subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
> (Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net>):
> Erik Moeller schrieb:
> >Just because you're currently talking about the parser I thought I might
> >bring up an issue which should be fixed in a next generation parser:
>
> Here's another one:
>
> # foo
>
> # bar
>
> becomes
>
> 1. foo
>
> 1. bar
>
> but it should become
>
> 1. foo
>
> 2. bar
>
> ATM people work around it with two
 tags, but that's ugly.

I'm not sure I agree with this one at all. If a blank line doesn't
delimit paragraphs, what does? And if we maintain numbers across
separated lists, how do you specify separate lists that /should/
restart from 1?

If the you only want the double-spacing in the list for esthetic
reasons, then using non-semantic markup like
 (or some wiki
equivalient) is the right way to encode that.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Chat about Wikipedia performance?

body:
On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 01:08:58PM -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Nick Reinking <nick at twoevils.org>):
> >
> > Anyways, what I want to clarify.  To me, when my mind encounters '' or
> > ''', it thinks, "Ooo!  Quotation marks that make stuff bold!".  My mind
> > is used to closing quotation marks, so I guess that's why it makes the
> > most sense for them to span multiple lines until they are closed.  I'm
> > not sure how quotes work in a lot of other languages, but I know they're
> > closed in Japanese much the same way (but with different symbols than
> > quotation marks).
> >
> > That's not to say that stopping them at the end of a line is a bad idea
> > - I'm sure it helps a lot to prevent new users from making a bad
> > mistake, seeing a messed up page, and giving up.
> >
> > In the end, I'm writing a new parser for Wikipedia, not for myself.  If
> > everybody thinks it should end at newlines, I can make it do that, and
> > that will be that.  :)
>
> There are other reasons to kill them at line-ends. Primarily, the
> block-level elements like lists and
s and
s are defined by the
> first character of each line; allowing '' to span lines would require
> that we close and re-open them at paragraph boundaries to stay valid
> HTML, and that's complicated and error-prone. Second, just /defining/
> proper behavior requires specifying some maximum scope; otherwise,
> things like '' a ''' b '' c ''' d '' ... will just stack up without
> closing. If we define them to close at line-end (and I'd further
> define them to stack at most two levels), then they're easier to
> cleanly specify.

So, should I go ahead implementing the C parser to handle the current
Wikitext, or should I wait until we have an actual specification?

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
> If the you only want the double-spacing in the list for esthetic
> reasons, then using non-semantic markup like <br> (or some wiki
> equivalient) is the right way to encode that.

And I should also mention that this will be doable in a simpler
and cleaner way when I add style support:

  {{dblspace}}
  # Item 1
  # Item 2

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
> (Nick Reinking <nick at twoevils.org>):
>
> So, should I go ahead implementing the C parser to handle the current
> Wikitext, or should I wait until we have an actual specification?

I'm generally in the code-first ask-questions-later school, but since
the act of coding brings up questions, we might as well try to deal
with them when they come up.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: julien tayon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] digression

body:
> How could you delete that article since you are no
> admin ???
Maybe it did not happened the way I think it did. My memeory is not
clear on this point.

[...]

> Who are you trying to convince here ? Me ?
>
[...]
>
> I am not supporting keeping "stubs", I am supporting
> keeping "topics".
Who are you trying to convince here? me ? I agree with you there is no
such thing as a meaningless topic.

>
> Sure. No prob. But, what are you exactly disagreeing
> with ? Removal of superfluous hair practices or
> "esquisses-stubs" ???
Je vais le dire en fran?ais pour ?tre s?r d'?tre compris.

Certains article ont ?t? ?crit de mani?re clairement non NPOV. Et je
maintiens que les d?lire de philippe sur les homosexuels, transexuels,
juifs et autres me cassaient les couilles car ils n'avaient pas leur
place dans wikipedia ? ce titre. Je n'ai pas propos? d'effacer l'article
dans sa version actuelle qui me convient totalement, mais j'?tais pour
son effacement dans la version originale car il ?tait :
- non-NPOV
- plus facile ? r?-?crire from scratch qu'? reprendre

?tonnamment, la version actuelle est une r?-?criture totale. On aurait
?t? plus vite en l'effa?ant. Cet article ?tait clairement un d?lire non
objectif et pas franchement un article informatif.

Jul
A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she
follows.		-- Chamfort


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
> (Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>):
>
> However, please keep in mind that we have hundreds of megabytes of
> existing wikitext, and converting this to anything else would be a major
> PITA. It may be doable but is probably nothing the developers want to
> spend much time on.

I consider that a minor issue. Ours is the largest wiki on the planet,
and converting every page in the database would take a few hours at
most, and I consider that a small price for the potential gains of a
clean, usable syntax.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Link tags

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Interlanguage links should produce <link> tags to go in the <head>
> section, such as:
> <link title="This article in Swahili"
> [...]
> Will it have any practical results? I dunno. But it sounds exciting and
> standards-compliant!

Some of these link tags are supported by Lynx, for example the
previous and next links at the top of a page like

  http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/mhausen/0089.html

but I doubt that any other browser (except Opera?) makes use of them,
even if they are standard.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search results - please let people know search is disabled.

body:
> (David A. Wheeler <dwheeler at dwheeler.com>):
> When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

Hmm. I just got lots of article title matches on both of those.
Are you sure you're not reporting something that happened last
night while I was rebuilding the text indexes?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
Please don't publicize this URL to everyone, both because it will
go away and because the old server is still sharing the database
with it and I don't want it swamped, but:

  http://larousse.wikipedia.org

Is running on the new server, talking to the database on pliny.
It would be nice if a few of you went there and did some testing
to make sure I didn't screw up anything major.

This is NOT a test database--it is talking to the real live
Wikipedia database, so don't "test" any pages you don't want
changed for real.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
> On Thu, 8 May 2003, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> > When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> > Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> > an EXACT match that "Go" will find.
>
> I've gone ahead and re-enabled the title search for now.
>
> It may make more sense to just replace 'search' with the 'go' function at
> this point...

When the new server comes up, it might well be possible to re-enable
general text searching. If not, at least title searching.

What /would/ be nice though is if the "Go" button were first, and I'll
do that if I don't hear any objections.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Can you handle CVS? I for one would have no objections to granting you CVS
> access. There are several Windows front ends if that is what you use
> (Google for WinCVS). For the command line client, Google for CVS tutorial
> and you'll find countless of good introductions. It sounds more
> complicated than it really is, with a decent front end, it's a lot like
> FTP.

I can handle cvs. Wikipedia cvs (from sourceforge) is installed at my linux
server at home. And I have the documentation in the drawer of my desk at
work, but to run an cvs ci LanguageDe.php I think I don't need it.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Apache-Conf: Redirect possible?

body:
> (Thomas Corell <T.Corell at t-online.de>):
> Hello,
>
> I have detected that you can reach
> http://de.wikipedia.org/tarballs/[cur|old]_table.bz2 if you link to it.
>
> You can not browse http://de.wikipedia.org/tarballs/ , but
> http://www.wikipedia.org/tarballs/de/
>
> Any reason for this different behaviour?

Probably just laziness in creating the directories. I should
also point out that the English tarballs are absent on pliny at
the moment, because I moved them to larousse. When the servers
are both up, we'll come up with a plan for regular backups.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
I suppose it's to be expected, per your statements the other day,
that some images are broken?

Otherwise, it's sweet... *smoking* fast, but I guess almost no one
is on it.  :-)

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> Please don't publicize this URL to everyone, both because it will
> go away and because the old server is still sharing the database
> with it and I don't want it swamped, but:
>
>   http://larousse.wikipedia.org
>
> Is running on the new server, talking to the database on pliny.
> It would be nice if a few of you went there and did some testing
> to make sure I didn't screw up anything major.
>
> This is NOT a test database--it is talking to the real live
> Wikipedia database, so don't "test" any pages you don't want
> changed for real.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop nominations

body:
On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 16:41, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> And a technical means to "auto-sysop" would be a bad
> idea; like you said Lir would have been made a sysop,
> so would Clutch and maybe even TMC (depending on the
> criteria). These users would have been even more
> troublesome as Admins and created an even greater
> amount of damage (blocking IPs willy-nilly, deleting
> pages that should not have been deleted etc).

Actually, it would have made the case for banning them much stronger
more quickly.

Instead of seeing possible auto-sysopping of troublesome members as a
Bad Idea, it's more constructive to think about the principle of No
Permanent Damage. That is, what constraints/mechanisms would be
necessary for a few bad apples to be unable to make the Good Idea--of
allowing useful contributors (that is, most people) to automatically
gain more capabilities--a problem?

