from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
From: David Friedland <david at nohat.net>

>How would you feel if the linked images had a disclaimer saying
>something to this effect:

>The following images have been placed on a separate page because they
>MAY be consiered disturbing and/or offensive. It is Wikipedia policy not
>to take a position on whether the following images are in fact
>disturbing or offensive or not (See [[Wikipedia:Neutral Point of
>View]]). However, to avoid disturbing or offending those users to whom
>the images are disturbing or offensive, they have been placed on a
>separate page.

It would be nice to find a much shorter way of expressing this, but I think
this is a very accurate and nicely put expression of what I, personally, feel
needs to be expressed. And I think it's a good policy, while recognizing that
no disclaimer can change the fact that placing the link does amount to
catering to somebody's point of view.

I've been brooding about this issue of "making it a link caters to a point of
view." I've asked myself how I would feel if I went to an article about
someone I admire--say, Margaret Sanger--and found that the text had been
completely replaced with a link and a disclaimer, saying "It is Wikipedia
policy not to take an position on whether the life and opinions of Margaret
Sanger are, in fact, offensive. However, to avoid disturbing or offending
those users to whom this material is offensive, we have placed it on a
separate page." My conclusion is that I _would_ find this irritating but I
would find it tolerable. (Just barely).

Linking to photographs which ought to be seen _does_ affect the _balance_ of
point of view on the page, but does not amount to _censorship_ or
_suppression_ of any point of view.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> But it's not an NPOV issue if we don't say "Look at *this* image, but
> don't look at *this* image!" (nor would it be an NPOV issue if we said
> "Don't look at *any* image until you explicitly request it", but most
> people would find that option unacceptable for an encyclopedia).

Possibly you've already addressed this, so please be gentle with me as
I try to understand.

Apply the same logic above to any particular _text_ in Wikipedia.
Should we have a policy that no text should be deleted, because it is
inherently POV to say "Look at *this* text, but don't look at *this*
text"?

> > I don't agree with this.  This is not "no point of view" -- it is a
> > specific and highly undesirable (for most people) point of view that
> > says that we're going to shove images down the readers throat unless
> > they are so bad that 95% of the editors don't like them.
>
> Hm, that's an interesting claim. On the basis of which poll do you claim
> that most people don't want to adopt this proposed policy, with and/or
> without the above additional measures?

It's my general sense of this discussion, and a prediction based on
what I know of Wikipedians generally.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  In reading
all the comments so far, I think that most people seem to think that
in borderline cases, an acceptable compromise is to keep the image,
but behind a link.

> If, say, 70% of the people think that the criticisms of Mother Teresa are
> "too dominant", how can we argue with a straight face that the article is
> neutral? Simple. By looking at the neutral point of view policy, which is
> not about majorities, but about certain ways to express facts and opinions
> neutrally.

NPOV is not about majorities, but it *is* a social concept.  (I note
that my original exposition of NPOV, which I still regard as policy,
has been edited out of the Wikipedia: Neutral Point of View article.)

The Wiki software model, not majority vote, drives things.  If 1
person right this minute thinks that the criticisms of Mother Theresa
are "too dominant" in the article (which is surely possible as a valid
criticism of any article), then they can go and change it.  Of course,
their change is also going to have to satisfy you, which may be
difficult of course, but you aren't an irrational ideologue, and so
long as they aren't either, then our experience shows that positive
change is possible in virtually all cases.

NPOV is not the same as "true" or "objective"; it is a subset of what
is true and objective.  It is a social concept first and foremost,
even though the current presentation on Wikipedia has obscured that.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nathan Hamblen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: extension .mp4 not served with proper mime type

references:
<c7roph$2ou$1@sea.gmane.org> <c7t7ji$vk7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40A25138.1060306@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> It should be set now, please test...

Thanks a bunch, works great! Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl

Nathan


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Perter Jaros Wrote:
> If people simply don't want to know certain *facts*, in text or in
> image, I agree that reworking articles to this end is a breakdown
> of
> NPOV.  Allowing users to learn all the facts without an unwanted
> visceral reaction is just playing nice and making the Wikipedia
> more
> accessible.

Front Page?
[[Shocking Subject]]
See:
[[Shocking Subject (With Photos)]]
[[Shocking Subject (No Photos)]]

Suppressed Images?
[[Shocking Subject]] [Enable Photos]

Linked Images:

[[Shocking Subject]]
[[Socking Subject Image Gallery]]

Either would be OK with me.

I am not even looking at consistency. I think each article needs to
be treated on a case by case basis for text already, format-wise.
Likewise images can be dealt with on a case by case basis.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
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subject: [WikiEN-l] offensive pict policy suggestions

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Future :
>
> Additionnaly, I think we could go forward setting a
> couple of categories of potentially offensive
> pictures, such as
> * sex
> * violence
> * nudity
> * ...

Let's not forget images of:
* Elections
* Demonstrations
* Medical procedures
* Diseases
* Weaponry/bombmaking
* Cracking (in the computer cracking sense)
* Drug paraphenalia
* Bioagents
* Chemical Agents
* Nuclear and Atomic Manufacturing / Processing Equipment
* Religious symbols
* American Presidents (it seems to really chafe some people to look
at GW)
* WWII-era paraphenalia (France/Germany especially)

I'm not being facetious, unfortunately. I see and read a lot of
non-US media (mostly really) and it's amazing the number of things
people find offensive.

Oh, forgot about animals too:
* Spiders
* large cats hunting and feeding
* Any insect up close
* Snakes

* slaugtherhouses

I am sure each culture is able to add to the list.

I just looked on the W for a page about that, but only came up with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Profanity
Maybe there is a page for image classification based on
cultural/political sensitivities.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: Severed head (wasRe: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy)

body:
Good point, well made.
Mark R.

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Mark Gerdes wrote:
>
> >There is a very famous photo of a South Vietnamese
> >officer blowing off the head of a Viet Cong fighter
> on
> >a Saigon street.  This is quite offensive to view
> but
> >it is nonetheless one of the most important photos
> of
> >the last 35 years.  Would you want this famous
> picture
> >to be pushed out of an article on Vietnam due to
> its
> >terrible content?
> >
> >Similarly, there is a ghastly photo of a naked
> young
> >child running down a road with severe burns from
> >napalm.  A horrible picture, but one that should
> not
> >be pushed aside.
> >
> Both of those pictures had already crossed my mind
> as I was considering
> this subject.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] offensive images policy

body:
Image is offensive to me, should be shown inline : 3

Image is not offensive to me, should be shown inline : 4
	(with one person who probably did not understand the question well)

That makes : 7/44 (perhaps 6/44)

-------
Image is offensive to me, should be linked to or removed : 14

Image is not offensive to me, should be linked to or removed : 16

Haven't looked at image, should be linked to or removed : 7

That makes : 37/44 (perhaps 38/44), hence 84 %

-------

It is interesting to note that 7 people voluntarily did NOT want to look
at it. We can suppose that these people would *really* prefer to have
the choice to click on the picture, than being forced to see it.

I would like to note as well, that afaik, currently, when an image is
listed on votes for deletion, I think the % required for removal is 80%
(or something like this ?)

If some people find a picture offensive, and want it not to be displayed
online, they will have two possibilities
* campaigning for plain deletion (80%)
* campaigning for inline linking (???)

Obviously, ??? can not be a % over 80%. If a number of 95% is required
to label a picture "offensive", that means

*first that people will rather try to have it plain deleted (not exactly
the best way to achieve a consensus, and truely potential censorship)
*second that the decision will be taken in truth by 6% of people (the
tyranny of the minority)

This seems a very strange way to manage decisions than to have 6% of
people impose their opinion, and second to favor extrem solutions over a
more consensual one.

I would think that as soon as there is a question over a picture, we
roughly decide that more than 80% for removal lead the picture to be
removed.
If less than 80% but more than 50% have a problem with the picture being
displayed online, then the image is
* kept in the db
* not directly visible in the article
* visible through a link, either in a gallery or the image page itself
* that a warning message is displayed in the article (general mediawiki
message for example)
* that the link to the image is made "proeminent", so as not to be
missed by those interested (bold for example)

--------

Future :

Additionnaly, I think we could go forward setting a couple of categories
of potentially offensive pictures, such as
* sex
* violence
* nudity
* ...

When the category system is on, a picture labelled offensive (so,
between 50% and 80% of opinion) could belong to one of these categories.
People might choose to display one or several of these categories or not
in their prefs.

If the filter is OFF for a category : the image is displayed online
If the filter is ON for a category : the image is available through a link


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Elections

body:
In the upcoming elections, I intend to make no comment on which
specific candidates I prefer, nor do I intend to vote in the
elections.  The "constitutional monarch" should stay out of politics,
I think.

It would please me, though, if at least 1 of the seats could be filled
by someone who is not from the United States, because we are a global
project, and there are concerns from people from time to time that we
need to reflect that fact in governance.

By my count, 8 of 11 candidates total are not from the United States.
So it is entirely possible that both seats will be non-U.S., which is
wonderful, too.

