body:
> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

> > a) It's not at all clear to me that http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103
adds
> > much to the http://en.wikipedia.org/Homo_floriensis article
> > b) Even if it does, it's not clear that the Wikinerds link is the best
> > source, or even a particularly good source for that information. It is
not
> > nearly as close to the source, or as authoritative as several of the
other
> > links that are already in the article.
> > c) NSK does have a clear promotional interest in wanting to build up his
> > site.
>
> I have no hesitation in reverting this variety of edit as spam, and usually
> in blocking the IP if it's an anon. I fully expect to continue as well.
> Because it is spam.
>
> If it's not one of *the* *best* possible links the article could have, and
> it's not a reference used in the article, there's no reason for it to be
> there. Hence the frequent edit summary "Wikipedia is not dMoz". (Or Wikia.)

Well, sure.

I said it was borderline, I said it was skating on thin ice, and I said that
NSK shouldn't be surprised if people removed his links.

If I found one of his links on a page that's on my watchlist and that I
specially care about, I'd click on the link and read the page it linked to.
If it struck me as pure spam, I'd probably delete it. But if it struck me as
being egg bacon spam and sausage, I might figure "that's not got much spam"
and leave it in.

The actual Homo floriensis link under discussion struck me as being more like
spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam.

It is, of course, very easy for NSK to avoid the issue altogether, and he
doesn't need to "leave Wikipedia" to do it.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Hi,

I?think that concerns only the English Wikipedia, for the time being at least.
Could this discussion be moved to wikien-l, please ?

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikien-l

from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site (NSK)

body:
>Yes, I can agree with this, and I think what I am doing is fair and useful
>to
>the reader. And hey, your post was very insightful.
>
>I considered the situation and found that Wikipedia needs an External Link
>Proposal Procedure (ELPP).
>
>Here is how ELPP could work:
>- The person who wants to include an external link to his site on Wikipedia
>will not be allowed to do that, but he should use the ELPP system. Let's
>name
>this person "Link Provider".
>- The first step of the ELPP process is: The Link Provider places the
>proposed
>link on his user page.
>- The second step: The Link Provider completes a form or writes to the
>mailing
>list (it could even be a special mailing list) or on the village pump or on
>the talk page of the affected article saying that he proposes the inclusion
>of a link to his site. He gives his userpage.
>- Admins and Wikipedians go to his userpage and check the link.
>- The Link Provider also explains on his userpage why the link is
>informative
>and where he likes it to be included (which Wikipedia article).
>- Admins and Wikipedians vote and discuss whether to include the link
>- If approved, the link will be inserted to the relevant article by an
>admin
>or Wikipedian, but not by the Link Provider.
>
>Allowing anybody to insert links in Wikipedia is like asking for spam. ELPP
>solves this problem by creating a formal process for the submission of new
>external links.

I think it unlikely that any editor would submit themselves to this
incredibly bureaucratic procedure, or that any admins would bother
administering it.

Here's a simpler idea: don't post links to your own website.

And if you really think your website is that great, post a link to it on the
Talk: page, and suggest to any interested readers that they might want to
post it in the article, if their estimation of the website matches your own.

Jay.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikitech-l] Maps: An alternate approach

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Seroiusly: I *am* aware that there are many map-rendering programs
> around, some of them open source. But, the fact that noone has come up
> with a working solution for MediaWiki tells me that there's some kind
> of problem.

I think part of the problem is an impedence mismatch of sorts: Most of
the GIS software is designed by and for geographers who want to run
large statistical queries on it, while we by and large just want pretty
pictures, and want them as fast and simply as possible.  Still, it'd be
a shame if none of the considerable work that's been done is reusable...

> Well, internally I want to store "real-world" coordinates (lalt/long).
> All coordinates are passed through a single function to convert them
> into display coordinates. For the different 2D mapping systems, that
> should not be a problem, as it can be tweaked at a single point in the
> source. 3D is a different beast, of course. Personally, I'd go for a
> 2D solution initially. If there is pressing need for rendering a map
> on a 3D globe, then displaying a 2D image of it in the browser, I am
> certain it will not exceed the joined programming abilities of the
> people on this list :-)
>
> As for resolution/zoom, all objects can be tagged with metadata. I
> imagine rivers with "magnitude" tags 1-5 or something. Detail level
> could depend on actual resolution, default settings
> ("global","country","state",etc.), parameter ("show_magnitude=1-3"),
> or any combination of the above.

That sounds reasonable.  This is probably part of why GIS systems are so
complex: They want, for example, arbitrary and automatic resolution
scaling based on rather complex feature-summarization algorithms, so you
store the most detailed data, and it automatically abstracts it when you
"zoom out" as necessary.  But I imagine 5 discrete levels will suffice
for 99% of our purposes.  Part of the problem remaining then is that
we'd have to regenerate all this data ourselves, or at least tag it:
There are huge data repositories of GIS data already freely available
(especially for the US), but they wouldn't have this sort of information.

Anyway, it does seem like a good way to go forward, barring anyone with
significant GIS experience jump-starting integration of one of those
systems into MediaWiki in the near future (their documentation is too
horrid for me to have succeeded in my last attempt).  I do have some
vague familiarity with the existing datasets, so when I get some free
time (probably in about 2 weeks... conference submission deadlines
coming up) I'll see if I can write some scripts to extract some of the
sorts of data that'd be useful to us from the commonly-available data
sets, so we don't have to manually input every bit of data that's
already out there.

-Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?

Fred

> From: Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org>
> Organization: Boskonia
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:12:19 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright
>
> I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
> [[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old, but
> its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright notice
> associated with it and was never published until it was captured by the
> Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for Wikipedia's
> purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status really is.
> Can anyone help me?
>
> --
> Sean Barrett     | I have a plan so cunning you could shave with it.
> sean at epoptic.com |
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject:
[WikiEN-l] No blogs,
	portals or sites which have less information than this

body:
The subject is the edit summary from the edit that removed NSK's link.  Independent of the particulars of NSK's site, this summary is not a valid excuse, wikipedia articles can grow to a level of completeness that most external sites cannot match, yet a lot of our information comes from external sites, and it can be important to cite those sites even though their information has been included in the article and a subsequent editor unfamiliar with the history may now consider them redundant..      -- Silverback

-------------- Original message --------------

> Hello.
>
> Please check
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=0&oldid=9300527
>
> It is about the removal of an external link to my site that I first inserted
> in October. See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=6952756&oldid=6
> 952087
>
> The link is this: http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103
>
> I insert only links that I truly believe are informational and I have no
> interest to insert any bogus links. I truly believe that my report is
> informational.
>
> Please explain why it was considered inappropriate and give me a link to any
> external links policies that you may have.
>
> The link was removed by Adam Bishop. He contacted me through e-mail and I
> answered promptly. I explained my concern that my link was removed because it
> was pointing to a "competing" wikisite. He said that the link was spam
> because it was pointing to my site.
>
> Other links to my site removed by Adam Bishop have been featured on
> Slashdot.org - check: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/28/1825218 and
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/19/174240 - Links to wikinerds.org
> that were featured on these Slashdot stories were added (and subsequently
> removed by Adam Bishop) in this article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation_Europe - I have since
> inserted links to the Slashdot stories because I believe that they are
> informational.
>
> All that happened the same day I decided to start contributing some of my
> articles on Wikipedia (and thus relicensing some CC content under GFDL for
> your use) - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsync
>
> I don't agree that I should not be allowed to post links to my site just
> because it is mine. This isn't spam.
>
> I post this message on the mailing list because I want a clear answer on
> whether my link about Homo Floresiensis was spam or not. If the other admins
> agree with me that self-linking is not spam then I would like Adam Bishop to
> reconsider and post a public apology on his userpage stating that my link on
> Homo Floresiensis was not spam. If you decide that the link was not
> informational, I have no problem with this. But I truly believe that
> describing it as spam was unfair. Adam Bishop stated in the History log of
> the Homo Floresiensis article: "01:45, 12 Jan 2005 Adam Bishop (removing
> spam)"
>
> I also promise to not post any other external links without asking on the
> mailing list or the village pump first.
>
> --
> NSK
> Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Propably just a chmod, please

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

>>I urgently need the csv files that are generated by Erik Zachte's
>>wikistat. They were accesible via
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/ but the directory is not
>>accesible anymore. Can anyone just make it readable by Apache or tell
>>me where is it gone, please?
 >
> Files in this directory are actually uncompressed, we probably want to
> make them available on download.wikimedia.org/wikistats/ as tar.gz

Erik send me the files - so it's not that urgent anymore :-)

greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> While I see your point, and even agree, it is probably preferable in
> such a case to put the link in a "references" section, rather than
> simply giving it some invisible immortal status in the "external
> links" section. By which I mean, if an editor can come along and say
> "this link gives me no useful information beyond what's already here",
> the link has ceased to be useful *as further reading*, which is what
> the majority of External links provide, so they are quite justified in
> saying so. If it was a reference used in *creating* the article, it
> should be cited as such, and then people will know that that is why it
> is listed, and comments about comparitive levels of content become
> irrelevant.

