body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but
> it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too.

I think neither the talk pages are adequate for such a general discussion
(they are already much too long to keep track)
nor the list is the right place. It may seem strange, but maybe the best
solution (if there are enough people who want to share in the NPOV-ing
project) would be an extra mailing-list for these disputes.

I didn't intend to start a direct discussion of the examples from my
posting, but anyway some answers....

> Is it generally uncontroversial that the Irgun killed more than 100
> civilians?  If so, then I see no reason for the "supposed to have
> killed them" formulation.  The word "murder" should be used, in many
> contexts, but it should be used cautiously, I think.

I changed this already by reducing the number of "supposed" 340 victims to
the number approved by the International Red Cross.

> I'm sure we could have two weeks discussion of just what makes for a
> murder versus other descriptions!  I wouldn't want to open that can of
> worms unless absolutely necessary, so just understand me to be saying
> that such judgments can be difficult and controversial, and that
> sometimes the arguments could be avoided through careful word choices
> to avoid the controversial conclusions.

ACK. This should be general policy.

> > Or "Palestinians claim that the bulk of Palestinian refugees had been
> > inhabitants of Palestine for many generations": doesn't this obvious,
> > totally trivial fact, recognized by the UNO, earn a formulation as a fact,
> > not a claim?
>
> I think so, but perhaps it should be bolstered by estimates of the
> percentage of Palestinian refugees who were born elsewhere, etc.
>
> We might say (and I am making these numbers up, and perhaps valid
> numbers are not available) that 80% of the Palestinian refugees are
> children or grandchilden of people who lived in the area before the
> creation of the state of Israel, and 15% are people from other
> countries with cultural/familial ties that go back further than that,
> and 5% are people who have intermarried into the Palestinian
> population.

First, the sentence in questions is not about the descendants, but the
actual refugees. De facto, the sentence above the cited is a complaint of
the Israelis that also people were counted who immigrated from 1946-48.

If someone could say how many of the 700 000 did that? If they are no
significant number I would leave this out.

> Could we not here simply describe the uncontroversial facts, without
> any _judgment_ as to the status of the property in question?  It might
> be difficult to word properly, but it seems possible to me.

Yes. Could a native speaker try this? Find out, what was actually done and
formulate it properly?

> I think the right answer to this is: whenever there is controversy, we
> do neither.  It is not up to wikipedia to judge the controversial
> moral issues of our day, but to present information agreeable to all
> reasonable parties in a controversy so that both feel that a neutral
> observer will have sufficient data to come to the right conclusion.

as it is written in the NPOV-policy ;-)

> > "In contrast, Israelis and Americans point out that millions of people
> > live in similar and worse conditions all over the world, yet these
> > people never resort to waves of homicide bombings."
> >
> > Okay, the thing with the schoolbooks should be clear for the interested
> > reader, but what the hell is the "unsatisfactory situation"?
>
> Would simply fleshing out the details of what Palestinians regard as
> the 'unsatisfactory situation' be enough here?

Yes, but it would maybe better placed in an article of its own, since this
could be very long.

> On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
> like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
> differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
> around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
> campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

Dangerous questions.
So I have also to step a little bit more into the controversy and comment
on this sentence I deliberately wrote nothing about. Honestly, I was
deeply shocked by this sentence. So we live, you in the mostly peaceful
and wealthy US, I in peaceful and wealthy Germany. I have never seen
someone shot in reality, have you? I was never beaten by policemen - were
you? Who are we to juge how one should react in an situation of poverty,
political oppression and overwhelming injustice done to him? Who are we to
jugde how the husband of Suha al-Schaer should react, who erred high
pregnant half the night through the hills, barred the way to the hospital
by the soldiers at the Israeli checkpoints, lost her child and fell into a
Koma?

The American President Bush asked after September 11th "Why do they hate
us?" You could possibly say, "they hate us because of arrogant sentences
like this one." (together with the ongoing support of the USA and other
first world countries for their oppression and anti-democratic rulers)

> It does seem relevant to examine what things, beyond the raw fact of
> grievances, led to this reaction.  Part of this must be cultural and
> religious (Islamic martyrdom).  And part of it is likely due to
> differences in strategy and tactics on the part of Israelis?