--Jimbo


body:
--- Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:

> > * Bioagents
> > * Chemical Agents
> What's to see here? A vial or barrel of the stuff? Or the effects
> on humans?

> > * Cracking (in the computer cracking sense)
> We have images of this? Let me post a screenshot of nmap, eh? :)

> > * WWII-era paraphenalia (France/Germany especially)
> > * Drug paraphenalia
> Hmm. This bears some thought, but if you're looking up an article
> about the Nazi party, I don't know why you shouldn't expect a Nazi
> flag/insignia/thing.

Look up the issue with yahoo and the french govt 2000-2001

> > * Weaponry/bombmaking
> > * Nuclear and Atomic Manufacturing / Processing Equipment
> > * Religious symbols
> > * Demonstrations
> > * American Presidents (it seems to really chafe some people to
> look at GW)
> > * Elections
> These proceed from mildly facetious to utterly facetious. :)

In China, people are not allowed by state media to see images of a
free electoral process.

Does a picture of Adolf Hitler in uniform evoke an emotional resonse
to you? North Korea's Kim Jung Il evokes a similar response to
Japanese (I know, my wife is Japanese, and she HATES his guts. She
gets all emotional when she sees his photo)
Likewise, Bush is seen by people around the world as a reprehensible
evil man, and seeing his photo makes them angry (an emotional
response if ever there was one)

> There's a difference between an image of a thing someone finds
> offensive and an image which someone finds offensive.

And the difference is?

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] My 5c worth

body:
This all reminds me of Aria Giovanni and THAT link.

My own position: it seems OK to me to have 'soft'
photos such as the terrorists standing behind Mr Berg,
but no 'hard' ones showing him beheading Berg. That
is simply too graphic and is even playing into the
terrorists hands (you're circulating the horror that
they want to have circulated).

As for any photo that can be reasonably be regarded
as offensive or pornographic, a link if really
necessary, otherwise not at all.

Remember that juveniles and persons from conservative
environments (eg Islamic countries with strict codes about nudity) are likely to consult this wikipedia.
It should be kept suitable for such persons through
some use of common sense.

"Erik Moeller wrote:
> Exactly. If you take a look at Talk:Clitoris/Image discussion, you will
> see that all options were offered, and the option of *showing the photo
> inline* (instead of just a link) got the most votes of all.

This shows me that you are right that majority vote is not the right
way to determine the correct result.  Majority vote is very frequently
not helpful in finding or determining NPOV.

(Some advanced voting algorithms probably do a much better job of
helping to find or determine a consensus, of course.)

> So your belief that people will readily accept hiding "offensive"
> images behind links is clearly wrong; many people (including myself)
> perceive this as an endorsement of a pro-censorship POV and are
> therefore against it. Even if these people were in the minority,
> there would hardly be any consensus on the matter.

I doubt very much that in most cases, the people who would like to
show the photo inline are so unreasonable as to absolutely insist that
only their own viewpoint is the correct one, and that no compromise is
possible.

> So it appears that you believe that there will be consensus in cases
> where there clearly won't; that's fine, as long as we agree that
> consensus is a requirement for hiding an image behind a link.

Well, of course I can agree to that, since consensus is the
requirement for everything that we do.  "Showing the image" can hold
no privileged position, "hiding the image behind a link" can hold no
privileged position, "delete the image" can hold no privileged
position.

I think I see where we disagree now.  Your position is that we should
show the image in all cases unless 95% of the people think it should
not be shown, and that this should be a policy which overrides
consensus and compromise.  That's a perfectly acceptable position to
hold, but will you agree that it would amount to abandoning NPOV for
pictures and substituting instead a policy that most matches your own
(and my own, I should add!) views about what should be shown?

With text, I feel that any form of voting is almost always inferior to
creatively solving the problem with repeated revision of the text.

If there are cases where voting is absolutely necessary, and if I'm
forced to say exactly what it means to have NPOV consensus, the answer
surely can't be "NPOV is my own preferred position unless 95% of the
people disagree with me."

Instead, the exact meaning of consensus in a voting situation has to
be something like Condorcet, Approval voting, Instant Runoff or the
like.

I think if we re-ran the vote on clitoris, with the same voters
participating, but did it as a Condorcet, then "linking to the image"
would be the clear winner by a longshot.  Do you disagree?  Or, if you
do disagree, then let me suppose that I'm wrong, and ask another
question: do you agree with me that going with the Condorcet winner
would be the best available option?

--Jimbo"

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
On Thu, 13 May 2004 07:02:04 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> If someone says "Gee, I'd like to be able to read an article about the
> Nick Berg situation without having to look at the actual picture
> unless I choose to do so" then responding with: "Fine, you may turn
> off every single image in Wikipedia" doesn't sound helpful to me.  I
> doubt if many of the people who have a preference against looking at
> severed heads are going to be satisfied with that answer.

The man talks sense once again. Wikipedia is great in that I can view
a page about any number of shock sites without seeing the actual
image.

I still have yet to discover any *practical* reasons why the image
must remain in the article. It's fairly clear, in this case at least,
that many, many people find it offensive, and this is a good practical
reason to link instead of showing the image. On the other hand, we see
several objections to linking along the lines of "it could be
construed as censorship" or "it could be construed as POV" et cetera.
No one even argued that it would be excessively inconvenient or
anything like that...

I view images as a convenience to the reader. When they are offensive
to a significant number of readers, they should not be immediately
displayed. Even if that number isn't a majority, if (say) even a third
of the population is disturbed by the mere sight of the image- why
would we NOT want to link instead of embed?

Then there's the matter of "offensive". I mean this more in the
gut-reaction sense of "oh my god that is HORRIBLE!" or "eww, gross,
why are they showing that?"- perhaps "disturbing" or "disgusting"
would be more accurate. I would imagine that many people would have
philisophical objections to stuff portrayed in images (think Bush,
Gore, Image:Angelab.jpg, other related issues... do we have any
pictures of flag burnings, perhaps?) I think it would be rather
obvious that it's the "disgusting" and objectionable sort of images
which we would attempt to obscure rather than the ones which are
philisophically/politically/etc disagreeable.

Wisdom in a private IRC conversation:
<CimonAvaro> I think the only thing to do is to cool things down, and
later, when the dust has settled, get serious about what our
_fundamental_ policy with images should be, beyond copyright concerns.
We (including you), can't see this clearly while staring at Bergs
head.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Delirium-
> Note that the Nick Berg decapitation image now only has 81% support for
> not putting it inline, so by not having it inline we are, by your
> argument, catering to the non-neutral majority POV that images of
> decapitated heads should not be displayed.

There is certainly no consensus for removing it on grounds of
offensiveness alone; you yourself voted against that option.
Since you find the image of the decapitated head so important, how do you
feel about the compromise I have proposed on the talk page?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Language file updates

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Ray Kiddy wrote:
>
>> Is the intention that you are using ISO-639? or ISO-629/2? Or both? Or
>> ISO-639 and ISO-629/2 and whatever we feel like adding?
>
>
> RFC 3066, like the rest of the net, with a few rare exceptions such as als.
>
>> As I am looking at the langs table in the "experimental schema", I am
>> curious if there is a reason you did not go ahead and put a column in
>> for the locale, as defined in ISO 3166. The point is almost too
>> obvious to make. Does American English equal British English? There
>> may be no need for this right now. However, one can easily imagine
>> that people might want to localize articles, as well as translate
>> them. At that point, the locale would become significant.
>
>
> No idea what schema you're talking about.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

He's referring to Timwi's schema proposal:

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

This was a schema that Timwi posted to Meta shortly after Brion posted
his to wikitech-l and meta. Timwi didn't bother to tell anyone about it,
and it was quickly forgotten.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: timelines on test

body:
Hunter Peress wrote:
> After looking at the implemention on test.wp.org , I am not pleased with how technical the code
> is, I strongly feel that its just a toy-idea.
>
> I told gwicke on irc that I believe that sortable tables should come before timelines. Here is
> why:
>
> First, 1.3 introduces a parser (Tim, (i assume),  its a standard LALR algorithm that takes in a
> BNF grammar?  (dont know where in the code it is exactly, both of these answers would help).
>
> Assuming its a normal parser, then wiki tables will have to run through it no?

No, nothing like that. It's still essentially the same old parser. I
moved it from OutputPage.php to Parser.php back in 1.2. It's based on
multiple passes of preg_replace() for simple syntax, and preg_split()
followed by simple processing of the split bits for more complex syntax.
In 1.3, JeLuF introduced a tokenizer to handle internal links and
apostrophe-based formatting. It runs through the tokens from start to
finish in a single pass, maintaining modes, but it only handles a small
portion of the wiki syntax. The code to split the tokens involves
hard-coded regular expressions.

My brace-handling code is based on preg_replace_callback() instead of
preg_split(), so it's rather inconsistent with the rest of the parser.
I'd like to see it incorporated into the tokenizer section eventually.
Presumably we could rewrite the entire parser properly in one go, but
no-one has volunteered as of yet, and it's not clear what would happen
to performance.

> With this, just a little work is needed to make the tables into some type of data object that can
> be manipulated.
>
> A simple application of this object would be making tables sortable on columns.