I agree with you, but would also like to point out that there are hybrid
situations where an external link is both used as a major reference *and* still
has enough good info in it to act as 'further reading'. What I do in this
situations is put '(also used as a reference)' after the link in the ==External
links== list. One could put the link both in the ==External links== and
==References== lists, but, IMO, that is a bit redundant.

Oh, and References can also be cited as such if only used to confirm
information in an article. This is necessary due to the fact that so many
editors don't add references at all.

-- Daniel (aka mav)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
> > threatening them with banning".
>
> He blocked himself. Don't worry Brion, I'm getting the joke, even if
> no-one else is.

I used to block myself all the time on my work computer. But it wasn't a joke -
my work productivity was on the line. :)

-- mav

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from_name: Arkady Rose

subject: [WikiEN-l] External links and self-linking to my site

body:
NSK wrote:
> I insert only links that I truly believe are informational and I have no
> interest to insert any bogus links. I truly believe that my report is
> informational.
>
> Please explain why it was considered inappropriate and give me a link to any
> external links policies that you may have.
[Remainder snipped for brevity]

The standard policy on Wikipedia is "no self-promotion". If the
reports and articles you are trying to link to are truly so useful
then let others link to them.

Right now I am very much reminded of Irismeister - except you're not
being *quite* as obnoxious about it.

-a


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> The answer to your question is, Michael Everson and Adam Carr
> (although they're not celebrities of the level that they get a lot of
> publicity)

The second type of celeb is what I was talking about. And the two people you
cite are only widely known within narrow circles. Heck most of my uni
professors would also qualify in that regard.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site

body:
I thoroughly agree.  NSK's site is mostly material that has been deleted from Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, and his/her main purpose in life on this mailing list is to get us to go to his/her site and contribute to it.  There is hardly anything there that adds to material we already have on Wikipedia.

RickK

Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
I think it's a fairly clear example of spamming. Based on a look at
NSK's contributions, it seems (and doesn't surprise me) that a
majority of them are adding links, many to his site. Nearly every post
by NSK to Wikipedia's mailing lists, including this one, is either a)
trying to convince people to go to his site, or b) trying to convince
people that Wikipedia needs to be made more like his site. I think by
this point it's abundantly clear that NSK is here, not to add to
Wikipedia, but to advertise his own site, and that he's fast becoming
one of the shining examples of Wikipedia being overgenerous with its
good faith.

With this in mind, I think the removal was perfectly justified.

-- ambi

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:38:25 -0800, Nicholas Knight
wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
> > I do not think there should be an /a priori/ rule that posting links
> > to your own sites is forbidden. On the other hand, one should expect
> > a certain amount of scrutiny if one does.
> >
> > In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
> > Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
> > in a more peaceable manner. I don't agree with removing it and citing
> > as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.
>
> Ditto'd. A little extra scrutiny is not unreasonable, but calling it
> spam simply because it's his own site is pretty much off the deep end.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
_______________________________________________
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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Sean Barrett said:

> Is there a way to get a list of all /images/ I've contributed?
> I'm afraid my "my contributions" list is too long to be useful.

Go to [[Special:Contributions]] and ''then'' select "image:" space from
the drop down box.
When I did it I got this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=Tony+Sidaway&hideminor=0&namespace=6


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
>>> From: Sean Barrett
>>> I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
>>> [[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old,
>>> but
>>> its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright notice
>>> associated with it and was never published until it was captured by the
>>> Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for
>>> Wikipedia's
>>> purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status really
>>> is.
>>> Can anyone help me?
>>>
>>
> Who the copyright belongs to is a different issue.
>
> I would venture to guess that the vast majority of material that is
> protected by copyright lacks an owner who would have rights to be
> protected.

I think there are almost always heirs, or the state, or whatever, but in
some
cases it would be a considerable effort to find out who it is. If you recall
the NPG guy who sent us the nastygram about images of paintings,
part of his day job was to track down copyright owners, because the
NPGs makes millions of dollars from their holdings, and a copyright
owner could surface and demand a piece of the action. In our case, it's
hardly worth spending much time on the research, even on a volunteer
basis, since we're not making any money from the copyrighted work;
if an owner ever shows up and decides that the old document is
somehow a moneymaker, the most we would need to do is to take it down.

So we should just be able to tag things as "copyright owner unknown" and
leave it at that.

Stan


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Hi Yann

Why does this concern only en.wikipedia?

What will de.wikipedia do if somebody registers as
User:Gerhard_Schroeder, or somebody on fr.wikipedia registers as
User:Jacques_Chirac? (or perhaps a more minor celebrity).

I don't know from experience, but my guess is that some other
Wikipedias, especially de.wikipedia and ja.wikipedia, have had similar
problems.

Mark

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:36:12 +0100, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think that concerns only the English Wikipedia, for the time being at least.
> Could this discussion be moved to wikien-l, please ?
>
> Thanks,
> Yann
> --
> http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
> http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
> http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Geoffrey Roughton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Converting Wiki XML outputs to a PDF

body:
Hi

I am new to Wiki which we are using to prepare a manual collaboratively. We have downloaded all the pages (about 130) into an XML which runs to just over 15,000 lines. I now wish to convert this to a PDF. Does anyone know if a utility already exists that might make this easier. The main problem appears to be the Wiki formatting stuff embedded in the text blocks.

Any information or suggestions?

Geoffrey


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
> threatening them with banning".

He blocked himself. Don't worry Brion, I'm getting the joke, even if
no-one else is.

-- Tim Starling


body:
NSK said:
>
> I considered the situation and found that Wikipedia needs an External
> Link  Proposal Procedure (ELPP).

You don't need all this palaver.  Just negotiate external links on an
article-by-article basis.  If you're the only person editing an article,
ask another editor to look at the link in the context of the article and
remove it if necessary.  Be prepared to take no for an answer and don't
get into arguments, and you shouldn't encounter any serious problems.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

body:
Moin,

having written a <graph>-plugin for Mediawiki, I would like to announce it
here.

It takes textual graph descriptions between <graph></graph> like this:

For instance this input:

	<graph>
        [ Bonn ] -> [ Berlin ]
        [ Berlin -> [ Frankfurt ] { border: 1px dotted black; }
        [ Frankfurt ] -> [ Dresden ]
        [ Berlin ] -> [ Potsdam ]
        [ Potsdam ] => [ Cottbus ]
	</graph>

Would be rendered in ASCII as (use monospaced font for viewing :o)

        +------+     +--------+      .............     +---------+
        | Bonn | --> | Berlin |  --> : Frankfurt : --> | Dresden |
        +------+     +--------+      .............     +---------+
                       |
                       |
                       v
                     +---------+     +---------+
                     | Potsdam | ==> | Cottbus |
                     +---------+     +---------+

HTML looks similiar, but more pretty (well, maybe :)

All the gory details, the patch, software, testcases, screenshots etc can
be found at:

	http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/

This is a proof-of-concept - e.g. it is likely not to work #:o)=

It is also still very early pre-alpha. Especially the Graph.php is very
rough - I never did read nor write PHP code before - but it looks
suspiciously like Perl and seems to work, so I am not complaining :)

However, before I wander off over the proverbial big cliff, I'd rather get
some corrections. Read: please tell me what you think about it, whether
this is going to be usefull/work/bring world-peace etc.

There are quite a few thing that are simple not implemented yet - I do
have plans to implement them in the near future, though :) However, most
of the work remains in the external parser/renderer.

My main interest in this area lies in _easily_ documentating network
plans, flow charts, schematics and other things in that area. IMHO having
such a feature in a wiki would be very usefull.

Best wishes,

Tels

PS: Special thanx go to Omega for beta testing!

--
 Signed on Wed Jan 12 16:43:06 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Marketing lesson #1: The synergy of the result driven leverage can
 *never* incentivize a paradigm shift. --  Walterk (124748) on 2004-01-16
 at /.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
During the developers meeting at 21C3, we saw a pretty impressive
demonstartion of a map-generation software; alas, the underlying data
was (partially) contradicting itself, and the software consists of parts
in at least three programming language, all in alpha/beta stages, AFAIK.

When I saw someone upload dozens of maps on commons the other day, all
identical except for a different county marked in red, I though there
should be something simpler. Along the ideas that I published on meta
some long time ago, I wrote a PHP script for a simple map generation
tool. Source: CVS HEAD, "phase3/tools/geo.php", hereby GPL.

*Disclaimer:* This is just proof-of-concept; it would need significant
work to become useful.

This little script reads data from indexed sets of texts (currently
hardcoded as an array key=>text, but would be title=>wikipage in a
"real" implementation) and generates SVG from it. In the included
example (just run it from command line) it generates a simplified ;-]
map of Germany, showing east and west Germany (no political implications
here, just testing!) as well as the Danube.

