>	It is possible for storing dates, but for viewing we use only 2
>systems:
>a) 1. ?nora 2004 (month is in genitiv, therefore ended with -a)
>b) 1. 2. 2004
>
What has been the effect of joining the European Union?

>>and in the former Czechoslovakia numbers would have avoided any
>>requirements to choose between different Czech and Slovak forms.
>>
>>
>	Czech and Slovak are two different languages. It something like
>English and French in Canada (if you don't care that Czech and Slovak
>are very close to each other which is not the case of English and
>French). Therefore the difference in month names in Czechoslovakia
>was the one of many more important differences.
>
Of course they're different, but in a bilingual country when texts must
be issued in both languages, it is good to have a neutral standard.  All
government documents in Canada now use the ISO format, 2004-08-06.  The
abbreviated form for August is the same in English and French except
that it uses a capital "A" in English and a small "a" in French.  That's
enough to make people argue

>
>
>
>>For you the abbreviations might be most useful in dealing with
>>confused expatriates who are now living in the United States. :-)
>>
>>
>	In which sense?
>
>
A Czech who may have emigrated to the United States after the 1967
problems would now be more familiar with the American system.  He may
have taught the Czech language to his children who are more familiar
with the American system of dates.  These would be the confused people.

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: meta

body:
Guillaume Blanchard a ?crit:
> Anthere a ?crit :
>
>>
>>
>> Guillaume Blanchard a ?crit:
>>
>>> From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"
>>>
>>>
>>>> What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
>>>> * 1 for organizational purposes
>>>> * 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>>>>  and other stuff like that
>>>>
>>>> Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> well.
>>>
>>> What about use wikimedia site as a Wiki for projects organistion ?
>>> (and Meta
>>> for all other purposes)
>>>
>>> Aoineko
>>
>>
>>
>> I do not think this is the goal of the foundation website at all.
>
>
> Sure that may be better to re-organize the Meta site.
> Meanwhile wikimedia may have a (members only?) Wiki for fundation
> activities, isn't it ?
>
> Aoinek
> o

Fundation activities only yes.
But meta is much much much more than fundation activities
and it is important not to confuse fundation activities and daily
organisation, such as request for adminship on projects, because this is
not a fundation activity

finally meta is open to anyone editing, freely, and I think this freedom
of participation is absolutely essential.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes Parser.php,1.224,1.225

body:
Richards,Michael wrote:
> We currently have Mediawiki 1.1 installed.
>
> Can we upgrade directly to 1.3 (once it becomes stable after the
> bughunt), or do we need to upgrade to 1.2.6 first?

It should work to upgrade directly, but I haven't tested this in quite a
while.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is:
>>>> "Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."
>>>> equivalent to:
>>>> "Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."
>>>
>>>
>> I'm asking a simple question about compatibility of a proposed syntax
>> change with existing text. If you can't answer it, please just leave
>> it for someone who is interested.
>
>
> You are jumping to conclusions like a kangaroo. Nobody has ever proposed
> $...$ for MediaWiki (unless I missed it, but it wasn't me). My proposal
> was to introduce something shorter and easier than <math>...</math>. You
> pretty well know that there are millions of potential alternatives that
> are better than $...$ and still shorter and easier than
> <math>...</math>. Arguing against $...$ (which, again, I have not
> proposed for MediaWiki) is no-where near arguing in favour of
> <math>...</math>.

Was there a point to this?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to Jayjg's claims

body:
>From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> Reply-To: English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l]
>Response to Jayjg's claims Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 11:08:50 -0700 (PDT) Jayjg
>writes: etc.

Hi Robert

I've written all that I think needs to be said in this particular list, and
won't be getting into a debate here.  I'd prefer to work on the text of the
article itself in the relevant Talk: page, and hope we can resolve our
disagreement there, or through mediation.

Regards,

Jay

_________________________________________________________________
MSN? Calendar keeps you organized and takes the effort out of scheduling
get-togethers.
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines
  Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN? Premium right now and get the
first two months FREE*.


from_name: Kai F. Lahmann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

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

Am Freedag 06 August 2004 11:31 schrieb Jan Hidders:
> I was wondering what the status of MathML support was. It is marked
> "experimental" in user preferences, but as far as I can tell no MathML
> is generated at all.

and that's the best, we can do. MathML might need *at least* 2
Browser-Generations, before it's usable!

> Since Mozilla et al. are starting to have
> reasonable MathML support and there is a free plug-in for Explorere
> available I think it would be worth having this fully operational.

Mozilla can do it, if you have the file served as XML (which will break the
page completely for all except Mozilla and Opera) and f?r MSIE exists a
Plugin to render external MathML.

As a result we have 2 Options:
- - automatically generate external MathML - then we have it visible in Mozilla,
can get it visible in MSIE with forcing the People to install a Plugin nobody
currently has
(http://www.webhits.de/deutsch/index.shtml?/deutsch/webstats.html), useless
XML in Opera and an error message in all other Browsers.