> Some people think that society would be better if
> every teenager were given a gun on their 18th birthday
> regardless of their mental state or firearms training.
> I'm definitely not in that camp of thought.

Nor am I. But conflating sysop powers on Wikipedia with gun usage is
silly and wrong. Your principled stand against disseminating instruments
of death has little relevance in a discussion about Wikipedia editing.


subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
> On Thu, 8 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > Is running on the new server, talking to the database on pliny.
> > It would be nice if a few of you went there and did some testing
> > to make sure I didn't screw up anything major.
>
> http://larousse.wikipedia.org/en/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit
>                              ^^^^
>
> Are we going to keep the evil secret subdirectory as /w/ for all wikis, as
> before? There are an awful lot of URLs to old versions, contribs links,
> etc that are written that way, and I'd hate to break them.

What, specifically, uses the "/w" URLs? I couldn't see that the old
system output them anywhwere. I have the new server laid out more
sensibly, with international ones in mind. All should use the
/wiki URL form in all cases.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] [sonyalebrun@hotmail.com: Hacker attack at Wikipedia]

body:
I'm forwarding this on behalf of "Sonya Lebrun", who says that she
tried to send it to wikien-l unsuccessfully.

I find the claim about MyRedDice placing a photo of himself into this
person's cookie folder wildly implausible, but nonetheless, I'm duty
bound to say don't do that.  :-)

I offered my personal advice to "Sonya Lebrun" that she and her
friends DW and BlackWidow would be better off just leaving wikipedia.

The vague legalistic threats that have come from all of them do not
tickle my WikiLoveBone.

----- Forwarded message from Sonya Lebrun <sonyalebrun at hotmail.com> -----

From: "Sonya Lebrun" <sonyalebrun at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 22:51:09 +0000
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: Hacker attack at Wikipedia

I am using a computer in two or three public places to access Wikipedia. You
have a 35 year Cookie on users to your site so I don't need to give you my
static IP address. I am proud to be a great and good friend of user Black
Widow and her husband DW who also used some or all of these same public
computers.

I was attacked at Wikipedia by a few people, some have Wikipedia powers such
as user Zoe and JohnOwnens to delete pages and do other things to any user
that I cannot overcome. They attacked me solely because I stated I was a
friend of Black Widow. My valid contributions were all deleted and my polite
complaints were obfuscated. I will send you precise details of this later
because right now their is a more urgent matter for you to take care of at
once.

You have a very brazen hacker named User:MyRedDice on Wikipedia who jumped
in to attack me and boldly wrote on my User Page then deleted my User Page
and moved my complaints from the Village Pump and the like and posted a
derogatory page about me. When I accessed his page to politely ask he stop,
he placed a photo of himself into this computer?s Windows Cookie folder.
This is illegal conduct and a criminal offense.

Mr. Wales, I think you know how frightening this is, and the potential
consequences and damages could be substantial. I have notified my server,
and will be taking other steps to protect myself. As you are responsible for
this site, I would request that you take note of this serious matter and
immediately take the appropriate action at Wikipedia.org to protect me and
other users at Wikipedia.org from this danger and abuse. Thank you.

I tried to send this to wikien-l at wikipedia.org. buyt Hotmail said the
address could not be recognized.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
> > > Are we going to keep the evil secret subdirectory as /w/ for all wikis, as
> > > before? There are an awful lot of URLs to old versions, contribs links,
> > > etc that are written that way, and I'd hate to break them.
> >
> > What, specifically, uses the "/w" URLs? I couldn't see that the old
> > system output them anywhwere.
>
> * editing pages
> * history
> ...

Yes, of course; I'd forgotten that we weren't redirecting those.
I put "/w/" back as an alias, so the old URLs still work. I'd like
to keep the new directory structure, though. Yes, robots might have
to be modified.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Zoe

body:
Just for the record, the only things I have said about
Sonya L is to point out that she is the banned user
DW.  Other than that, I have said nothing about her,
pro or con.  If that is an "attack", then so be it.

Zoe

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
> Okay, back to sweet sweet UTC. Looks okay now...
> It also looks like NTP is working on larousse now:

Cool. Now that I think about it, you're right that my current
Apache directory structure on larousse won't work: it share
DocumentRoot among different wikis, so won't let you do separate
robots.txt, favicon, etc. I'll tweal it a bit.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Can you handle CVS? I for one would have no objections to granting you CVS
>> access. There are several Windows front ends if that is what you use
>> (Google for WinCVS). For the command line client, Google for CVS tutorial
>> and you'll find countless of good introductions. It sounds more
>> complicated than it really is, with a decent front end, it's a lot like
>> FTP.

> I can handle cvs. Wikipedia cvs (from sourceforge) is installed at my linux
> server at home. And I have the documentation in the drawer of my desk at
> work, but to run an cvs ci LanguageDe.php I think I don't need it.

Cool! Give Brion your SourceForge account name and I'm sure he'll set you
up. Maybe you can even help with other stuff, that would be neat.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
> ----- Forwarded message from Sonya Lebrun <sonyalebrun at hotmail.com> -----
> I am using a computer in two or three public places to access Wikipedia. You
> have a 35 year Cookie on users to your site so I don't need to give you my
> static IP address.

Wikipedia does *not* set 35-year cookies. Temporary per-session cookies
(which are not saved after your close your browser), may be set with a
negative expiration time. Due to bizarrities of how time and numbers are
dealt with by computers, it is possible for a buggy program to display
what should be a negative/deliberately invalid time as a date around
either December 31, 1969, or sometime in 2038.

Please report the bug to the manufacturer of your browser.

> When I accessed his page to politely ask he stop,
> he placed a photo of himself into this computer?s Windows Cookie folder.
> This is illegal conduct and a criminal offense.

That is a normal function of your web browser called "caching". It saves
files on your disk in a temporary folder in order to save the trouble of
downloading them again the next time you load the same page. Some web
browsers mix saved HTML and image files in with the cookies.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 06:34, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Brion, would there be a problem in giving Thomas CVS access?
>
>
> No problem at all. But you still gotta notify us when you check in if
> you want updates installed on the server in a timely fashion. :)

I sended you my sourceforge accout, and I will inform about patches here.

> Which reminds me; we really ought to set up e-mail notification on CVS
> checkins. Anyone know how to go about doing this?

I know how it works, but I don't think it works properly. One of the
problems I detected by using it, was that everyone has to add himself to
the notification. And it works usually only for one file, not a directory.
What I meen is: you add a new file, and everyone wants to know about
changes he/she has to add himself to the notify. It don't works automatically.

But, there's possibly a 'solution'. You have to make a mailing list and
send the notifications to this list. And if a new file is created someone
must add the mailinglist-address to the notification. Possibly this works.
I will check it.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Zoe wrote:

>Just for the record, the only things I have said about
>Sonya L is to point out that she is the banned user
>DW.  Other than that, I have said nothing about her,
>pro or con.  If that is an "attack", then so be it.
>
>Zoe
>
Gee, is that all?  She was leaving the impression that you might be
using Wicca-pedia powers for witchcraft or voodoo :-( .

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] New server testing

body:
> (Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>):
> I suppose it's to be expected, per your statements the other day,
> that some images are broken?

Oh, yeah; I disabled uploads, but I haven't copied the actual image
directories over. So /all/ images ought to be broken (except for the
logo).

> Otherwise, it's sweet... *smoking* fast, but I guess almost no one
> is on it.  :-)

Yeah, that helps a lot.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Thanks for the acces to the CVS, Brion, seems all working well.

I will check in the following mailed patch myself, with some additional
changes accumulated in the meantime, later on.

Thomas Corell wrote:
> 69c69
> < 	"et" => "Esti",
> ---
>
>>	"et" => "Eesti",
>
> 402c402
> < "prevn"			=> "letzte $1",
> ---
>
>>"prevn"			=> "vorherige $1",

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
Since the subject seems to have flared up again, I'm writing up my
vision of the future of wikitext syntax. I think the desire of some
here for double-spaced lists and the clarity of the spec can be
reconciled by using a line-break syntax. I like the suggestion "\\"
(double backslash, in case your mailer screws that up).

So here's how it might work: within a line, "\\" gets replaced by a
BREAK element inline, so it can be used anywhere (inside headings,
tables, etc.). When on a line all by itself, a BREAK element is
added to the currently-open block-level element, which then remains
open. Any totally blank line closes the element (as it does now).