The drwaing is based on poly-lines made from coordinate pairs in the
text entries. The poly-lines are then appended to each other as needed,
eventually forming polygons. This will save a great deal of work and
keep the data consistent: a border line between two states, for example,
is only defined once, then "included" into the polygons of both states.
To take this even further, is a river partially forms the border, the
very same polyline can be used as part of the river.

Currently, it draws each polygon separately, so in my demo, "Germany" is
still divided into two states :-(
However, I plan on a "merging" method, which will fuse two polygons into
one by removing common borders, so East and West Germany could be drawn
individually, with borders, or as the entity "Germany", with one common
border around it.

Imagine this for the U.S.: If we had the border data for all counties,
and want to draw a world map with the U.S. as a single entity, the
county polygons would be fused into state polygons, which then would be
fused into a few country polygons (continental, Hawaii, Alaska).

In my implementation, all data sets can carry meta information as well.
The Danube in the example is painted in blue because it carries a
"type:river" marker. Different object groups can be defined for
different purposes (political, geographical, etc.) Also, objects can be
labeled in all languages in-place. I currently don't show the labels,
though.

In a "real" implementation, all data would be stored as wiki pages. A
query to render some complicated view might take some time, then. But,
as long as we don't need real-time refreshment (cache as cache can!), I
would deem such a soultion prefferable to uploading (and maintaining) a
zillion map images...

Magnus


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Christopher M. Hagar

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Copyright Violation

body:
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:00:07 -0600
Ian Monroe <ian.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, I sometimes write a new definition if I have a spark of
> inspiration, otherwise I modify the definitions that make sense to me
> from Wordnet (I avoid Webster 1913 like the plague generally).

Wordnet is an awful source, that lumps together multiple words as though
they had identical meanings, when there truly are few words that have an
identical meaning to another word. Anyway, the definitions it uses are
severely flawed anyway and are no where near as good as authoritative
sources like Webster and OED. The definitions in Wordnet are more
appropriate to a desk reference for middle school students than an
authoritative dictionary.

Cheers,

Chris Hagar


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

Moin,

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 17:10, Magnus Manske wrote:
> During the developers meeting at 21C3, we saw a pretty impressive
> demonstartion of a map-generation software; alas, the underlying data
> was (partially) contradicting itself, and the software consists of
> parts in at least three programming language, all in alpha/beta stages,
> AFAIK.
>
> When I saw someone upload dozens of maps on commons the other day, all
> identical except for a different county marked in red, I though there
> should be something simpler. Along the ideas that I published on meta
> some long time ago, I wrote a PHP script for a simple map generation
> tool. Source: CVS HEAD, "phase3/tools/geo.php", hereby GPL.
>
> *Disclaimer:* This is just proof-of-concept; it would need significant
> work to become useful.

I sense a deja vu here :-)

(I actually toyed with the idea of SVG generation for graphs, but
postponed that to later once the ideas are more stabilized :)

However, I like your idea - even though I am not in map-making myself.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jan 12 17:42:43 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally
 established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white
 pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls." -- Terry Pratchett

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from_name: Rebecca

body:
I think it's a fairly clear example of spamming. Based on a look at
NSK's contributions, it seems (and doesn't surprise me) that a
majority of them are adding links, many to his site. Nearly every post
by NSK to Wikipedia's mailing lists, including this one, is either a)
trying to convince people to go to his site, or b) trying to convince
people that Wikipedia needs to be made more like his site. I think by
this point it's abundantly clear that NSK is here, not to add to
Wikipedia, but to advertise his own site, and that he's fast becoming
one of the shining examples of Wikipedia being overgenerous with its
good faith.

With this in mind, I think the removal was perfectly justified.

-- ambi

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:38:25 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> <snip>
> > I do not think there should be an /a priori/ rule that posting links
> > to your own sites is forbidden.  On the other hand, one should expect
> > a certain amount of scrutiny if one does.
> >
> > In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
> > Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
> > in a more peaceable manner.  I don't agree with removing it and citing
> > as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.
>
> Ditto'd. A little extra scrutiny is not unreasonable, but calling it
> spam simply because it's his own site is pretty much off the deep end.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Johannes Schindelin

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

body:
Hi,

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tels wrote:

> It is also still very early pre-alpha. Especially the Graph.php is very
> rough - I never did read nor write PHP code before - but it looks
> suspiciously like Perl and seems to work, so I am not complaining :)

You seem to use an external Perl script... Any chance to rewrite it in
PHP?

> However, before I wander off over the proverbial big cliff, I'd rather get
> some corrections. Read: please tell me what you think about it, whether
> this is going to be usefull/work/bring world-peace etc.

You made the same mistake as I did: not using an extension. Extensions are
small files which you place in extensions/ and activate by including them
in LocalSettings.php. This also obsoletes the activation in the settings.

The extensions mechanism is preferable, because they are more or less
independent of the rest of MediaWiki.

Ciao,
Dscho


body:
Hi,

how often do maps change? Seeing that there is already a lot of work being
done by the servers, I wouldn't want them to do things where you don't
need to collaborate (thus not needing online rendering capabilities).

Ciao,
Dscho


subject: [Wikitech-l] Information Architectures

body:
I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database. So if
I search from the German start page - I might get results that were
originally added in Spanish or French - as well as German.

Is there an elegant way of achieving this?

Paul


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

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

Moin,

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 17:56, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tels wrote:
> > It is also still very early pre-alpha. Especially the Graph.php is
> > very rough - I never did read nor write PHP code before - but it
> > looks suspiciously like Perl and seems to work, so I am not
> > complaining :)
>
> You seem to use an external Perl script... Any chance to rewrite it in
> PHP?

Since the external Perl script uses many (big) Perl modules - it passes
basically just the data around, but the real work is still done in Perl.
So, I think this is not going to work.  Unless, of course, you can use
Perl modules directly in PHP.

> > However, before I wander off over the proverbial big cliff, I'd
> > rather get some corrections. Read: please tell me what you think
> > about it, whether this is going to be usefull/work/bring world-peace
> > etc.
>
> You made the same mistake as I did: not using an extension. Extensions
> are small files which you place in extensions/ and activate by
> including them in LocalSettings.php. This also obsoletes the activation
> in the settings.
>
> The extensions mechanism is preferable, because they are more or less
> independent of the rest of MediaWiki.

I didn't know about extensions. I'll have a look - if it is simpler, than
that would be cool :) (I already wondered about the repetivive code that
handles html, math etc). Can you please point me to a demo extension
and/or doc about them?

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jan 12 18:01:54 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Spammed if you do, spammed if you don't." - Murphy's Law

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from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 12:01, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 01:13:13AM +0200, NSK wrote:
> > Find out more at http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/NGWP
>
> Shouldn't it be named NGMW ;-)

It has nothing to do with MW.

I already have a new MW here: http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/WikiAnt

They are totally independent programs. NGWP has shares no code with any other
project. NGWP is actually not just a wiki/CMS but also a new object-oriented
platform.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

body:
Hi,

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tels wrote:

> Since the external Perl script uses many (big) Perl modules - it passes
> basically just the data around, but the real work is still done in Perl.
> So, I think this is not going to work.  Unless, of course, you can use
> Perl modules directly in PHP.

I see. Pity.

> I didn't know about extensions. I'll have a look - if it is simpler, than
> that would be cool :) (I already wondered about the repetivive code that
> handles html, math etc). Can you please point me to a demo extension
> and/or doc about them?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Write_your_own_MediaWiki_extension

And (shameless plug) my LilyPond extension:

http://lily4jedit.sourceforge.net/mediawiki-LilyPond-extension-v3.tar.gz

Hth,
Dscho


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 17:59, Sean Barrett wrote:
> Is there a way to get a list of all /images/ I've contributed?
> I'm afraid my "my contributions" list is too long to be useful.

Hey,

You can filter the log. Ask me for specific directions if you don't know how
to do that.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
Delirium schrieb:

>
> Isn't this reimplementing some sort of a GIS data format and
> visualization system?  I think there was at least one person on this
> list who claimed to have significant knowledge of the GIS field, and I
> know there are some open-source systems already available.

Well, if there is a central, open-source (software and data),
editable-by-anyone solution that we can just plug into MediaWiki, great,
let's do it. Otherwise I say: GIS? So what? ;-)

Seroiusly: I *am* aware that there are many map-rendering programs
around, some of them open source. But, the fact that noone has come up
with a working solution for MediaWiki tells me that there's some kind of
problem.

>
> Stuff tends to get pretty complex as you go along: dealing with
> projections (since the earth isn't flat), 3d data,
> increasing/decreasing resolution as you zoom in/out, and even
> automatically placing labels.