*calming down* From a scientific point of view this would be rather
interesting to know. Perhaps in a common effort of psychologues, political
scientists and islam scientists of wikipedia there could be written a
neutral article about it. Any volunteers? A general article about the
origins of terrorism?

> > Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?
>
> Dig in and do it!  It would be much apppreciated, especially since (a)
> you seem to know a lot about it and (b) you have a sensitivity to the
> demands of NPOV.

Seems, as the articles about the political systems of the european
countries in the German wikipedia have to wait a bit :-(

> > greetings and sorry for the horrible english,
>
> Horrible English?  I thought it was perfect.

Thank you ;-)
elian, still struggling with the english language


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

body:
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> One thing I'm interested in, is how much the anger of Palestinian
> nationalists is due to mistreatment by Israel -- compared to how much is
> frustration because of rejection by Islamic nations to assimilate refugees --
> and also how much is due to rabble-rousing by groups dedicated to Israel's
> destruction. How's that for a "dangerous question"?

Can people now see why these articles are a big problem for Wikipedia? This is
how long it took for a meta discussion to get nasty on specific points.

I'm in favour of just removing the articles and stating that Wikipedia at this
date is unable to provide a NPOV, even after a year of trying.

-- Daniel


body:
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>>> One thing I'm interested in, is how much the anger of Palestinian
>>> nationalists is due to mistreatment by Israel -- compared to how much is
>>> frustration because of rejection by Islamic nations to assimilate refugees --
>>> and also how much is due to rabble-rousing by groups dedicated to Israel's
>>> destruction. How's that for a "dangerous question"?

>> Can people now see why these articles are a big problem for Wikipedia? This
>> how long it took for a meta discussion to get nasty on specific points.

> I don't understand: what is "nasty" about trying to sort things out? If the
> nationalists' anger is due entirely to (a) and not at all to (b) or (c), just
> say so. I wasn't trying to make a point; I was really trying to get
> information to put into the article.

The tone of the paragraph I've quoted is accusing and IMO nasty. Particularly
your sentence 'How's that for a "dangerous question"?'.

I'm not saying your specific point is wrong, or that you are a bad person, or
even that my perception of this makes anything you say invalid.

What I _am_ saying is that even the most level headed and forthcoming
participants here, such as you, are drawn into what amounts to pitched battles
almost immediately.

Even when it's very clear that the issue is not specific points, but how to
solve the general problem that these articles represent. Yes, Elian was the one
who brought specifics into it - but only as examples and part of
"documentation".

These articles have driven a lot of people away from Wikipedia, they're NPOV,
and I don't see them improving (as this thread has demonstrated). Again, I call
for having them (re)moved, and a statement put in their place about how
Wikipedia is not able to provdide this particular service.

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Middle East articles and NPOV.

body:
And on a related note, I would like to ask everyone to refrain from discussing
specific points on this list. It's pure poison to those involved, and tastes
bad to those who aren't. :)

-- Daniel


from_name: Adam Williamson

body:
On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
> like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
> differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
> around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
> campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

(To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)

Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think
it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my
opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more
attractive than most others I can think of right now.

However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do
with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a
thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of
murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot
more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in
all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was
frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may
not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure
killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. Jews in WWII
Germany were so absolutely and utterly powerless that they literally had
*no possible way* to instigate any kind of significant retaliation,
violent or otherwise, against their oppressors; had it been possible,
i'm sure they would have done. And again there were no suicide bombings
(as far as i'm aware, anyway) in the Indian struggle for independence,
but there was certainly a hell of a lot of murder. Hindis killed
Muslims, Muslims killed Hindis, Hindis and Muslims both killed English,
and the English killed everyone else. A hell of a lot more people died
during Partition than have died (or probably ever will) during the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Suicide bombing is undeniably nasty, and has a strong impact on the
Western psyche because it's completely foreign to it, but in the final
analysis, someone who's been murdered is just as dead no matter how it
happened. So I don't think focussing on the method is particularly
profitable. Suicide bombing is one of very few effective strategies of
murder available to Palestinians inclined to it, and one that their
particular ideology supports, therefore it gets used; I don't see
anything intrinsically *more* evil about it than, say, just getting a
bunch of explosive and blowing the hell out of somewhere, a
time-honoured tactic of all sides in all armed conflicts since the
invention of explosives...in the end, it's just a different method of
transport.