Alas no. The code for the wiki table markup is a pass where the text is
split into an array of lines. It then loops through the lines, checking
the first two characters and concatenating an appropriate segment to the
  accumulated string.

> A more advanced application would be to take this object representing the tables and feed it to
> the timeline program (done in perl/plotticus). (I actually feel that it should be done in svg....
> like the non-ganglia stats).

If we had an object to store tables, then sorting and manipulation of
this kind would indeed be possible.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On Thu, 13 May 2004 08:08:51 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote (order changed at replier's whims):

> * Medical procedures
> * slaughterhouses
Sure. Blood gore internal organs ick yuck.

> * Diseases
Depending on the effects? I suppose, yeah, possibly.

> * Bioagents
> * Chemical Agents
What's to see here? A vial or barrel of the stuff? Or the effects on humans?

> * Cracking (in the computer cracking sense)
We have images of this? Let me post a screenshot of nmap, eh? :)

> * WWII-era paraphenalia (France/Germany especially)
> * Drug paraphenalia
Hmm. This bears some thought, but if you're looking up an article
about the Nazi party, I don't know why you shouldn't expect a Nazi
flag/insignia/thing.

> * Weaponry/bombmaking
> * Nuclear and Atomic Manufacturing / Processing Equipment
> * Religious symbols
> * Demonstrations
> * American Presidents (it seems to really chafe some people to look at GW)
> * Elections
These proceed from mildly facetious to utterly facetious. :)

> I'm not being facetious, unfortunately. I see and read a lot of
> non-US media (mostly really) and it's amazing the number of things
> people find offensive.

There's a difference between an image of a thing someone finds
offensive and an image which someone finds offensive. I'm offended
by... hmm, how about [[Kim Il Sung]]? I am not offended by his image,
particularly in a place such as an article about the guy. On the other
hand, I may be in for shock and surprise if I happen onto an article
about, say, [[Ebola]] and see the results of the disease.


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
According to http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1787
We may should install a debian Sarge on. If you want to do it jimmy, you can find iso image on ftp://ftp.lami.univ-evry.fr/debian-unofficial/sarge/ the first cd should be enought.

Did I say I love debian and his apt-get utility :) I use it at home for a year (sarge) and it works fine :)
Very stable
And with this, we dont have to care about security pbs, apt-get does the job :)

Shaihulud


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
I wrote:
> Since you find the image of the decapitated head

Damnit. And I wanted to avoid saying "decapitated head". Apologies to all
concerned.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>An option to hide all images is still useful, but that has nothing to do
>with offensiveness.  It would be welcome by people with slow internet
>connections as we keep getting away from plain vanilla text articles.

Perhaps there is a software solution. We could add a field to the
"image" table called "img_rating," which could be used to indicate
potentially offensive characteristics of the image from a fixed list
of possibilities, e.g., "sex," "violence," "profanity,"
"scatological." The same fixed list could be added to user options,
so that people could choose themselves which types of images they
prefer not to see.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>
> We discussed something like this on irc yesterday, an idea is to use css
> classes to mark certain elements. A simple .violence { display: none }
> would be enough to hide violent things for example. Works already in 1.3
> if you add that class to your user stylesheet.
> Could be used for things like 'spoiler', 'nudism' etc as well, multiple
> classes are possible like this:
Some
> content
. A small javascript function could even offer to un-hide
> things with one click if desired.
>
> I intend to move as many prefs as possible to generated css/js for 1.4
> to improve performance, this is kind of a schoolbook example where this
> is particulary easy.
>
> Gabriel Wicke

If such spoiler or nudism is meant to be displayed inline within a
paragraph, then the
 tag will force it into a separate paragraph.
Of course, if there were support for  tags, then we could use those...

- David


subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
Camille Constans wrote:
> I'm afraid that the 4 new 1U boxes will be used quickly.... As our 5
> web servers are completely overloaded. And one squid, browne, is
> often at a load 20-30.  Just an idea, for the web servers, as we use
> only cpu on this boxes, maybe we could buy some inexpensive
> dual-athlon instead of mono-P4.

Do others share this assessment?  If so, we need to increase the
visibility of our fund raising efforts, because we've now spent most
of our original campaign's funds.  Some money trickles in all the
time, but it's been de-emphasized significantly.

I'd strongly prefer that we not wait for an emergency, and I hope that
we can have an "annual campaign" again at the end of the year to raise
a large block of money for 2005.

The total price of the new db server plus 4x1u mono-P4 machines was
just over $20,000.

I bought more than recommended this time around because I am going to
be out of town for 5 weeks.  I do have someone here (Michael) who can
setup more boxes while I'm gone, if absolutely needed, but obviously
it'll be harder that way.  If we need more 1u machines, dual athlons
or whatever, we should make that move now probably.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 01:09 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I presume calling SquidUpdate::purge after the save (in EditPage) with the
> section viewing URL as parameter (multiple ones if the whole page is
> edited) would solve this problem? That doesn't sound very hard.

How many threshold settings are there and how many headlines on a page?
Even if you restricted the options to 'on' and 'off', it would be > 100
purge requests to each of the squids for a simple edit, plus it would
already halve the cache hit ratio.

Separate pages on the other hand will only purge the (shorter) page
that's actually edited and the page they're linked to if they are
deleted/added.
A long overview page can still use the individual cached page content,
either with a server-side version with <esi:include> tags or using
javascript, using the same cached page content as in the single-page
view. Inform yourself at http://www.esi.org/ if there's information
missing.

The category feature needs some work, maybe also a separate link table
to improve efficiency- i'm looking forward to see your contributions
(and discuss them if you want to save time).

Cheers

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] timelines on test

body:
On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 16:57 -0700, Hunter Peress wrote:
> After looking at the implemention on test.wp.org , I am not pleased with how technical the code
> is, I strongly feel that its just a toy-idea.
>
> I told gwicke on irc that I believe that sortable tables should come before timelines. Here is
> why:
>
> First, 1.3 introduces a parser (Tim, (i assume),  its a standard LALR algorithm that takes in a
> BNF grammar?  (dont know where in the code it is exactly, both of these answers would help).
>
> Assuming its a normal parser, then wiki tables will have to run through it no?
>
> With this, just a little work is needed to make the tables into some type of data object that can
> be manipulated.
>
> A simple application of this object would be making tables sortable on columns.

There are javascripts that do this, see
http://plone.org/plone_javascripts.js, scroll down to 'table sorter
script'. You can experiment with it in your user javascript on test.

Cheers

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1U's ship tomorrow

body:
Silicon Mechanics tells me that the 1U servers will ship tomorrow --
the 2U (new database machine) will take a bit longer, they are waiting
on an order of 2U cases.

I think it takes about 5 days for them to ship, so late next week
should be the install date.

--Jimbo


body:
<snipped>
Yeah, I know about the French government and Yahoo! . . . I will
refrain from impersonal attacks on the French and their government in
this space. =/

> > There's a difference between an image of a thing someone finds
> > offensive and an image which someone finds offensive.
>
> And the difference is?

Consider it this way. (The following is a guideline, and does not
apply in all circumstances): If you were to show an image of, say, a
person, to someone who knows nothing about the subject, would they be
offended? Or to some random kid: to them, Hitler is just a guy with a
moustache (who is yelling something and sticking out his arm with our
picture...) The image of the guy is not offensive. It's the guy
himself who offends.

Consider an image of a flag being burned. It's just a piece of fabric
on fire (though there's probably some sort of lovely right-wing local
yokel gun nut holding it as well :). The image itself is not
offensive, it is what the image displays which may be offensive. (It
would be suitable for an article on flag burning, if not an article on
flags or the particular country whose flag is being burned).

Consider this guy who has been beheaded. There's easily something
disturbing about seeing the guy's head off, no? The guy himself is
pretty inoffensive, I think most would say. There is additionally
offense at the sociopolitical+etc aspects as well, however.

It's more a matter of when the *display* of the image is offensive
rather than what the image itself shows. This would include grossing
people out with images of severed heads, the effects of nasty
diseases, et cetera, as well as (possibly) the display of images such
as that of the penis and clitoris, for possible reasons related to
modesty. However, with an article such as Hitler/Kim Jong Il/the KKK,
it's reasonable to have pictures of the actual people there. And since
I'm dragging in the KKK, I'd say that it would be reasonable to have
inline pictures of them in hoods, burning crosses... but we shouldn't
have *inline* pictures of any victims all bloody or mangled or
anything like that.

General tip: if it involves lots of blood and/or gore, people are
liable to be disturbed by the picture itself, not the person who it is
of.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ocaml parser (was Re: timelines on test)

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 11:16:47AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>Presumably we could rewrite the entire parser properly in one go, but
>>no-one has volunteered as of yet, and it's not clear what would happen
>>to performance.
>
>
> There's one in Ocaml I posted to wikitech-l some time ago.
> It wasn't complete, but nothing conceptualy difficult was left (HTML attributes
> validation and a few tweaks here and there). The problem is of course integrating
> such thing with PHP codebase.
>
> Performance was excellent.