Well, internally I want to store "real-world" coordinates (lalt/long).
All coordinates are passed through a single function to convert them
into display coordinates. For the different 2D mapping systems, that
should not be a problem, as it can be tweaked at a single point in the
source. 3D is a different beast, of course. Personally, I'd go for a 2D
solution initially. If there is pressing need for rendering a map on a
3D globe, then displaying a 2D image of it in the browser, I am certain
it will not exceed the joined programming abilities of the people on
this list :-)

As for resolution/zoom, all objects can be tagged with metadata. I
imagine rivers with "magnitude" tags 1-5 or something. Detail level
could depend on actual resolution, default settings
("global","country","state",etc.), parameter ("show_magnitude=1-3"), or
any combination of the above.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

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

Moin,

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 18:37, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tels wrote:
> > Since the external Perl script uses many (big) Perl modules - it
> > passes basically just the data around, but the real work is still
> > done in Perl. So, I think this is not going to work.  Unless, of
> > course, you can use Perl modules directly in PHP.
>
> I see. Pity.
>
> > I didn't know about extensions. I'll have a look - if it is simpler,
> > than that would be cool :) (I already wondered about the repetivive
> > code that handles html, math etc). Can you please point me to a demo
> > extension and/or doc about them?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Write_your_own_MediaWiki_extension

Wow! Thanx, I'll use that for the next version. I had a look at some of
the extensions in v1.3.9 but I couldn't figure out how they were actually
"registered".

Thank you again,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jan 12 18:46:17 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Die deutsche Zensoren  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dummk?pfe - - - -
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -." Heinrich Heine

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body:
Johannes Schindelin schrieb:

>Hi,
>
>how often do maps change? Seeing that there is already a lot of work being
>done by the servers, I wouldn't want them to do things where you don't
>need to collaborate (thus not needing online rendering capabilities).
>
>
I imagine a separate project (wikimaps.org?) on a server of its own.
Especially in the beginning, many changes will be made to the map data,
so I'd suggest re-rendereing maps once a day or so at an off-peak time.

Later, when these maps are actually used by wikimedia and other
projects, I'd use a FIFO order to process map requests, and forcible
keep the load beneath a certain threshold. Maybe a request could
generate an initial image under that name, saying "This map is being
rendered. please reload your browser page in 5 minutes to see the map."
or something. This would be shown on the requesting page until the map
is rendered.

However, since I have no idea how long rendering would take, it might
just work in real-time.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

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

Hello again,

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 18:37, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tels wrote:
> > Since the external Perl script uses many (big) Perl modules - it
> > passes basically just the data around, but the real work is still
> > done in Perl. So, I think this is not going to work.  Unless, of
> > course, you can use Perl modules directly in PHP.
>
> I see. Pity.
>
> > I didn't know about extensions. I'll have a look - if it is simpler,
> > than that would be cool :) (I already wondered about the repetivive
> > code that handles html, math etc). Can you please point me to a demo
> > extension and/or doc about them?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Write_your_own_MediaWiki_extension

However, I do not see how my extension can get:

* parameters like in:

	<graph gid=123> some text </graph>

AFAICS, only <graph> is supported, e.g. not additional parameters.
* user preferences, like whether the output should be in HTML or ASCII

Is it possible for an extension to define it's own user preferences that
are visible when the extension is loaded, and invisible otherwise?

And then there is also:

	http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GraphViz

Murphy dictates that I find this out now, and not 2 months ago :)

Sorry for asking so many silly questions,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Jan 12 18:49:58 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Retsina?" - "Ja, Papa?" - "Warp 3." - "Is gut, Papa."

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body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 17:38, dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> On the other hand, my perception is that he _is_ seeking to find ways in
> which he can simultaneously help Wikipedia _and also_ promote his site as a
> byproduct.

Yes, I can agree with this, and I think what I am doing is fair and useful to
the reader. And hey, your post was very insightful.

I considered the situation and found that Wikipedia needs an External Link
Proposal Procedure (ELPP).

Here is how ELPP could work:
- The person who wants to include an external link to his site on Wikipedia
will not be allowed to do that, but he should use the ELPP system. Let's name
this person "Link Provider".
- The first step of the ELPP process is: The Link Provider places the proposed
link on his user page.
- The second step: The Link Provider completes a form or writes to the mailing
list (it could even be a special mailing list) or on the village pump or on
the talk page of the affected article saying that he proposes the inclusion
of a link to his site. He gives his userpage.
- Admins and Wikipedians go to his userpage and check the link.
- The Link Provider also explains on his userpage why the link is informative
and where he likes it to be included (which Wikipedia article).
- Admins and Wikipedians vote and discuss whether to include the link
- If approved, the link will be inserted to the relevant article by an admin
or Wikipedian, but not by the Link Provider.

Allowing anybody to insert links in Wikipedia is like asking for spam. ELPP
solves this problem by creating a formal process for the submission of new
external links.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>> Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Sean Barrett
>>>> I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
>>>> [[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years
>>>> old, but
>>>> its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright
>>>> notice
>>>> associated with it and was never published until it was captured by
>>>> the
>>>> Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for
>>>> Wikipedia's
>>>> purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status
>>>> really is.
>>>> Can anyone help me?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Who the copyright belongs to is a different issue.
>>
>> I would venture to guess that the vast majority of material that is
>> protected by copyright lacks an owner who would have rights to be
>> protected.
>
> I think there are almost always heirs, or the state, or whatever, but
> in some
> cases it would be a considerable effort to find out who it is. If you
> recall
> the NPG guy who sent us the nastygram about images of paintings,
> part of his day job was to track down copyright owners, because the
> NPGs makes millions of dollars from their holdings, and a copyright
> owner could surface and demand a piece of the action. In our case, it's
> hardly worth spending much time on the research, even on a volunteer
> basis, since we're not making any money from the copyrighted work;
> if an owner ever shows up and decides that the old document is
> somehow a moneymaker, the most we would need to do is to take it down.
>
> So we should just be able to tag things as "copyright owner unknown" and
> leave it at that.

I would be comfortable with that, but I fear that I am in the minority.
What's more common is material that comes out with no notice
whatsoever.  It leaves me with the impression that our contributor has
done no homework at all.  The rest of us should not have to do someone
else's due diligence.

Ec


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:

>Well, if there is a central, open-source (software and data),
>editable-by-anyone solution that we can just plug into MediaWiki, great,
>let's do it. Otherwise I say: GIS? So what? ;-)

Some experimental work was done by Taw:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/Maps

Alfio


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
JAY JG wrote:

[long detailed proposal by NSK snipped]

> Here's a simpler idea: don't post links to your own website.

adding: and don't complain about it on the mailing list if they get removed.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Iinformation Architectures

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:27:15 +0100, Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
> language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database. So if
> I search from the German start page - I might get results that were
> originally added in Spanish or French.
>
> Is there an elegant way of achieving this?

Well, as of version 1.4 (currently in beta) MediaWiki allows each user
to select the language used by the *interface*. Thus you could have a
site that was multilingual (as http://meta.wikimedia.org is, at least
theoretically) and people could search whatever was there, translating
for each other's convenience as necessary. [For obvious reasons,
automatic translation is not a good idea.]

Alternatively, you could have multiple instances of MediaWiki with
appropriate interlanguage linking (as currently used by Wikipedia),
and come up with some kind of "meta search" that could find content in
any of them - some work has gone into abstracted search systems, I
believe, specifically in relation to "Lucene" (?); but no-one, as far
as I know, has developed a multi-MediaWiki search engine (apart from
Google with an appropriate "site:..." term, of course!)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
First off, I'm in no way affiliated with NSK or wikinerds. In fact, I
find it to be a very boring site that I wont waste my time on. Bug
NSK:s very polite request and the answers, some of which was very rude
that he got, got me thinking. What if NSK continues to do what he is
currently doing? After all, everyone has a self-interest, some
acknowledge it, others don't, NSK is atleast honest about it. Then
when someone thinks that NSK has inappropriately inserted a link to
his site and reverts it AND NSK disagrees with their judgement he
contacts me. I will then, as an impartial observer, look at what the
link links to and in which Wikipedia page it was inserted and
determine if that link belongs or should be removed. Ofcourse I would
not have the final say in such disagreements. It is just that then the
disagreement would be between me, if I find the link fitting and
someone else doesn't, instead of with NSK. I think that would be
beneficial because I'm just a random Wikipedian who can gain nothing
from link-spamming to wikinerds. Strange idea maybe, but totally
serious.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce] <graph> plugin

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:52:58 +0100, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> However, I do not see how my extension can get:
>
> * parameters like in:
>
>         <graph gid=123> some text </graph>
>
> AFAICS, only <graph> is supported, e.g. not additional parameters.

Not yet, but there is progress towards implementing it: see
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684

> * user preferences, like whether the output should be in HTML or ASCII
>
> Is it possible for an extension to define it's own user preferences that
> are visible when the extension is loaded, and invisible otherwise?