My $0.02. I hope this isn't too inflammatory, if you consider it so and
want to respond, please do so off-list to keep the temperature down...I
also hope it maybe has something of use to these particular articles,
but I'm probably wrong. :)
--
adamw


from_name: elian

body:
"Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen" <daniel at copyleft.no> writes:

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> > I don't understand: what is "nasty" about trying to sort things out? If the
> > nationalists' anger is due entirely to (a) and not at all to (b) or (c), just
> > say so. I wasn't trying to make a point; I was really trying to get
> > information to put into the article.
>
> The tone of the paragraph I've quoted is accusing and IMO nasty. Particularly
> your sentence 'How's that for a "dangerous question"?'.

This "dangerous" refers directly to a term in my mail and, honestly I
don't see it as nasty. Maybe it can be seen as nasty by Ed's unconscious
choice of words (which should never be used in an article but here on the
mailinglist rules are not that strict), but the question he asked is a rather
interesting one.

I must agree to the people who want this discussion taken off the
list, but the participants need IMHO a possibility for one central
discussion. Any suggestions?

> These articles have driven a lot of people away from Wikipedia, they're NPOV,
> and I don't see them improving (as this thread has demonstrated). Again, I call
> for having them (re)moved, and a statement put in their place about how
> Wikipedia is not able to provdide this particular service.

This radical solution would me spare a lot of energy ;-) But however, it
feels like a capitulation of the wikipedia-project.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Spanish reunification effort

body:
> One disturbing thing is that Edgar still views the
> English Wikipedia as a solely American enterprise,
> rather than an international effort. I find this
> saddening, especially since many of our contributors
> are not American (e.g., me). However, even he seems
> in
> favor of reunification, albeit very reluctantly.
>
> (I'm reading this all via machine translation, so
> take
> it with a grain of salt).
>
> Stephen G.

Hello,
Sorry to be a pain, but I "strongly" suggest that the
american flag be removed from that page
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org

I think it is *really* misplaced. Really. Really.
Really.

But I didnot remove it myself...just to point out how
badly misplaced it was...

> One disturbing thing is that Edgar still views the
> English Wikipedia as a solely American enterprise,
> rather than an international effort.

yeah, really strange, no ? He probably is the only one
to think this

Cheers
anth?re

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Sorry to be a pain, but I "strongly" suggest that the
> american flag be removed from that page
> http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
>
> I think it is *really* misplaced. Really. Really.
> Really.
>
> But I didnot remove it myself...

Dude, it's a wiki! :)

 > just to point out how badly misplaced it was...

I have no problem with it being there -- small and tasteful alongside
the UK, Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealandese, Belizean, etc
flags, just as similar paragraphs for the other languages could have
flags representing the countries where those languages are spoken.

Until somebody gets around to doing that or thinks of something better,
I've yanked the unnecessarily large stars & stripes image.

>>One disturbing thing is that Edgar still views the
>>English Wikipedia as a solely American enterprise,
>>rather than an international effort.
>
> yeah, really strange, no ? He probably is the only one
> to think this

Oddly enough, I've noticed that the German wikipedia's links to the
English wikipedia call it the "International Wikipedia". I guess Austria
and Switzerland don't count as international to the Germans? ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> the
> > american flag be removed from that page
> >
>
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org

> > But I didnot remove it myself...
>
> Dude, it's a wiki! :)

you didnot get my point maybe ?
anyway, it's ok for it maybe to be on the meta (so I
didnot remove it). It is not ok for it to be that way
on wikipedia.org (here, I would have removed it)

> I have no problem with it being there -- small and
> tasteful alongside
> the UK, Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealandese,
> Belizean, etc
> flags, just as similar paragraphs for the other
> languages could have
> flags representing the countries where those
> languages are spoken.

