from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:

body:
Haha,  SOLLOG HAS SPOKEN...

FF

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: debussy at cyber-rights.net <debussy at cyber-rights.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:19:14 -0800
Subject:
To: fastfission at gmail.com

You jesus christing moron!

--
What's beautiful here is the motivation assigned. ILLITERATE-That's
right,
Wikipedia is just here to "lure people in with a pack of lies" just
so
they can be banned! YEAH MORON-That sounds like a reasonable
endeavor, worth the
time of the four hundred administrators and many thousands of
registered editors.WHAT THE JESUS CHRIST!! HAS THAT!!! TO DO WITH
WHAT  I SAID YOU NUTTER?

But wait! Who are these hundreds of editors? YOUR FANTASY NUTTER. I
NEVER SAID 100'S OF EDITORS. YOU CAN'T EVEN GODAMN READ!!! YOU
MORON-How did they get to be in
the position of banning? WHAT U ON ABOUT U CRAZY BUGGER?-Were they
not too lured in by the pack of
lies and banned? SOME HAVE BEEN MORON-How does one change from the
banned to the banners?MEANINGLESS SHIT-
How is such a decision made?FUK U-

More importantly: When can I get banned, or ban someone?U'LL NEVER
BE BANNED COS YOU'RE A BASTARD. READ!!!!!! THE MESSAGE BEFORE
COMMENTING ON IT. MORON!!!!!!! I'm not in
either category and feeling somewhat unsure of my identity.WHAT U
ON ABOUT YOU POOR SAP?- Do I
create the pack of lies or am I a dupe of them? If someone could
let
me know either way, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.I'LL LET YER KNOW. U
R A MORON AND A BASTARD. OK SPAZ BASTARD?

FF

Get your free encrypted email at http://www.cyber-rights.net


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
Anthere schreef:
[cut]
> Last point, it was suggested that only board members
> or officers get cards, not regular members of
> associations. I do not think this is a problem.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Anthere

The fictional editors of the semi-fictional Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy do have some type of identification card to show that the work
for the HHGG.

In some situations it can be useful to have such a card to show that you
are a Wikipedia/Wikinews/etc. editor. Such a card means off course
nothing. But there are a lot of people there outside who can be
impressed whit a plastic card whit your name and picture on it.

And open doors where you otherwise are not allowed. Practical I think on
getting access to buildings and permission to make pictures from some
people and objects in museums and so.

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
Anthere wrote:

> This said, I stand up to my opinion that mentions of stewards or
> arbitrators of the english AC has basically nothing to do here. These
> positions do not exist in the real world. They mean nothing to those
> outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the Foundation itself. And
> they are only part of the status existing on the projects.

But in a sense, "official" positions mean nothing outside Wikipedia
either, except to lawyers.  Wikipedia is the project and community, not
the legal paperwork.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Business cards

body:
On Friday, March 11, 2005 5:56 PM, foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org <>
wrote:

> I transfered to nota and Elian the set of business
> cards I made after James Forrester cards. I had to do
> them again unfortunately, as I could not open them
> with my available software and they were american
> format, not the one we use in Europe.

Umm. The ones I sent you were in PostScript format, A4-paper, European-size.
Unless I made a mistake, but I'm pretty sure I didn't... No, I checked,
they're European-sized, European paper. I also have made US-letter paper and
US-sized templates (for Jimbo and Mav and so on).

> These were done in Adobe Illustrator format.
> Elian will put on meta. And notafish could (if you ask
> nicely) make each of you a set at your name and sent
> you a high quality pdf for printing. If you purchase a
> set of pre-cut cards, it is quite cheap.

Hmm. This is what I was doing... I've been usurped! ;-)

> The benefit of it could be that we all have similar looking cards.

Or, better, that they are 'official' cards.

[Snip]

> It would be nice to get James cards as well, to put them on meta
> possibly.

Jimbo has a copy of the templates. The problem with putting them up on a
public place is that anyone could come along and provide an 'offical' card,
which might prove difficult to

> Last point, it was suggested that only board members
> or officers get cards, not regular members of
> associations. I do not think this is a problem.

Yeah, I put something quite detailed about this on [[Official position]] on
meta.

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Business cards


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
I agree a little card can help.
But keep in mind that this one is about the Foundation and its local
chapters. So, having a card confers a sort of authority to its holder
and Jimbo has more than once found himself in the situation where some
one he was talking to told him, "Mr X, your representant, told us that
blahblahblah". The person thought it real and true, and it was not so
easy for Jimbo to convince him otherwise.

Now, I think this is essentially a problem when discussion is over legal
issue, technical deals, donations negociations etc... which are the
concerns of the chapters and foundation proper.

This is quite different from being an editor on a project. We already
mentionned several times that it would be great for example, to have a
press card for some wikinewsies, as it would open them doors.
Similarly, setting up cards saying that someone is an editor at
wikipedia or wikinews (with Wikipedia logo or Wikinews logo) to help
access in some areas, do not seem to be a problem to me.

ant

Walter Vermeir a ?crit:
> Anthere schreef:
> [cut]
>
>> Last point, it was suggested that only board members
>> or officers get cards, not regular members of
>> associations. I do not think this is a problem.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>>
>> Anthere
>
>
> The fictional editors of the semi-fictional Hitchhiker's Guide to the
> Galaxy do have some type of identification card to show that the work
> for the HHGG.
>
> In some situations it can be useful to have such a card to show that you
> are a Wikipedia/Wikinews/etc. editor. Such a card means off course
> nothing. But there are a lot of people there outside who can be
> impressed whit a plastic card whit your name and picture on it.
>
> And open doors where you otherwise are not allowed. Practical I think on
> getting access to buildings and permission to make pictures from some
> people and objects in museums and so.
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


list: wikien-l

from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: Re [WikiEN-l] Abuse of blocking powers (The Recycling Troll)

body:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 02:35:42 -0500, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> Fritz Wuehler wrote:
> > Hi, Recycling Troll.
> >
> > Please note that the wikipedia scum are doing the same routine to you as they've
> > done to many before. (Check back over this mailing list.) The wikipedia is
> > not of course an online encyclopedia, there's plenty of real online encyclopedias,
> > (you know, the places where wikipedia steals most of it's stuff from), it's
> > a place where Jimmy Wales and other scum lure people in with a pack of lies
> > and then proceed to do to them what they're starting in on doing to you.
> >
> > Many have tried to opppose their insanity. But you are flogging a dead horse.
> > If you keep trying they'll just have loads of fun at your expense, as they
> > control the system, and in the end carry out a bizarre an un-American great
> > "court case" against you and then ban you. They are pathetic (but nasty) morons.
> >
> > Also did you know that Jimmy Wales is a sick pornograper?:http://www.247news.net/2004/20041211-wikipedia.shtml
> >
>
> Am I the only person this joker has started emailing off-list with
> indictments of my flippant quips about his emails?

Nope he's emailded me too.

Theresa


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I made a late checkin on the 1.4 branch today.

I've reverted it for the moment. Could you check it into the mainline
development branch please?

If it looks ok and doesn't break the actual called hook functions (or if
it does, and we have some warning to fix them first), *then* go ahead
check it into REL1_4.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject: [Foundation-l] Legal on meta-wimedia

body:
Hello,
I've created :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_department
and the category
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Legal
in order to centralize issues, people and skills related to legal questions.
Hopefully, this will getting useful.
villy ~~JC


subject: [Foundation-l] Legal on meta-wimedia


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions and unwanted extra transforms

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Tels wrote:
>> How do I stop whatever get's my extension's output and "mangles" it?
>
> Hack up the parser to work differently... :)

Didn't test it, but woulf it help to wrap the extension output in
<nowiki> tags? Or is the nowiki parsing done before the extensions?

Magnus
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from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Saturday 12 March 2005 14:51, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
> > Tels wrote:
> >> How do I stop whatever get's my extension's output and "mangles" it?
> >
> > Hack up the parser to work differently... :)
>
> Didn't test it, but woulf it help to wrap the extension output in
> <nowiki> tags? Or is the nowiki parsing done before the extensions?

Good idea. I try it. Thanx to both of you for the explanations.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sat Mar 12 14:58:53 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Elliot, Sie Schwachkopf!"

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from_name: Klaus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Backup and reinstall question

body:
A liitle question from a beginner,

I have install w wikipedia on my LAN. Now I want it backup and reinstall it
on another LAN. How can I do it or where can I read something about it?

Many thanks
Klaus


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> Just, don't use your real identity.  You would also be deleting this history of accuser-"litigators", or mobocracy supporters.  Why assume it is just the "unfairly" accused and maligned that you are protecting?  It is best to have an open system.  In the real civil and criminal court system, it is the dirt that gets "sealed" or "expunged", to the detriment of society.
>
> Whatever identity you use, if your overall behavior continues to be exemplary, eventually it will reflect negatively on the accusers, unless you expunge the records.  Besides, perhaps they will have retained some notes themselves.  If there isn't an "official" record, then their,  perhaps selective records may go unchallenged.
>

Regardless of the benefits or detriments provided by your solution(s) in
general, the "don't use your real identity" suggestion isn't practical
and doesn't address any problem.  There's not really any such thing as a
kept secret on the Internet.  It's too easy to find out who is behind an
obfuscating identity and, in any case, some people choose to use their
legal identities for various purposes, often in part because of the
perceived added credibility that comes with personal accountability.