I'm not sure about this one. Does the new "callback hooks" system
implement anything related to this? Or is there already code in there?
Or neither?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:49:55 +0000, actionforum at comcast.net
<actionforum at comcast.net> wrote:
> The subject is the edit summary from the edit that removed NSK's link.  Independent of the particulars of NSK's site, this summary is not a valid excuse, wikipedia articles can grow to a level of completeness that most external sites cannot match, yet a lot of our information comes from external sites, and it can be important to cite those sites even though their information has been included in the article and a subsequent editor unfamiliar with the history may now consider them redundant..      -- Silverback

While I see your point, and even agree, it is probably preferable in
such a case to put the link in a "references" section, rather than
simply giving it some invisible immortal status in the "external
links" section. By which I mean, if an editor can come along and say
"this link gives me no useful information beyond what's already here",
the link has ceased to be useful *as further reading*, which is what
the majority of External links provide, so they are quite justified in
saying so. If it was a reference used in *creating* the article, it
should be cited as such, and then people will know that that is why it
is listed, and comments about comparitive levels of content become
irrelevant.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Frando

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transform 'talk/discussion' pages to real forum

body:
My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known
from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.

So each article would have one subforum, in which everyone can create a
new thread. Other users can answer these threads or create new ones. It
should only be possible to edit your own posts but not the ones from others.

The forum structure could be like this:
-Wikipedia Forum
--Wikipedia intern
---Bugreports
---Proposals and criticism
--Articles
---(Subforum for each article)
--Users
---(Subforum for each users)
--Portals
---(Subforum for each portal)
and so on...

I think this way the discussions would be much more effective and
purposeful.

At the the top of each discussion page there could be a notice where you
are at the moment:

You are here: [Wikipedia Forum] -> [Articles] -> [Foobar] -> [Delete
this article?]

The most important thing is that the discussion is really organized in
forums, subforums, threads and posts, EXACTLY the way it is in the known
Burning Boards.

Because currently you hardly find ever a real discussion, i.e. about
feature requests. Many people out there have fantastic ideas how to
improve wikipedia ... so a real discussion forum would be great.
Or when somebody just doesnt understand a part of an article, he could
just start a new thread in the article's forum and get an answer...

Some example for Burning Boards:
http://www.streamboard.to/forum -- Example for vBulletin
http://www.woltlab.de/de/forum/ -- Example for wBB

Whats your opinion?

Frando

P.S. Sorry for my unequivocal improvable English ;)


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] apaches: 'dynamic' maxclient setting

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

Hello,

Looks like one of the trouble with the apaches server is that some of
them can have more client at a given time cause they have more memory.

I did some basic http configuration that would allow 512MB apaches to
run with MaxClient 40 and 1024GB apaches with 70.

The scripts ( /h/w/conf/ ):

httpd-define.conf : call a custom conf depending on a variable
'HOST'.$hostname
httpd-(512|1024|3072)MB.conf : different MaxClient values

In the /h/w/b/apache-* scripts, we need to append at the end of the
apachectl command:
  -D"HOST$($HOST_NAME)"

So for tingxi, apachectl will get a HOSTtingxi variable defined. The
http-define.conf will then call httpd-512MB.conf .

Et voil?, different memory capabilities = different MaxClient .

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB5Y5mpmyHQ2O4INERAlsIAJ4vth3wUrrWyKTK5faqEZNeo6N1gwCgwhvl
3uzrFugKe/5ScpfYKPMymN0=
=EM67
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
Alfio Puglisi schrieb:

>On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>
>>Well, if there is a central, open-source (software and data),
>>editable-by-anyone solution that we can just plug into MediaWiki, great,
>>let's do it. Otherwise I say: GIS? So what? ;-)
>>
>>
>
>Some experimental work was done by Taw:
>
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/Maps
>
>
Yes, that's the one that was shown and discussed on the developer
meeting at 21C3. The one consisting of three different parts in
different programming languages. And the underlying data has to be fixed
manually anyway, as it contains numerous errors.

Again, I am not trying to push my 'ware here. I am just proposing to
have a (rather simple) PHP script and a wikimedia project with lots of
volunteers to do the work (in this case, data collecting and
-structuring, not writing articles)

If you (the list) think this is worth exploring, I could try and get
some more detailed data for a *real* demonstration. If you think it is a
waste of time, I won't.
Either way, tell me! :-)

Magnus


body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:53:12 -0000, Geoffrey Roughton
<g.roughton at btconnect.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am new to Wiki which we are using to prepare a manual collaboratively. We have downloaded all the pages (about 130) into an XML which runs to just over 15,000 lines. I now wish to convert this to a PDF. Does anyone know if a utility already exists that might make this easier. The main problem appears to be the Wiki formatting stuff embedded in the text blocks.

Do you mean that you have a load of MediaWiki pages wrapped in XML by
Special:Export, and you want to convert the wiki markup to PDF? If so,
I wouldn't say the "Wiki formatting stuff" is not so much the "main
problem", as "the whole of the problem". But fret not! A tool has
already been written specifically for this purpose:
See http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipdf (and http://wiki.auf-trag.de/).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant

body:
Bonjour,

Depuis mon retour de vacances, une id?e me trotte dans la t?te et j'ai d?cid? de la mettre en oeuvre.

Voila.
Comme vous le savez, je suis partie en vacances dans le Hoggard. Il se trouve que mon fils William, 8 ans, en classe de CM1, a un expos? ? faire pour d?but f?vrier. Il avait auparavant d?cid? de faire un expos? sur les objets anciens, et a bien ?videmment chang? d'avis, pour le faire sur le sud alg?rien.

Cet expos? doit ?tre tap?, puis imprim?. Doit contenir des photos, graphes etc...

Evidemment... vous devez suivre mon id?e ? pr?sent.

Je vais faire d'une pierre trois coups.
D'une part mon fils va faire son expos?; d'autre part il va d?couvrir le fabuleux monde d'internet et surtout du wiki; et enfin, je tenterais de faire d?couvrir le merveilleux monde de Wikip?dia ? notre ?cole...

Voici mon id?e, dites moi ce que vous en pensez et surtout si cela vous pose probl?me.

Je vais faire ouvrir un compte ? mon fils sur Wikip?dia, et je souhaiterais lui faire cr?er son expos? dans un de ses sous pages. J'?viterais les liens dans le texte m?me (pour que le format soit assez respectueux du format demand? par la maitresse) mais j'utiliserais bien sur des images de Wikip?dia (dont celles que j'aurais upload?es pour Wikip?dia, plus celles qu on y trouve d?j?), et je mettrais des liens vers tous les articles pouvant servir de sources ou r?f?rences.

Mais il s'agira d'un texte ?crit par un enfant, et je pense qu'il faut qu'il reste essentiellement par lui.... sauf que nous pourrions montrer ? la maitresse la force de la collaboration ? travers quelques ?dits bien plac?s (typos, fautes de grammaire etc...).

L'an dernier, ? mon retour de Laponie, j'ai fait un dossier ?quivalent, plus simple, mais en version papier. Le dossier a fait le tour de l'?cole tant les enseignantes ?taient impressionn?es.

Je gage que faire l'expos? sous wikipedia, en montrant ensuite l'historique d'?dition etc... peut avoir un impact fort.

Je souhaiterais plut?t faire cela sur Wikip?dia afin de montrer l'aspect communautaire, et cela serait en quelque sort un article encyclop?dique du sud de l Alg?rie, destin? aux enfants. Une sorte de Wikipedia junior.

Qu'en pensez vous ?

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A challenge to the integrity of wikipedia


body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:51:32 +0100, Frando <frando at xcite-online.de> wrote:
> My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known
> from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.

I think everyone will agree that some move to incorporate the
advantages of forum systems within the context of the wiki would be a
good idea. Let's face it, wikis just *aren't* suited to linear
discussions. *But* the fact that everything within a MediaWiki wiki is
- well, within the wiki - has it's advantages too, and I (and, I
suspect, many others) would be wary of just plain ripping out the
discussion pages and putting a forum in instead. Better to improve
what we have than to replace one set of flaws with another.

> The forum structure could be like this:
<snip>

This is where your thinking is already diverging from mine - wikis
don't have a hierarchical structure of this sort, and for good reason.
One of the longest-standing concepts of a wiki is that, because
everything can be editted, everything can be "refactored" -
reorganised, renamed, disassembled and put together in a different
order, summarised, combined, split...

Although MediaWiki's use of discussion pages has already diverged from
that original concept (where discussions are simply "turned into" an
article about the subject under discussion), there is still a definite
feeling that things are "fluid". And a discussion page on MediaWiki is
still just that - a page full of discussion, which can be linked to or
not by any related page you feel like, but doesn't need to have a
"place in the universe" just *in order to exist*. [Hierarchies are
useful, but why should there have to be any one definitive hierarchy?]

Of course, you then have a section of the hierarchy labelled "subforum
for each article" - since the articles aren't hierarchical, this has
to be one big flat structure; so why do we not just have one big flat
structure for the whole site? [BTW, I'm not sure what you are
referring to by "portals" here, but that's a minor point]

> I think this way the discussions would be much more effective and
> purposeful.