I think, we can think of that the day, all common Browsers can *really* handle
XML and at least three of the 4 big ones have native MathML.

- --
Kai F. Lahmann

1zu160-Bahner
http://www.1zu160.net
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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>On Thursday 05 August 2004 14:20, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>In fact it would be required (the Germans say "Deutsch" on their WP, not
>>"German").
>>
>
>So what is Modern English called in Anglo-Saxon?
>
"Sir Not-appearing-in-this-encyclopedia", of course.

:-)

But seriously, "andwearde Englisc" is probably closest, going by
the online translator at http://forrest.cx/projects/oe-dict/ .
There is a lot of OE/AS material on the net!

Stan


from_name: Timwi

body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

> Not to mention the fact that this would be a significant step towards
> getting away from the math-markup-mess that we are in right now.

What mess?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: meta

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
> * 1 for organizational purposes
> * 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>   and other stuff like that
>
> Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them well.

Why would two separate wikis serve them better? I doubt that.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Try to create wiki: Invalid request

body:
I just went to jbo.wikipedia.org and hit the "Create wiki" button and got a
page saying "Invalid request". Why?

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia -- domain name donation

body:
Hi Jimmy,

I recently sent this HTMLlified long text to the WikiEN-l mailing list:
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(the file has no JavaScript, if you have any doubts, open it in an
editor first)

I fear that the domain name donation bit (see side note to Gripe #1)
might have gotten overlooked.

I've also been thinking:
For purposes of turning over the domain name, how am I to know whether
a person contacting me (who could, say, claim to be an authorized
Wikipedia admin) is really who and what they claim to be? How can I be
sure I'm not turning over the domain name to someone who just wants to
score a possibly high-exposure domain name?

It's for this reason that I would like to ask you if I can deal
directly with you in doing the turnover. While I'm a fairly new
Wikipedian and don't know you personally, your record as the Wikipedia
founder speaks for itself so with you at least I can be certain.

Please email me direct and let me know if you've got a public key (say,
for PGP or whatever you use) and I will duly send you all the details
for the wikipaedia.net domain.

(Yep, I know I sound pretty paranoid -- but better be safe than sorry!
The example detailed in the attendant HTML file shows that it's
probably a fairly good idea to be careful and protect our assets.)

Thanks and regards,
Jens

There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683
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body:
On Thursday 05 August 2004 10:48, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> writes:
> > I guess it's like Latin in being a dead language, but just as
> > deserving of a Wiki.
>
> Encyclopedia writer should try to get the facts right before posting.
> Latin is still in use (and it was never dead).  And, more important,
> Latin something like a sleeping lingua franca.

"Dead" referring to a language means "having no native speakers". Unlike Manx,
which died with its last native speaker (but is still in use), Latin died
(but remained in use) when its descendants differentiated sufficiently that
none of them was Latin, which can't be pinpointed as precisely.

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Kai F. Lahmann wrote:

>Mozilla can do it, if you have the file served as XML (which will break the
>page completely for all except Mozilla and Opera) and f?r MSIE exists a
>Plugin to render external MathML.
>
>
I have to admit I'm a bit puzzled by your reaction. I wasn't suggesting
that MathML should become the default output. All I want is that the
people who ask for MathML in their user preferences actually get it.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
On Thursday 05 August 2004 14:20, Stan Shebs wrote:
> In fact it would be required (the Germans say "Deutsch" on their WP, not
> "German").

So what is Modern English called in Anglo-Saxon?

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

> Having MathML
> fully operational would help that situation because it would make the
> rule "mark math always as <math>" a viable option.

I see your point, and it's a good point, but what's currently stopping
me from inserting <math> everywhere is that it's hard to type and hard
to read. If we had something easy and simple, like LaTeX's $, that would
make all the difference.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of MathML support

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Only like one or two tiny things are done; simple equations like
> "y = x + 2" should work. But, unless the wiki is switched into XHTML
> mime type mode it won't render as MathML in Mozilla anyway.

Ok. I assume that this is not set for the English Wikipedia, right?
Would there be a problem if you did? I'm just asking to see if there are
other problems that keep Wikipedia from generating MathML.

> If you can figure out the scary Objective Caml code in texvc, you can
> try fleshing out the mathml conversion module (see html.ml and
> mathml.ml in the 'math' subdirectory of MediaWiki source).

I took a brief look and I think I can. I already know a little OCaml
(and was planning on learning more anyway) and the lexer/parser look
straightforward .

I also checked if my sourceforge account still works, and it does, and
it even seems I'm still listed as one of the developers of Wikimedia.
:-)  So would it be Ok with the main developers if I had a go at this? I
cannot promise anything soon because it's been a while and I don't even
have a running system at home anymore, but it looks very much like a fun
(relatively little) project to me.

-- Jan Hidders


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.0beta6 released

body:
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This should be the final beta release of MediaWiki 1.3.0; the final
final version will be released in a few days after some more bug fixing
and polishing up of documentation and installation.