If there's a problem that needs fixing, "don't use your real identity"
won't fix it.  If you really don't want your "real identity" associated
with something, the only way to ensure that is to not associate with
that something at all, which in this case would mean abandoning
Wikipedia to others and having nothing further to do with it as an
editor.  I don't think that's a productive or desirable solution.

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
This is not possible.

While ultimately the English and French versions may or may not be
/less/ biased in this way, there is no such thing as 0 bias and NPOV
is subjective based on the collective cultural experience of the
group.

Mark

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:07:34 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Jack Lutz wrote:
>
> >On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts depend
> >on where you are coming from". Ultimately he suggests it "present opposing
> >points of view where appropriate", but notice how the different language
> >editions are having their facts and emphasis warped to meet culture, because
> >"readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
> >reality."
> >
> >
> This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".  If the Serbian
> Wikipedia is biased towards the Serbian viewpoint when it comes to
> regional conflicts, and the Bosnian Wikipedia is biased towards the
> Bosnian viewpoint, then they're _useless_ when it comes to providing
> NPOV information, and any Serbian or Bosnian interested in such
> information would have to turn to one of the other Wikipedias (en, fr,
> de, ...) for it.
>
> I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral
> information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
This is the same problem I encountered back in December when I tried
using the hooks to insert extra information into the template's context

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-December/026533.html

In that email, I suggested using a named array rather than a simple
array to pass the parameters.  Do you think this might provide more
clarity?

Also, what about including this actual setupTemplate processing hook
that I proposed?

/Jonah

On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 09:46 -0500, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> --=-HwYMtKXwosVZ95m4MJOb
> Content-Type: text/plain
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> I made a late checkin on the 1.4 branch today.
>
> The problem was with Hooks.php, the event-handling mechanism for
> optional functionality and third-party extensions. wfRunHooks(), the
> interface for mainline code to raise events for hooks to handle, was
> using PHP's variable-argument syntax so you could give different
> parameter sets to different events:
>
>     wfRunHooks('Event1', $param1, $param2, $param3); # three params
>     wfRunHooks('Event2', $param4, $param5); # just two params
>
> The problem with this is that the var args syntax silently changes
> pass-by-reference semantics to pass-by-value semantics. So events that
> should allow modifying parameters do not. For example:
>
>     $wgEventHooks['Event3'][] =3D 'MyEvent3Handler';
>     # ...
>     function MyEvent3Handler(&$str) {
>         $str .=3D " and so on.";
>         return true;
> 	}
>     # ...
>     $somestring =3D "Eggs, bananas, bacon";
>     # NOTE: OLD CALLING FORMAT
>     if (wfRunHooks('Event3', &$somestring)) {
>         echo $somestring; # prints "Eggs, bananas, bacon"
>     }
>
> After some consulting with PHP gurus, the best solution I could come up
> with was to pack the params in an array when passing them to
> wfRunHooks(). Now the last few lines are:
>
>     if (wfRunHooks('Event3', array(&$somestring))) {
>         echo $somestring; # prints "Eggs, bananas, bacon and so on."
>     }
>
> Adding a reference to an array keeps its "reference-ness".
>
> I wanted to make sure that the hooks technology was at least worth
> experimenting with in the 1.4 branch, and that the interface (from both
> sides) was relatively stable. Hooks need to be able to modify their
> parameters to be useful, so I made these changes.
>
> I've done pretty extensive testing of all the points in 1.4 where
> wfRunHooks() is called, and it seems to be stable.
>
> ~Evan
>
> --=20
> Evan Prodromou
> evan at bad.dynu.ca
>
> --=-HwYMtKXwosVZ95m4MJOb--
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> Haha,  SOLLOG HAS SPOKEN...
>

It's not SOLLOG, it's WikiUser

--sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:

body:
sannse wrote:
>
>
> Fastfission wrote:
>
>> Haha,  SOLLOG HAS SPOKEN...
>>
>
> It's not SOLLOG, it's WikiUser

(or at least, a good imitation)

--sann


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
James D. Forrester a ?crit:
> On Friday, March 11, 2005 5:56 PM, foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org <>
> wrote:
>
>
>>I transfered to nota and Elian the set of business
>>cards I made after James Forrester cards. I had to do
>>them again unfortunately, as I could not open them
>>with my available software and they were american
>>format, not the one we use in Europe.
>
>
> Umm. The ones I sent you were in PostScript format, A4-paper, European-size.
> Unless I made a mistake, but I'm pretty sure I didn't... No, I checked,
> they're European-sized, European paper. I also have made US-letter paper and
> US-sized templates (for Jimbo and Mav and so on).

Nod, European paper, but not the size of precut cards one can buy here :-(
If I remember well, yours proposed 4 cards from top to bottom, while
pre-cut paper has 5. So I could not print them myself. Unless I use
regular paper and cut them myself by other means. If you remember, I
wrote to you about this, but you could not answer for a while, and I had
to do them again so I could have them for my meeting in time. And since
I could not edit your format with the soft I had, I unfortunately had to
remake them entirely. But they are of similar type than yours. Now, if
people purchase precut cards in France, the only type I found is 5 cards
from top to bottom.

>>These were done in Adobe Illustrator format.
>>Elian will put on meta. And notafish could (if you ask
>>nicely) make each of you a set at your name and sent
>>you a high quality pdf for printing. If you purchase a
>>set of pre-cut cards, it is quite cheap.
>
> Hmm. This is what I was doing... I've been usurped! ;-)

Two people is better than one. So, when one is missing, the other can
help :-)
Seriously, the main person likely to need these cards is Ryo. Notafish
being his girl friend is more likely to fix quickly translation issues
than you :-)

>>The benefit of it could be that we all have similar looking cards.
>
>
> Or, better, that they are 'official' cards.

I suddenly wonder what is "official"...

> [Snip]
>
>
>>It would be nice to get James cards as well, to put them on meta
>>possibly.
>
>
> Jimbo has a copy of the templates. The problem with putting them up on a
> public place is that anyone could come along and provide an 'offical' card,
> which might prove difficult to

True. We won't put the template on meta then.
This said, when I was looking for you to fix my own cards, the latest
thought I had was to ask Jimbo to fix them for me.

>>Last point, it was suggested that only board members
>>or officers get cards, not regular members of
>>associations. I do not think this is a problem.
>
>
> Yeah, I put something quite detailed about this on [[Official position]] on
> meta.

Oh, I had not thought of looking at this place.
I go look...

Well, my opinion then

First, there is no mention of local chapters at all. I regret this.
Second, you suggest that the following positions might get a card

* Arbitrator (en)
Member, English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee

I strongly disagree with this.
I do not think being a arbitrator on one project grant in any sense an
official position in the Foundation.
If there is need of a card, this card should have Wikipedia logo only,
and should not mention the Foundation itself.
I think there is a big confusion here between being active and trusted
on a projet, and having an official position on the Foundation.
If any card was distributed to an arbitrator, please ask him not to use
it. I think it is embarassing because it would give an authority to a
person on Foundation matters, where there is not I think.

* MediaWiki Developer
Member, MediaWiki Developer Committee
Same comment. MediaWiki is different from WikiMedia. And developers are
first to say it.
The only one who could have one right now is the Developer liaison.
Now, if MediaWiki developer need a card, by all means, let's do it, but
with the MediaWiki logo on it.

* Wikimedia Steward
Wikimedia Steward
I would tend to say that again, being a wikimedia steward does not in
any sense give an authority on Wikimedia matters. Plus, to be honest, no
one aside from us, knows what it encompasses :-)

> [Snip]
>
> Yours,

I am sorry if what I say above upset any one. I am perfectly aware that
a card could help some people get some doors opened, and if we can do
something, such as giving an official title, fine. If we can make other
types of cards, fine as well.
But frankly, our internal kitchen is no one business. Being an
arbitrator is internal business. Sure enough, arbitrators are people we
generally like and trust. But if we trust them to take some decisions
for us, that does not mean they should appear as Wikimedia official
people. There is an arbitration committee on en now, elected with
certain rules. There will be soon one on fr, elected with other rules.
And maybe there is one on de ? And maybe in one year, we will have 100
arbitrators in all projects. Does that grant them the right to appear as
officials in negociations, say for hosting servers ? I do not think so.

I would hope to say that from now on, I would prefer that only those on
board of Foundation and local chapters, plus officials, have a card.
I do not know Ang position on this, but I trust that Jimbo agrees. What
do you think Ang ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
I read again the description by James. And realise I got confused by the
"warrant" term. So, there was nothing wrong in what is written. I
apology for not having understood well.