I agree with the "effective" bit, in as much as they'd be using tools
more suited to discussions rather than anything else. I'm not so sure
it would make them any less "purposeful" though, since people seem
quite happy to define the purpose of a conversation under the current
system.

> You are here: [Wikipedia Forum] -> [Articles] -> [Foobar] -> [Delete
> this article?]

Are the first two steps of that example really useful? Effectively
they tell you "you are in Wikipedia" and "this is the discussion of an
article", both of which are clear from all sorts of explicit and
implicit parts of the current design [and if they aren't clear enough,
they can be]. This may seem like nit-picking, but what I'm getting at
is that the remaining two are also available in the current system, in
the sense that the page Talk:Foobar contains all the discussion about
"Foobar", and everything under the heading "Delete this article?" can
be editted as a section, referenced directly ("[[Talk:Foobar#Delete
this article?]]"), etc.

> The most important thing is that the discussion is really organized in
> forums, subforums, threads and posts, EXACTLY the way it is in the known
> Burning Boards.

The thread and post model is certainly useful. But as for the forum
and subforum one, I'm far from convinced. Thus, I can't agree with
your "EXACTLY".

> Because currently you hardly find ever a real discussion, i.e. about
> feature requests. Many people out there have fantastic ideas how to
> improve wikipedia ... so a real discussion forum would be great.

Well, for feature requests about the *software*, we have an
installation of BugZilla, because the developers find it useful for
tracking things. For ways of improving Wikipedia, the best place is
probably the "Village pump", or its equivalent in other languages and
projects; that has plenty of discussions on it. Or, of course, you can
take advantage of this being a wiki and *do* the thing you're
suggesting; then people can discuss its merits with you if they feel
the need.

> Or when somebody just doesnt understand a part of an article, he could
> just start a new thread in the article's forum and get an answer...

They can do that already: click "discussion", click "edit" or "+",
type your question, click "save". That's not to say we couldn't do
with better features for tracking the answers (as a simple one, how
about seperating watchlists by namespace? or, more radically, how
about giving "sections" enough real existence that the software can
answer questions like "when was the last edit *to this section*?"?)
and all sorts of other things, but to imply you need a forum before
you can ask a question is just wrong.

Like I say, I don't want to dispute the fact that there are definite
advantages of forums/bulletin boards which a page on a wiki really
can't emulate; but I don't agree that *structure* is one of them. In
fact, I would argue that a wiki can give *better* structure in some
cases, simply because it is not rigid, and you can create new kinds of
relationships between pages and sections just by describing them.

"Eloquence" has described a kind of "ideal world" discussion system at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads, and I think I agree with
the advantages stated there: basically, a threaded discussion gives a
solid meaning to "discussions" and "comments", allowing information
about those to be processed and manipulated; and, crucially, allowing
them to be "watched".

The exact balance between solid relationships and complete editability
is a difficult one to get right, and LiquidThreads certainly *sound*
good, but might be very hard to get right in practise. One of the key
problems, for instance, is how to avoid the system becoming so complex
that people are put off taking part in discussions because they don't
understand the proliferation of options, views, controls, special
cases, etc, with which they are presented.

So my opinion is that wikis can definitely learn something from
forums, but I think forums could well learn something from wikis too.

[This protracted ramble brought to you by my tired and distracted
brain. We apologise for any boredom caused.]
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Iinformation Architectures

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 01:07:58 +0100, Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com> wrote:
> v1.4 sounds perfect.
>
> Anyone want to guess how long it will take to stabilize?

Well, it's considered stable enough to run all of Wikimedia's
high-profile wikis, so while there are still bugs around, anything
major is pretty high priority right now - and even once we "reach"
1.4.0, there's bound to be plenty still to fix. The tracking bug at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202 shows 8 dependencies
still unfixed in our bugzilla database.

Basically, I don't know the "official" answer to when 1.4 final will
hit, but I do know that it will be very soon - I'd say a few weeks at
most - and there's a pretty solid guarantee that the 1.4betas are
"safe for production use".

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Paul Youlten

subject: [Wikitech-l] Iinformation Architectures

body:
v1.4 sounds perfect.

Anyone want to guess how long it will take to stabilize?

Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 9:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Iinformation Architectures

> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:27:15 +0100, Paul Youlten <paul.youlten at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
>> language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database. So
>> if
>> I search from the German start page - I might get results that were
>> originally added in Spanish or French.
>>
>> Is there an elegant way of achieving this?
>
> Well, as of version 1.4 (currently in beta) MediaWiki allows each user
> to select the language used by the *interface*. Thus you could have a
> site that was multilingual (as http://meta.wikimedia.org is, at least
> theoretically) and people could search whatever was there, translating
> for each other's convenience as necessary. [For obvious reasons,
> automatic translation is not a good idea.]
>
> Alternatively, you could have multiple instances of MediaWiki with
> appropriate interlanguage linking (as currently used by Wikipedia),
> and come up with some kind of "meta search" that could find content in
> any of them - some work has gone into abstracted search systems, I
> believe, specifically in relation to "Lucene" (?); but no-one, as far
> as I know, has developed a multi-MediaWiki search engine (apart from
> Google with an appropriate "site:..." term, of course!)
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Josh Gerdes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Obscure Copyright

body:
I think that would be okay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fairuseunsure is a good template
for this purpose.

Josh Gerdes
(User:JoshG)

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>>
>>>> Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?
>>>>
>>>> Fred
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> From: Sean Barrett
>>>>> I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
>>>>> [[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years
>>>>> old, but
>>>>> its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright
>>>>> notice
>>>>> associated with it and was never published until it was captured by
>>>>> the
>>>>> Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for
>>>>> Wikipedia's
>>>>> purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status
>>>>> really is.
>>>>> Can anyone help me?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Who the copyright belongs to is a different issue.
>>>
>>> I would venture to guess that the vast majority of material that is
>>> protected by copyright lacks an owner who would have rights to be
>>> protected.
>>
>>
>> I think there are almost always heirs, or the state, or whatever, but
>> in some
>> cases it would be a considerable effort to find out who it is. If you
>> recall
>> the NPG guy who sent us the nastygram about images of paintings,
>> part of his day job was to track down copyright owners, because the
>> NPGs makes millions of dollars from their holdings, and a copyright
>> owner could surface and demand a piece of the action. In our case, it's
>> hardly worth spending much time on the research, even on a volunteer
>> basis, since we're not making any money from the copyrighted work;
>> if an owner ever shows up and decides that the old document is
>> somehow a moneymaker, the most we would need to do is to take it down.
>>
>> So we should just be able to tag things as "copyright owner unknown" and
>> leave it at that.
>
>
> I would be comfortable with that, but I fear that I am in the minority.
> What's more common is material that comes out with no notice
> whatsoever.  It leaves me with the impression that our contributor has
> done no homework at all.  The rest of us should not have to do someone
> else's due diligence.
>
> Ec


from_name: Arkady Rose

body:
NSK wrote:
> If you have a closer look at my site (especially in the NerdyPC Project) you
> will see lots of articles on Information Technology that I wrote and are much
> better and more updated than the corresponding articles that Wikipedia has.
>
As the author of those articles you can hardly be viewed as unbiased
and neutral on the subject, which makes your statements on the
subject suspect.

-a


from_name: Philippe Elie

body:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 at 00:06 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:51:32 +0100, Frando <frando at xcite-online.de> wrote:
> > My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known
> > from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.
>
> I think everyone will agree that some move to incorporate the
> advantages of forum systems within the context of the wiki would be a
> good idea. Let's face it, wikis just *aren't* suited to linear
> discussions. *But* the fact that everything within a MediaWiki wiki is
> - well, within the wiki - has it's advantages too, and I (and, I
> suspect, many others) would be wary of just plain ripping out the
> discussion pages and putting a forum in instead. Better to improve
> what we have than to replace one set of flaws with another.

I agree, did you get a look at extensions/wikiforum.php written by
aoineko ?

In short words it add a new namespace Thread and a special page Forum.
This page display links to Y last modified page in this namespace + X
last modified page displayed inline (X < Y). Page are normal page so
 can be moved get history etc. It seems a much simpler solution to
this problem. A few things should be added, like a link in each page to
the Special page, perhaps some change to Search only in this namespace
when doing a search from a page in this namespace. Last time I tried
thread names with accented char was broken too.

Note this was not intended as a replacement of talk page but just as
replacement of village pump. Anyway I don't see any real use of forum
like things for talk page except if we want to start to dicuss more than
to work :)

Aoinkeo any progress with wikiforum ?

-- phe


from_name: David Gerard

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net (dpbsmith at verizon.net) [050113 02:38]:

> a) It's not at all clear to me that http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103 adds
> much to the http://en.wikipedia.org/Homo_floriensis article
> b) Even if it does, it's not clear that the Wikinerds link is the best
> source, or even a particularly good source for that information. It is not
> nearly as close to the source, or as authoritative as several of the other
> links that are already in the article.
> c) NSK does have a clear promotional interest in wanting to build up his
> site.