Would you propose to put the flags of participants
countries of origin, or flags of countries where the
langage is spoken ?
that's quite different

How many countries are there where spanish is spoken ?
quite a lot I think. For we should not forget any
country no ?

What about countries where several langage are spoken,
would it be a good idea that they have 5 times their
flag on this page ?

Would not be too many flags quite heavy in terms of
loading time, and using too much screen space ?

Why putting in the front countries ??? langages are
important, not countries.

just my feelings.

-----
Now, I have been wondering for many years, and this IS
NOT in my dictionary.

What is a dude ??? And what does that mean when you
write dude ???

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch Wikipedia upgraded to phase III

body:
Since testing of the Dutch localization of the new software has been
going pretty smoothly and a final upgrade was requested, I've gone ahead
and upgraded the Dutch Wikipedia to the phase III Wikipedia software.
There may be some remaining rough spots, please let me know!

The wiki's new home is http://nl.wikipedia.org ; the old UseMod wiki
will remain at http://nl.wikipedia.com for a few days so that anything
that may have accidentally vanished in conversion can be copied over.
Then, the .com address will become an alias to the new .org address. (If
there's a way to make the .com one read-only for the interval, that
might be a good idea.)

A list of pages on the English wiki that include interlanguage links to
the Dutch wiki is at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dutch_Wikipedia_language_links
volunteers to help go through the list and make sure links to the
English and other wikis are put into the Dutch articles are welcome.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dutch Wikipedia upgraded to phase III


body:
Anthere wrote:
>>the>american flag be removed from that page
> http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
>>>But I didnot remove it myself...
>>
>>Dude, it's a wiki! :)
>
> you didnot get my point maybe ?
> anyway, it's ok for it maybe to be on the meta (so I
> didnot remove it). It is not ok for it to be that way
> on wikipedia.org (here, I would have removed it)

Well, _my_ point was that the thing you were objecting to was a
proposition, part of a wiki conversation with an example illustration.
It being a wiki, you were free to mention your objection right there on
the page with it, or in the talk page, and/or directly manipulate the
proposal to improve it -- that's how a wiki conversation works!

Your point, as I saw it, was that this is a Big Deal that we should
remember to avoid such seeming Yankee jingoism, so you wanted to make
sure everyone was aware of the issue by posting about it to the mailing
lists.

>>I have no problem with it being there -- small and
>>tasteful alongside the UK, Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealandese,
>>Belizean, etc flags, just as similar paragraphs for the other
>>languages could have flags representing the countries where those
>>languages are spoken.
>
> Would you propose to put the flags of participants
> countries of origin, or flags of countries where the
> langage is spoken ?
> that's quite different
>
> How many countries are there where spanish is spoken ?
> quite a lot I think. For we should not forget any
> country no ?
>
> What about countries where several langage are spoken,
> would it be a good idea that they have 5 times their
> flag on this page ?
>
> Would not be too many flags quite heavy in terms of
> loading time, and using too much screen space ?

Could be. Got a better idea?

> Why putting in the front countries ??? langages are
> important, not countries.

Languages, unfortunately, usually don't have conveniently identifiable
colorful eye-catching symbols. (The Esperanto flag is an exception. ;)

> Now, I have been wondering for many years, and this IS
> NOT in my dictionary.
>
> What is a dude ??? And what does that mean when you
> write dude ???