Beta 6 includes a security fix: earlier 1.3.0 beta releases may be
vulnerable to a PHP inclusion attack if you have allow_url_fopen and
register_globals on (this is the default configuration in PHP 4.1.x, but
register_globals is off by default in 4.2.x and later).

Note that while MediaWiki through 1.1 required register_globals to be
on, 1.2 and 1.3 *do not*. If you have register_globals on, you should
turn it off unless you are absolutely sure you require it for some other
package. See http://php.net/register_globals for general information.

Release notes:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=258701

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.0beta6.tar.gz?download

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [WikiEN-l] Azerbaijan and Iran related articles

body:
There's been a recent wave of possible vandalizing or at least very
pointed edits (heavy removal of information, wiki links, and disputed
notices) on Azerbaijan and Iran related articles. Since I can't see
proper reversions or NPOVization, it seems that only very few people
care about the articles, and even from the short list, some of them
may be partial (like myself, I live in Iran).

This is rather important since the situation is rather bad now, and
while the two countries are in a good relation in the surface (the
Iranian president is visiting Republic of Azerbaijan as I'm writing
this), there are hot issues being discussed in the independent or
non-official newspapers and websites, published in Tehran, Baku, or
Tabriz, accusing "Persians" of anti-Azerbaijani behaviour (which
includes Iranian-Armenian relations), asking for autonomous status for
northwestern Iranian provinces, or accusing the ROA of funding
separatist movements in northwestern Iran (which the separatists call
"South Azerbaijan") and common maneuvers with the USA in the disputed
water borders in the Caspian Sea.

I would wish to ask people to give some Wiki love to some of the
pages, so we could really get some NPOV in the articles (google
searches leading to the articles may be increasing) and more people
could watch of the articles to help reduce the vandalizations. It's
always hard for likes of me the distinguish vandalization and very
pointed major edits that don't consider Wikipedia policy.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Azerbaijan and Iran related articles

body:
Ah, I forgot. Some of the articles are [[Azerbaijan]], [[Azerbaijan
(disambiguation)]], [[History of Azerbaijan]], [[South Azerbaijan]],
[[Azerbaijanis]], [[Azerbaijani language]], [[Aran (Azerbaijan)]],
[[Shervan]], and [[Persian language]]. Some of these I can't revert
anymore because of the three reverts policy.

roozbeh

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 16:11:40 +0430, Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's been a recent wave of possible vandalizing or at least very
> pointed edits (heavy removal of information, wiki links, and disputed
> notices) on Azerbaijan and Iran related articles. Since I can't see
> proper reversions or NPOVization, it seems that only very few people
> care about the articles, and even from the short list, some of them
> may be partial (like myself, I live in Iran).
>
> This is rather important since the situation is rather bad now, and
> while the two countries are in a good relation in the surface (the
> Iranian president is visiting Republic of Azerbaijan as I'm writing
> this), there are hot issues being discussed in the independent or
> non-official newspapers and websites, published in Tehran, Baku, or
> Tabriz, accusing "Persians" of anti-Azerbaijani behaviour (which
> includes Iranian-Armenian relations), asking for autonomous status for
> northwestern Iranian provinces, or accusing the ROA of funding
> separatist movements in northwestern Iran (which the separatists call
> "South Azerbaijan") and common maneuvers with the USA in the disputed
> water borders in the Caspian Sea.
>
> I would wish to ask people to give some Wiki love to some of the
> pages, so we could really get some NPOV in the articles (google
> searches leading to the articles may be increasing) and more people
> could watch of the articles to help reduce the vandalizations. It's
> always hard for likes of me the distinguish vandalization and very
> pointed major edits that don't consider Wikipedia policy.
>


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: meta

body:
Anthere a ?crit :

>
>
> Guillaume Blanchard a ?crit:
>
>> From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"
>>
>>
>>> What do you think about dividing meta into 2 wikis:
>>> * 1 for organizational purposes
>>> * 1 for rants, loose discussions, lists of Wikipedians by eye color
>>>  and other stuff like that
>>>
>>> Currently meta serves both function, but doesn't serve either of them
>>
>>
>> well.
>>
>> What about use wikimedia site as a Wiki for projects organistion ?
>> (and Meta
>> for all other purposes)
>>
>> Aoineko
>
>
> I do not think this is the goal of the foundation website at all.

Sure that may be better to re-organize the Meta site.
Meanwhile wikimedia may have a (members only?) Wiki for fundation
activities, isn't it ?

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki 1.3.0beta6 released

body:
Morbus Iff wrote:
> Incidentally, a side note about this. From what I've read, you cannot
> set allow_url_fopen by using ini_set - it's an admin value only. I
> think I saw an attempt to turn this off in one of the source files.
> Is this "just in case" sorta stuff?

An empirical test on 4.3.2 shows that you can indeed turn
allow_url_fopen on and off via ini_set(), despite what the documentation
says.