So,

  # first

  # second

will produce

  1. first

  1. second

just as it does now. But

  # first
  \\
  # second

will produce

  1. first

  2. second

or to be precise,

first

second

Likewise,

  Blah blah

  Blah blah...

is rendered as

Blah blah

Blah blah...

but

  Blah blah
  \\
  Blah blah...

becomes

Blah blah

  Blah blah...

BTW, I did look at the links provided for other efforts at
unifying syntaxes, but they both seemed to me to be too complex
and too different from out current syntax to be practical here.
I really think I can make a syntax that is dead simple, not a
drastic change, and more powerful.  I'll post the URL here when
I finish the writeup.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>(Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
>>
>>Which reminds me; we really ought to set up e-mail notification on
>>CVS checkins. Anyone know how to go about doing this?
> I can set that up, though it might be more trouble than it's worth.
> I tend to do "cvs up" frequently, and anytime I see that there's
> been a checkin by someone else I look at it. If I got mail, I'd
> just ignore it and look at it later anyway. Also, now that I have
> the test suite running, I can do more bold changes that affect lots
> of files at once, and I don't know how mail handles that.

Ok, if not everyone want those mails, what about configuring CVSROOT/notice
and using the cvs watch [add] command? Each developer than can configure it
by himself.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > wget
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l.mbox/wikipedia-l.mbox
> > grep "Axel Boldt" wikipedia-l.mbox
>
> While this is cute, I suppose we must concede that it may not be all
> that helpful for newbies and non-Unix folks.

It turns out that gmane has a nice searchable web interface to our
mailing lists:
http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
> I think it's much more important to be able to produce nice PSs/PDFs from
> wiki markup than to introduce even more magic into it. It's magical enough as is
> and most people don't have ease-of-use problems with it, but we still don't have
> any way of doing high-quality printing.

Actually, that's right at the top of the document I'm writing as one of the
goals of the syntax. That's why, for example, I'm specifying output in terms
of a DOM, not just HTML.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
Just because you're currently talking about the parser I thought I might
bring up an issue which should be fixed in a next generation parser:

* foo bar
foo

Becomes

foo bar

foo

It should become

foo bar foo

I generally agree that wiki markup should not span linebreaks, but here I
think it should at least span single linebreaks. Otherwise it gets very
hard to format bullets with long paragraphs:

* foaer aoierj aerjf ioaer oifmaeo rmfi aoerijf oaeir ioafjeoirjf oaierj
oaierjfoiaj eroi fjaeroijf aoerji oaeijrfo iajero fjaoerij oaierjfo iajeio
jraeoifj aoeirj oiaejrfo iajerio fjaoerjifo iajeroij afoeirjf aioejr
ioaerjfoairjefo iaejroifj ioaerjf ioaerjfoaierjfoi jaeroifjaoeirjfoaerjif
ioaerjfioaejrfo iajer fioaejrifj aeiorjfoaeirjf oiaejrfoiaejrfioaejrfoi ..

I can't insert a linebreak because that would kill the bullet. But a
single linebreak would already increase readability. This is important for
[[Current events]], where individual items are formatted as bullets and
can get fairly long.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transition to new server (DNS)

body:
I belive that it would be a worthwhile investment for wikipedia to invest in
an easyDNS account. i believe its important for the project to have full
control over their dns at all times.... and its not expensive at all. i use
it and i absolutely love it.. and if a couple of people want to, im willing
to chip in for it.

Lightning

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Transition to new server

> Yeah, I noticed that right after I sent this mail...  For some reason,
> I thought that wikipedia.org was a different situation (in terms of
> DNS) than wikipedia.com.  I don't know what made me think that.
>
> Jason
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > How's that?  I'm sorry, I don't understand.  It's all in my register.com
> > account, right?
> >
> > Jason Richey wrote:
> >
> > > I am only in control of wikipedia.com, I don't know who can change the
> > > TTL on wikipedi.org subdomains.
> > >
> > > Jason
> > >
> > > Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Jason, regardless of which way we go, you can start by reducing
> > > > the lifetime of "test" and "www" in DNS, and make entries for
> > > > "pliny" and "larousse". We also need to change the canonical
> > > > name of ww to pliny--I can do that, but I'm not sure what else
> > > > that might effect, so I haven't done it yet.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> > > > "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and
past,
> > > > are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or
modified
> > > > for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or
notification."--LDC
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > > > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > > --
> > > "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
> (Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz>):
>
> That doesn't solve the problem of wanting to put a string of block elements
> within a list item (perfectly legitimate HTML)

You can still put lists inside a list item; you just can't put
paragraphs or PREs. I'll have to think about how big a problem
that is, if any.

It's certainly /not/ my intention for wikitext to be able to
represent any possible DOM--just the most useful, powerful subset
that keeps it simple enough for newcomers to edit.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
Erik Moeller schrieb:
> Just because you're currently talking about the parser I thought I might
> bring up an issue which should be fixed in a next generation parser:

Here's another one:

# foo

# bar

becomes

1. foo

1. bar

but it should become

1. foo

2. bar

ATM people work around it with two <br> tags, but that's ugly.

Kurt


from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop nominations

body:
I'd second that -- Andrew (Ams80)

----- Original Message -----
From: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 9:33 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] sysop nominations

> user:CatherineMunro would be a good sysop too
>
> sannse
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:
>>(Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net>):
>>Erik Moeller schrieb:
>>
>>>Just because you're currently talking about the parser I thought I might
>>>bring up an issue which should be fixed in a next generation parser:
>>
>>Here's another one:
>>
>># foo
>>
>># bar
>>
>>becomes
>>
>>1. foo
>>
>>1. bar
>>
>>but it should become
>>
>>1. foo
>>
>>2. bar
>>
>>ATM people work around it with two
 tags, but that's ugly.
>
>
> I'm not sure I agree with this one at all. If a blank line doesn't
> delimit paragraphs, what does? And if we maintain numbers across
> separated lists, how do you specify separate lists that /should/
> restart from 1?

Do we have articles with two lists which are not separated with some
text or a heading? If really needed we could do it with two blank lines.

> If the you only want the double-spacing in the list for esthetic
> reasons, then using non-semantic markup like
 (or some wiki
> equivalient) is the right way to encode that.

But that's not very intuitive. I think most people expect the markup to
behave the way I described above.

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
> I wonder if we shouldn't contact the developers of other open source
> wiki software, and convene a by-email "mini summit meeting" about wiki
> syntax, and try to formalize a standard that they and we can all
> follow.

There have, as always, been several attempts to standardize on some common
syntax. In the Python world, reStructured text seems to be quite popular:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-matters24/

One of us has proposed a standardized Wiki-syntax ("Wikitax"):

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

And I bet there are many other wikis out there who are thinking about the
problem.

However, please keep in mind that we have hundreds of megabytes of
existing wikitext, and converting this to anything else would be a major
PITA. It may be doable but is probably nothing the developers want to
spend much time on.

On the other hand, UseMod-style wikitext is very common. Wikipedia is by
far the largest wiki and will remain so, probably forever. The best
approach may be to fix the problems in our current parser and syntax, and
then document that as much as possible and publish it under some name.
Before we do that, we should definitely add basic support for tables,
though. And \\ for single linebreaks (instead of <br>) might be nice, too.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
Kurt/Lee-
>> I'm not sure I agree with this one at all. If a blank line doesn't
>> delimit paragraphs, what does? And if we maintain numbers across
>> separated lists, how do you specify separate lists that /should/
>> restart from 1?

> Do we have articles with two lists which are not separated with some
> text or a heading? If really needed we could do it with two blank lines.

I tend to agree with Kurt. The cases where

# foo

# bar

should become

1. foo

1. bar

seem to be very few, if they exist at all. When you have

# foo

baz

# bar

It is quite obvious that the list needs to be restarted.

I've run into this problem before when importing text into a Wikipedia-
based wiki. With very long list items, having an additional blank line in
the wikitext also greatly increases readability.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
> Any idea how this should work? I tested to get it converted to LaTeX, but
> HTML tables are very complicated to convert. OK, they are nearly the only
> problem, to be correct.

DocBook does tables well. It should be reasonably simple to render
wikitext as XML with the DocBook DTD, then produce PDF from that
using something like FOP.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
Hello,

I have detected that you can reach
http://de.wikipedia.org/tarballs/[cur|old]_table.bz2 if you link to it.

You can not browse http://de.wikipedia.org/tarballs/ , but
http://www.wikipedia.org/tarballs/de/

Any reason for this different behaviour?