Pardon my language, I'm from California after all. ;)  "Dude" in this
usage is simply a vocative/exclamation. It has no real meaning, per se,
but indicates emphasis.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> Well, _my_ point was that the thing you were
> objecting to was a
> proposition, part of a wiki conversation with an
> example illustration.
> It being a wiki, you were free to mention your
> objection right there on
> the page with it, or in the talk page, and/or
> directly manipulate the
> proposal to improve it -- that's how a wiki
> conversation works!

mind you, that's exactly what I did; I put a comment
about that yesterday in the talk page...so I think I
was within the bounds of wiki conversation

> Your point, as I saw it, was that this is a Big Deal
> that we should
> remember to avoid such seeming Yankee jingoism, so
> you wanted to make
> sure everyone was aware of the issue by posting
> about it to the mailing
> lists.

thanks

> > Would not be too many flags quite heavy in terms
> of
> > loading time, and using too much screen space ?
>
> Could be. Got a better idea?

my opinion is no flag, but you are right we need a way
to easily identify langages. I don't think having a
hundred of flags to deciphar will help in that goal.

> Languages, unfortunately, usually don't have
> conveniently identifiable
> colorful eye-catching symbols. (The Esperanto flag
> is an exception. ;)

true. Sorry, I have no idea right now :-((

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

body:
Anthere wrote:

>What about countries where several langage are spoken,
>would it be a good idea that they have 5 times their
>flag on this page ?
>
>Would not be too many flags quite heavy in terms of
>loading time, and using too much screen space ?
>
>Why putting in the front countries ??? langages are
>important, not countries.
>
Indeed, we'd need dozens of flags for EN:, and plenty of flags would end
up on several languages ... too complicated!

I think all that text is too much. newcomers are going to think "what is
all this?". Besides, the introduction & explanation of the project is
already on the language-specific main pages.

I suggest a very simple, minimal page:

"Wikipedia" at the top, large font, centred.

then a list (maybe 2-3 columns) of links that just say:

Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia (English)
Wikipedia: l'encyclopedie libre (francais)
Vikipedio: .... (Esperanto)
Huiquipedia: Enciclopedia Libre Universal (Espa?ol)

etc

it's simple, it's clean, and people can easily find their language and
follow for more information.
I can do an HTML mockup to show better what I mean.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS-Feeds

body:
Some anonymous user today made a very interesting proposal on the German
Wp:
You should offer an RSS-Feed!

I had no idea what this was, but it sounded interesting. So I surfed a
bit around and found this German description:
http://derschockwellenreiter.editthispage.com/rss.html
with some links, most of them in English:
http://www.schockwellenreiter.de/directory/techZeuch/rss/index.html

Here's a nice English article which introduces to the concept:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_tech
nology/4203205.htm

I think this is a great idea! We could offer a RecentChanges-Feed, a
NewArticle-Feed, a ArticleNowBiggerThen1500Chars-Feed or whatever. It's
just two hours ago that I read about this thing for the first time, so
I'm still thinking about it ... :-)

What do you think? Is this doable?

Kurt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunification effort)

body:
Since this concerns the English Wikipedia in a direct way I am cross-posting
with wikipedia-l.

On Saturday 05 October 2002 12:01 pm, Stephen G. wrote:
> One disturbing thing is that Edgar still views the
> English Wikipedia as a solely American enterprise,
> rather than an international effort. I find this
> saddening, especially since many of our contributors
> are not American (e.g., me).

Yep - Edgar's perception is unfortunate but ever since we started talking
about reunification I have come to see that this view is also /completely/
understandable (especially for people who equate the English language with
American cultural imperialism - which seems to be increasingly common among
non-English speakers in the world);

1) Before Phase III came along the non-English Wikipedias were waiting for
ages to get an upgrade while depending on well intentioned yet still empty
promises. Granted Phase II had major problems that exhausted the developers
time but this didn't seem to be communicated very well to the non-English
Wikipedias (another thing is that the modified Phase II software at
Encyclopedia Libre seems to be working fine). The non-English Wikipedians
therefore understandably felt left-out.

Issue being solved;
Now each wiki is being upgraded as fast as the volunteer staff of developers
and translators can convert the databases.

2) Then there is also the issue that interlanguage links went only one way
(to the "foreign" languages from the "main" English articles).