This said, I stand up to my opinion that mentions of stewards or
arbitrators of the english AC has basically nothing to do here. These
positions do not exist in the real world. They mean nothing to those
outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the Foundation itself. And they
are only part of the status existing on the projects.

Ant

> First, there is no mention of local chapters at all. I regret this.
> Second, you suggest that the following positions might get a card
>
> * Arbitrator (en)
> Member, English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
>
> I strongly disagree with this.
> I do not think being a arbitrator on one project grant in any sense an
> official position in the Foundation.
> If there is need of a card, this card should have Wikipedia logo only,
> and should not mention the Foundation itself.
> I think there is a big confusion here between being active and trusted
> on a projet, and having an official position on the Foundation.
> If any card was distributed to an arbitrator, please ask him not to use
> it. I think it is embarassing because it would give an authority to a
> person on Foundation matters, where there is not I think.
>
> * MediaWiki Developer
> Member, MediaWiki Developer Committee
> Same comment. MediaWiki is different from WikiMedia. And developers are
> first to say it.
> The only one who could have one right now is the Developer liaison.
> Now, if MediaWiki developer need a card, by all means, let's do it, but
> with the MediaWiki logo on it.
>
> * Wikimedia Steward
> Wikimedia Steward
> I would tend to say that again, being a wikimedia steward does not in
> any sense give an authority on Wikimedia matters. Plus, to be honest, no
> one aside from us, knows what it encompasses :-)
>
>
>> [Snip]
>>
>> Yours,
>
>
> I am sorry if what I say above upset any one. I am perfectly aware that
> a card could help some people get some doors opened, and if we can do
> something, such as giving an official title, fine. If we can make other
> types of cards, fine as well.
> But frankly, our internal kitchen is no one business. Being an
> arbitrator is internal business. Sure enough, arbitrators are people we
> generally like and trust. But if we trust them to take some decisions
> for us, that does not mean they should appear as Wikimedia official
> people. There is an arbitration committee on en now, elected with
> certain rules. There will be soon one on fr, elected with other rules.
> And maybe there is one on de ? And maybe in one year, we will have 100
> arbitrators in all projects. Does that grant them the right to appear as
> officials in negociations, say for hosting servers ? I do not think so.
>
> I would hope to say that from now on, I would prefer that only those on
> board of Foundation and local chapters, plus officials, have a card.
> I do not know Ang position on this, but I trust that Jimbo agrees. What
> do you think Ang ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


from_name: Jon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
Why do we have such a nasty dispute resolution process as the user conduct RfC? And one that creates so much bitterness from those who have been through it?

As I see it, the rules are this: two users have a disagreement with one user (User X) and cite them on RfC.

User X gets permanently listed on a troublesome users list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_conduct_disputes). There is no appeal and no provision for User X to be removed from that list - and any Wikipedian (or, as SlimVirgin has noted on  - any potential employer can see that User X is trouble from it too).

The arguments for retention seem to be the follow:

(1) we'll need the info in the RfC for if/when the case goes to ArbCom; and
(2) we like a record of these things (ie it is interesting to the prurient)

As a result of the nastiness of the process, trolls and bullies know they can threaten people with the process. Of course, the one-sided nature of the process makes it much more likely that User X reacts badly so that the case has to go to the ArbCom.

Should RfC really remain vicious and interesting for those that like a dispute?

Or should it not be changed to encourage disputes to be resolved, and quickly forgotten, so those who wish to make WP a better encycopaedia can get on with that aim? (And, going back to the SlimVirgin point - should the RfC process not take account that potential employers often do make internet checks of potential employess?)

Kind regards

jguk

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
Just, don't use your real identity.  You would also be deleting this history of accuser-"litigators", or mobocracy supporters.  Why assume it is just the "unfairly" accused and maligned that you are protecting?  It is best to have an open system.  In the real civil and criminal court system, it is the dirt that gets "sealed" or "expunged", to the detriment of society.

Whatever identity you use, if your overall behavior continues to be exemplary, eventually it will reflect negatively on the accusers, unless you expunge the records.  Besides, perhaps they will have retained some notes themselves.  If there isn't an "official" record, then their,  perhaps selective records may go unchallenged.

                        -- Silverback

-------------- Original message --------------
> Why do we have such a nasty dispute resolution process as the user conduct RfC?
> And one that creates so much bitterness from those who have been through it?
>
> As I see it, the rules are this: two users have a disagreement with one user
> (User X) and cite them on RfC.
>
> User X gets permanently listed on a troublesome users list
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_conduct_disputes). There is no
> appeal and no provision for User X to be removed from that list - and any
> Wikipedian (or, as SlimVirgin has noted on - any potential employer can see
> that User X is trouble from it too).
>
> The arguments for retention seem to be the follow:
>
> (1) we'll need the info in the RfC for if/when the case goes to ArbCom; and
> (2) we like a record of these things (ie it is interesting to the prurient)
>
> As a result of the nastiness of the process, trolls and bullies know they can
> threaten people with the process. Of course, the one-sided nature of the process
> makes it much more likely that User X reacts badly so that the case has to go to
> the ArbCom.
>
> Should RfC really remain vicious and interesting for those that like a dispute?
>
> Or should it not be changed to encourage disputes to be resolved, and quickly
> forgotten, so those who wish to make WP a better encycopaedia can get on with
> that aim? (And, going back to the SlimVirgin point - should the RfC process not
> take account that potential employers often do make internet checks of potential
> employess?)
>
> Kind regards
>
> jguk
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> Why not just redirect old RfCs to the main RfC page? That way, the
> history would be kept, and if the information needed to be accessed
> later for some reason, it could be retrieved.

You're still giving somebody else control of the information, instead of keeping it in the open.
                       -- Silverback


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> This said, I stand up to my opinion that mentions of stewards or
>> arbitrators of the english AC has basically nothing to do here. These
>> positions do not exist in the real world. They mean nothing to those
>> outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the Foundation itself. And
>> they are only part of the status existing on the projects.
>
>
> But in a sense, "official" positions mean nothing outside Wikipedia
> either, except to lawyers.  Wikipedia is the project and community, not
> the legal paperwork.
>
> -Mark

I would dare say that Wikipedia is the project, the community, a bunch
of servers, a software, a bank account to pay the bills, an audience,
and Jimbo.

Remove any of these items today, and there is no more Wikipedia.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's bugzilla

body:
Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
> I'm trying to get a hold of the templates used by the Wikipedia's
> Bugzilla installation. I like the fact that wikipedia's bugzilla is
> using the monobook style as it makes both the bugzilla nd wikipedia look
> like one product.

Templates:
http://download.wikimedia.org/bugzilla/bugzilla-custom.tgz

Patch:
http://download.wikimedia.org/bugzilla/bugzilla-patch.diff

These are for bugzilla 2.18. You probably won't want it to point at our
web site, so customize it. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
Why not just redirect old RfCs to the main RfC page? That way, the
history would be kept, and if the information needed to be accessed
later for some reason, it could be retrieved.

Erik


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re Abuse of blocking powers (The Recycling Troll)

body:
TBSDY <csherlock at ljh.com.au> wrote:

> Oh. My. Gosh. Can someone kick Sollog off the mailing list please?

If they want to vandalise Wikipedia, we'll vandalise them.