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS:new Version of LanguageDe.php

body:
As announced, I patched LanguageDe.php in CVS.

Now a real developer has to activate it.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fred's work given its own article

body:
Hmm...what should be done about your controversial edits, then?

james duffy wrote:

>
> I have moved Fred's controversial edits to a separate page from
> [[Communist state]]. Given that they amount to a critique of communist
> government and governance (not the theoretical discussion of a system
> where party and government are blurred together) I have provisionally
> called it [[Communist government]] (well my suggestion was slightly
> different but Taku turned it into that) though someone may be able to
> come up with a better title. It is now linked to the Communist state
> page, allowing the Cs page to be what it was designed to be and what
> its opening paragraph says it is about, a definition of a particular
> constitutional system, not a discussion on communISM.
>
> Fred can work on his linked page there to try to NPOV it and give it
> some degree of balance (and to avoid sweeping generalisations in
> preference to solid analysis), while its analysis is linked to the
> [[Communist state]] page (along with other links like [[Forms of
> government]], [[China]] etc. Having spent so much time reverting
> [[China]] originally to remove the term [[Communist state]], then when
> that failed gone to [[Communist state]] and tried to POV it and add in
> stuff that was not linked to a definition (the page was specially
> created in the first place to explain to him what the term meant!)
> maybe now he can pull together a proper encyclop?dic article without
> constantly reverting everyone else's work and completely changing the
> meanings of what they had written in mysterious 'minor' edits. A
> properly written encyclop?dic article can augment the article on the
> political science definition, with each linked to the other. But the
> [[Communist government]] article needs a hell of a lot of work to
> reach that standard. Hopefully it will get that and reach that standard.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
I think it's much more important to be able to produce nice PSs/PDFs from
wiki markup than to introduce even more magic into it. It's magical enough as is
and most people don't have ease-of-use problems with it, but we still don't have
any way of doing high-quality printing.


from_name: elian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transliteration

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com schrieb:

> I've recently begun working on some articles about past prime ministers of
> Iraq, to put a little historical perspective into the conflict. The problem I
> have come across is that the names are transliterated in countless different
> names in the texts I have and, as a result, in existing articles in
> Wikipedia. It can get very confusing, especially with links.
>
> Is there anyone else here with some background in Arabic, so that we can
> develop some kind of standard transliteration system?

I tried to develop an arabic trancription standard for the German Wikipedia, see
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion%3AListe_islamischer_Begriffe_in_Arabisch

maybe it's of some use if someone wants to create an english one.

> Shukran
afuan
elian


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I have a lot (way too many) of other irons in the fire so I doubt I'll make
much personal imput but both articles (and any others in the same vein)
remain subject to the normal editing process.

Deleting large blocks of someone elses edits or engaging in automatic
reverts will remain problematic.

That day (when I started all this) and made the two provocative edits to
[[China]] (making a link to [[autoritarianism and totalitarianism]] in the
first paragraph) and the other to [[United States]] (I guess the Watchers'
Council is not so well organized on that front) I guess I was acting rather
confrontive and reckless. "Tragedies happen when you are bored"

Fred

> From: cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 02:54:46 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fred's work given its own article
>
> Hmm...what should be done about your controversial edits, then?
>
> james duffy wrote:
>
>>
>> I have moved Fred's controversial edits to a separate page from
>> [[Communist state]]. Given that they amount to a critique of communist
>> government and governance (not the theoretical discussion of a system
>> where party and government are blurred together) I have provisionally
>> called it [[Communist government]] (well my suggestion was slightly
>> different but Taku turned it into that) though someone may be able to
>> come up with a better title. It is now linked to the Communist state
>> page, allowing the Cs page to be what it was designed to be and what
>> its opening paragraph says it is about, a definition of a particular
>> constitutional system, not a discussion on communISM.
>>
>> Fred can work on his linked page there to try to NPOV it and give it
>> some degree of balance (and to avoid sweeping generalisations in
>> preference to solid analysis), while its analysis is linked to the
>> [[Communist state]] page (along with other links like [[Forms of
>> government]], [[China]] etc. Having spent so much time reverting
>> [[China]] originally to remove the term [[Communist state]], then when
>> that failed gone to [[Communist state]] and tried to POV it and add in
>> stuff that was not linked to a definition (the page was specially
>> created in the first place to explain to him what the term meant!)
>> maybe now he can pull together a proper encyclop?dic article without
>> constantly reverting everyone else's work and completely changing the
>> meanings of what they had written in mysterious 'minor' edits. A
>> properly written encyclop?dic article can augment the article on the
>> political science definition, with each linked to the other. But the
>> [[Communist government]] article needs a hell of a lot of work to
>> reach that standard. Hopefully it will get that and reach that standard.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
> To give an example of the 'little idiosyncracies' Jimmy is talking
> about: In Wikipedia, one links to another title than the text of the
> link with [[link|title]]. In Sensei's Library (the only other Wiki of
> this kind that I frequent) it is [title|link]. Very similar, using the
> same ideas, and yet totally non-compliant with each other.

Well, I wonder then how one creates an external link on Sensei's Library. If
we can get the energy up and get others to participate movement toward a
standard seems worthwhile. Its been done with html and electric plugs.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> I think it's much more important to be able to produce nice PSs/PDFs from
> wiki markup than to introduce even more magic into it. It's magical enough as is
> and most people don't have ease-of-use problems with it, but we still don't have
> any way of doing high-quality printing.

Any idea how this should work? I tested to get it converted to LaTeX, but
HTML tables are very complicated to convert. OK, they are nearly the only
problem, to be correct.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: David A. Wheeler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search results - please let people know search is disabled.

body:
I said:
> When I type in a search request, e.g., "Unix" or "Europe",
> Wikipedia reports "No article title matches" - even if there's
> an EXACT match that "Go" will find.

Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> replied:
> Hmm. I just got lots of article title matches on both of those.
> Are you sure you're not reporting something that happened last
> night while I was rebuilding the text indexes?

No, it's been happening for over a week.

Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> then said:
> I've gone ahead and re-enabled the title search for now.

Hooray! Thank you very much!  Title search is a really useful
feature, and I'm glad to see it back.

If you ever have to disable it again, it'd be nice if the
search results said so ("Sorry, title search has been disabled")
and at least identified any exact match.  But
hopefully disabling title search won't be necessary again.

Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> said:
> What /would/ be nice though is if the "Go" button were first, and
> I'll do that if I don't hear any objections.

No objections.  In fact, that's a good thing.
I know that I had a blindness to that particular button - I
always hit "search" and never even noticed "go".
That's probably because mentally I wanted to find something...
so once I saw "search", I pressed it, because that was
"obviously" what I wanted to do.


from_name: james duffy

body:
I have moved Fred's controversial edits to a separate page from [[Communist
state]]. Given that they amount to a critique of communist government and
governance (not the theoretical discussion of a system where party and
government are blurred together) I have provisionally called it [[Communist
government]] (well my suggestion was slightly different but Taku turned it
into that) though someone may be able to come up with a better title. It is
now linked to the Communist state page, allowing the Cs page to be what it
was designed to be and what its opening paragraph says it is about, a
definition of a particular constitutional system, not a discussion on
communISM.

Fred can work on his linked page there to try to NPOV it and give it some
degree of balance (and to avoid sweeping generalisations in preference to
solid analysis), while its analysis is linked to the [[Communist state]]
page (along with other links like [[Forms of government]], [[China]] etc.
Having spent so much time reverting [[China]] originally to remove the term
[[Communist state]], then when that failed gone to [[Communist state]] and
tried to POV it and add in stuff that was not linked to a definition (the
page was specially created in the first place to explain to him what the
term meant!) maybe now he can pull together a proper encyclop?dic article
without constantly reverting everyone else's work and completely changing
the meanings of what they had written in mysterious 'minor' edits. A
properly written encyclop?dic article can augment the article on the
political science definition, with each linked to the other. But the
[[Communist government]] article needs a hell of a lot of work to reach that
standard. Hopefully it will get that and reach that standard.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


in_reply_to: <000d01c315ca$6bf68140$0a01a8c0@bridge>; from lightning@chaos-productions.com on Thu, May 08, 2003 at 09:29:22PM -0400

body:
Lightning wrote:
> I belive that it would be a worthwhile investment for wikipedia to
> invest in an easyDNS account. i believe its important for the
> project to have full control over their dns at all times.... and its
> not expensive at all. i use it and i absolutely love it.. and if a
> couple of people want to, im willing to chip in for it.