They may have changed it and the documentation is incomplete, or it
might be an old bug.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Timwi wrote:

> Jan Hidders wrote:
>
>> Not to mention the fact that this would be a significant step towards
>> getting away from the math-markup-mess that we are in right now.
>
> What mess?

Hmm, I regret using that word now because a "mess" is probably putting
it a bit too strongly but to describe it (too) succinctly: the fact that
math is not always marked as <math> and the presentation problems that
are associated with that. See also the discussion on::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#The_case_for_LaTeX

Note that I'm *not* saying that this a big urgent problem that requires
an immediate solution or even one that can be solved entirely. But good
separation of content and presentation is an important long-term goal
and important if you ever want to be able to publish the content in
different ways, say in PDF, and still have it look good.  Having MathML
fully operational would help that situation because it would make the
rule "mark math always as <math>" a viable option.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Richards,Michael

body:
We currently have Mediawiki 1.1 installed.

Can we upgrade directly to 1.3 (once it becomes stable after the bughunt), or do we need to upgrade to 1.2.6 first?

Michael Richards
Gartner

PS I couldn't find anything mentioning this in the install or release notes (or on meta). Perhaps it is just an implicit assumption that you need to upgrade to each stable release and cannot jump releases?


from_name: Adam Bishop

body:
I think an Old English Wikipedia sounds interesting (although I don't know
very much OE myself), and now that you are also discussing Latin, I wanted
to point out a few problems you might encounter (I am an admin on the Latin
Wikipedia):

Most importantly, you should start off by making some guidelines about what
should and should not be included.  The Latin wikipedia is pretty old and
only recently has there been a concerted effort to give it some direction -
I think any new wikipedia in a dead language would benefit from having the
rules first.

For example, you would (I assume) want to have articles about Anglo-Saxon
related topics, but will people also want to write about unrelated subjects?
  Will the stereotypical Pokemon article be allowed?

What form of the language will you use?  For Latin, I think we try to be as
classical as possible, although there is some medieval and neo-Latin there
too.  As far as I understand, the 9th century Wessex dialect is the most
attested form of Anglo-Saxon, right?  Would you accept alternate
spelling/grammar found in other dialects (Northumbrian, perhaps)?

(As a side note, you would probably also want to specifically state that Old
English is not the same as "ye olde English", nor is it Chaucerian or
Shakespearian English, as has been mentioned already.)

Are there groups who still use Old English, from whom you can draw either
contributors or information on where to begin?  Is there any information on
how to use OE words for modern concepts? For Latin it is fairly easy to find
Neo-Latin terms, but what if you want to write about Japan, for example, in
OE? I guess my point is, can OE still be used in a meaningful way, or will
you be limited by existing vocabulary?

I hope these questions/suggestions help, and I hope I can contribute when it
is created!

Adam Bishop

>From: Pierre Abbat <phma at phma.hn.org>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
>Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 15:40:55 -0400
>
>On Thursday 05 August 2004 10:48, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> > "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> writes:
> > > I guess it's like Latin in being a dead language, but just as
> > > deserving of a Wiki.
> >
> > Encyclopedia writer should try to get the facts right before
posting.
> > Latin is still in use (and it was never dead).  And, more
important,
> > Latin something like a sleeping lingua franca.
>
>"Dead" referring to a language means "having no native
speakers". Unlike Manx,
>which died with its last native speaker (but is still in use), Latin
died
>(but remained in use) when its descendants differentiated sufficiently
that
>none of them was Latin, which can't be pinpointed as precisely.
>
>phma
>--
>li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
Designer Mail isn't just fun to send, it's fun to receive. Use special
stationery, fonts and colors.
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  Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN? Premium right now and get the
first two months FREE*.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery	images
	on Wikipedia website]

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>IMHO, the whole matter couldn't be any more in a mess than it currently is.
>
>My catalog for the Tate was written by them & is copyrighted by this
>institution, so it is fair to then assume they own the copyright on the
>works shown. Unless per the case quoted here, the law indicates otherwise.
>
Each separate item in that catalogue should probably have its own
copyright date.  Even if we accept the premise that reproductions are
copyrightable, it does not permit them to issue a new edition ten years
later, and use that as a basis for restarting the clock on material that
was already in the older edition.

>One interesting case is an anthology of photographs, _Oregon then and Now_,
>which includes a selection of photographs taken around Oregon in the first
>decade of the 20th century, with contemporary photos of the same subjects --
>a fascinating example of how the local landscape has changed. In this case,
>there is _no_ copyright notice! Obviously the 100+ year-old photgraphs are
>PD, yet there is the suggestion that the author wanted to release into the
>PD his newer photgraphs. (The prudent rule for reuse would be to assume that
>the author retains copyright on these newer photos pending a clarification
>from the author.)
>
Before 1989 US law required a copyright notice.  Works issued before
that date (assuming that they were not pirate editions) without that
notice may be in the public domain.  The effect on things published
after that is that it generated copyrights that the authors and
publishers never even considered.