Let's register at the WikipediaSucks forum! Yeah! Vandalise the place!

~~~~


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
This is a very narrow-minded view I often encounter.

"So many people around the world speak English!"

In most counts of second-language speakers of English, actual ability
is not measured. Thus I might take a random sample of Nicaraguans and
find out if they speak English. What do I define "speak English" as?
For most counts, that's simply people who /say/ they speak English,
which is a lot larger than the number of people who can actually read,
write, and/or speak English at an elementary level.

It's especially exaggerated in for example African countries (for
example Nigeria), as well as India, many places in Europe, and the
like.

In the end we would still come up with a fairly large number of
English speakers, even with a revised more accurate count. But a much
smaller percentage of them would be second language speakers from
outside the US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, and Ireland (plus the
other, smaller countries where English is the native language for most
people).

Yes, we do get some degree of POV counterbalancing from non-native
speakers of English, but what percentage of editors on en: speak
English as their second or third (or other - I find now on en: that in
biographical articles where it says somebody speaks even so few as 9
languages [in the field of polyglots, that's relatively small], people
question if that's even possssible on the talkpage out of ignorance)
language? AFAICT, it's decreasing rapidly as we get more and more
people (an increasing number of them are blockheads, bringing our
blockhead percentage up as well to dangerous levels), mostly from the
US, Canada, UK, NZ, and Australia (all the people I have met that are
my age know about Wikipedia, which is shocking since this wouldn'tve
been true a year ago).

Nearly all the non-first-language editors on en: are from the upper
economic strata of their respective societies where fluency in English
is more common than in, say, the lower middle class.

All these factors combined mean that en: is still very much shaped by
the collective cultural experiences of its editors, and thus while we
try to remove systemic bias we still miss some important POV holdouts
because they don't jump out at us, and en: is still very much an
encyclopaedia written from an
American-Australian-NewZealandic-Canadian-British perspective/POV with
only relatively minor counterbalances from those whose cultural
experiences fall outside those of the aforementioned English-native
group.

Still, the counterbalances are greater than they are on, say, the
Greek Wikipedia, or the Serbian Wikipedia, or the Chinese Wikipedia.

My point is that all Wikipedias have their inherent biases.

People seem to think this is a huge problem, but for now it is
unsolveable and it will remain unsolveable until we can see a full,
accurate MT solution implemented in a Wikipaedic context.

Mark

Ti Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> 12.03.05 21:54:30 -0500 si?-k?ng:
> This is the reason that it is necessary for anyone who is able to edit
> on a Wiki outside their country of residence.  The English wikipedia
> is a representative of people who speak English all over the world.
> The fact that the vast majority of those users are American does not,
> in my mind, change the fact that a English-speaking person in France
> can correct point-of-view problems on an article regarding Denmark, or
> any other combination.  There will always be an inherent bias towards
> wherever the most editors hail from.  This simply heightens the need
> for those who do not live there to provide what could be considered
> outside input.
>
> On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:22:24 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is not possible.
> >
> > While ultimately the English and French versions may or may not be
> > /less/ biased in this way, there is no such thing as 0 bias and NPOV
> > is subjective based on the collective cultural experience of the
> > group.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:07:34 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > Jack Lutz wrote:
> > >
> > > >On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts depend
> > > >on where you are coming from". Ultimately he suggests it "present opposing
> > > >points of view where appropriate", but notice how the different language
> > > >editions are having their facts and emphasis warped to meet culture, because
> > > >"readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
> > > >reality."
> > > >
> > > >
> > > This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> > > encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".  If the Serbian
> > > Wikipedia is biased towards the Serbian viewpoint when it comes to
> > > regional conflicts, and the Bosnian Wikipedia is biased towards the
> > > Bosnian viewpoint, then they're _useless_ when it comes to providing
> > > NPOV information, and any Serbian or Bosnian interested in such
> > > information would have to turn to one of the other Wikipedias (en, fr,
> > > de, ...) for it.
> > >
> > > I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral
> > > information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version.
> > >
> > > -Mark
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
>


from_name: Jay Converse

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
This is the reason that it is necessary for anyone who is able to edit
on a Wiki outside their country of residence.  The English wikipedia
is a representative of people who speak English all over the world.
The fact that the vast majority of those users are American does not,
in my mind, change the fact that a English-speaking person in France
can correct point-of-view problems on an article regarding Denmark, or
any other combination.  There will always be an inherent bias towards
wherever the most editors hail from.  This simply heightens the need
for those who do not live there to provide what could be considered
outside input.

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:22:24 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is not possible.
>
> While ultimately the English and French versions may or may not be
> /less/ biased in this way, there is no such thing as 0 bias and NPOV
> is subjective based on the collective cultural experience of the
> group.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:07:34 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Jack Lutz wrote:
> >
> > >On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts depend
> > >on where you are coming from". Ultimately he suggests it "present opposing
> > >points of view where appropriate", but notice how the different language
> > >editions are having their facts and emphasis warped to meet culture, because
> > >"readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
> > >reality."
> > >
> > >
> > This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> > encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".  If the Serbian
> > Wikipedia is biased towards the Serbian viewpoint when it comes to
> > regional conflicts, and the Bosnian Wikipedia is biased towards the
> > Bosnian viewpoint, then they're _useless_ when it comes to providing
> > NPOV information, and any Serbian or Bosnian interested in such
> > information would have to turn to one of the other Wikipedias (en, fr,
> > de, ...) for it.
> >
> > I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral
> > information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version.
> >
> > -Mark
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
I wasn't trying to imply that this bias was in any way avoidable.  I
was simply trying to point out that without the valuable contributions
of those who are not native speakers of English, the Wikipedia would
be much more biased towards the large group of nations you just
pointed out.  I am also fully aware that English is not close to being
the most spoken language in the world.

In short, I agree with everything you've mentioned.  I'm not trying to
sound like a copout, but I think somewhere along the way what I said
previously was either misinterpreted, or I managed to brainfart and
say something in a way I didn't mean.  Apologies.

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 20:30:43 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very narrow-minded view I often encounter.
>
> "So many people around the world speak English!"
>
> In most counts of second-language speakers of English, actual ability
> is not measured. Thus I might take a random sample of Nicaraguans and
> find out if they speak English. What do I define "speak English" as?
> For most counts, that's simply people who /say/ they speak English,
> which is a lot larger than the number of people who can actually read,
> write, and/or speak English at an elementary level.
>
> It's especially exaggerated in for example African countries (for
> example Nigeria), as well as India, many places in Europe, and the
> like.
>
> In the end we would still come up with a fairly large number of
> English speakers, even with a revised more accurate count. But a much
> smaller percentage of them would be second language speakers from
> outside the US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, and Ireland (plus the
> other, smaller countries where English is the native language for most
> people).
>
> Yes, we do get some degree of POV counterbalancing from non-native
> speakers of English, but what percentage of editors on en: speak
> English as their second or third (or other - I find now on en: that in
> biographical articles where it says somebody speaks even so few as 9
> languages [in the field of polyglots, that's relatively small], people
> question if that's even possssible on the talkpage out of ignorance)
> language? AFAICT, it's decreasing rapidly as we get more and more
> people (an increasing number of them are blockheads, bringing our
> blockhead percentage up as well to dangerous levels), mostly from the
> US, Canada, UK, NZ, and Australia (all the people I have met that are
> my age know about Wikipedia, which is shocking since this wouldn'tve
> been true a year ago).
>
> Nearly all the non-first-language editors on en: are from the upper
> economic strata of their respective societies where fluency in English
> is more common than in, say, the lower middle class.
>
> All these factors combined mean that en: is still very much shaped by
> the collective cultural experiences of its editors, and thus while we
> try to remove systemic bias we still miss some important POV holdouts
> because they don't jump out at us, and en: is still very much an
> encyclopaedia written from an
> American-Australian-NewZealandic-Canadian-British perspective/POV with
> only relatively minor counterbalances from those whose cultural
> experiences fall outside those of the aforementioned English-native
> group.
>
> Still, the counterbalances are greater than they are on, say, the
> Greek Wikipedia, or the Serbian Wikipedia, or the Chinese Wikipedia.
>
> My point is that all Wikipedias have their inherent biases.
>
> People seem to think this is a huge problem, but for now it is
> unsolveable and it will remain unsolveable until we can see a full,
> accurate MT solution implemented in a Wikipaedic context.
>
> Mark
>
> Ti Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> 12.03.05 21:54:30 -0500 si?-k?ng:
> > This is the reason that it is necessary for anyone who is able to edit
> > on a Wiki outside their country of residence.  The English wikipedia
> > is a representative of people who speak English all over the world.
> > The fact that the vast majority of those users are American does not,
> > in my mind, change the fact that a English-speaking person in France
> > can correct point-of-view problems on an article regarding Denmark, or
> > any other combination.  There will always be an inherent bias towards