Well, we do run our own DNS servers, too.  It's really just a matter
of convenience and tradition that we've never moved the DNS from
register.com to our own DNS servers.  We could do that, it's just a
matter of time.

--Jimbo


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 09:29:22PM -0400, Lightning wrote:
> I belive that it would be a worthwhile investment for wikipedia to invest in
> an easyDNS account. i believe its important for the project to have full
> control over their dns at all times.... and its not expensive at all. i use
> it and i absolutely love it.. and if a couple of people want to, im willing
> to chip in for it.
>
> Lightning

I use easyDNS right now, and I have to agree - it is awesome.  The web
interface is good, customer service is quick, and my transfer from
register.com (who messed up my WHOIS record _twice_ leaving me stranded
for a week [their automated scripts made an error, boo!]) was pretty
painless.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikitech-l] Link tags

body:
On Thu, 8 May 2003 16:38:17 +0200 (CEST), Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>
gave utterance to the following:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Interlanguage links should produce <link> tags to go in the <head>
>> section, such as:
>> <link title="This article in Swahili"
>> [...]
>> Will it have any practical results? I dunno. But it sounds exciting and
>> standards-compliant!
>
> Some of these link tags are supported by Lynx, for example the
> previous and next links at the top of a page like
>
> http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/mhausen/0089.html
>
> but I doubt that any other browser (except Opera?) makes use of them,
> even if they are standard.

Opera, Mozilla (and spawn), Icab. Not sure about Safari

--
Richard Grevers
I'm easy to please as long as I get my way


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser: Breaks in bullets

body:
On Thu, 8 May 2003 15:48:13 -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> gave
utterance to the following:

>> (Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net>):
>> Erik Moeller schrieb:
>> >Just because you're currently talking about the parser I thought I
>> might  >bring up an issue which should be fixed in a next generation
>> parser:
>>
>> Here's another one:
>>
>> # foo
>>
>> # bar
>>
>> becomes
>>
>> 1. foo
>>
>> 1. bar
>>
>> but it should become
>>
>> 1. foo
>>
>> 2. bar
>>
>> ATM people work around it with two
 tags, but that's ugly.
>
> I'm not sure I agree with this one at all. If a blank line doesn't
> delimit paragraphs, what does? And if we maintain numbers across
> separated lists, how do you specify separate lists that /should/
> restart from 1?
>
> If the you only want the double-spacing in the list for esthetic reasons,
> then using non-semantic markup like
 (or some wiki
> equivalient) is the right way to encode that.
>
I have just been having major nightmares with this on another wiki (based
on UseMod) which I am now moderating. Some pages contain a list of wishes
with people then commenting on them. At the moment the only way of keeping
the wishes as an OL is to italicize the comments and keep them inline, or
else I end up with 1. wish1 	comment 1 	comment
1. wish 2
	comment
In HTML, a list item is allowed to contain almost any block content.
How about keeping any list open until some sort of "End list" tag is
encountered: -# ?

ooh look, the random sig selector chose somethign appropriate again :-)
--
Richard Grevers
I'm easy to please as long as I get my way


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list

body:
I'm not sure I want to subscribe to this list anymore.
It is usually filled up with arguments about what is
NPOV and what counts as vandalism and the difference
between "movies" and "films", and it takes a half-hour
a day to read through it all. If it's OK, I would like
to contribute to Wikipedia (although usually
uncontravercially) without being on this list. Is that
OK, or should I stay here? I want to keep sysop powers
so I can still edit the main page and move misplaced pages.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
On Thu, 8 May 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I wonder if we shouldn't contact the developers of other open source
> wiki software, and convene a by-email "mini summit meeting" about wiki
> syntax, and try to formalize a standard that they and we can all
> follow.
>
> We've deviated, with good cause and good results, from the traditional
> CamelCase method, but there's a lot of syntax that wikis share, but
> lots of little idiosyncracies that should probably be ironed out.

The problem is, that when there would be a standard, those that have
something different would have to change. Few will have a problem with
adding some extra Wiki-syntax (like the \\ for a linebreak someone else
proposed in this thread), but when existing syntax has to be deprecated,
it means that lots of pages have to be changed, possibly causing errors,
users suddenly have to change their habits, etcetera. I think that many
developers will have an "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude to
that.

To give an example of the 'little idiosyncracies' Jimmy is talking
about: In Wikipedia, one links to another title than the text of the
link with [[link|title]]. In Sensei's Library (the only other Wiki of
this kind that I frequent) it is [title|link]. Very similar, using the
same ideas, and yet totally non-compliant with each other.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
I think somewhere on meta someone suggested including tables in the same way
that we include images. I think this is quite a good idea as some articles
with tables in look like a complete mess in edit windows, just having
[[table:some table]] or something might make them look a little cleaner. I
just thought I should re-mention this while there was discussion of syntax.
I don't know the ins and outs of designing this kind of thing so maybe
there's many a good reason for not doing this but I just thought I should
mention it.

Cheers,

Andrew (Ams80)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee at piclab.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

> > (Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>):
> >
> > However, please keep in mind that we have hundreds of megabytes of
> > existing wikitext, and converting this to anything else would be a major
> > PITA. It may be doable but is probably nothing the developers want to
> > spend much time on.
>
> I consider that a minor issue. Ours is the largest wiki on the planet,
> and converting every page in the database would take a few hours at
> most, and I consider that a small price for the potential gains of a
> clean, usable syntax.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:

> So here's how it might work: within a line, "\\" gets replaced by a
> BREAK element inline, so it can be used anywhere (inside headings,
> tables, etc.). When on a line all by itself, a BREAK element is
> added to the currently-open block-level element, which then remains
> open. Any totally blank line closes the element (as it does now).
>
> So,
>
>   # first
>
>   # second
>
> will produce
>
>   1. first
>
>   1. second
>
> just as it does now.

I still haven't seen an article where this makes any sense.

> But
>
>   # first
>   \\
>   # second
>
> will produce
>
>   1. first
>
>   2. second

It's just a bit less ugly than

# first

# second

But I do agree that we need something to replace the
 tags, because
they are needed in some rare cases (but are overused - at least in the
German Wikipedia - in normal article text).

I appreciate efforts in making things cleaner and more standardized, but
I think that it's more important to keep editing simple and intuitive.

Kurt


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Guess I missed the excitement this morning...

body:
Yes, the wiki server went down this morning. Jason and Brion are
on it.

At the moment, larousse is responding to 130.94.122.197 as well as
199. Brion, I assume that was done deliberately so that you can set up
the read-only backup?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Line breaks

body:
On Thu, 8 May 2003 19:53:07 -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> Since the subject seems to have flared up again, I'm writing up my
> vision of the future of wikitext syntax. I think the desire of some
> here for double-spaced lists and the clarity of the spec can be
> reconciled by using a line-break syntax. I like the suggestion "\\"
> (double backslash, in case your mailer screws that up).
>
> So here's how it might work: within a line, "\\" gets replaced by a
> BREAK element inline, so it can be used anywhere (inside headings,
> tables, etc.). When on a line all by itself, a BREAK element is
> added to the currently-open block-level element, which then remains
> open. Any totally blank line closes the element (as it does now).
>
That doesn't solve the problem of wanting to put a string of block elements
within a list item (perfectly legitimate HTML)

--
Richard Grevers
If teenagers dress to express individuality why do they all look alike?


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Hacker attack

body:
Jimmy writes:
> I find the claim about MyRedDice placing a photo
> of himself into this person's cookie folder
> wildly implausible, but nonetheless, I'm duty
> bound to say don't do that.  :-)

Hm, you don't think Martin could have hacked the
server and changed it to assign an ASCII-art
self-portrait cookie to DW and pals, but no one else?
I thought that's what Martin did for a living.

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
Well, just about the time Brion and I got the read-only backup
working on larrouse, pliny came to life again. I assume Jason did
that, in which case, thanks. All seems to be hunky-dory now.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list

body:
On Fri, 9 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 10:50:04 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list
>
> I'm not sure I want to subscribe to this list anymore.
> It is usually filled up with arguments about what is
> NPOV and what counts as vandalism and the difference
> between "movies" and "films", and it takes a half-hour
> a day to read through it all. If it's OK, I would like
> to contribute to Wikipedia (although usually
> uncontravercially) without being on this list. Is that
> OK, or should I stay here? I want to keep sysop powers
> so I can still edit the main page and move misplaced pages.