>Scanning these materials for Wikipedia -- & allowing their reuse for one
>& all -- is a thorny issue!
>
>And I'm not even considering scanning my materials from German museums, as
>I have no sense what the copyright law is in _that_ country. (Is there a
>summary of copyright laws for various countries on Wikipedia somewhere?)
>
The EU generally follows a life plus 70 rule.  For quick reference I use
the site http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html#whatpd

In considering copyright infringement one also needs to consider the
penalty implications.  For this one also needs to distinguish also
between civil infringements and criminal infringements.

I've just read through some 20 or so sections of the "Criminal Resource
Manual" dealing with the issue of Criminal infringement of copyright
beginning at
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01840.htm
.  It would be difficult to sustain a case of criminal infringement for
the simple uploading of material.  Most notably an important element of
such an infringement is that it be "for purposes of commercial advantage
or private financial gain", although that provision can be interpreted
faitly broadly. It also needs to be noted that, although registration of
a copyright is not a prerequisite to owning a copyright, it is a
prerequisite before a court can have jurisdiction over a specific
infringement.

It is ironic that there is a criminal law provision against making a
false copyright notice, but the fine is substantially less than for
infringing copyright.

Ec


body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I see your point, and it's a good point, but what's currently stopping
>> me from inserting <math> everywhere is that it's hard to type and hard
>> to read. If we had something easy and simple, like LaTeX's $, that
>> would make all the difference.
>
> I certainly agree that it would make a difference. But do you think
> changing the mark-up is a realistic option? Or even adding an extra
> shorter notation?

It is only unrealistic in the sense that most of the Wikipedia community
is against it (as evidenced by a poll held some time ago). Their
reasoning I've never understood.

Timwi


from_name: Chitu Okoli

body:
Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone had further thoughts about this grant support
suggestion. Let me summarize the gist of the responses so far:

1. An number of people seem interested in the idea of surveying wikipedians
to find out more about them, similar to the survey conducted on SourceForge
open source developers. This would probably be a multilingual survey, and
off course, the wikipedians would have the choice whether or not to opt out.
Technically, Wikimedia Foundation's main technical involvement would be to
provide links on the wikipedias to ask for Wikipedians and visitors to
respond. Interested wikipedians on the various language wikipedias could
translate the master version into their respective languages. Note: The
Web-based survey itself could be either onsite or offsite (so that there be
no strain on Wikipedia resources).

2. There were some comments about my current research activities. About the
comparison of encyclopedia quality, comments were positive. About the social
analysis of wikipedian interaction, I clarified that this research is
currently being done 100% on an off-site database dump replication, and does
not directly interfere with wikipedians or Wikimedia Foundation.

3. I made a comment about "Wikipedia" vs. "wikipedia" which seemed to be a
lot more interesting to many people than the grant collaboration :-) Could
we get back on topic, please?

I have some questions that have not been addressed yet:

1. Would Wikimedia Foundation be willing to work with me to conduct such a
survey? I would appreciate a letter of support to that effect, and that
indicates that we could work together on other possible research questions
that WF would be interested in. Again, such a letter would help me acquire
personal grants.

I fully understand WF's financial constraints, so the support I'm asking for
does not involve any financial assistance (rather, I'm trying to help WF
that way--see next comment). I would like to cover any actual expenses
incurred (such as developer/consulting time) as part of my grant. The more
concrete the ideas of future possibilities, the more likely I can make
specific requests in the grant application. So please pour in the ideas!

2. As the note below indicates, I could probably request something like $US
4,500 ($CA 6,000) in hardware to support my research, that would effectively
be fully and directly available for Wikipedia (i.e. I could legitimately
ship it to Florida) for at least three years. What would be the best
expenditure for this possibility and what would be the best way to carry it?

I know that this is a drop in the bucket for Wikipedia's growing needs, but
I sincerely want to help. I also want to be clear that regardless of if WF
feels comfortable about writing me a letter of support, as a Wikipedian I'd
like to do my bit to help out this great project. It's because I believe in
it that I'm committing to it as a major research topic. I'll write a little
bit more on this in a separate posting.

I look forward to hearing more comments.

Regards,
Chitu

-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List [mailto:foundation-l at wikimedia.org]
Sent: July 29, 2004 9:04 PM
To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Foundation-l] Personal research grant collaboration request
Importance: Low

Dear Wikimedia Foundation,

My name is Chitu Okoli. I am a professor in information systems (MIS) at
Concordia University in Montr?al, and I've been very interested in
Wikipedia
for a while. (I am also a light Wikipedian, User:cokoli, since March this
year. In addtion, I've been listening in on foundation-l for a little while
now.)

I am currently working on a couple of research projects involving
Wikipedia.
Two specific projects involve:
1. Obtaining a scholarly evaluation of the quality of its articles by
comparing Wikipedia articles with those of other encyclopedias; and
2. Mapping the sociological networks of Wikipedians among each other in
their wiki activities, and the effects of these networks on their
individual
and group performance in Wikipedia.