I meant rewrite it in PHP. Lots of people have coded parsers in other
languages, which aren't integrated with the existing PHP functionality:
skins, title canonicalisation, link cache, user rendering preferences,
etc. Not to mention more recent features such as template substitution
and recursive parsing, TOC and section editing, wiki tables and
hieroglyphics. Work on the PHP parser is continuous.

Theoretically we could write a PHP module to provide Ocaml integration.
We would need some method for calling PHP from Ocaml also. Then the
Ocaml parser could be dropped in. Perhaps it could then be used by
MediaWiki users who want higher speed but less features.

Using Ocaml as the primary parser would mean more complex installation
-- 5 packages to install instead of 4. Many web hosting companies
provide PHP, MySQL and Apache but not Ocaml, so those users would be
unable to install that version of MediaWiki. Also, most developers would
have to learn the language.

In light of the costs, I'd have to see some very good reasons to switch
to an Ocaml/PHP hybrid rather than continuing to work purely in PHP. The
current PHP parser may be ugly, but it does work.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Camille Constans wrote:
>>I'm afraid that the 4 new 1U boxes will be used quickly.... As our 5
>>web servers are completely overloaded. And one squid, browne, is
>>often at a load 20-30.  Just an idea, for the web servers, as we use
>>only cpu on this boxes, maybe we could buy some inexpensive
>>dual-athlon instead of mono-P4.
>
>
> Do others share this assessment?

There's more efficiency to be gained in the software; we're still not
saving rendered html and diffs and such in many places where we
could/should.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human rights abuses in Iraq

body:
>People who don't have a firm handle on mathematics (specifically,
probability and statistics) tend to generalize from what they see.

Well, I have a doctorate in mathematics; and I generalise from what I see.
I don't accept any 'equation', though, between human rights abuses in Iraq
under Saddam, and post-Saddam.  I wonder why Ed is bringing this up.

Charles


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> An option to hide all images is still useful, but that has nothing to do
>> with offensiveness.  It would be welcome by people with slow internet
>> connections as we keep getting away from plain vanilla text articles.
>
> Perhaps there is a software solution. We could add a field to the
> "image" table called "img_rating," which could be used to indicate
> potentially offensive characteristics of the image from a fixed list
> of possibilities, e.g., "sex," "violence," "profanity,"
> "scatological." The same fixed list could be added to user options, so
> that people could choose themselves which types of images they prefer
> not to see.

This came up in one of our periodic debates about categories.  There's
no reason why categories can't apply to images.  The items in your lists
could all be treated as such categories.  In conjunction with
Wikipedia's own internal search function (Does anyone remember when that
was operational) a user could set a filter consistent with his own
beliefs.  There was at least one voice then that was complaining that
this would open the door to censorship.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
Gabriel-
> How many threshold settings are there and how many headlines on a page?

The threshold setting only exists for logged in users.

> Even if you restricted the options to 'on' and 'off', it would be > 100
> purge requests

How is sending a hundred URLs - perhaps 5000 bytes - to the Squid on page
saves a problem?

> Separate pages on the other hand will only purge the (shorter) page
> that's actually edited and the page they're linked to if they are
> deleted/added.

Separate pages are not a good solution for this particular problem, see my
responses to Brion.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 13:20 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Gabriel-
> > How many threshold settings are there and how many headlines on a page?
>
> The threshold setting only exists for logged in users.

So what do you think all this caching-for-logged-in-users-using-esi
stuff is about?

Cheers

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Severed head (wasRe: Offensive photos policy)

body:
As for me, I have the memory of an asian girl child, engulfed in stormy
and muddy water after a flood, having a hand up for help, holding
herself to a branch or something similar with the other hand, not to go
under the water.
The picture of this girl went all over the world. I hope the journalist
who got the money for the picture of this dying girl, made good use of it.

Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
>
> Mark Gerdes wrote:
>
>> There is a very famous photo of a South Vietnamese
>> officer blowing off the head of a Viet Cong fighter on
>> a Saigon street.  This is quite offensive to view but
>> it is nonetheless one of the most important photos of
>> the last 35 years.  Would you want this famous picture
>> to be pushed out of an article on Vietnam due to its
>> terrible content?
>> Similarly, there is a ghastly photo of a naked young
>> child running down a road with severe burns from
>> napalm.  A horrible picture, but one that should not
>> be pushed aside.
>>
> Both of those pictures had already crossed my mind as I was considering
> this subject.
>
> Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: UTF-8 conversion was  Multilingual interface

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:
>
>> We could convert all tables except old, the biggest and the longest.
>> And running a script which convert old later. Old will be in broken
>> iso-8859 for a few day. I wrote a small php script to convert old from
>> iso-8859-1 to utf-8.
>
> That would be really problematic,

I don't think it would.

> it would interfere with user
> contributions lists and history,

Other than having slightly broken edit summaries for a few days, I'm not
sure what problems you are referring to?

> and you'll have to be very careful to
> avoid double conversions.

That won't be a problem. It is trivial to check if something is already
in UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1. Checking for this has the added advantage of
reducing database load by not converting things that are plain ASCII
(and thus don't require conversion) anyway.

> diffs, etc, could cause data corruption
> on reversions (auto and manual),

I don't see that as a problem either. I picture the script would take
one page at a time and convert its entire history. Once it's finished
with it, it can also check cur to see if someone just by pure
coincidence happened to revert something at that particular moment,
which is highly unlikely anyway.

> I'd recommend strongly against it.

What alternative do you recommend? Prolonged downtime?

Timwi


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
Pedro Fortuny wrote:

>Hope we agree in some little minimalistic but certain human rights before
>the project collapses,
>
>
I guess I don't see how we can permit individuals to control what we
display.  What if the family of the shot fighter in the famous Vietnam
war photo alluded to earlier in this discussion objected to the public
display of this image of his killing?  Should we remove it out of
respect for human dignity, despite its historical importance?  I would
argue we shouldn't.  The same goes for the Vietnamese girl covered with
napalm---it should stay, even if her family objected.

Note that in this case the family hasn't actually objected.  They
haven't asked people not to disseminate the video or reprint stills from
it, or really said anything at all that would indicate they had a
problem with the video itself.  Perhaps they do, but they haven't
indicated so.  Not that I'd expect them to ask us at Wikipedia anything,
but if they objected in general, they may have asked the major media
organizations not to disseminate the footage or photographs from it, and
as far as I can tell they haven't done so.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Section collapsing taken out

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I've just had a long talk with Gabriel and we finally agreed that section
>folding/collapsing does not interact well enough and by design cannot
>interact well enough with caching to be viable. Instead we have agreed to
>work toward an alternative solution based on the category system, where
>you would add
>
>[[Category:Deletion debate]]
>
>to a talk page, and you could view that category to get a list of all
>deletion debates (already possible) *and* an expanded view of all these
>pages, with edit links to each of them (not yet possible). Here we could
>use ESI includes for the individual component pages which would be
>cacheable.
>
>Another feature we discussed is the moving of individual sections to a
>different page from the section editing screen.
>
>I'll think about other options to solve this problem. The caching issues
>here are trickier than I'd seen, as sending lots of purges for all
>sections appears to be too problematic in terms of performance. Too bad
>about the wasted effort, but sometimes you just have to ditch it and start
>over.
>
Too bad, but your effort is still appreciated.  I'm sure we could have
used it at Wikisource when whole books have been entered, and an
automatic division into chapters would have been helpful.  It might
still have done nothing for our bigges file, "Pi to 1,250,000 places".

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Page collapsing/expanding

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I've also improved section
> editing/viewing behavior to load subsections within a section instead of
> just the mother section.

Where was this discussed/voted on/announced/etc.? I don't want this. I
don't see how that is an "improvement". It only makes editing the first
part of a section with loads of sub-sections more difficult.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Votes for deletion (was: Page collapsing/expanding)

body:
I don't understand what's so hard about making VfD usable.

It is clear that some people want a short page with a list of links,
which all go to Talk pages where the deletion is discussed, while other
people want everything on one huge page.

So why not provide both of these pages?

The huge page can easily be created/administered by making use of the
next version's ability to transclude pages from any namespace.

So, [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] would look like this:

* [[Page name]] ([[Talk:Page name/delete|talk]])
* [[Asdfsdfsdf]] ([[Talk:Asdfsdfsdf/delete|talk]])
* [[Bush is gay]] ([[Talk:Bush is gay/delete|talk]])
* [[User:Idiot/Wikisex]] ([[User talk:Idiot/Wikisex/delete|talk]])

and [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (full)]] would look like this:

== [[Page name]] ==
{{Talk:Page name/delete}}
== [[Asdfsdfsdf]] ==
{{Talk:Asdfsdfsdf/delete}}
== [[Bush is gay]] ==
{{Talk:Bush is gay/delete}}
== [[User:Idiot/Wikisex]] ==
{{User talk:Idiot/Wikisex/delete}}

Compared to the problems we have with our current design, the problem of
keeping the two versions in sync seems marginal, and if someone cares
enough, they can write a feature to automate it anyway.