You know you can get the list in digest mode, right? Sounds perfect if
you're reading it all at one time anyway. Go to
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l , enter your email
address in the bottom box by the "edit options" button (you might have to
do the address/password boxes above to get it to recognize you, then go
back), go down to the list of radio buttons and click "Set Digest Mode"
on. Hope that might help. I don't know just how "digested" digested is,
I've never gotten it myself.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Everyone around me dies, Mr. Morden, except those who most deserve it.
				--Londo Mollari


subject: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list

body:
Just delete the crap. Even if it's my crap.

Fred

> From: "John R. Owens" <jowens.wiki at ghiapet.homeip.net>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 16:04:27 -0500 (CDT)
> To: Wiki Pedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list
>
> On Fri, 9 May 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>> Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 10:50:04 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] The wiki list
>>
>> I'm not sure I want to subscribe to this list anymore.
>> It is usually filled up with arguments about what is
>> NPOV and what counts as vandalism and the difference
>> between "movies" and "films", and it takes a half-hour
>> a day to read through it all. If it's OK, I would like
>> to contribute to Wikipedia (although usually
>> uncontravercially) without being on this list. Is that
>> OK, or should I stay here? I want to keep sysop powers
>> so I can still edit the main page and move misplaced pages.
>
> You know you can get the list in digest mode, right? Sounds perfect if
> you're reading it all at one time anyway. Go to
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l , enter your email
> address in the bottom box by the "edit options" button (you might have to
> do the address/password boxes above to get it to recognize you, then go
> back), go down to the list of radio buttons and click "Set Digest Mode"
> on. Hope that might help. I don't know just how "digested" digested is,
> I've never gotten it myself.
>
> --
> John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
> Everyone around me dies, Mr. Morden, except those who most deserve it.
> --Londo Mollari
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
There is some suspicion that our server-crashes-all-the-time problem is
related to the hard disk and/or SCSI controller.

Here's a diagnostic program for the disk (DOS program, runs from a
floppy... do we have a floppy drive?):
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Here's the detailed specs for the drive:
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/85256AB8006A31E587256A78005A3610/$file/ddys_sp21.PDF

Is the SCSI controller built-in to the motherboard? What's the motherboard
manufacturer? Do they have any diagnostics? Or is there something we could
get direct from Adaptec (Adaptec AIC-7899 Ultra 160/m SCSI host adapter)?

I'd also recommend upgrading our old kernel to a current 2.4.x to ensure
that drivers are current; Jason may be recompiling anyway for serial
console support, so two birds with one stone.

It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we
can still communicate during downtime...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
> To give an example of the 'little idiosyncracies' Jimmy is talking
> about: In Wikipedia, one links to another title than the text of the
> link with [[link|title]]. In Sensei's Library (the only other Wiki of
> this kind that I frequent) it is [title|link]. Very similar, using the
> same ideas, and yet totally non-compliant with each other.

Well, I wonder then how one creates an external link on Sensei's Library. If
we can get the energy up and get others to participate movement toward a
standard seems worthwhile. Its been done with html and electric plugs.

Fred


body:
I have a lot (way too many) of other irons in the fire so I doubt I'll make
much personal imput but both articles (and any others in the same vein)
remain subject to the normal editing process.

Deleting large blocks of someone elses edits or engaging in automatic
reverts will remain problematic.

That day (when I started all this) and made the two provocative edits to
[[China]] (making a link to [[autoritarianism and totalitarianism]] in the
first paragraph) and the other to [[United States]] (I guess the Watchers'
Council is not so well organized on that front) I guess I was acting rather
confrontive and reckless. "Tragedies happen when you are bored"

Fred

> From: cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 02:54:46 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fred's work given its own article
>
> Hmm...what should be done about your controversial edits, then?
>
> james duffy wrote:
>
>>
>> I have moved Fred's controversial edits to a separate page from
>> [[Communist state]]. Given that they amount to a critique of communist
>> government and governance (not the theoretical discussion of a system
>> where party and government are blurred together) I have provisionally
>> called it [[Communist government]] (well my suggestion was slightly
>> different but Taku turned it into that) though someone may be able to
>> come up with a better title. It is now linked to the Communist state
>> page, allowing the Cs page to be what it was designed to be and what
>> its opening paragraph says it is about, a definition of a particular
>> constitutional system, not a discussion on communISM.
>>
>> Fred can work on his linked page there to try to NPOV it and give it
>> some degree of balance (and to avoid sweeping generalisations in
>> preference to solid analysis), while its analysis is linked to the
>> [[Communist state]] page (along with other links like [[Forms of
>> government]], [[China]] etc. Having spent so much time reverting
>> [[China]] originally to remove the term [[Communist state]], then when
>> that failed gone to [[Communist state]] and tried to POV it and add in
>> stuff that was not linked to a definition (the page was specially
>> created in the first place to explain to him what the term meant!)
>> maybe now he can pull together a proper encyclop?dic article without
>> constantly reverting everyone else's work and completely changing the
>> meanings of what they had written in mysterious 'minor' edits. A
>> properly written encyclop?dic article can augment the article on the
>> political science definition, with each linked to the other. But the
>> [[Communist government]] article needs a hell of a lot of work to
>> reach that standard. Hopefully it will get that and reach that standard.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> At any rate, if you do that again, I can get the read-only backup
> going quickly if you notify me (mail to wikidown is fine). Of course
> larousse by itself drags to a crawl with high traffic, even read-only,
> because it's not quite as hefty a server.

Well, if we get around to the prettified static-HTML mirrorable version
that's been discussed, that would be preferable to the database-driven
live version for emergency purposes.

But, we don't have that done yet.

> > It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so
> > we can still communicate during downtime...
>
> Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki,
> I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other.  They
> need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.

Offsite would be better yet, but I'd rather see them on larousse, which
does _not_ have a history of crashing once a month or so and being offline
for hours at a time, than remain on pliny.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lightning wrote:
> what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????

I don't think we'd have the same control there, and I don't think we could
make the move transparent.

What we'd like to be able to do is just set up mailman on the other
location, change our DNS records to point to the new machine as
the mail server for the wikipedia.org domain, and let mail move over there
automatically as the new DNS gets picked up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
We (at Bomis) do have another server that could run the mailing lists
that is almost unrelated to wikipedia.  It's the server that wikipedia
started out on, which still hosts some of the old UseMod wikis.

I haven't spoken to Jimmy about this, but I think he was considering
allowing wikipedia to use the server to host the mailing lists.

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lightning wrote:
> > what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????
>
> I don't think we'd have the same control there, and I don't think we could
> make the move transparent.
>
> What we'd like to be able to do is just set up mailman on the other
> location, change our DNS records to point to the new machine as
> the mail server for the wikipedia.org domain, and let mail move over there
> automatically as the new DNS gets picked up.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
>
> I'd also recommend upgrading our old kernel to a current 2.4.x to ensure
> that drivers are current; Jason may be recompiling anyway for serial
> console support, so two birds with one stone.

Jason, if you want to move IPs again, Brion and I finally got the
read-only backup thing working on larousse, about 10 seconds before
pliny came back to life (in fact, when I went to add the note "this
is a read-only backup" to the main page, I ended up adding it to the
live wiki :)

At any rate, if you do that again, I can get the read-only backup
going quickly if you notify me (mail to wikidown is fine). Of course
larousse by itself drags to a crawl with high traffic, even read-only,
because it's not quite as hefty a server.

> It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so
> we can still communicate during downtime...

Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki,
I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other.  They
need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki syntax

body:
> (Andrew Smith <ams80 at cam.ac.uk>):
> I think somewhere on meta someone suggested including tables in the same way
> that we include images. I think this is quite a good idea as some articles
> with tables in look like a complete mess in edit windows, just having
> [[table:some table]] or something might make them look a little cleaner. I
> just thought I should re-mention this while there was discussion of syntax.
> I don't know the ins and outs of designing this kind of thing so maybe
> there's many a good reason for not doing this but I just thought I should
> mention it.

That was certainly one way to do it, but unless we have a new syntax,
that just moves the difficultly around without solving it. Sure, it
makes the enclosing page simpler, but you still need to code the table
itself, and if newbies can't do that, they can't really participate
any more than they do now with complex tables that just get left alone.

I think a simplification of MoinMoin syntax will do us just fine:

  ||| Table
  | col1 | col2 | col2

Gets rendered as a table with two rows, the first having a single
cell spanning three columns, and the second having three cells.