> > wherever the most editors hail from.  This simply heightens the need
> > for those who do not live there to provide what could be considered
> > outside input.
> >
> > On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:22:24 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This is not possible.
> > >
> > > While ultimately the English and French versions may or may not be
> > > /less/ biased in this way, there is no such thing as 0 bias and NPOV
> > > is subjective based on the collective cultural experience of the
> > > group.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:07:34 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > Jack Lutz wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts depend
> > > > >on where you are coming from". Ultimately he suggests it "present opposing
> > > > >points of view where appropriate", but notice how the different language
> > > > >editions are having their facts and emphasis warped to meet culture, because
> > > > >"readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
> > > > >reality."
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> > > > encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".  If the Serbian
> > > > Wikipedia is biased towards the Serbian viewpoint when it comes to
> > > > regional conflicts, and the Bosnian Wikipedia is biased towards the
> > > > Bosnian viewpoint, then they're _useless_ when it comes to providing
> > > > NPOV information, and any Serbian or Bosnian interested in such
> > > > information would have to turn to one of the other Wikipedias (en, fr,
> > > > de, ...) for it.
> > > >
> > > > I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral
> > > > information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version.
> > > >
> > > > -Mark
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > --
> > I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


from_name: Marc

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikisource

body:
 You could find a new page to organize a vote on Wikisource language subdomains here : http://wikisource.org/wiki/New_vote_on_language_subdomains

Marc Galli

Caton


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
Again, I see the term "the Wikipedia". I had previously thought this
was reserved entirely for journalists. But let's remember forks,
Wikipedia is many and one at the same time. There is no "the"
Wikipedia - the proper way to say it is "a Wikipedia", "en.wikipedia",
or "the English Wikipedia".

Anyhow, I didn't think you were trying to imply it was avoidable.

It just struck me that you seem to believe that the NPOV level of en:
*far* surpasses that of smaller Wikipedias, when in fact it does not.
I will explain this in greater detail in my response to Mark's
message.

Mark

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:36:50 -0500, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wasn't trying to imply that this bias was in any way avoidable.  I
> was simply trying to point out that without the valuable contributions
> of those who are not native speakers of English, the Wikipedia would
> be much more biased towards the large group of nations you just
> pointed out.  I am also fully aware that English is not close to being
> the most spoken language in the world.
>
> In short, I agree with everything you've mentioned.  I'm not trying to
> sound like a copout, but I think somewhere along the way what I said
> previously was either misinterpreted, or I managed to brainfart and
> say something in a way I didn't mean.  Apologies.
>
>
> On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 20:30:43 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a very narrow-minded view I often encounter.
> >
> > "So many people around the world speak English!"
> >
> > In most counts of second-language speakers of English, actual ability
> > is not measured. Thus I might take a random sample of Nicaraguans and
> > find out if they speak English. What do I define "speak English" as?
> > For most counts, that's simply people who /say/ they speak English,
> > which is a lot larger than the number of people who can actually read,
> > write, and/or speak English at an elementary level.
> >
> > It's especially exaggerated in for example African countries (for
> > example Nigeria), as well as India, many places in Europe, and the
> > like.
> >
> > In the end we would still come up with a fairly large number of
> > English speakers, even with a revised more accurate count. But a much
> > smaller percentage of them would be second language speakers from
> > outside the US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, and Ireland (plus the
> > other, smaller countries where English is the native language for most
> > people).
> >
> > Yes, we do get some degree of POV counterbalancing from non-native
> > speakers of English, but what percentage of editors on en: speak
> > English as their second or third (or other - I find now on en: that in
> > biographical articles where it says somebody speaks even so few as 9
> > languages [in the field of polyglots, that's relatively small], people
> > question if that's even possssible on the talkpage out of ignorance)
> > language? AFAICT, it's decreasing rapidly as we get more and more
> > people (an increasing number of them are blockheads, bringing our
> > blockhead percentage up as well to dangerous levels), mostly from the
> > US, Canada, UK, NZ, and Australia (all the people I have met that are
> > my age know about Wikipedia, which is shocking since this wouldn'tve
> > been true a year ago).
> >
> > Nearly all the non-first-language editors on en: are from the upper
> > economic strata of their respective societies where fluency in English
> > is more common than in, say, the lower middle class.
> >
> > All these factors combined mean that en: is still very much shaped by
> > the collective cultural experiences of its editors, and thus while we
> > try to remove systemic bias we still miss some important POV holdouts
> > because they don't jump out at us, and en: is still very much an
> > encyclopaedia written from an
> > American-Australian-NewZealandic-Canadian-British perspective/POV with
> > only relatively minor counterbalances from those whose cultural
> > experiences fall outside those of the aforementioned English-native
> > group.
> >
> > Still, the counterbalances are greater than they are on, say, the
> > Greek Wikipedia, or the Serbian Wikipedia, or the Chinese Wikipedia.
> >
> > My point is that all Wikipedias have their inherent biases.
> >
> > People seem to think this is a huge problem, but for now it is
> > unsolveable and it will remain unsolveable until we can see a full,
> > accurate MT solution implemented in a Wikipaedic context.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > Ti Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> 12.03.05 21:54:30 -0500 si?-k?ng:
> > > This is the reason that it is necessary for anyone who is able to edit
> > > on a Wiki outside their country of residence.  The English wikipedia
> > > is a representative of people who speak English all over the world.
> > > The fact that the vast majority of those users are American does not,
> > > in my mind, change the fact that a English-speaking person in France
> > > can correct point-of-view problems on an article regarding Denmark, or
> > > any other combination.  There will always be an inherent bias towards
> > > wherever the most editors hail from.  This simply heightens the need
> > > for those who do not live there to provide what could be considered
> > > outside input.
> > >
> > > On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:22:24 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > This is not possible.
> > > >
> > > > While ultimately the English and French versions may or may not be
> > > > /less/ biased in this way, there is no such thing as 0 bias and NPOV
> > > > is subjective based on the collective cultural experience of the
> > > > group.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:07:34 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > > Jack Lutz wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > >On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts depend
> > > > > >on where you are coming from". Ultimately he suggests it "present opposing
> > > > > >points of view where appropriate", but notice how the different language
> > > > > >editions are having their facts and emphasis warped to meet culture, because
> > > > > >"readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
> > > > > >reality."
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> > > > > encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".  If the Serbian
> > > > > Wikipedia is biased towards the Serbian viewpoint when it comes to
> > > > > regional conflicts, and the Bosnian Wikipedia is biased towards the
> > > > > Bosnian viewpoint, then they're _useless_ when it comes to providing
> > > > > NPOV information, and any Serbian or Bosnian interested in such
> > > > > information would have to turn to one of the other Wikipedias (en, fr,
> > > > > de, ...) for it.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral
> > > > > information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version.
> > > > >
> > > > > -Mark
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
>


from_name: John Fader

subject: [WikiEN-l] en-> wikicities interwikis

body:
Hi all,
      I just noticed that interwiki mappings have been established
from (at least) en.wikipedia to wikicities (e.g.
[[Wikicities:c:StarWars:Jedi]]).

I wonder, could someone point me to the discussion which preceeded
this decision?

--
John Fader


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  NPOV

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Jack Lutz wrote:

>> On a similar note, see Bill Gates' essay on Encarta titled "The facts
>> "readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their
>> reality."

> This sounds exactly contrary to NPOV, a lot more like "write biased
> encyclopedias that will be more locally popular".

Pure marketing speak, and it does indeed fly in the face of NPOV. See
the recent fiery discussions on wikien-l about censorship and how people
were saying we needed it for marketing reasons, and never mind that
troublesome NPOV.

If NPOV makes people uncomfortable, too bad. It's essential to what
Wikipedia is.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
It is indeed true that areas relating to "the home country" are very
likely to be influenced, at least to some degree, by people whose
first language is not English.

You make an interesting point, too. There is widespread unconcious
discrimination on Wikipedia.

Mr. Randombtr will be trusted less about Chinese history than Mr.
Uneducatedchinesefarmer, even though there is a possibility that Mr.
Randombtr has his Ph.D in Chinese history and has lived in China for
20 years - after all, Mr. Uneducatedchinesefarmer is actually Chinese.
Even if he never saw a history textbook, or if he moved to the UK at
age 3 and never learnt much about Chinese history than some half
truth, half legend that his grandparents taught him (probably more
likely - uneducated Chinese farmers are unlikely to be editing on
en:), he is trusted disproportionately more because "he is Chinese".

This can be found in the real world as well, but more often than not
it is based on the colour of one's skin and the shape of one's eyes
rather than heritage and so a man of Japanese heritage born and raised
in London will be trusted more regarding Chinese history than will a
BTR woman who was born and raised in Beijing and completed university
there simply because she doesn't look "Asian" but he does.

But that is getting off topic and I don't think anybody denies it to a
large degree, so back to the topic at hand.

Since on most smaller Wikipedias there is usually nobody with enough
knowledge about "home countries" other than their own to write much