Timwi


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stringtime - sadly. a Wikipedian sees it differently

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>I'd like to draw attention to the behaviour of [[User:Toby Bartels]], in
>using [[Talk:Lubos Motl]] to pursue an agenda I have no sympathy with.
>
>Lubos Motl as [[User:Lumidek]] has been posting highly competent string
>theory articles; he is a high-flying academic in the field.  Toby obviously
>has some beefs to do with off-WP matters that I really think are quite
>irrelevant.  I have been pursuing private email with Lubos and Toby, in an
>attempt to make Lubos the Wikipedian feel less unwelcome, in the context
>that Toby the long-established Wikipedian has written some fairly nasty
>stuff about him (in ignorance, it is true, but it is hardly excusable
>behaviour anyway).
>
Any long-time participant in Usenet discussion will have developed
a pretty thick skin; I'll hazard a guess that all this bothers you
more than it does Lubos himself. There are plenty of articles that
discuss Usenet goings-on and some of the people that have become
(in)famous for their activities; but there's not much of an
established standard for how to describe these neutrally, and looks
like Toby made an imperfect attempt in good faith. Including a mention
of Usenet flamewars seems less relevant than our many bios of historical
scientists that quote some of the nasty things they said about each
other!

With each passing month, there are going to be more and more people
who discover that they have bios in WP, with varying degrees of
accuracy and impartiality. Might be worth pinging them proactively,
give them an opportunity to address problems that we might be
propagating from poor sources (still insisting on verifiability and
neutrality of course).

Stan


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/languages Language.php,
	1.210, 1.211

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> How about not removing my code, which I spent 6 hours on, without
> consensus?

Where has consensus been reached to introduce this feature in the first
place?

(Please don't misinterpret this as an indication that I wouldn't like or
want your section collapsing feature.)

Timwi


body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 12:21 +0000, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Log Message:
> restore section folding

Is this the replacement for a discussion?

Gabriel Wicke


body:
Gabriel-
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 12:21 +0000, Erik Moeller wrote:

>> Log Message:
>> restore section folding

> Is this the replacement for a discussion?

How about not removing my code, which I spent 6 hours on, without
consensus? Your impertinence is, once again, incredible.  I have
constantly offered to work with you in resolving any and all caching
issues that this functionality may cause. You can work with me, or you can
engage in an edit war on CVS, with open end and possibly one of us leaving
the project in disgust. Which one do you prefer?

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for TeX math rendering.

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:27:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> >>I have just taken a look at some Wikimedia pages, and it struck me as
>>odd that inline math was rendered without attention to the baseline.
>
> HTML side is the difficult one, not the TeX side.
> How to do that in HTML ?

Well, if we can get the height in pixels of the image (easy) _and_ the
Y-pixel position in the image of the baseline (????) it might be
possible to use relative positioning on the <img> to bump it down a few
pixels to match with the surrounding text baseline, something like:

   <img src="/math/123465.png" style="position:relative; top:4px" />

I haven't tested this theory, and that's dependent on getting the
information out of the renderer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Rich Holton wrote:

> If we approach it the other way, and do not mask the
> images, the penalty for those who are offended is that
> certain articles will become *unavailable* to them,
> unless they view what they find offensive.

This makes me long back to good old Opera 6, where you could just press
"G" and all images disappear and you can read the text without any
irritating blinking ads, or offensive pornography.

Why can't every browser simply have such a useful feature? :)

Inspired by that, I might suggest the following two features. We could
have (1) a "?disableimages=1" option that would display an article with
all the images removed, and (2) a wiki syntax to link to it. Then, when
people voice objection to the graphical content of a page, we could add
{{msg:offensiveimages}} at the top, which would add something like

     :'''''Notice:''' Some people have voiced objection to the images
     on this page. [[[disableimages]|View this page without images]]''

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> I'll point out that "Votes for deletion" was originally a software
> feature. From any page you could go to the 'Vote for this page'
> special page, and add a comment which would be inserted in the lists
> on 'Votes for deletion', 'Votes for rewrite', 'Votes for NPOVing', and
> a couple others.
>
> It was a little rough around the edges, but Lee didn't include the
> feature at all for phase 3 and the vote pages became utterly
> unmanageable manually. Votes for deletion survived into the present
> monstrosity, while the others eventually died of neglect.

One of the other options allowed voting for a well written article.  It
provided the opportunity to say something good about an article.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>For example, I could imagine that a compromise could be reached with the 8
>users who insist on showing the Nick Berg photo inline to wait with any
>such move for 1 year, to let the issue cool down, and to only include the
>photo when user-side filtering technology is in place.
>
>
I'd be willing to go along with that, though I think several other
images, such as the dead body on [[Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal]] and
the spread-open labia on [[clitoris]] should be treated similarly.
Possibly also the dead [[John F. Kennedy]], although I don't personally
have much of a problem with that one.

-Mark


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I've just had a long talk with Gabriel and we finally agreed that section
>folding/collapsing does not interact well enough and by design cannot
>interact well enough with caching to be viable. Instead we have agreed to
>work toward an alternative solution based on the category system, where
>you would add
>
>[[Category:Deletion debate]]
>
>to a talk page, and you could view that category to get a list of all
>deletion debates (already possible) *and* an expanded view of all these
>pages, with edit links to each of them (not yet possible). Here we could
>use ESI includes for the individual component pages which would be
>cacheable.
>
>
>
This is an excellent idea! Categories are the way to go: this looks
clean and scalable. We could add in paging of the expanded view (prev
10, next 10 type thing) as part of this. A solution to this should also
provide a solution to the other similar problems like copyvio
discussions, cleanup, etc. etc.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

references:
<98nipCDhpVB@erik_moeller> <40A3F6AB.1000103@hackish.org>
	<40A406CA.4030001@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> How about the erection photo inline on [[penis]]?

That one doesn't bother me personally, as I see penises as approximately
equivalent to breasts in terms of offensiveness---they're things that
are generally kept out of public view, and considered "private", but are
easily seen on an unclothed person even if you're standing 30 feet
away.  Anyone who's been to a nude beach or seen National Geographic
documentaries (or really seen at least one male and one female unclothed
in any context) has seen both penises and breasts.  A visitor to a nude
beach who put him or herself in a position to view clitorises, on the
other hand, would probably be a bit unusual!

But, regardless of my views, if lots of people find penises much more
offensive than breasts, I'd be fine with showing breasts inline and
hiding penises.

-Mark


body:
I've just had a long talk with Gabriel and we finally agreed that section
folding/collapsing does not interact well enough and by design cannot
interact well enough with caching to be viable. Instead we have agreed to
work toward an alternative solution based on the category system, where
you would add

[[Category:Deletion debate]]

to a talk page, and you could view that category to get a list of all
deletion debates (already possible) *and* an expanded view of all these
pages, with edit links to each of them (not yet possible). Here we could
use ESI includes for the individual component pages which would be
cacheable.

Another feature we discussed is the moving of individual sections to a
different page from the section editing screen.

I'll think about other options to solve this problem. The caching issues
here are trickier than I'd seen, as sending lots of purges for all
sections appears to be too problematic in terms of performance. Too bad
about the wasted effort, but sometimes you just have to ditch it and start
over.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Image hiding mock-up

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I've created a mock-up of an image hiding feature which should solve the
> problem of pictures which are offensive to some, but not to others:
> http://scireview.de/wikipedia/ihide/

It seems to work only with JavaScript. Personally I think we should have
a ?disableimages=1 option instead which is more likely to work everywhere.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Jimmy-

> That's the way I would vote, and quite possibly is the way you would
> vote as well.

Yes, but only because the voting system would force me to rank my choices
like that, even if I find only one of them to be in compliance with our
policy.

>> It's not about whose viewpoint is correct. It's about not implicitly and
>> selectively endorsing the view that the image is offensive.

> It's also about not implicitly and selectively endorsing the view that
> the image is *not* offensive.

True. I have already addressed this argument. We don't do that because we
aren't selective.

> We can't as a matter of NPOV policy
> automatically privilege either position.

There are no NPOV issues at all as long as we don't take a position. There
are issues of Wikiquette, WikiLove etc., I agree with you on that point.
But it's not an NPOV issue if we don't say "Look at *this* image, but
don't look at *this* image!" (nor would it be an NPOV issue if we said
"Don't look at *any* image until you explicitly request it", but most
people would find that option unacceptable for an encyclopedia).

In order to address the issue of expressing *respect* for the other point
of view (which is a part of Wikiquette), I have no problem with
- a disclaimer at the beginning of the page for pages that contain images
widely considered offensive
- a "hide all images link" next to it.
- moving images widely considered offensive to a point where they aren't
immediately visible, so that the reader has a fair opportunity to hide
them
- allowing a user preference to hide such images by default when viewing a
page
- until these features are all in place, setting the threshold lower (70-
80%) to avoid offense

I'd say I'm willing to make quite a few concessions here, and I agree that
such concessions are required by policy. However, it is not the NPOV
policy, it is Wikiquette. This is also a very important policy for helping
people to work together, and it would be foolish and wrong to point to
neutrality as a justification for not searching compromises. However, it
would also be foolish to treat NPOV as something it isn't, which could
very well lead us down a road where we compromise on matters which we
shouldn't compromise on (namely the very neutrality of our encyclopedia).