Issue being solved;
As soon as each language is on-line with the new software there will be
inter-language links going in every direction. I will personally help with
this job.

3) Then there is the fact that Wikipedia was at .com and a majority of
non-English users wanted it at .org (or so I gather). There was also the
related perception that almost all Wikipedia publicity pointed to the English
Wikipedia as if it were the only one. And if the non-English Wikipedias were
mentioned at all it was as a minor side note.

Issue mostly solved;
Now the English Wikipedia is at .org and so are each converted wiki. There
really hasn't been any new publicity so I can't say there has been any
improvement in that department.

4) Now that the .org conversion has been made, another thing of concern is
that the English Wikipedia is at www.wikipedia.org and all the other
languages are relegated to xx.wikipedia.org as if the English Wikipedia were
/the/ Wikipedia (or at least the most important one in some symbolic sense).

Issue is being seriously worked on and discussed;
There are now tentative plans to move the English Wikipedia to
en.wikipedia.org and have www.wikipedia.org be a multilingual gateway to the
entire Wikipedia (all languages). I now fully support this move and will work
to make it happen.
Visit
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
and help with creating a new Main Page for the /whole/ project.

5) There is also the fact that an American company owns Wikipedia's server
and effectively owns the name "wikipedia".

Issue is being seriously worked on;
Now Jimbo and a few others (including lawyers who also happen to be
Wikipedians) are in the process working-out how to set-up a non-profit. Jimbo
seems to be very serious about this and I completely trust that this will
happen, but to make sure it does, several of us loud Wikipedians are serious
about holding him to this (However, setting-up the non-profit smartly and
cheaply may take some time though).

A related issue is that at one time there was semi-serious talk about having
some type of advertisements on Wikipedia.

Issue solved;
Jimbo has also promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia. I will
personally advocate that this is written in the preamble for the non-profit's
constitution or in some other way to make it permanent.

Wikipedia does not need paid staff. Therefore servers, bandwidth, domain fees
and electricity are the only real expenses we have. Jimbo has already said he
will pay domain fees, for bandwidth and presumably electricity, but if it
were needed, all costs could be paid for by a relatively small number of
modest monthly contributions to a non-profit Wikipedia Foundation.

6) A current issue that I would like to put forward is that the English
Wikipedia policy mailing list is at wikipedia-l as if policy decisions made
for the English Wikipedia apply to the other languages.

Issue open;
This is /not/ the case but I can understand why some people might get this
impression after seeing that the mailing lists for the non-English
Wikipedias are at xx-wiki-l (if I remember correctly) and also seeing that
some things which obviously pertain to the /whole/ project are discussed on
the English mailing list (oftentimes without cross-posts to intl-l).

After the non-profit is set-up I propose that wikipedia-l /only/ be used for
the non-profit's business and for working out issues that affect the entire
project (hosting it at wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org would also be nice. There is
little reason to keep it on the Nupedia server.). The English-specific
mailing list would then be at en-wiki-l (or whatever the naming convention
is) and will only be about English Wikipedia-specific matters.

> However, even he seems in
> favor of reunification, albeit very reluctantly.

It is a very good thing that Edgar is in favor of reunification, even
reluctantly. The impression that I got from several off-list discussions with
a person very familiar with the original fork is that Edgar was one of the
most vocal opponents of being associated with Wikipedia in the past. We
should even ask him what else we could do to make him feel more comfortable
with reunification. For that matter, I would like to ask /all/ Wikipedians of
every language this related question;

What can Jimbo and the English Wikipedia community reasonably do to make you
feel more comfortable and a part of a larger multilingual Wikipedia
community? I of course only speak for myself and only ask this question to
gather information and spark discussion.

I would like all the different language Wikipedias to be a family where the
non-profit Wikipedia Foundation is the symbolic mother and the different
language Wikipedias are symbolic siblings. In my estimation that would then
make Jimbo the symbolic father (in the same way Linus Torvalds is the
symbolic father of Linux) since he was the person who thought of the crazy
idea of having a free as in Libre encyclopedia (Hm, I guess that makes Larry
the symbolic mid-wife and nanny. Sorry Larry I couldn't resist an opportunity
to lighten-up this looong post ;-).