about them, articles such as that are often translations of the
English or teh French version.

If a man on the Cantonese Wikipedia (which doesn't actually exist...
yet) were to write an article on "Vienna U-Bahn" (that's Vienna
Underground, isn't it?), excluding the possibility that he lives or
lived at one point in Vienna and knows more than a little bit about
the U-Bahn, he will most likely translate from the English or French
version, or (perhaps a bit less common) research it on Google to write
an original article; in many cases he will use a mixture of the
English version and information from Google and completely organise it
into what seems like an original article but contains mostly the same
information.

Because of this, articles about "the home country" tend to vary little
between Wikipedias (especially smaller ones), and since they are by
far en:'s articles most influenced by people whose first language is
not English, the "POV balancing" and "fact correction" that occurs in
articles by non first language-speakers on en: is spread around across
projects like butter on bread. Thus, the degree of inherent POV in all
Wikipedias is very similar because of this repeated exchange of a
narrow range of articles.

Mark (am I "the other Mark"?)

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 01:48:33 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >All these factors combined mean that en: is still very much shaped by
> >the collective cultural experiences of its editors, and thus while we
> >try to remove systemic bias we still miss some important POV holdouts
> >because they don't jump out at us, and en: is still very much an
> >encyclopaedia written from an
> >American-Australian-NewZealandic-Canadian-British perspective/POV with
> >only relatively minor counterbalances from those whose cultural
> >experiences fall outside those of the aforementioned English-native
> >group.
> >
> >
> This depends a lot on where on en: Wikipedia you look.  Many of the
> articles related to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have been
> edited by people who actually live there, and their opinions tend to be
> given somewhat disproportionate weight, as they're presumed to know what
> they're talking about (not exclusive weight, but more than my opinions
> on Hong Kong would be given).  There was even a class in Hong Kong whose
> teacher had his students go around on en: adding articles on different
> places, companies, etc. in the city.
>
> Just now I clicked on "Random page", and I got [[Vienna U-Bahn]],
> written by [[User:ThomasK]], whose user page indicates he lives in
> Vienna.  Etc.
>
> Percentage-wise, non-English-world users might not make up a large
> proportion of the editors, but their influence is fairly strong,
> especially on subjects related to their home country.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>All these factors combined mean that en: is still very much shaped by
>the collective cultural experiences of its editors, and thus while we
>try to remove systemic bias we still miss some important POV holdouts
>because they don't jump out at us, and en: is still very much an
>encyclopaedia written from an
>American-Australian-NewZealandic-Canadian-British perspective/POV with
>only relatively minor counterbalances from those whose cultural
>experiences fall outside those of the aforementioned English-native
>group.
>
>
This depends a lot on where on en: Wikipedia you look.  Many of the
articles related to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have been
edited by people who actually live there, and their opinions tend to be
given somewhat disproportionate weight, as they're presumed to know what
they're talking about (not exclusive weight, but more than my opinions
on Hong Kong would be given).  There was even a class in Hong Kong whose
teacher had his students go around on en: adding articles on different
places, companies, etc. in the city.

Just now I clicked on "Random page", and I got [[Vienna U-Bahn]],
written by [[User:ThomasK]], whose user page indicates he lives in
Vienna.  Etc.

Percentage-wise, non-English-world users might not make up a large
proportion of the editors, but their influence is fairly strong,
especially on subjects related to their home country.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
Did you write [[m:How to deal with Poles]]?

Mark

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 09:25:08 +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
<taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 01:15:19AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Mr. Randombtr will be trusted less about Chinese history than Mr.
> > Uneducatedchinesefarmer, even though there is a possibility that Mr.
> > Randombtr has his Ph.D in Chinese history and has lived in China for
> > 20 years - after all, Mr. Uneducatedchinesefarmer is actually Chinese.
> > Even if he never saw a history textbook, or if he moved to the UK at
> > age 3 and never learnt much about Chinese history than some half
> > truth, half legend that his grandparents taught him (probably more
> > likely - uneducated Chinese farmers are unlikely to be editing on
> > en:), he is trusted disproportionately more because "he is Chinese".
>
> You forgot one exception - at least on en, being Polish makes one
> considered less trustworthy about Polish history, not more.
>


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interwiki Bugs (incorrect lang list?)

body:
Hi all,

Editing the Ossetic Wikipedia I've encountered lots of interwiki problems:

1. Interwiki links to os.wikipedia never appear in other language wikipedias.

2. Interwiki links to some wikipedias (cv, ce, lb and other codes) do
not work in os.wikipedia.

3. Standard prefixes for other WikiMedia projects don't work as well,
leaving red links.

What can be done about all that and _who_ can help?

As an excellent illustration to my words here's  the list of languages
of wikipedia:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_language_Wikipedias_available
The Ossetic is among the "active" (at least 100 articles), but it's
code is in red. ;)

Slavik

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Klaus-Eduard Runnel

body:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:20:30 +0100, Klaus
<Klaus-Dieter.Wiemann at t-online.de> wrote:
> A liitle question from a beginner,
>
> I have install w wikipedia on my LAN. Now I want it backup and reinstall it
> on another LAN. How can I do it or where can I read something about it?

1. make an sql dump
2. use it to create the database on your new sql server
3. make a fresh MediaWiki install on your new location, setting the
parameters correctly.
4. If you mess up with 2. or 3., start over.

I think, that's the way I did it.

another Klaus


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Is there a list of allowed arguments to font tag?

body:
Jim Higson wrote:
> So far I'm allowing color face and size, are there any others the php parser
> allows (or should allow?)

Here's what the HTML sanitizer code in 1.5 currently allows:

Common attributes:
'id', 'class', 'lang', 'dir', 'title', 'style'

Specific to <font>:
'size', 'color', 'face'

The <=1.4 code is more permissive as it has only a global attribute
whitelist, and will thus allow attributes that don't actually apply to
the <font> element.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Is there a list of allowed arguments to font tag?

body:
Jim Higson wrote:
> Just out of interest, what value is attained from allowing id and class in
> wikitext?

class is useful for attaching styles in the style sheet.

id can be used to ad explicit anchor targets which can be specified in a
link's fragment identifier.

> Doesn't this allow people to create messed up pages by setting
> id="globalWrapper" or some such thing?

Sure, but that'd be a silly thing to do wouldn't it? ;)

Unique id verification will probably get added at some point for markup
purity (a validator will complain at you if you have non-unique id
attributes).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] en-> wikicities interwikis

body:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 01:00:39 +0000, John Fader <jfader at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>       I just noticed that interwiki mappings have been established
> from (at least) en.wikipedia to wikicities (e.g.
> [[Wikicities:c:StarWars:Jedi]]).
>
> I wonder, could someone point me to the discussion which preceeded
> this decision?

This is the case for many wikis. There isn't any discussion of these
since they can just be added to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map which is a publicly
editable page.

Wikicities is in the interwiki map, along with dozens of other wikis.
Redirects within the Wikicities set up allows the use of c:WikiName to
be a link to a particular Wikicity (this prevents each individual
Wikicity needing to be added).

There are help pages on this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_linking and
http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Help:Interwiki_link

The idea is explained at http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?InterWiki and
used on many wikis (see <http://www.google.com/search?q=InterWikiMap>)

Angela.


from_name: Steven Melenchuk

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment
	revote]]

body:
As the old ratification vote for the arbcom policy amendment has
degenerated into a fiasco, I am working on initiating a revote. Please
visit there and add any significant comments you might have to make.

~Grunt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 13:41 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>If it looks ok and doesn't break the actual called hook functions (or if
>>it does, and we have some warning to fix them first), *then* go ahead
>>check it into REL1_4.
>
> I've tested every single one of the hook events, both with and without
> the Syslog sample extension. This was in the REL1_4 branch; I think it
> probably makes better sense to test in the 1.4 branch than with the HEAD
> branch (since that's what's actually going out), but I'll do that too.

Unless you're checking in something that will never ever be supported in
the future, or is a hack specifically for a problem in the 1.4 branch
that does not exist in the next version, it needs to go in HEAD.

If it doesn't go into HEAD, it will not be there in the next version. It
would be pretty lame if we fix a bunch of bugs in 1.4 and have them come
back in 1.5, wouldn't it? :)

I generally prefer to see things checked in on HEAD *first* and *then*
on REL1_4. If you prepare the code on both and check them in a few
minutes apart in the other order, that's fine too; I do that pretty
frequently. But if somebody makes a change out of the blue on the
release branch, and many hours layer there's no sign of it on the
development branch, big warning signs flash in my head and my
inclination is to pull it pending further work -- if it's not ready for
the development branch, it's probably not ready for production.

Keep in mind that we're pulling updates from REL1_4 (manually, but
frequently) on our live wikis. It's not a testing branch; it's in
production.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 13:41 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > I made a late checkin on the 1.4 branch today.
>
> I've reverted it for the moment. Could you check it into the mainline
> development branch please?

Sure, but it should really go out for 1.4 final, as the hooks
architecture is read-only without it (counter its documentation).

> If it looks ok and doesn't break the actual called hook functions (or if
> it does, and we have some warning to fix them first), *then* go ahead
> check it into REL1_4.

I've tested every single one of the hook events, both with and without
the Syslog sample extension. This was in the REL1_4 branch; I think it
probably makes better sense to test in the 1.4 branch than with the HEAD