> I don't agree with this.  This is not "no point of view" -- it is a
> specific and highly undesirable (for most people) point of view that
> says that we're going to shove images down the readers throat unless
> they are so bad that 95% of the editors don't like them.

Hm, that's an interesting claim. On the basis of which poll do you claim
that most people don't want to adopt this proposed policy, with and/or
without the above additional measures?

Yes, it *is* a point of view to say that we show all images by default,
however, it is not a POV pertaining to any individual article, just like
any other policy is itself a point of view about how to build an
encyclopedia, including the NPOV policy itself. The key point is that it
is not in violation of said NPOV policy, which does not say "We must hold
no opinions about how to build an encyclopedia" (which would be
nonsensical) but which does say that articles must not endorse specific
opinions. By going with whatever the majority prefers, we would do that.
By showing all images by default we don't.

> The articles are supposed to reflect consensus and compromise among
> editors with many different perspectives.  If there's a case where,
> say, 70% of the people think that an image should not be shown, then
> how can we argue with a straight face that the article is neutral and
> satisfactory to both opponents and advocates?

If, say, 70% of the people think that the criticisms of Mother Teresa are
"too dominant", how can we argue with a straight face that the article is
neutral? Simple. By looking at the neutral point of view policy, which is
not about majorities, but about certain ways to express facts and opinions
neutrally. Now, I agree with you entirely on the need to search
compromise, and that compromise may include temporary transgressions
against the spirit and letter of the actual NPOV policy. But to say that
an article must make the majority happy to be neutral is a nonsensical
claim. In fact, when we *have* to choose between being nice and being
neutral, being neutral should always come out on top.

> But what of the case where 70% think it should not be shown, 30% think
> that it should be shown?  What of the case where if we did a Condorcet
> vote, "show it behind a link" would be the clear winner?

You are searching compromise in the wrong department. You want to make it
mandatory to compromise on our neutrality, while I seek ways to preserve
neutrality while still making all sides of the dispute happy. Your
solution is the easy way out and a good way to "keep the peace", but it is
not a good way to find true neutrality. Instead, please help me in
implementing and advocating solutions which make available additional
*choices* to end users, so that we don't have to simply go with whatever
the majority currently prefers.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Jimmy-

> If someone says "Gee, I'd like to be able to read an article about the
> Nick Berg situation without having to look at the actual picture
> unless I choose to do so" then responding with: "Fine, you may turn
> off every single image in Wikipedia"

??? That's not the proposal. I think you misunderstood what has been
discussed. See
http://scireview.de/wikipedia/ihide/ (tested in Mozilla).

You would have a link to dynamically hide images *on that particular
page*. To prevent people from viewing the image before they choose to hide
it, the offensive image would be moved out of immediate view, perhaps to
the bottom of the page. (It would be required by policy that adding such
images is only allowed when the page is long enough to do that.)

There would be a user preference to hide images on such pages (those with
a <warning> tag) by default to avoid all risk of stumbling across one by
accident. That should not be the default, however, because then we would
implicitly endorse the majority POV -- instead we endorse no POV, make
only neutral statements about the offensiveness of images, and offer
people the choice to tell the server "Please endorse my POV on this
image", by clicking the hide link.

Last but not least, when there is clear consensus on the matter, images
could still be moved to a separate page.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Jimmy-
> Apply the same logic above to any particular _text_ in Wikipedia.
> Should we have a policy that no text should be deleted, because it is
> inherently POV to say "Look at *this* text, but don't look at *this*
> text"?

No, because the question is not about whether the image of Nick Berg's
head, or any other, should be removed *per se*. The question is whether it
should be removed or hidden because of the *offense* it may cause. We may
still argue to remove it for other reasons - copyright, usefulness,
context, quality .. (I think aside from its offense, there is a
significant lack of usefulness in case of the Nick Berg image, for
example.)

The same of course applies to text. It would be inherently POV to say
"This text must be moved to a separate page because I find it highly
offensive" unless the offense is so obvious and so blatant that everyone
shares it or respects it. But it would be perfectly legitimate to say
about the same text: "This has nothing to do with the subject of this
article. It should be summarized and expanded elsewhere." Or: "This
particular phrasing, while correct, is needlessly offensive. I have
suggested a different wording which is also correct and doesn't have that
problem." In fact working towards finding compromises here, as long as
they don't have a negative effect on the neutrality of the article, is a
requirement for working together.

> It's my general sense of this discussion, and a prediction based on
> what I know of Wikipedians generally.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  In reading
> all the comments so far, I think that most people seem to think that
> in borderline cases, an acceptable compromise is to keep the image,
> but behind a link.

So far no additional options have been offered in these discussions, such
as the technological ones which I have suggested, and the fact that people
support such compromises does not mean that they wouldn't support a policy
which effectively does not require them.

> NPOV is not about majorities, but it *is* a social concept.  (I note
> that my original exposition of NPOV, which I still regard as policy,
> has been edited out of the Wikipedia: Neutral Point of View article.)

Not by me, but I appreciate that. I think you are mixing different
concepts and that this isn't beneficial to the discussion. It's typical
for you - when you send out your "Let's all be nice" messages, they are
often a blur of different ideas in your head, the idea to create an
encyclopedia, the idea to work together in peace, the idea to not endorse
specific points of view .. Other people have since taken these ideas,
which are all brilliant, and have developed them into coherent, separate
policies and goals which all need to be met when working on articles.

The need to work towards compromise *is* an essential component of
Wikipedia policy, but it has its own name - Wikiquette. By blurring the
concepts we risk sacrificing one for the other. I hope that you won't make
an official proclamation to enforce such a blurring of different goals.
There are enough problems with NPOV as it is (the policy is unclear on
many key points). It would effectively be a step backwards in the
evolution of Wikipedia.

While I think that the NPOV policy does not allow for "objective truth", I
strongly believe in a puristic interpretation of the policy itself and
yes, in the goal (the ideal, as Cunctator put it) of reaching true
*neutrality* on issues. That does not mean that I want to abandon
Wikiquette, not at all, but I want it to be treated as a separate goal
which can often be reached by different means. If only one of them can be
reached (which will rarely but sometimes be the case), I believe our
mission as an encylopedia requires us to go for being neutral over being
nice.

Ideally we should reach a state of stability on an article not through
attrition (as in the case of MT) but through being able to say: "Look,
this is our policy. If these facts about Scientology / the Mormons /
Martha Stewart are correct, they can be included. We may try to find ways
to present them in such a way that they are more acceptable to you, but
only if this does not have an impact on the neutrality of the article." If
people can't work within such a framework, I think they shouldn't work on
Wikipedia at all. Let's not forget that we are first and foremost an
encyclopedia.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 16:51 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:

> You would have a link to dynamically hide images *on that particular
> page*. To prevent people from viewing the image before they choose to hide
> it, the offensive image would be moved out of immediate view, perhaps to
> the bottom of the page. (It would be required by policy that adding such
> images is only allowed when the page is long enough to do that.)
>
> There would be a user preference to hide images on such pages (those with
> a <warning> tag) by default to avoid all risk of stumbling across one by
> accident. That should not be the default, however, because then we would
> implicitly endorse the majority POV -- instead we endorse no POV, make
> only neutral statements about the offensiveness of images, and offer
> people the choice to tell the server "Please endorse my POV on this
> image", by clicking the hide link.

We discussed something like this on irc yesterday, an idea is to use css
classes to mark certain elements. A simple .violence { display: none }
would be enough to hide violent things for example. Works already in 1.3
if you add that class to your user stylesheet.
Could be used for things like 'spoiler', 'nudism' etc as well, multiple
classes are possible like this:
Some
content
. A small javascript function could even offer to un-hide
things with one click if desired.

I intend to move as many prefs as possible to generated css/js for 1.4
to improve performance, this is kind of a schoolbook example where this
is particulary easy.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Elections

body:
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 09:10:52AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> It would please me, though, if at least 1 of the seats could be filled
> by someone who is not from the United States, because we are a global
> project, and there are concerns from people from time to time that we
> need to reflect that fact in governance.

I hope that in two or three years we can change the allocation
of the seats to "one per continent" (forget about Antarctia).

I think that if the election will be kept first past the post
some might withdraw to make sure that the strongest of their
language wins a seat.

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: offensive pict policy suggestions

body:
You are making it too complex to blur the issue Chris :-)

Now, if user A absolutely want a special category of [[image:offending
elections]], by all mean, let us create this category with a huge smile

Then, when User A list a picture to be set in [[image:offending
elections]], let us have a poll on it; One vote to put it in the
category, 99 votes not to put it. Hence, the picture is not listed in
the category

After a year, gently and discreetly comment on that neat
[[image:offending elections]] category, still empty of any offending
picture. Suggest deletion.

Wait 2 weeks.

Delete the category.