Sorry for the length of this post, but this has been on my mind ever since I
first asked about the status of Encyclopedia Libre vs the Spanish Wikipedia
and how that relates to the upcoming upgrade.

At first this was just a feeling I had, but now I think I have begun the
process of understanding why there was a Spanish Wikipedia fork and also why
many contributors to the non-English Wikipedias sometimes/often feel left-out
as second class Wikipediacitizens.

Yours very much in the WikiWay;

Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS-Feeds

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> You should offer an RSS-Feed!
> What do you think? Is this doable?

It certainly is doable.  Several wikis already implement this.

Compare the recent changes list, http://susning.nu/Senaste_nytt
with this RSS feed http://susning.nu/rss
or its text version http://susning.nu/rss.txt
(same contents declared as Content-Type: text/plain).

I'm not certain who actually uses it, but it was fun to implement.

Another way is to import an RSS feed into a wiki page, e.g. the RSS
feed from Slashdot is imported into http://susning.nu/Slashdot
just by saying [(rss http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf)] in the wiki
page.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit on double-click

body:
I recently noticed that several wiki engines have implemented a simple but
convenient feature, a little JavaScript in the "body" tag of the generated
pages that may look like this:

ondblclick="document.location='http://www.wakkawiki.com/WakkaIntro/edit';"

What this means is that you can edit the page by simply double clicking its
contents.  Go to http://www.wakkawiki.com/WakkaIntro to see it in action. I
have tested it in Mozilla and IE, but it probably works in all reasonably
modern JavaScript-implementing browsers. It should be silently ignored if the
browser is JavaScript incapable.

I don't know if this behavior should be made the default, but it would
certainly be nice to have it as an option. What do you think?

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. G?nstige DSL- & Modem/ISDN-Tarife!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit on double-click

body:
> What this means is that you can edit the page by simply double
clicking its
> contents.

I like it. It should be useful especially when you are reading long
pages and find something to correct.

Let's keep those programmers busy! :-)

> I don't know if this behavior should be made the default, but it would
> certainly be nice to have it as an option. What do you think?

Why not make it default? A few more people will find out that it is
possible to edit articles - by accident :-)

On the other hand, double-clicking is used for marking a word, so maybe
better make it just an option?

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > > actively deleting "stub" articles.
> >
> > this is an english rule. It was discussed on the
> > english list, by english people. Not us. Does your
> > wiki only follow english rules ? You don't have
> your
> > own ?
>
> I might be confused, but I thought wikipedia-l was a
> global
> Wikipedia list, not just a list for the English
> Wikipedia.
> I'm a member of wikipedia-l, intlwiki-l, wikitech-l
> and the German
> list.  I don't speak French.

The problem is clearly that the main list is having
two different missions, english issues et global
issues.

That?s where I think there is misunderstanding. For
most english, the main list is in reality the english
list. For that's the place they discuss english
policy.

But unfortunately, that's also the place we discuss
global community issues. It would have no sense for
example to discuss .com ->.org *only* on the
international list. Because *all* wikipedians are
involved. Not only the international. And also because
officially, the inter list is supposed to deal with
inter issues only.
When you really go to the point, the international
list has no sense, because the point is not to discuss
how international wikis are involved in the global
scheme, but how *all* the wikis are involved in the
global scheme.

I suggested to change the name of the main list
because either it's the *main* list (ie for all
wikipedias) or it's the en.list to discuss english
policy issues.