I want to apply for grant funding to support my research, and I would love
to arrange this in a way that would translate into free computer equipment
for Wikipedia. For this, I would only need the Wikimedia Foundation's
organizational support and some technical cooperation. I hope it could be a
win-win situation where I could receive assistance for my research (and the
satisfaction of contributing tangibly to what I believe is a worthy cause),
and the Foundation could hopefully get some valuable resources.

I'd like to work together with you to see what options could work best for
mutual benefit. Specifically, let me quote my faculty's grant coordinator,
as he explains quite well the boundaries of what mind be possible:

<<
Also, with regards to buying and sending equipment to Wikipedia, you
should be okay doing that.  However, the university may request that the
equipment be returned to the university at the end of the research project
i.e. 3 years from the starting date.  So, Wikipedia could use the server
for 3 years, which would obviously help them by saving them the money in
the short term to purchase the equipment and in 3 years from now you may
request from the university that the equipment be donated, sold at a
discount, returned, etc.  This would have to be negotiated between
yourself and the Associate Dean and Dean of the business school.
I would suggest first that you contact Wikipedia to ask them to give you a
list of the server equipment that they need to buy, but tell them that the
value cannot exceed say $6000 CDN for example.  I say $6,000 because you
may get a maximum of $15,000/yr for 3 years, which you would need to hire
RAs, buy yourself a laptop to travel with, etc.  In return, they would
have to send you a letter of support indicating that they will be helping
you to collect the data you need via surveys, etc.
>>>
>
>
How I would like the Wikimedia foundation to assist me is in two main ways:

1. If my research program seems interesting to you, and/or if you believe
the Foundation could benefit from the equipment that the grant(s) could
provide, please write me an official letter of support indicating that you
are willing to offer me necessary assistance in carrying out my research. I
am certainly NOT asking for financial assistance--rather, I'm trying to
help
provide some. (Besides, after listening in on the fundraising banner
discussion, Wikimedia Foundation is the last place I'd go asking for money
>:-) Such a letter of support in and of itself would be a great act of
"support" for me--it would be very helpful in helping me obtain a research
grant to continue my research.

2. As far as what actual "support" I would need, for much of my research, I
don't need anyone from the Wikipedia Foundation to actually do anything for
me--I am already working off the Wikipedia database dumps, and the
Wikitech-l provides pretty good technical support. (Thanks Timwi and Brion
Vibber for helping my research assistant, Claudio.)

However, some of the further research I might need to do could need
substantial help from the Wikimedia Foundation. One particular idea I have
in mind would be to conduct a survey of Wikipedians to figure out who they
are, and why they do what they do. I have in mind something very much along
the lines of the "Hacker Survey" that Boston Consulting Group conducted on
SourceForge developers, through the support of the Open Source Developers
Network. (The results are available in PDF at
http://www.bcg.com/opensource/BCGHACKERSURVEY.pdf.) I think the Foundation
could benefit from a similar survey, to better understand who Wikipedians
are. However, if I were to help conduct this survey (I am a social
scientist
with special training in conducting accurate surveys), I would need special
access to Wikipedians beyond what a database dump could provide. This is
just an example to show the kind of "support" I would need that could be
mutually beneficial. And of course, I'm trying to get funds from outside to
sponsor this (e.g. I apply for a grant to pay the Foundation for developer
time to help create the surveys).

To be explicit, what I hope to offer the Wikimedia Foundation (subject to
grant award) would be:
1. Free hardware for about three years or so (depending on the grant
terms).
2. Consulting/developer fees for specific projects that might require more
time by board members and developers.

Please post your thoughts and comments on this. I'd like you to help make
this a proposal that could help both me and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Sincerely,

Chitu Okoli, PhD
Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems
John Molson School of Business
Concordia University, Montr?al, Canada

Phone: +1 (514) 848-2424 x2967
cokoli at jmsb.concordia.ca
http://chitu.okoli.org/mis

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subject: [Foundation-l] Personal research grant collaboration request


subject:
[Foundation-l] Brief thought on the long-term value of grants for
	Wikimedia projects

body:
Hi WF,

I have the feeling that the current growing pains that Wikipedia is
experiencing are short-term, as it tries to gain more universal recognition.
I followed the discussion on the NEH grant, and I believe that if WF gets
things together, in a couple of years you'll be able to garner something
major like that.

I don't know how many people know about Perseus (www.perseus.tufts.edu), but
it's an awesome online searchable collection of classical primary and
secondary texts. It was established by a National Science Foundation grant,
and I believe continues to be supported by the NSF, NEH, and other agencies.
If Wikipedia could garner enough recognition by grant-awarders as a major
resource of international humanitarian benefit, I believe a couple
well-crafted grants could fund it and grow it to perpetuity. I hope that
academic research such as I am doing (I've also got in touch with Andrew Lih
and Tomoaki Watanabe on this list, who also do academic research on
Wikipedia) could help put it on the radar screen of the money givers.

I'd like to hear some thoughts on this.