Now, you should trust users to be reasonable. If a category is
unreasonable, there will not be consensus to put any picture in it :-)

Anthere

Christopher Mahan a ?crit:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Future :
>>
>>Additionnaly, I think we could go forward setting a
>>couple of categories of potentially offensive
>>pictures, such as
>>* sex
>>* violence
>>* nudity
>>* ...
>
>
> Let's not forget images of:
> * Elections
> * Demonstrations
> * Medical procedures
> * Diseases
> * Weaponry/bombmaking
> * Cracking (in the computer cracking sense)
> * Drug paraphenalia
> * Bioagents
> * Chemical Agents
> * Nuclear and Atomic Manufacturing / Processing Equipment
> * Religious symbols
> * American Presidents (it seems to really chafe some people to look
> at GW)
> * WWII-era paraphenalia (France/Germany especially)
>
>
> I'm not being facetious, unfortunately. I see and read a lot of
> non-US media (mostly really) and it's amazing the number of things
> people find offensive.
>
> Oh, forgot about animals too:
> * Spiders
> * large cats hunting and feeding
> * Any insect up close
> * Snakes
>
> * slaugtherhouses
>
> I am sure each culture is able to add to the list.
>
> I just looked on the W for a page about that, but only came up with
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Profanity
> Maybe there is a page for image classification based on
> cultural/political sensitivities.
>
>
> =====
> Christopher Mahan
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> 818.943.1850 cell
> http://www.christophermahan.com/
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
> http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Proposal for TeX math rendering.

references:
<x5oeosvzr7.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>	<20040513213859.GD4388@wroclaw.taw.pl.eu.org>	<40A3ED2E.6090501@pobox.com>
	<x565azx6dc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>

body:
David Kastrup wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:
>>Well, if we can get the height in pixels of the image (easy) _and_ the
>>Y-pixel position in the image of the baseline (????) it might be
>
>
> Well, as I already wrote: the information can be retrieved by using
> preview.sty and/or dvipng, easily.  dvipng has command line options
> for writing out the ascender/descender information, and preview.sty
> will output the interesting information if you just use the "lyx"
> option.

Saying it's easy is nice, providing code to do it is better. ;)

I might try looking into it when I get a chance, but my hands are pretty
full already.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiReader production

body:
Kit Langton wrote:
> What is a wikireader? probably everyone already knows that but.... oh well

WikiReaders are collections of Wikipedia material on a particular topic
into a handy booklet.

See: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
(Babelfish may be adequate for the German-impaired.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 11:39 +0200, Camille Constans wrote:
> According to http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1787
> We may should install a debian Sarge on. If you want to do it jimmy, you can find iso image on ftp://ftp.lami.univ-evry.fr/debian-unofficial/sarge/ the first cd should be enought.
>
> Did I say I love debian and his apt-get utility :) I use it at home for a year (sarge) and it works fine :)
> Very stable
> And with this, we dont have to care about security pbs, apt-get does the job :)

Echoing this preference, something as simple as installing ploticus
takes something like an hour because one has to fix all the dependencies
manually (not to mention there's no working deb available). In debian,
the latest version 2.20 is there, even a separate doc package.
Copy&pasting url's back and forth is just so backwards ;-)

I would volunteer to install debian on the new machines if there's a
concensus in favour. The current apaches would profit from a kernel
upgrade sooner or later as well, once the new machines are up one could
migrate the other 1U servers to debian and upgrade to 2.6 as time
permits.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Important Election Notice

body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Important Election Notice

body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
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list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Important Election Notice

body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
-------------- next part --------------
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body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
-------------- next part --------------
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body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
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list: wikimedia-l

body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
-------------- next part --------------
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body:
Election Notice

Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.

Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.

In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.

We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.

Thank you,

Danny

Imran
-------------- next part --------------
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from_name: Alex Regh

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re recipes
	and how-tos?

body:
Hi!

On Tue, 11 May 2004 19:36:16 +0200, Anthere wrote:

>~You miss the point. Many people do consider many recipees are
>encyclopedic, as some have cultural value.

Actually, the German WP allows some recipies, namely those of very traditional
and well-known dishes, including local ones. However, only one is allowed, so
that people can see what a particularly famous dish is; an article is not
supposed to be a collection of recipies.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 08:30:13PM +0200, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 11:39 +0200, Camille Constans wrote:
> > According to http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1787
> > We may should install a debian Sarge on. If you want to do it jimmy, you can find iso image on ftp://ftp.lami.univ-evry.fr/debian-unofficial/sarge/ the first cd should be enought.
> >
> > Did I say I love debian and his apt-get utility :) I use it at home for a year (sarge) and it works fine :)
> > Very stable
> > And with this, we dont have to care about security pbs, apt-get does the job :)
>
> Echoing this preference, something as simple as installing ploticus
> takes something like an hour because one has to fix all the dependencies
> manually (not to mention there's no working deb available). In debian,
> the latest version 2.20 is there, even a separate doc package.
> Copy&pasting url's back and forth is just so backwards ;-)
>
> I would volunteer to install debian on the new machines if there's a
> concensus in favour. The current apaches would profit from a kernel
> upgrade sooner or later as well, once the new machines are up one could
> migrate the other 1U servers to debian and upgrade to 2.6 as time
> permits.

That's a great idea - and please install it on all machines where texvc
is running too, so we can have working Unicode in math mode.


from_name: Medéric Boquien

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SATA vs DMA

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> Echoing this preference, something as simple as installing ploticus
> takes something like an hour because one has to fix all the dependencies
> manually (not to mention there's no working deb available). In debian,
> the latest version 2.20 is there, even a separate doc package.
> Copy&pasting url's back and forth is just so backwards ;-)

Just a simple question, why don't you use something like yum to manage all
dependancies? I've been using linux for a few years (mandrake with
urpmi/q/f, debian with apt-get or gentoo with emerge), and i have never had
to manage dependancies manually. It seems weird to me to have to do that
manually nowadays. :o)
If you want to change of distribution, why not using one compiled
specifically for the architecture. Isn't using binaries made for i386 just
a waste of 20 years of cpu evolution? ;)

Med


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] SATA vs DMA

body:
On Thu, 13 May 2004 07:12:18 -0700
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > The 3ware SATA RAID card of course will be a separate kettle of fish. :)
> > It has its own driver, which we'll have to figure out someday.
>
> I tested it here in the office on an old machine, by installing Fedora
> Core 1.  I did not test it regarding DMA or anything fancy, all I can
> say is that it functions under Fedora Core 1.
>
> When the new servers arrive, my plan is to install it with 2x250Gb and
> probably Fedora Core 1 (with your permission) and then stick it in the
> colo for ya'll to test more thoroughly.  With 1 new big powerful db
> server and 4 new 1U boxes (to be customized according to our needs),
> we should have spare boxes enough to be able to run tests and such.

I'm afraid that the 4 new 1U boxes will be used quickly.... As our 5 web servers are completely overloaded. And one squid, browne, is often at a load 20-30.
Just an idea, for the web servers, as we use only cpu on this boxes, maybe we could buy some inexpensive dual-athlon instead of mono-P4.

Just my 2 cents.

Shaihulud


body:
I'd like to draw attention to the behaviour of [[User:Toby Bartels]], in
using [[Talk:Lubos Motl]] to pursue an agenda I have no sympathy with.

Lubos Motl as [[User:Lumidek]] has been posting highly competent string
theory articles; he is a high-flying academic in the field.  Toby obviously
has some beefs to do with off-WP matters that I really think are quite
irrelevant.  I have been pursuing private email with Lubos and Toby, in an
attempt to make Lubos the Wikipedian feel less unwelcome, in the context
that Toby the long-established Wikipedian has written some fairly nasty
stuff about him (in ignorance, it is true, but it is hardly excusable
behaviour anyway).

Now Toby seems to want to pursue this, by reverts on [[Talk:Lubos Motl]], a
back-handed apology on [[User talk:Lumidek]], and [[User talk:Charles
Matthews]].

Ironic is not really strong enough for how I felt at spending
WP-gets-Community-Webby-Day emailing, trying to put a bandage on this
damaging stuff.  I'd be very grateful if someone could talk some sense into
Toby Bartels.  I'm actually incandescent, that he can so clearly put
personal gripes ahead of the needs of the project.

Charles

http://www.speakingasaparent.com/


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
a) When the WP include videos, we might as well include the beheading.

b) By adopting the "all articles must be treated the same way" we are
assuming content is less important than NPOV. This might be true for
things but if this is true for persons, I think the project is biased
towards "people have no rights and this project has rights over all
people".

c) In any case, I see there is a POV here: people have no values worth
more than a presumed right of the WP to "inform" (whatever that presumed
right might mean).

I know I have a POV. And all of you realize this is not
censorship/offensivenes. It is called dignity. I have to say I feel shame
while reading many of these posts. And you will tell me you feel
shame/pity/nothing/something/whatever at reading this
pathetic/emotive/void/interesting/uninteresting post. You know what? It is
your problem.

But, Jimbo, do not let Erik's politeness about NPOV mislead you. It is not
taste, it is not education, it is a human undeniable right. Which if
denied (and it has been here and in the talk page at N.Berg's article)
allows us to overcome Wikikette, wikilove and any other concept.