We can eliminate the MoinMoin syntax for centering and justifying
cells because that can be done more simply with the unified style
syntax. I don't see any reason to need rowspans--I can live without
them. We might want to do something to distinguish table heading
cells from regular data cells; I'm thinking using the "=" symbol
so that it's consistent with text headings.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
> (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
>
> Well, if we get around to the prettified static-HTML mirrorable version
> that's been discussed, that would be preferable to the database-driven
> live version for emergency purposes.

That sounds like a good next high-proirity project for me, and doesn't
sound too tricky. A PHP script in the maintenance directory that just
rendered every page in the cur table into an appropriate file system
hierarchy would do the trick. And doing incremental updates.

Pushing new syntax out another month....

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????

Will

> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >>It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so
> >>we can still communicate during downtime...
> > Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki,
> > I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other.  They
> > need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.
>
> I think you are right, Lee. If you want to move the lists, than to a host
> not involved with wikipedia (DB or Apache). If they have to run on one of
> the wikipedia hosts, a move is not nesseccary. If something goes wrong
> there is a good chance that's hitting the mailserver too.
>
>
> Smurf
> --
> -------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Thanks !

body:
Thanks to the guy(s) bringing up Wikipedia again!

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Drive of doom

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so
>>we can still communicate during downtime...
> Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki,
> I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other.  They
> need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.

I think you are right, Lee. If you want to move the lists, than to a host
not involved with wikipedia (DB or Apache). If they have to run on one of
the wikipedia hosts, a move is not nesseccary. If something goes wrong
there is a good chance that's hitting the mailserver too.

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Interlanguage links - a very good intermediate solution

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> tarquin wrote:
>
> > I have an intermediate solution which I think
> would be simple to
> > implement:
> >
> > : ignore the link made to the *current* language.
> >
> > ie, on the English wikipedia, ignore an [[en:foo]]
> link
> >
> > this would mean the the SAME block of links can be
> pasted between all
> > the involved pages. It's not perfect, but it would
> speed things up for
> > the time being :-)
>
> erm...
> no comments on this?

Sorry

That's a great idea which would certainly help setting
up links much more quickly. I second you entirely.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: James Lovejoy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop request

body:
Hello all,

I've been considering this for a little while, and
since it recently came up, I'd like to request sysop
status.

I don't have much interest in banning IPs and the
like; I think others are much more qualified to do
this.  I'd primarily use the sysop powers to assist in
general upkeep such as removing some oversized PNG/GIF
images, which I've replaced with much more compressed
JPEGs (mostly astronomical images), and cleaning up
vandalism.  Another other reason I'd like access is to
help keep the "Selected Articles" section of the Main
Page up to date.

Thanks,
James Lovejoy (aka Minesweeper)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Communist state article broken

body:
We seem somehow to have broken the link to this hottly contested article
which can no longer be accessed for some reason. It does not show up on
recently deleted.

Fred


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> We seem somehow to have broken the link to this
> hottly contested article
> which can no longer be accessed for some reason. It
> does not show up on
> recently deleted.
>
> Fred

ROFL. Excellent ! Thanks for the laugh !

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for developer access

body:
I would like to request developer rights on the English Wikipedia. This
would allow me to execute write-access queries on the database, and as
such, to grant sysop privileges to other users. I would like to help with
the sysopping, which seems to be right now only done by a couple of
people. Since I read wikien-l daily and intend to continue to do so, I
usually catch sysop requests on time, but can currently do nothing about
them.

I am one of the developers (which does not automatically mean Wikipedia DB
access) and currently a regular sysop.

Regards,

Erik (User:Eloquence)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Autonomous CVS

body:
Following the directions at:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Software

to get latest version:

$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:
/cvsroot/wikipedia login (ENTER)
Logging in to
:pserver:anonymous at cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/wikipedia
CVS password: (ENTER)
cvs [login aborted]: recv() from server cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:
Connection reset by peer
$

So what is the likely problem?

Fred


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Interlanguage links - an intermediate solution

body:
tarquin wrote:

> I have an intermediate solution which I think would be simple to
> implement:
>
> : ignore the link made to the *current* language.
>
> ie, on the English wikipedia, ignore an [[en:foo]] link
>
> this would mean the the SAME block of links can be pasted between all
> the involved pages. It's not perfect, but it would speed things up for
> the time being :-)

erm...
no comments on this?


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: I like BBS:es

body:
"Hunter Peress" skribis:

> That people have no idea what has been addressed by Lee's email by just
> looking at the list of emails because of another point on
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media (and which I also stated in
> the previous email, but was also not reincluded) OR to whom it was
> addressed as changing the title on a non-threaded system causes havoc.
>
> Namely: "where in a good threading system like slashdot's where you
>    know if there have been replies or not. Where you *can*
>    change the title of your repsonse while not worrying about its
>    placement in the thread."

I do not know how it looks like in the web-interface,
but my mailreader shows the messages threaded, independant
of the subject line.

(This sometimes causes trouble when people want to
 start an new thread by simply responding a message
 and changing the title.)

When you write your bbs-mail-interface, please continue
to use the References:-Mechanism.

Paul


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sysop request

body:
Minesweeper worte (in part):

> I've been considering this for a little while, and
> since it recently came up, I'd like to request sysop
> status.

Minesweeper has been pre-seconded by mav, JohnOwens and Tannin.

Regards

sannse


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Request for developer access

body:
On Saturday 10 May 2003 05:00 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> I would like to request developer rights on the English Wikipedia. This
> would allow me to execute write-access queries on the database, and as
> such, to grant sysop privileges to other users. I would like to help with
> the sysopping, which seems to be right now only done by a couple of
> people. Since I read wikien-l daily and intend to continue to do so, I
> usually catch sysop requests on time, but can currently do nothing about
> them.
>
> I am one of the developers (which does not automatically mean Wikipedia DB
>   access) and currently a regular sysop.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik (User:Eloquence)

I for one trust you - but I guess this is a call for the developers to make.

-- mav


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Various topics

body:
I'm catching up after a busy couple of days. To save cluttering up the
list with a whole stack of little posts, in no particular order:

1: Various comments in several threads re shouting on talk pages and in
edit summaries, mostly to do with "Communist state"  (which is now, by
the way, in excellent shape - pending destructive reverts, of course)
by Mav and others. I agree. "Vandalisim" is not the appropriate term to
use here. In this connection, a  semi-apology from Fred. Thankyou Fred.
Apology accepted. (At least I am taking it as an apology, and on that
basis I'll say no more about the matter, just look forward to working
with you on other entries in the future).

2: sonyalebrun at hotmail.com: Hacker attack at Wikipedia. MyRedDice saved
his picture onto a public computer  & other wonderful related stuff.
Best laugh I've had in ages. Thankyou Jimbo for sharing that with us.

3: Various nominations for admin status: Kingturtle,  Someone Else, Abe
Sokolov, Minesweeper, Slrubenstein, Hephaestos, and several others as
well. I second (fifth, ninth? whatever) the nominations. There were one
or two names I didn't recognise (I probably work on different
specialties much of the time), but I trust the consensus here. Mav (and
others) wouldn't have suggested them if they were not good people. Did
anyone nominate Jimfbleak and Arpingstone yet? If not, we should. They
are both careful, hardworking contributors, with level heads and a
proven record of solid contribuions.

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)


subject: [WikiEN-l] 172's sysop request (was "Communist state and rudeness")

body:
>THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE ON THE POLITICAL AND
>ECONOMIC THEORY OF MARXISM-LENINISM. THIS IS
>AN ARTICLE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
>STRUCTURE OF A COMMUNIST STATE!!!!!! READ
>THE ARCHIVED PAGES SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO
>REPEAT WHAT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED OVER AND
>OVER AGAIN.
>
>ALSO, SITE OWNER JIMBO WALES AGREES THAT FRED'S
>CONTENT DOESN'T BELONG IN THIS ARTICLE (SEE THE
>MAILING LIST), SO YOUR EFFORTS TO INSERT FRED'S
>(PERHAPS YOUR) POV COULD GET YOU BANNED. --172

I've been seriously biting my tongue until now in regards to 172's sysop
request, but this last message and many similar ones before it has compelled
me to /strongly/ oppose 172's Admin application.

A person who acts so badly and without backing off, apologizing or accepting
their own POV, is, IMO, very likely to abuse any power they may have over
others.

I also find it troubling that he seems to badly want these powers for some
reason (going as far as placing messages on Brion's and at least one other
person's talk page asking to be promoted by them) while at the same time
other people are still debating if he should be a sysop at all. For me, at
least, that has the appearance of being sneaky and trying to get what he
wants through a back door. I also don't recall seeing him do much, if any,
Wikipedia weeding or ever make requests to have things posted on the Main
Page.