branch (since that's what's actually going out), but I'll do that too.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou
evan at bad.dynu.ca
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 01:15:19AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Mr. Randombtr will be trusted less about Chinese history than Mr.
> Uneducatedchinesefarmer, even though there is a possibility that Mr.
> Randombtr has his Ph.D in Chinese history and has lived in China for
> 20 years - after all, Mr. Uneducatedchinesefarmer is actually Chinese.
> Even if he never saw a history textbook, or if he moved to the UK at
> age 3 and never learnt much about Chinese history than some half
> truth, half legend that his grandparents taught him (probably more
> likely - uneducated Chinese farmers are unlikely to be editing on
> en:), he is trusted disproportionately more because "he is Chinese".

You forgot one exception - at least on en, being Polish makes one
considered less trustworthy about Polish history, not more.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 01:51:15AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Did you write [[m:How to deal with Poles]]?

No, but I fully understand the author.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 17:31 -0500, Jonah Bossewitch wrote:

> This is the same problem I encountered back in December when I tried
> using the hooks to insert extra information into the template's context

Thanks for reporting the problem; that's one of the reasons it's been
fixed.

> In that email, I suggested using a named array rather than a simple
> array to pass the parameters.  Do you think this might provide more
> clarity?

It's a good idea, but I don't think it'll improve clarity. I think the
current format is easier to write and read than having named params.
Viz:

        # current
        wfRunHooks('Event', array($param1, &$param2, $param3));
        # ...
        function MyHookFunction($param1, &$param2, $param3) {
            $param2 = $param1 + $param3;
            return true;
        }

versus

        # proposed
        wfRunHooks('Event',
          array('param1' => $param1, 'param2' => &$param2, 'param3' => $param3));
        # ...
        function MyHookFunction($args) {
            $args['param2'] = $args['param1'] + $args['param3'];
            return true;
        }

I also don't think that named-arg passing makes defining the event
parameters any simpler; you just have to look up the names of the
parameters rather than their position. Either way, there's a
documentation requirement that won't go away.

And wfRunHooks() itself would be slightly more complicated.

> Also, what about including this actual setupTemplate processing hook
> that I proposed?

I'll try to get to it, but it's a separate issue. I'd also like to set
output events at a really fine grain.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou
evan at bad.dynu.ca


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: NPOV

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 01:15:19AM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>Mr. Randombtr will be trusted less about Chinese history than Mr.
>>Uneducatedchinesefarmer, even though there is a possibility that Mr.
>>Randombtr has his Ph.D in Chinese history and has lived in China for
>>20 years - after all, Mr. Uneducatedchinesefarmer is actually Chinese.
>>Even if he never saw a history textbook, or if he moved to the UK at
>>age 3 and never learnt much about Chinese history than some half
>>truth, half legend that his grandparents taught him (probably more
>>likely - uneducated Chinese farmers are unlikely to be editing on
>>en:), he is trusted disproportionately more because "he is Chinese".
>>
>>
>You forgot one exception - at least on en, being Polish makes one
>considered less trustworthy about Polish history, not more.
>
This is not unusual.  Outsiders can sometimes look at another country
more objectively.  E.g. de Tocqueville on democracy in America; Burke on
the revolution in France, etc.   Problematic native editors are not
limited to Poland

Ec


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

body:
On Saturday, March 12, 2005 5:04 PM, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I read again the description by James. And realise I got confused by the
> "warrant" term. So, there was nothing wrong in what is written. I apology
> for not having understood well.

Sorry, my fault, I shouldn't use such flowery language :-)

> This said, I stand up to my opinion that mentions of stewards or
> arbitrators of the english AC has basically nothing to do here. These
> positions do not exist in the real world. They mean nothing to those
> outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the Foundation itself. And
> they are only part of the status existing on the projects.

Well, there are apparently plans to form Arbitration Committees on other
language versions of Wikipedia, so it's not en:-centric (or not intended to
be). Thus Arbitrator status, and certainly, of course, Stewards, are
Wikimedia-project-wide, and the people who will receive these cards will
understand that they confer extra 'status' of some kind, as you say. Neither
job are particularly easy to do, and a small amount of thanks like this is
perhaps not a bad thing.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Business cards


subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 13:41 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > I made a late checkin on the 1.4 branch today.
>
> I've reverted it for the moment. Could you check it into the mainline
> development branch please?

Done.

> If it looks ok and doesn't break the actual called hook functions (or if
> it does, and we have some warning to fix them first), *then* go ahead
> check it into REL1_4.

OK, I've checked the change in to HEAD, and I've re-tested to my own
satisfaction (ran over all the places in the code where events are
raised, trying to vary as many things as I could). I've also added a bug
report:

        http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694

I'll merge back to REL1_4 after a few days if I don't hear screams of
bloody murder anywhere. Let me know if you want to do some more formal
acceptance criteria.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou
evan at bad.dynu.ca


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] FlickR

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi,

has anybody seen this: http://www.flickr.com? It is kind of an photo
blog community, and many photographs are licensed with a creative
commons licence.

Bye, Till


from_name: Jim Higson

body:
So far I'm allowing color face and size, are there any others the php parser
allows (or should allow?)

This is for my realtime javascript parser.

Thanks,
Jim


from_name: Jean-Christian Imbeault

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's bugzilla

body:
Hi again, I posted this a few days ago but I think my thread might have
gotten lost.

I'm trying to get a hold of the templates used by the Wikipedia's
Bugzilla installation. I like the fact that wikipedia's bugzilla is
using the monobook style as it makes both the bugzilla nd wikipedia look
like one product.

I'm using wikipedia for an internal documentation resource and also
bugzilla for bug tracking so I'd like to also have my bugzilla use the
monobook style. Unfortunately making templates in bugzilla is not as
simple as just copying .css files :(

Does anyone know how I can get a copy of the templates used on
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Thanks,

Jc


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Jim Higson wrote:
>> So far I'm allowing color face and size, are there any others the php
>> parser allows (or should allow?)
>
> Here's what the HTML sanitizer code in 1.5 currently allows:
>
> Common attributes:
> 'id', 'class', 'lang', 'dir', 'title', 'style'
>
> Specific to <font>:
> 'size', 'color', 'face'
>
> The <=1.4 code is more permissive as it has only a global attribute
> whitelist, and will thus allow attributes that don't actually apply to
> the <font> element.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Thanks.

Just out of interest, what value is attained from allowing id and class in
wikitext? Doesn't this allow people to create messed up pages by setting
id="globalWrapper" or some such thing?


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] menu on wmf

body:
Hi

the menu on the foundation site appears to some of us as

     * Main Page
     * Community portal
     * Current events
     * <ourprojects>
     * <pressroom>
     * <localchapters>
     * <bylaws>
     * <benefactors>
     * Recent changes
     * <contactus>
     * <membership>

This is quite ugly. I changed myself this menu when the site was set up,
and it was initially correct. I am sorry, but I have no idea how to fix
this. Can some one help us here ?

This really does not look professional at all. We just look ridiculous
ihmo. Please ?

Anthere


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: menu on wmf

body:
thanks Brion for fixing this.

Ant

Anthere a ?crit:
> Hi
>
> the menu on the foundation site appears to some of us as
>
>
>
>     * Main Page
>     * Community portal
>     * Current events
>     * <ourprojects>
>     * <pressroom>
>     * <localchapters>
>     * <bylaws>
>     * <benefactors>
>     * Recent changes
>     * <contactus>
>     * <membership>
>
>
>
> This is quite ugly. I changed myself this menu when the site was set up,
> and it was initially correct. I am sorry, but I have no idea how to fix
> this. Can some one help us here ?
>
> This really does not look professional at all. We just look ridiculous
> ihmo. Please ?
>
> Anthere


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Pronunciations of things foreign

body:
Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could an American please pronounce and upload George W. Bush and a Chinese ??? ??

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:En-us-George_W._Bush.ogg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:En-us-George_Walker_Bush.ogg

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Pronunciations of things foreign

body:
For what it's worth, the Voice of America runs a Pronunciation Guide
for names at http://names.voa.gov/

I think it might be public domain, as is all other VOA material, and
if so, could be used at Wikipedia.

-ilya

> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 16:00:09 +0100
> From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pronunciations of things foreign
>
> Hoi,
> There is this joke about these Americans asking for the "tjamps
> ilajsies" in Paris, and nobody ever heard of it... Many words cannot be
> properly pronounced by people not speaking the language. Many news
> organisations have their presenters trained in pronouncing foreign words..
>
> When we write about things foreign, there is often no difinitive word
> for the subject in the language that the article is written in. So often
> we try to find something that will do. Most often we use what others
> used before us, often it is a transliteration or a transcription to yet
> another language. With our digital encyclopedia, it is easy to add
> pronunciation of words in the local language. We often add how it is
> written in another script and, it would make equal sense to add the
> pronunciation in the local language as well.
>
> As an example I have done this in the wikipedias for "Jaap de Hoop
> Scheffer" and for "Silvio Berlusconi". I have also pronounced and
> uploaded the category of Dutch politicians from the en:wikipedia to
> Commons... Could an American please pronounce and upload George W. Bush
> and a Chinese ????"???? ??
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM


body:
Goplat wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>Unique id verification will probably get added at some point for markup
>>purity (a validator will complain at you if you have non-unique id
>>attributes).
>
> This XHTML fetish has got to go. It's nothing but a waste of the Apache