I have no hesitation in reverting this variety of edit as spam, and usually
in blocking the IP if it's an anon. I fully expect to continue as well.
Because it is spam.

If it's not one of *the* *best* possible links the article could have, and
it's not a reference used in the article, there's no reason for it to be
there. Hence the frequent edit summary "Wikipedia is not dMoz". (Or Wikia.)

- d.


body:
On Thursday 13 January 2005 01:23, Rick wrote:
> I thoroughly agree.  NSK's site is mostly material that has been deleted
> from Wikipedia for a variety of reasons

Please be aware that my site is very large (right now it uses more than 2 GB
of space) and has many sections and many subprojects. Every subproject is
managed with different policies and has different readership. The *only*
subproject where deleted material from Wikipedia is allowed to be posted is
the JnanaBase Project, an experimental wiki with no policies. But if you were
about to post deleted Wikipedia material on any other subproject of Wikinerds
you would be banned immediately from there. Actually Wikinerds is a
federation of wikis, and not a single site. Not all material in JnanaBase
comes from Wikipedia VFD. Finally, please note that Wikinerds accepts other
people's wikiprojects for free hosting and publishing, too.

> There is hardly anything there that adds to material we already have
> on Wikipedia.

If you have a closer look at my site (especially in the NerdyPC Project) you
will see lots of articles on Information Technology that I wrote and are much
better and more updated than the corresponding articles that Wikipedia has.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 21:37, BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:
> contacts me. I will then, as an impartial observer, look at what the

Good idea, I agree. What's your Wikipedia user name?

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 21:51, Frando wrote:
> My idea is to transform the discussion pages to a real forum, as known
> from phpBB, Woltlab Burning Board or vBulletin.

I am building WikiAnt, a MediaWiki distribution where the discussion pages are
replaced by phpBB threads.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
On Thursday 13 January 2005 03:36, Arkady Rose wrote:
> As the author of those articles you can hardly be viewed as unbiased
> and neutral on the subject, which makes your statements on the
> subject suspect.

See http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Test:AMD_Opteron

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
NSK (nsk2 at wikinerds.org) [050113 03:50]:

> Yes, I can agree with this, and I think what I am doing is fair and useful to
> the reader. And hey, your post was very insightful.
> I considered the situation and found that Wikipedia needs an External Link
> Proposal Procedure (ELPP).
> Here is how ELPP could work:

(snip 20 lines)

Please read [[m:Instruction creep]]. Procedures are *bad*; we should have
only the procedures we need, and those as lightweight as possible.

Here's a suggested better ELPP: put your link on the talk page, saying
"here is my page, does anyone else think it's worth including?" Then if
someone else does, they will.

I'm not going to write that up as a procedure because it doesn't need it.
See [[m:Instruction creep]].

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
Oh, I forgot to add that NGWP means New Generation Wiki Platform.

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 18:37, NSK wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 January 2005 12:01, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 01:13:13AM +0200, NSK wrote:
> > > Find out more at http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/NGWP
> >
> > Shouldn't it be named NGMW ;-)
>
> It has nothing to do with MW.
>
> I already have a new MW here:
> http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/WikiAnt
>
> They are totally independent programs. NGWP has shares no code with any
> other project. NGWP is actually not just a wiki/CMS but also a new
> object-oriented platform.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
On Thursday 13 January 2005 03:46, NSK wrote:
> On Thursday 13 January 2005 03:36, Arkady Rose wrote:
> > As the author of those articles you can hardly be viewed as unbiased
> See http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Test:AMD_Opteron

I would also like to add that NerdyPC has been mentioned in an article of The
Hindu, the Online edition of India's National Newspaper, Monday, Nov 08,
2004: http://www.hindu.com/biz/2004/11/08/stories/2004110800631500.htm

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


from_name: apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are we being spoofed?

body:
Hi everyone

This morning I received in my mail box a message purporting to come
from wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
It relates to a message I am supposed to have sent the list headed
*Darling*, and which has been bounced since it is too big. It ends by
inviting me to click a link to cancel the posting if I wish.

Needless to say the person whom I am likely to address as darling is
not on this list.

I am up to date on my anti-virus, firewall and am clean of adware, so
assume this is yet another spammer's devious trick!

Tony Woolrich
Canal Side, Huntworth, Bridgwater, Somerset UK
Phone (44) 01278 663020
Email apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.10 - Release Date: 10/01/2005


subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure copyright

body:
Hi everyone,
In view of the recent death of the author, it is clearly still in
copyright and this is owned by his heirs, if there are any. Is this a
personal document or an 'official' one? If the latter then the
copyright would be  with the successors of the Germany Navy then,
presumably the present German Ministry of Defense.

Tony Woolrich
Canal Side, Huntworth, Bridgwater, Somerset UK
Phone (44) 01278 663020
Email apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] expos� par un enfant

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Je souhaiterais plut?t faire cela sur Wikip?dia afin de montrer l'aspect
> communautaire, et cela serait en quelque sort un article encyclop?dique du
> sud de l Alg?rie, destin? aux enfants. Une sorte de Wikipedia junior.

Sounds like a good thing to have on the French Wikibooks version of Wikijunior.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] expos� par un enfant


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
I am not one to complain frequently or quickly. I have been a software
developer, and I know the anguish that often involves, and the meager
thanks that are often received.

However, I am becoming quite concerned about the recent performance
issues on en.wikipedia. I don't know if there are similar issues with
other projects or languages.

As users, we are told (at
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/) that the issues now is
not hardware or the MediaWiki software, but rather load balancing. We
are also told to "try again" when we receive one of many ugly errors.
We are invited to help, but given no indication how we might do that.

This situation is very unsatisfactory, and is damaging to Wikipedia.

I know that the developers are very busy, and are volunteering their
time. I do not "blame" them for the problems. I don't really see this
as a technical issue. Obviously, the solution to load balancing will be
technical, but the solution to the larger issue (reliability rapid
response to problems) is an issue of the will and resources of the
Wikimedia foundation.

We cannot allow en.wikipedia (and perhaps others) to languish for days
with horrible response times and frequent, ugly user errors. We must
quickly determine what we need to do to remedy this situation, and
quickly act to implement the remedy.

With respect and concern,

Rich Holton

(en.wikipedia:user:rholton)

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from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant

body:
> Bonjour,

Bonjour.

Excellente id?e !

Et si l'article est de qualit? encyclop?dique, personne n'aura
d'objection ? ce qu'il soit d?plac? vers l'encyclop?die :)

Nicolas [[Utilisateur:Ryo]]


subject: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching errors get copied and mirrored

body:
Stacey Greenstein wrote:

>When I first updated the Primate pages to use a 2001 taxonomy, I
>accidentally typo'd genus ''Pseudopotto'' as ''Psudopotto''. Recently
>I fixed the error. Googling, I can find all the mirrors that have
>picked up the error but which haven't yet gotten a more recent copy,
>as well as 'pedias that have copied and/or translated it, maintaining
>the error. Although it doesn't show on Google, Wikispecies even copied
>my mistake. I feel so honored. *grins*
>
The primate genus ''Psudpotto'' should be considered the type genus for
the phrase, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A challenge to the integrity of wikipedia

body:
On Jan 13, 2005, at 1:11 AM, Tim Starling wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>> http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710
>
> Just a couple of facts that weren't obvious to me at first glance but
> which I think are important:
>
> 1) The linked article was written by Stirling Newberry
> 2) Stirling Newberry is involved in a heated dispute over the
> [[Intelligent Design]] article.
>
> The article makes more sense when you read it in that context.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

Other way around. I am on the ID article because it is a test of the
current system. It's easy to keep out Holocaust denial, because the POV
that it is cover for is universally rejected. Much harder is removing
intellectual fraud that is cover for some fraction of a popular point
of view. If wikipedia is merely mobocracy, then it does not converge on
credibility.

There are similar articles on other aspects of creationism, many of
which, ahem, would get you laughed out of first year biology or
geology. Those arguing for expert gatekeeping have these articles as
proof that the system doesn't work, or, at the very least, is unstable
- prone to being upset at any moment, and untrustworthy because one
never knows if one is going to get garbage disinformation.

The reality of this is that there are risk adverse users of
information, and there are also purveyors of disinformation. The risk
adverse information users lie in fear of exactly what is going on on
wikipedia's articles on Creationism: organized intellectual fraud being
let through the gates.

This is a security flaw in wikipedia's process, the argument of open
source projects is that flaws are easily discovered, reported, and
dealt with. The argument of proprietary projects is that such flaws are
best dealt with by small selected groups of people out of reach of
others.


subject: [Wiktionary-l] portal page

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> For wikipedia they changed www.wikipedia.org to become a portal to
> show that wikipedia is a project in many languages. This is to show
> that wikipedia is not only English as many people think. The same is
> true for the wiktionary; there are many wiktionaries and, in the same
> manner as we have with wikipedia I propose to have wiktionary.org
> point to the page that can be found on META
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wiktionary.org_portal
>
> It took the wikipedia crowd two years to get to the point and change
> things. I expect that people will have the same arguments why they
> think wiktionary means en:wiktionary. However, wiktionary is much less
> known than wikipedia and, the other wiktionaries like pl: with over
> 28.000+ and gl: with 11.000+ prove that en: with 52.000+ is not the
> only kid on the block.There are also 9 others in between 1.000+ and
> 10.000- who emphasize the point.
>
> So I hope that we can agree to have a similar portal for wiktionary as
> we have for wikipedia.