I have to say that in order to keep my peace of mind I am not reading this
mailing list any more for a while (at the very least some days). If
someone wants to contact me, I am Pfortuny and my address is accessible.

Hope we agree in some little minimalistic but certain human rights before
the project collapses,

Pedro.

 --
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Important Election Notice

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> Election Notice
>
>
>
> Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as
> they see fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for
> each position, will be declared the winner.
>
When there are only two positions to be filled, this should effectively
turn the election into a joke.

Ec


from_name: Peter Jaros

body:
On May 13, 2004, at 5:37 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> It is completely ridiculous to say that because the verbs in a recipe
> are in the imperative mood, they are inherently POV.  The imperative
> mood can be instructive by nature, and does not imply an order to do
> things that will be enforced by anybody.  If you don't follow the
> recipe the meal may be a flop, but the cook proceeds at his own risk.
> We have a general disclaimer which should apply when the recipe
> doesn't work.

The mood is not, for me, the issue.  Certainly, the imperative mood is
useful in such articles.  However, there is a difference between the
only way to do it and the "best" way to do it.  If there is a finite
number (such as one) of ways to do something (such as replace a bulb in
a particular lamp), all of these should be documented or none at all.
Anything else is POV.

Recipes are tricky.  If you provide a recipe for chocolate cake as a
"chocolate cake" recipe, that's POV: you're asserting that *this* is
chocolate cake.  If you include "Le Grand Pain's famous chocolate cake
recipe", that's the only one of *those*.  It's all in the presentation.

Peter

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiReader production

body:
On May 5, 2004, at 5:13 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I have sent 3300 EUR from the foundation account to Erik Moeller on
> behalf of Thomas Koll for the purchase of a print run of WikiReaders.

So, how do we get our hands on these?

Peter

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


from_name: David Kastrup

body:
Hello hackers,

I have just taken a look at some Wikimedia pages, and it struck me as
odd that inline math was rendered without attention to the baseline.

If you are running your equations through LaTeX, I'd strongly suggest
taking a look at the preview.sty package: this package will make it
possible to produce either DVI files (for processing with dvipng,
_very_ fast), PostScript or PDF files (through LaTeX/dvips or
PDFLaTeX) with tight bounding boxes (using the "tightpage" option).

If you use the "lyx" option to preview.sty, the respective image
information _including_ the baseline info will be written to the log
file and to standard output from which it is easy to parse it.

Alternatively, you can tell dvipng to output height and depth
information when converting from dvi to PNG files.  This info, again,
can easily be parsed.

As a result, you can produce appropriate image alignment tags that
will make inline math produced with TeX align perfectly with its
surroundings.

And this stuff is _fast_, very much so if you use dvipng.

preview-latex <URL:http://preview-latex.sourceforge.net> uses it as
the base for WYSIWYG editing of LaTeX in Emacs windows, and it works
comfortably with large documents on slow processors.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Elections

body:
On May 13, 2004, at 12:32 PM, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> I hope that in two or three years we can change the allocation
> of the seats to "one per continent" (forget about Antarctia).

Given that there are only five seats, it could get a little crowded
around that table...

(Don't worry, I do know what you meant. :)

Peter

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re
	recipes	and how-tos?

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

> On May 13, 2004, at 5:37 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> It is completely ridiculous to say that because the verbs in a recipe
>> are in the imperative mood, they are inherently POV.  The imperative
>> mood can be instructive by nature, and does not imply an order to do
>> things that will be enforced by anybody.  If you don't follow the
>> recipe the meal may be a flop, but the cook proceeds at his own
>> risk.  We have a general disclaimer which should apply when the
>> recipe doesn't work.
>
>
> The mood is not, for me, the issue.  Certainly, the imperative mood is
> useful in such articles.  However, there is a difference between the
> only way to do it and the "best" way to do it.  If there is a finite
> number (such as one) of ways to do something (such as replace a bulb
> in a particular lamp), all of these should be documented or none at
> all.  Anything else is POV.
>
> Recipes are tricky.  If you provide a recipe for chocolate cake as a
> "chocolate cake" recipe, that's POV: you're asserting that *this* is
> chocolate cake.  If you include "Le Grand Pain's famous chocolate cake
> recipe", that's the only one of *those*.  It's all in the presentation.

Your distortion of NPOV as an excuse for getting rid of something you
don't like in Wikipedia boggles the imagination!  Deletion is also an
expression of POV, as been pointed out in the discussion about offensive
images.  And what could be so offensive about the recipes?

I have no objection to documenting ALL the ways to put in a light bulb.
(There are more than one ways.)  Just because the first person to post
on the subject has only presented one way of doing something does not in
itself make that contribution POV.  If it is the only POV it is
necessarily neutral.  If there are other POVs, the solution begins with
others presenting them, not with censoring the one that's already there.

I'm sorry, but I have a hard time suffering fools gladly.

Ec


body:
Stan Shebs wrote

> I'll hazard a guess that all this bothers you
> more than it does Lubos himself.

He made it clear he'd seen worse.  That's not the point.  I felt I had to
make it clear that a reception on Wikipedia calling someone 'a big jerk' is
not what Wikipedia is about.

Charles


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Offensive photos policy

body:
On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 11:47 -0500, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >An option to hide all images is still useful, but that has nothing to do
> >with offensiveness.  It would be welcome by people with slow internet
> >connections as we keep getting away from plain vanilla text articles.

This option already exists in 1.3, to hide images in the content, drop
this in your user stylesheet:
#content img {display: none}

http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_styles has some more samples.

> Perhaps there is a software solution. We could add a field to the
> "image" table called "img_rating," which could be used to indicate
> potentially offensive characteristics of the image from a fixed list
> of possibilities, e.g., "sex," "violence," "profanity,"
> "scatological." The same fixed list could be added to user options,
> so that people could choose themselves which types of images they
> prefer not to see.

There's some more discussion on the hiding/classification subject at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_content.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Kit Langton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiReader production

body:
What is a wikireader? probably everyone already knows that but.... oh
well

-Kit Langton

On May 13, 2004, at 10:24 PM, Peter Jaros wrote:

> On May 5, 2004, at 5:13 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I have sent 3300 EUR from the foundation account to Erik Moeller on
>> behalf of Thomas Koll for the purchase of a print run of WikiReaders.
>
> So, how do we get our hands on these?
>
> Peter
>
>                            -- ---<>--- --
>                  A house without walls cannot fall.
>     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
>                            -- ---<>--- --
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
On 05/13/04 22:28, Delirium wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> For example, I could imagine that a compromise could be reached with
>> the 8  users who insist on showing the Nick Berg photo inline to wait
>> with any  such move for 1 year, to let the issue cool down, and to
>> only include the  photo when user-side filtering technology is in place.
>>
>>
> I'd be willing to go along with that, though I think several other
> images, such as the dead body on [[Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal]] and
> the spread-open labia on [[clitoris]] should be treated similarly.
> Possibly also the dead [[John F. Kennedy]], although I don't personally
> have much of a problem with that one.

How about the erection photo inline on [[penis]]?

- d.


body:
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:27:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>
> Hello hackers,
>
> I have just taken a look at some Wikimedia pages, and it struck me as
> odd that inline math was rendered without attention to the baseline.

HTML side is the difficult one, not the TeX side.
How to do that in HTML ?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] On rights, NPOV and photos

body:
Pedro-
> b) By adopting the "all articles must be treated the same way" we are
> assuming content is less important than NPOV. This might be true for
> things but if this is true for persons, I think the project is biased
> towards "people have no rights and this project has rights over all
> people".

Actually
1) I am the one who blurred the prisoner photos on the Abu Ghraib article
in order to protect their identity, after that problem was pointed out
2) I have, from the start, voted against showing Nick Berg's severed head
and find that picture in very bad taste, especially as the case is still
very much in the news
3) I have suggested a temporarily reduced threshold of hiding offensive
photos until we have better technological solutions to let end users make
these decisions

So I find your insinuation that this is somehow an attempt by me to
campaign for the inclusion of photos that neither I nor you want quite
unfair. I am concerned with dealing with this issue in a fair and neutral
manner, but I am always open to pragmatic and humanistic arguments.

For example, I could imagine that a compromise could be reached with the 8
users who insist on showing the Nick Berg photo inline to wait with any
such move for 1 year, to let the issue cool down, and to only include the
photo when user-side filtering technology is in place.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:27:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> >
> > Hello hackers,
> >
> > I have just taken a look at some Wikimedia pages, and it struck me as
> > odd that inline math was rendered without attention to the baseline.
>
> HTML side is the difficult one, not the TeX side.
> How to do that in HTML ?

I have done some testing and come up with a (crude, but mostly
working) solution. Point your browser to
http://www.mai.liu.se/~jalar/dvipng/test.html

It works with a fairly new Exploder or Mozilla (JS-enabled), which
will display math at the right size at the right alignment. If your
browser won't redisplay after a font size change, click on one of the
images. Sadly there is no "fontSizeChange" JS event.

I haven't done anything about other browsers. Let me know if you want
the scripts.

/J?

--
The box said "Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or better", so I installed Linux.