> servers' CPU.

HTML 4.01 imposes roughly the same requirements as XHTML 1.0. It would
be slightly looser with case insensitivity and not always requiring
close tags, but otherwise about the same. It has almost exactly the same
set of allowed elements, attributes, and attribute values. id attributes
are still required to be unique. The same set of named character entity
references are valid.

Outputting HTML 4.01 would not actually save us any work over outputting
XHTML 1.0.

> So... what's the big benefit of using XHTML? Well, you can serve it with the
> application/xhtml+xml mime type (or whatever the W3C says it should be served
> as this week), and enjoy great new features like your page not displaying at
> all until it's completely finished loading and parsing. This may seem
> annoying, but it's necessary to protect people from seeing part of an invalid
> document, which would of course be a horrible traumatic experience and scar
> them for life.

Thanks for the non sequitur rant; I hope you feel better now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> It's a common version-control practise to make a stable branch before a
> release, and do only bug fixes, stabilizing changes, and release-related
> mods (version number, release notes, etc.) in that branch. Then, after
> the release milestone and hoopla, at your leisure you merge all changes
> back into HEAD as one big packet.

In my experience, merging anything as one big packet is a big pain in
the butt. :) Better to merge the changes up into HEAD when they're still
fresh in your mind.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 10:14:49 -0500, Evan Prodromou <evan at bad.dynu.ca> wrote:
> I also don't think that named-arg passing makes defining the event
> parameters any simpler; you just have to look up the names of the
> parameters rather than their position. Either way, there's a
> documentation requirement that won't go away.

This is just a comment, in that you've done the hard work of coding
the thing, so far be it from me to criticise from such limited
experience, but I think there are advantages to named arguments:

* it makes *altering* the event parameters in the future easier to
cope with - if you have named parameters they can always remain as
meaning the same thing; if an extra one is added, it gets an extra
name; if one is lost, functions which didn't use it anyway will still
work. With un-named params, you might be able to get away with adding
an extra one on the end, but you certainly couldn't safely remove one,
and adding one in the middle because it was a more logical ordering
would also be a no-no.

* if a function only needs to refer to one of the params, it's kind of
annoying to define it as something like myFunction($ignore1, $ignore2,
$ignore3, [etc,] $the_arg_we_want). Kind of a minor point, but
definitely more convenient with named args, where you'd just never
mention the others, even though they'd been passed.

* Similarly, people might mistakenly think that the name of the
arguments is important, or even find themselves with garbled results
because they thought the name of the arguments was *sufficient*. But I
guess people *that* new to programming are going to have multiple
problems anyway, and will need someone to call on for advice who'd see
through that.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pronunciations of things foreign

body:
Hoi,
There is this joke about these Americans asking for the "tjamps
ilajsies" in Paris, and nobody ever heard of it... Many words cannot be
properly pronounced by people not speaking the language. Many news
organisations have their presenters trained in pronouncing foreign words..

When we write about things foreign, there is often no difinitive word
for the subject in the language that the article is written in. So often
we try to find something that will do. Most often we use what others
used before us, often it is a transliteration or a transcription to yet
another language. With our digital encyclopedia, it is easy to add
pronunciation of words in the local language. We often add how it is
written in another script and, it would make equal sense to add the
pronunciation in the local language as well.

As an example I have done this in the wikipedias for "Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer" and for "Silvio Berlusconi". I have also pronounced and
uploaded the category of Dutch politicians from the en:wikipedia to
Commons... Could an American please pronounce and upload George W. Bush
and a Chinese ??? ??

Thanks,
GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's bugzilla

body:
A very big thank you! I was having a really hard time adapting the old
ones mentioned on meta-wiki.

Jc

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to get a hold of the templates used by the Wikipedia's
>> Bugzilla installation. I like the fact that wikipedia's bugzilla is
>> using the monobook style as it makes both the bugzilla nd wikipedia look
>> like one product.
>
>
> Templates:
> http://download.wikimedia.org/bugzilla/bugzilla-custom.tgz
>
> Patch:
> http://download.wikimedia.org/bugzilla/bugzilla-patch.diff
>
> These are for bugzilla 2.18. You probably won't want it to point at our
> web site, so customize it. ;)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Jonah Bossewitch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
> > In that email, I suggested using a named array rather than a simple
> > array to pass the parameters.  Do you think this might provide more
> > clarity?
>
> It's a good idea, but I don't think it'll improve clarity. I think the
> current format is easier to write and read than having named params.

I guess its partially a matter of opinion, but I still think that the
second example, where you pull out the parameters you care about by name
is the most clear.

As Rowan pointed out, this matters the most when you want to alter the
parameters getting passed through.  When you find yourself requiring a
new parameter, all of a sudden the coherent ordering and groupings of
parameters makes no sense, and with positional arrays, your only option
would be to tack something new on the end.  This inevitably makes the
positional ordering haphazard and illogical over time.

Named parameters are really common in both Perl and Python:

http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/perl/perlnut/ch10_04.htm
http://docs.python.org/tut/node6.html#SECTION006720000000000000000
(actually built into the language as part of the syntax)

but for whatever reason, not so much in php.

I think there are many arguments out there for their advantages over
positional arrays.

> And wfRunHooks() itself would be slightly more complicated.
>

Really?  I would think it would make wfRunHooks simpler.  No more var
arg processing.  A fixed, identical signature for every hook function:

myHookFunction ($parameterArray)

and that array would be the only thing that wfRunHooks would ever need
to pass through to the hook function.

Its just more work on the receiving end of each function to unpack the
parameterArray.

Maybe I am missing something...

> > Also, what about including this actual setupTemplate processing hook
> > that I proposed?
>
> I'll try to get to it, but it's a separate issue. I'd also like to set
> output events at a really fine grain.
>

Well even introducing at least one hook lets someone add new variables
to the context of the template. At the moment there is a ton of code you
need to carry around if you just want to add even one new variable to a
template.  The "cleanest" way I have found to do this without hooks, is
by overriding buildNavUrls in my subclassed skin, but I end up having to
copy/paste a ton of code just to add a few more variables to the
templates context.

Thanks,
Jonah


subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sun, 2005-13-03 at 06:55 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Unless you're checking in something that will never ever be supported in
> the future, or is a hack specifically for a problem in the 1.4 branch
> that does not exist in the next version, it needs to go in HEAD.
>
> If it doesn't go into HEAD, it will not be there in the next version. It
> would be pretty lame if we fix a bunch of bugs in 1.4 and have them come
> back in 1.5, wouldn't it? :)

I thought things worked differently.

It's a common version-control practise to make a stable branch before a
release, and do only bug fixes, stabilizing changes, and release-related
mods (version number, release notes, etc.) in that branch. Then, after
the release milestone and hoopla, at your leisure you merge all changes
back into HEAD as one big packet. You can also continue to make bug
fixes in the stable branch and merge each group of changes back to HEAD
after a minor release.

I'm not saying MediaWiki has to do it that way; I'm just saying that
that's a pretty common thing to do.

> I generally prefer to see things checked in on HEAD *first* and *then*
> on REL1_4.

I don't think that's a good idea. Not that my opinion on the subject
matters, but here's my thinking: if you're doing stabilizing bug fixes,
you should write and test them for the stable environment, not for a
moving-target development environment.

Also, merging between branches is an inherently destabilizing action;
one should inject that entropy from the stable branch into the unstable
branch, not the other way around. In other words, you should pay the
price in the dev branch, not in the stable branch.

But, hey: you da boss. I'll dev in HEAD then port to RELX_Y in the
future, if I need to. And I'll merge this changeset from HEAD to REL1_4
in a day or two.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou
evan at bad.dynu.ca


subject: [Wikitech-l] Late checkin on 1.4 branch

body:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:16:58 -0500, Jonah Bossewitch
<mrenoch at phantomcynthetics.com> wrote:
> Its just more work on the receiving end of each function to unpack the
> parameterArray.

Indeed, there's no real need for the *programmer* to worry about
unpacking the array - as far as a simple function is concerned, the
variables can just be used as ever. PHP may have to deal with it
differently, but from a coders point of view, it's:

function foo($a, $b, $c) {
    doMagicStuffWith $b;
}

versus

function bar($params) {
   doMagicStuffWith $params['b'];
}

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Reinhardt Wiewe

subject: [Wikitech-l] nb interlanguage links at no

body:
Hall?,

If you add a interlanguage link to nb: in a title at no: it does not show up
as a self referencing link.

a) Is this a configuratiuon issue or a bug?b) How is this solved at zh: and
zh variants?

Kve?ja / Gru? / Salutas / Best regards / Salutari cordiale

Reinhardt [[gangleri]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] International cooperation on sounds

body:
Hoi,

Three people, all very active in Wiktionary, agreed that the
pronunciation of names and places are quit different in the non local
languages. Many wikipedias add how a place is written in the language
where this name is local.

The three people pronounced a few words and, they have been added to
commons. I have also been so bold to add these pronunciations to the
wikipedias that have an article on these illustrious people; they are
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Silvio Berlusconi and George Walker Bush. I have
added some famous Dutch politicians for good measure and, if you want me
to pronounce Dutch words, you can always ask. I am aware that not
everyone in a country pronounce things in the same way, but it is most
often superior to what you make up if you see the characters that make
up the name.

One request, please add those pronunciations of important people, places
etc to Commons, there is no better way of learning how something is to
be pronounced for someone who is not failiar with your language.

Thanks,
   GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] International cooperation on sounds