I don't see any problems with this, but I would wait at least two weeks
so that the Wikipedia portal has time to stabilize.  Once they have beat
back all the arguments, implementing the Wiktionary portal should go
smoothly.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Obscure Copyright

references:
<BE0AD50B.A835%fredbaud@ctelco.net>	<41E57A6B.7080405@telus.net>	<41E5C143.6050606@apple.com>	<41E5EDB1.4010404@telus.net>
	<cs56pj$pte$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Josh Gerdes wrote:

> I think that would be okay.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fairuseunsure is a good template
> for this purpose.

It seems like a good idea   I'll consider developing something similar
for Wikisource.

Ec


from_name: Joseph Reagle

body:
On Thursday 13 January 2005 01:11, Tim Starling wrote:
> Stirling Newberry wrote:
> > http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002710.html#2710

This is a bit more abstract, but I was recently exploring some concepts with
respect to Wikipedia and intelligent design as well.

http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/epistemological-authority
2005 Jan 06 | Epistomological Authority

   Two recent discussions have prompted me to return to question of
   epistemological authority. In the case of the online collaborative
   Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, a founding participant, lamented the
   inability of the community to accept and retain contributions from
   "experts." Also, creationists have re-factored their doctrine into a
   pseudoscientific "theory" of intelligent design and advocate that it
   be taught alongside, or instead, of evolution. I believe both of
   these cases share the conditions that there is such a thing as
   expertise, but that all views are potentially ideologically biased.
   Can the community at large distinguish authoritative arguments, or
   must we be cynical and believe that all arguments are biased but
   some are only more eruditely presented? (In fact, I've realized that
   the bulk of continental social "theory" is about identifying such
   biases: Boudieu's doxa and symbolic violence, Hall's naturalization,
   Gramsci's hegemony, Marcuse's and Adorno's technological veil,
   Weber's symbolic violence, Foucault's episteme, Barthes'
   exnomination ('unnaming') etc.).

   In An Introduction to Reflexive Sociology Pierre Bourdieu (1992)
   discusses a couple of his conceptual contributions which may be of
   use in understanding these debates. A field is a cultural domain in
   which participants have a stake in and compete with each other for
   the accumulation of some sort of capital (i.e., social capital).

     Like any social universe, the academic world is the site of a
     struggle over the truth of the academic world and of the social
     world in general. Very rapidly, we may say that the social world
     is the site of continual struggles to define what the social
     world is; but the academic world is a peculiarity today that its
     verdicts and pronouncements are among the most powerful socially.
     In academia, people fight constantly over the question of who, in
     this universe, is socially mandated, authorized, to tell the
     truth of the social world (1992:70).

   One of Bourdieu's preferences is that fields be true to themselves
   and operate autonomously and in a "scientific" manner.

     A scientific field is a universe in which researchers are
     autonomous and where, to confront one another, they have to drop
     all nonscientific weapons -- beginning with the weapons of
     academic authority. In a genuine scientific field, one can freely
     enter free discussions and violently oppose any contradictor with
     the arms of science because your position does not depend on him
     or because you can get another position elsewhere. (1992:177)

   My own understanding is that scientific does not equal academic:
   academic authority is based on a hierarchical application of
   judgment to those who allegedly know less; while closely associated
   with the academic, scientific assessments should be discernible to
   those who know the same or even less. Above, Bourdieu introduces the
   notion of "scientific arms": legitimate means of dispute. In
   Jonathan Sarfati's response to the creationist book Teaching About
   Evolution, he notes that the creationists claim that the National
   Academy of Sciences "resorts to arbitrary, self-serving 'rules' to
   determine what qualifies as 'science' and what doesn't." Of course,
   and presently in America we have the confounding situation that a
   great majority of the members of the National Academy of Sciences
   accept evolution, but a frightening proportion of Americans don't.

     A field is all the more scientific the more it is capable of
     channeling, of converting unavowable motives into scientifically
     proper behavior. In a loosely structured field characterized by a
     low level of autonomy, illegitmate motives produce illegitimate
     strategies and, furthermore, strategies that are scientifically
     worthless. In an autonomous field such as the mathematical field
     today, by contrast, a top mathematician who once to triumph over
     his opponents is compelled by the force of the field to produce
     mathematics to do so, on pain of excluding himself from the
     field. Being aware of this, we must work to constitute a
     Scientific City in which the most unavowable intentions have to
     sublimate themselves into scientific expression. This vision is
     not utopian at all, and I could propose a number of very concrete
     measures designed to make it come true. For instance, where we
     have won a national referee or evaluator, we can institute an
     international panel of three foreign judges (of course, we must
     then control for the effects of international networks of mutual
     knowledge and alliances). When a research center or a journal
     enjoys a situation of monopoly, worked to create a rival one. We
     can raise the level of scientific censorship by a series of
     actions designed to upgrade the level of training, the minimal
     amount of specific competency required to enter the field, etc.

     In short, they must create conditions such that the worst, the
     meanest, and the most mediocre participant is compelled to behave
     in accordance with the norms of scientificity in currency at the
     time (1992:177).

   Interestingly, Bourdieu is advocating censoring "nonscientific"
   claims. Which, while not very democratic, can be meritocratic --
   though I think his proposals for committees implausible. Yet, while
   Bourdieu is sympathetic to the autonomous operation of a field he
   does not want to focus on a particular methodology or bureaucracy,
   but the almost anarchistic competition under an already agreed to
   metaphysical system.

     There is in history what we may call, after Elias, a process of
     scientific civilization, whose historical conditions are given
     with the constitution of relatively autonomous fields within
     which all moves are not allowed, in which there are immanent
     regularities, implicit principles and explicit rules of inclusion
     and exclusion, and admission rights which are being continually
     raised. Scientific reason realizes itself when it becomes
     inscribed not in the ethical norms of a practical reason or in
     the technical rules of scientific methodology, but in the
     apparently anarchical social mechanisms of competition between
     strategies armed with instruments of action and of thought
     capable of regulating their own uses, and in the durable
     dispositions that the functioning of this field produces and
     presupposes. (1992:180)

   But, in the case of the creation/evolution debates, what is at stake
   is the metaphysical system of judging what is and is not science; in
   Wikipedia, what is and is not good, neutral, and authoritative
   content? Creationists object to natural science as a baised
   metaphysical system, or even a religion, like their own supernatural
   literalism. It is at this point, that I find their position simply
   incoherent and can no longer sympathetically engage in the debate.
   The divine, supernatural, and the ineffable may exist and be
   revealed to some, but these are not legitimate discourses in a
   public sphere in which others do not have access to the inspired
   source. The alternative that I can understand is as Robert Pennock
   (2001:84) wrote in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics,
   "The methodological naturalist does not make a commitment directly
   to a picture of what exists in the world, but rather to a set of
   methods as a reliable way to find out about the world -- typically
   the methods of the natural sciences, and perhaps extensions that are
   continuous with them -- and indirectly to what those methods
   discover."

   As I discussed in Scandal and The Politics of Science and Vice
   Versa, "We can never know everything. We haven't the capacity nor
   time to give informed consideration to every important issue. So we
   rely upon labels and personalities to set the default values of our
   opinion." A claim of authority is a claim of being worthy of being
   deferred to. In the case of Wikipedia, if people are to accept it as
   an Encyclopedia, it seemingly must prove itself as an authority
   being worthy of being deferred to. Such proxies are often determined
   by the judgments of peers, judgement of superiors, method,
   majorities, personal experience, and results. And the difficulty
   with both the Wikipedia and debate on evolution is that the best
   method, results, is not immediately apparent. If we stop teaching
   evolution now, the effects would be long-term and confounded with
   many other social variables. And how does one "objectively" judge
   the quality of Wikipedia?

   Two of the key differences between Wikipedia and open source
   software development are that with questions of protocol and code
   one can easily make authoritative claims based on the results, and
   consequently such communities tend to be meritocratic. As I wrote in
   Why the Internet is Good, "With the cacophony of ideas, proposals,
   and debates, and a lack of a central authority to cleave the good
   from the bad, how does one sort it all out? It sorts itself out. ...
   The success of any policy is based simply on its adoption by the
   community." Encyclopedia making is not so fortunate, and Wikipedia
   strives to be more open, accepting anonymous contributions even,
   than most all open source projects. Nor can we simply rely upon the
   naked authority of expertise and academia: expertise should be
   supported, but to be accepted the results of expertise must also be
   widely perceptible to the larger public.