Regards,
Chitu


from_name: Jan Hidders

body:
Timwi wrote:

> I see your point, and it's a good point, but what's currently stopping
> me from inserting <math> everywhere is that it's hard to type and hard
> to read. If we had something easy and simple, like LaTeX's $, that
> would make all the difference.

I certainly agree that it would make a difference. But do you think
changing the mark-up is a realistic option? Or even adding an extra
shorter notation?

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: Morbus Iff

body:
>Beta 6 includes a security fix: earlier 1.3.0 beta releases may be
>vulnerable to a PHP inclusion attack if you have allow_url_fopen and
>register_globals on (this is the default configuration in PHP 4.1.x, but
>register_globals is off by default in 4.2.x and later).

Incidentally, a side note about this. From what I've read, you cannot
set allow_url_fopen by using ini_set - it's an admin value only. I
think I saw an attempt to turn this off in one of the source files.
Is this "just in case" sorta stuff?

--
Morbus Iff ( insert pithy quote here )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Easytimeline is back and runs UTF-8 extended ASCII
	(caveat)

body:
After two weeks finally the problems have been solved. Thanks again to those
who helped out.

EasyTimeline can now be run on UTF-8 sites, but only displays the extended
ASCII character set so far. Full unicode support using external fonts will
come later this year. Also annoyingly the internal font used by Ploticus
(which does the rendering) misses a few common accented characters, like ?.
These will be replaced by unaccented chars for the time being.

Erik Zachte


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Modifying mediawiki to be a frame rather than the
	whole page

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:

> yeah, I saw that -- after I posted. Removed it and it worked like a charm.
> perhaps I should rethink my order of operations and look first, *then* post.

Actually, that happens to people quite often. You fiddle around with
something, trying to find the answer to a question or the solution to a
problem. Eventually you give up and ask a friend for assistance, but a
second later you find it out yourself.

Is there a technical term for this phenomenon?

(And yes, I know this is off-topic, but it's interesting :-p)
Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> It would completely break Internet Explorer and would cause some pages
> to refuse to load in other browsers (those that are not 100% pure XML).
> Not quite ready for prime time yet. :)

Remember that we're only talking about an option that is not supposed to
be the default (yet). It would break browsers only if a user sets the
option.

Timwi


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Czech month abbreviations - just discussion with
	Ray Saintonge

body:
V?t Zv?novec wrote:

> 	It is possible for storing dates, but for viewing we use only 2
> systems:
> a) 1. ?nora 2004 (month is in genitiv, therefore ended with -a)
> b) 1. 2. 2004

Czech documents from the European Union seem to use form (a), e.g.
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/cs/archive/2004/l_26120040806cs.html

  (2004/579/ES)Rozhodnut? Rady ze dne 29. dubna 2004 o uzav?en?
  ?mluvy Organizace spojen?ch n?rod? o boji proti mezin?rodn?mu
  organizovan?mu zlo?inu jm?nem Evropsk?ho spole?enstv?

  (2004/580/ES)Rozhodnut? Rady ze dne 29. dubna 2004 kter?m se
  schvaluje makrofinan?n? pomoc Alb?nii a zru?uje rozhodnut?
  1999/282/ES

The same form (a) is used on Microsoft's Czech website, e.g.
http://www.microsoft.com/cze/presspass/MSG/20040721_news1.asp

  Ji?? Luka ze z?kladn? ?koly Mend?k?, kter? se letos stal
  v?t?zem sout??e Zlat? ?mos pro nejobl?ben?j??ho u?itele
  ?esk? republiky. T?bor se kon? od 19. ?ervence do 1. srpna u
  obce Ujkovice nedaleko Mlad? Boleslavi. ??astn? se ho d?ti ve
  v?ku o ?esti do patn?cti let. Letos to bude celkem ?edes?t
  d?t?. V?ce informac? o letn?m t?bo?e z?sk?te na
  www.tabor-mendici.wz.cz.

You can love or hate the EU and Microsoft, but both of them spend huge
efforts on translation and language.

This form (a) seems to have the most clarity and smallest risk for
confusion.  This is especially clear when you write "1. ?nora"
(February 1) without indicating the year.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Status of MathML support

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> It is only unrealistic in the sense that most of the Wikipedia
>> community is against it (as evidenced by a poll held some time ago).
>> Their reasoning I've never understood.
>
> Is:
> "Blah blah sold it for $100,000, making a $50 profit."
> equivalent to:
> "Blah blah sold it for <math>100,000, making a </math> profit."

I don't know if you're being like this just to annoy me, Brion, but I
would like to ask you to rethink your writing before you post it.

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Eric Pierce

subject: [Wikitech-l] Quoting, dashes, and HTML entities

body:
Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I am
curious about the status of automatic replacement of
dashes in the wikitext (in particular -- and ---) with
HTML-entity versions that many users seem to like so
much (ndash and mdash). I noticed that a while back
(February 2004) such a conversion was implemented, but
apparently reverted due to undesirable breakage. Any
way it could be reinstated? I may look into it once I
get familiar with the code.