This, and the fact that 172's message above is also a violation of
Wiki-Etiquette, makes me seriously question 172's motives on why he wants to
be a sysop.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Introducing WikiMoney

body:
WikiMoney is a quantification of WikiLove. Every long-term contributor
gets an initial amount of 100 WikiDollars (also known as WikiEuros),
for him or her to spend on any Wikipedia improvement project of their
choosing. See

   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiMoney

for the details.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for developer access

body:
On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 22:31, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I would like to request developer rights on the English Wikipedia. This
> would allow me to execute write-access queries on the database, and as
> such, to grant sysop privileges to other users. I would like to help with
> the sysopping, which seems to be right now only done by a couple of
> people. Since I read wikien-l daily and intend to continue to do so, I
> usually catch sysop requests on time, but can currently do nothing about
> them.
>
> I am one of the developers (which does not automatically mean Wikipedia DB
> access) and currently a regular sysop.

Seconded. Erik has contributed useful code to the project and
demonstrated responsibility.

I'd also like to remind people of proposals mentioned at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_details_special_page
whereby the sysop process could be better automated by a nomination /
confirmation system. Something like:

* anybody (or perhaps any sysop) could nominate a user for sysophood
* the nomination would be displayed in a prominent log page of some sort
* after a delay of a couple or a few days, that user automatically
becomes a sysop
* IF AND ONLY IF at least one other sysop seconds the nomination
* UNLESS any sysop (or perhaps any user) rejects the nomination during
the waiting period

It's very clumsy to require manual database mucking to deal with common
user account stuff, and creates delays when the small number of
developers are busy or difficult to communicate with. As much as
possible, a wiki community should be able to run itself.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] is new content not written instantly into the database?

body:
Often when I create a new page I get an "article doesn't exist" message
aver saving. I also happens that after editing an article my browser
shows the old version of it. I thought it would be a bug in Mozilla's
caching, but it also happens after clearing the cache and reloading the
page. But when I reload it after about 20 seconds the new page version
is shown. So I guess it takes some time until the new content is written
into the database.

But maybe it's still a problem at my end. Did anybody else experience this?

Kurt


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 05:21:55PM +0100, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Often when I create a new page I get an "article doesn't exist" message
> aver saving. I also happens that after editing an article my browser
> shows the old version of it. I thought it would be a bug in Mozilla's
> caching, but it also happens after clearing the cache and reloading the
> page. But when I reload it after about 20 seconds the new page version
> is shown. So I guess it takes some time until the new content is written
> into the database.
>
> But maybe it's still a problem at my end. Did anybody else experience this?

Yse, I had the same problem yesterday.

--
Luc Van Oostenryck aka User:Looxix


from_name: Marco Krohn

body:
On Saturday 10 May 2003 18:21, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> But maybe it's still a problem at my end. Did anybody else experience this?

yup, today I experienced this for the first time.

  Marco


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've been seriously biting my tongue until now in regards to 172's
> sysop request, but this last message and many similar ones before
> it has compelled me to /strongly/ oppose 172's Admin application.

I also oppose it. Following 172's actions a bit, I couldn't help but
get the impression that his first and foremost goal is not the welfare
of Wikipedia but the promotion of a specific agenda. To be sure, there
are several users like that, but I don't see an advantage in makeing
them sysops.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Brad Johnson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Communist state and rudeness.

body:
I direct your attention to the exhibit of fine Wikipetiquette below,
from [[Talk:Communist state]]. It's enough to make me sentimental--I
haven't been YELLED AT, threatened with banning, been called rude, a
nuisance, dense, and lazy since LMS was around.

THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE ON THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THEORY OF
MARXISM-LENINISM. THIS IS AN ARTICLE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
STRUCTURE OF A COMMUNIST STATE!!!!!! READ THE ARCHIVED PAGES SO THAT I
DON'T HAVE TO REPEAT WHAT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

ALSO, SITE OWNER JIMBO WALES AGREES THAT FRED'S CONTENT DOESN'T BELONG
IN THIS ARTICLE (SEE THE MAILING LIST), SO YOUR EFFORTS TO INSERT FRED'S
(PERHAPS YOUR) POV COULD GET YOU BANNED. --172

As I said before, your shouting is rude. You also have a deep
misunderstanding of Wikipetiquette, Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines,
and Jimbo's role. I hope you will consider improving your understanding.
--The Cunctator

I know that it's rude. So is trying to insert your POV after JTD,
Tannin, Tarquin, other users, and I have probably written well over a
hundred pages on this page, user pages, and the mailing lists explaining
why these poorly written paragraphs don't belong here. And here you
come, interjecting yourself in the debate, being a further nuisance. I
doubt that all of us could say anything else to convince you; you seem
far too dense. So quit being so lazy and why don't you go through all
our explanations and do some research to see if we're not all engaging
in some kind of conspiracy and making these arguments up ourselves? 172


from_name: The Cunctator


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] You won't have 172 to kick around anymore

body:
Mav:

Your behavior is inappropriate, not mine. You?re interjecting yourself into this debate led by JTD, Tannin, and me on one side and Fred Bauder on another. You have faint understanding of what?s going on and why the three of us are opposing Fred?s attempt to POV the articles on China and Communist state with his shoddy material by the natures of the misrepresentations (euphemisms for far worse adjectives I could direct against your statements at the moment) that you are spewing on the mailing list.

If you are claiming that my opposition to Fred?s material is due to my own POV, you are grossly mistaken. I don?t give a damn whether Communism is presented favorably or not on this article or any article and do not have strong partisans feelings about the subject. I have done far more work than Fred Bauder on Wikipedia that could be perceived as anti-Communist by non-academic or non-analytic readers of history. Even if he were attempting to post my own material to that site borrowed from another article I?d join the opposition against those attempts.

If you think that I have a pro-Communist POV, do you think that JRT, Tannin, Tarquin, and Jimbo Wales are also rabid Communists trying to portray Communist history from a sympathetic point of view? They have also agreed that Fred?s additions were not NPOV and don?t belong in the article on Communist state. Why are you selectively directing these charges against me?

I don?t want to become a sysop because I have any personal and political agendas either. Once again, those charges are slanderous.

I am not going to make a singe edit to Wikipedia until Mav apologizes. I will not press the edit botton on any Wiki page until that happens. I don?t deserve this kind of treatment for volunteering my time to make sure that a couple of articles are professionally written, accurate, balanced, and follow proper academic standards.

User 172

---------------------------------
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from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spellchecking

body:
Someone knows how fast the aspell/pspell function are? It seems to be easy
(if apache and php are properly configured) to run a spellcheck through a
wikipedia page, which displays misspelled works in a proper color.

Should be used by pressing 'preview', IMHO.

Some Pseudo-Code:

- Create array of words from article text.
- foreach word pspell_check(appropriate_dict, wort)
   -TRUE: next
   -FALSE: enclose word in color tag

That's without personal spellbooks, replacements and so one, I think
getting wikipedia tags inside the languagedict, or use a additional dict is
  enought.

--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spellchecking

body:
On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 06:55:17PM +0200, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Someone knows how fast the aspell/pspell function are? It seems to be easy
> (if apache and php are properly configured) to run a spellcheck through a
> wikipedia page, which displays misspelled works in a proper color.
>
> Should be used by pressing 'preview', IMHO.
>
> Some Pseudo-Code:
>
> - Create array of words from article text.
> - foreach word pspell_check(appropriate_dict, wort)
>   -TRUE: next
>   -FALSE: enclose word in color tag
>
> That's without personal spellbooks, replacements and so one, I think
> getting wikipedia tags inside the languagedict, or use a additional dict is
>  enought.

Of course it can't possibly work.
Encyclopedia contains too many proper names and other stuff that no
dictionary knows.


from_name: Giskart

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The wiki list

body:
On 09 mei 2003, you wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english:

> I'm not sure I want to subscribe to this list anymore.
> It is usually filled up with arguments about what is
> NPOV and what counts as vandalism and the difference
> between "movies" and "films", and it takes a half-hour
> a day to read through it all. If it's OK, I would like
> to contribute to Wikipedia (although usually
> uncontravercially) without being on this list. Is that
> OK, or should I stay here? I want to keep sysop powers
> so I can still edit the main page and move misplaced pages.

You can read the wikipedia lists like a newsgroup.
Use the server  news.gmane.org  and search for Wikipedia

The English list is gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english

See http://intlwiki.wikipedia.be

--
Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be