Also, there's some ongoing disagreement about
"correct" quote usage: several users like to replace
standard ASCII apostrophes with their lsquo/rsquo HTML
counterparts, which seriously uglifies the wikitext.
The same is true of normal double-quotes
(ldquo/rdquo). I realize it may be quite difficult to
implement some form of quote-matching that could
automatically convert these from ASCII, especially
given our other uses for single-quotes; would it be
feasible to use multiple ASCII double-quotes to clue
in the parser about desired behavior? e.g., "foo" for
normal ASCII double-quotes, ""foo"" for an HTML
lsquo/rsquo, and """foo""" for ldquo/rdquo. I can see
where this might run into some problems in situations
involving nested quotation, but seems adequate for the
majority of quoting.

Given the regularity of conflict over this issue (not
to mention some users, who shall remain nameless, on a
mission to replace all occurrences of what they
perceive as bad quoting, wikitext readability be
damned), it seems like something worth implementing. I
like correct and nicely-readable HTML-entity-style
quotes as much as the next guy, as long as it doesn't
hamper editing. It's frustrating to see so much heated
debate over a matter that could, at least in theory,
be solved by such an improvement.

Eric

=====
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Help preserve the public domain by becoming a Distributed Proofreader. http://www.pgdp.net/

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bughunt day 5

body:
We now stand at 154 open bugs out of 1108 total, a few hours ahead of
schedule. Nifty!

Three more days remaining: the goal for day 5 is 154 - 15 = 139 open bugs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Hey Adam,
	Thanks for the help and kinds words - these are all very good and
important questions.

As for types of articles, I (myself as a writer/contributor to the AS wiki)
would like to start out with simple fact-based articles, perhaps the ones
listed on the "100 articles every wiki should have."  I would hope that
people would contribute articles, either Pokemon, Mario, News, Biography,
whatever.  I have no doubt someone will want to write Anglo-Saxon related
articles, but I'd rather do modern history, some biographies, biology,
technology, etc.  If you'd like to write the Pokemon article, feel free!  Ic
wille ??t s?on, gif ?u ??t wille wr?tan.  There are people who can
contribute readily on the Forum for Old English mailing list, English-L
mailing list, and Old English Made Easy mailing list.

The form of the language would be early West Saxon, as used in the Clark
Hall Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, without the syncopation of endings in
verbs (a more formal syntactic convention).

The groups are above mentioned, as well as other groups that can be found
with a google search. There is already a terminology page for the technology
terms, as well as many biology and other terms native to the language.  As
Icelandic has created new uses for old words, I'm sure Old English can do
the same (How about an article about a circulwyrde or the symantec fyrweall
rungestreon, or ?? Nipponiscan l?ode (the Japanese people)?).

Does that help?

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Adam Bishop
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 5:22 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English

I think an Old English Wikipedia sounds interesting (although I don't know
very much OE myself), and now that you are also discussing Latin, I wanted
to point out a few problems you might encounter (I am an admin on the Latin
Wikipedia):

Most importantly, you should start off by making some guidelines about what
should and should not be included.  The Latin wikipedia is pretty old and
only recently has there been a concerted effort to give it some direction -
I think any new wikipedia in a dead language would benefit from having the
rules first.

For example, you would (I assume) want to have articles about Anglo-Saxon
related topics, but will people also want to write about unrelated subjects?

  Will the stereotypical Pokemon article be allowed?

What form of the language will you use?  For Latin, I think we try to be as
classical as possible, although there is some medieval and neo-Latin there
too.  As far as I understand, the 9th century Wessex dialect is the most
attested form of Anglo-Saxon, right?  Would you accept alternate
spelling/grammar found in other dialects (Northumbrian, perhaps)?

(As a side note, you would probably also want to specifically state that Old
English is not the same as "ye olde English", nor is it Chaucerian or
Shakespearian English, as has been mentioned already.)

Are there groups who still use Old English, from whom you can draw either
contributors or information on where to begin?  Is there any information on
how to use OE words for modern concepts? For Latin it is fairly easy to find
Neo-Latin terms, but what if you want to write about Japan, for example, in
OE? I guess my point is, can OE still be used in a meaningful way, or will
you be limited by existing vocabulary?

I hope these questions/suggestions help, and I hope I can contribute when it
is created!

Adam Bishop

>From: Pierre Abbat <phma at phma.hn.org>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
>Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 15:40:55 -0400 > >On Thursday 05 August 2004
10:48, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> > "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> writes:
> > > I guess it's like Latin in being a dead language, but just as
> > > deserving of a Wiki.
> >
> > Encyclopedia writer should try to get the facts right before
posting.
> > Latin is still in use (and it was never dead).  And, more
important, > > Latin something like a sleeping lingua franca.
>
>"Dead" referring to a language means "having no native
speakers". Unlike Manx, >which died with its last native speaker
(but is still in use), Latin died >(but remained in use) when its
descendants differentiated sufficiently that >none of them was Latin,
which can't be pinpointed as precisely.
>
>phma
>--
>li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
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