As long as that list will work at two levels, there
will be confusions about what is specifically english
and what is  global. And there will be confusion that
the english policy is the one that must followed by
all the other wikis

- the main list should become the en.list, to make it
clear the list on only for english issues
- as the other wikis grow, each, if needed, set up a
de.list, fr.list...
- the international list, maybe renamed the main list,
deal with global issues

Cheers Lars

Anth?re

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Hi Larry,

> Not that I speak for Jimbo of course, but this might be misleading, Lars.
> [...] Again, this is misleading on a number of points.  First of
> [...] Again, Lars, you misleadingly imply something that makes
> [...] This is ridiculous, for reasons above stated.  I'm certain

I don't know why, but your words sound hard to me, and they sounded
hard last year when you backed them up by being the official editor.
I might have misunderstood all of this, and I could blame it all on
the fact that English is not my native language, but the factual
consequence is that I went away and started my own project because of
this.  I simply cannot see how much energy I would have had to spend
trying to get to terms with you, energy that I now saved by staying
out of your way.

Still I have the deepest respect and gratitude for your starting
Wikipedia, the first successful project to create a free encyclopedia.
I am very careful to point this out in my paper that I'm presenting
in Karlovy Vary next month, http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/elpub02/
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/elpub02/abstracts/G_04.htm

We agree completely that wiki is very useful.

We disagree on the need for a license and strict policy.  Wikipedia
has GFDL and takes *pride* in being *only* an encyclopedia and *not*
being a dictionary, a joke book and what not.  Susning.nu has no
license policy, and very few ask for it.  And operating in the much
smaller Swedish language environment (there is no about.com in
Swedish, and no amazon.com or imdb.com full of book and film reviews),
Susning.nu is *proud* to be *both* an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a
hacker jargon dictionary, a consumer's guide to various products and
services, a link guide, and pretty much anything that the users make
it to be. There never was any discussion of what is suitable and what
is not. The most recent addition is a number of terms from slang
people use only when they are drunk, not very far from Jimmy's joke
book.

You recently expressed a view something along the lines that a real
encyclopedia cannot be built entirely with amateurs, but also needs
the input from serious scholars (sorry if I'm quouting this wrong).
Your conclusion is that these people must be found and encouraged to
join the Wikipedia project.  I think that I agree with your assessment
but my conclusion is different: Susning.nu continues to work with the
people who wants to use it for fun, and might never become a fully
functional encyclopedia.

All these differences should be perfectly OK: Two different projects
with different goals and methods.  Still, the articles on Susning.nu
are far better than those on the Swedish Wikipedia.

This is a problem for the Swedish Wikipedia, and it illustrates a
potential similar problem for any non-English Wikipedia: Should policy
be relaxed (down to the Susning.nu level) in order to include more
uses, and more users?  Or should the policy be kept strict and
centralized at the risk of excluding contents, uses, and users? Overly
strict policy is what Nupedia suffered from.  A relaxation of the
policy for, say, the Bulgarian Wikipedia might mislead users to
believe that the same is OK in the English or Russian Wikipedia.  This
could erode the value of the Wikipedia brand.  If policy is relaxed
for one language, the name Wikipedia might no longer be globally
associated with quality and seriousity.  I think this illustrates that
policy issues can be as important as GFDL licensing to assure
compatibility between projects.

As far as I can see, Enciclopedia Libre is still fully compatible with
Wikipedia, while Susning.nu probably is not.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:
> > actively deleting "stub" articles.
>
> this is an english rule. It was discussed on the
> english list, by english people. Not us. Does your
> wiki only follow english rules ? You don't have your
> own ?

I might be confused, but I thought wikipedia-l was a global
Wikipedia list, not just a list for the English Wikipedia.
I'm a member of wikipedia-l, intlwiki-l, wikitech-l and the German
list.  I don't speak French.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> We're trying to convince them that Jimmy will *not* betray the project;
> you're telling them to go to hell.

If I were talking to them, this might be the effect, but I am not.
Instead I'm telling Jimmy to come up with really good arguments,
and I think he will.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunification effort)

body:
Maverick wrote
> I would like all the different language Wikipedias
> to be a family where the
> non-profit Wikipedia Foundation is the symbolic
> mother and the different
> language Wikipedias are symbolic siblings. In my
> estimation that would then
> make Jimbo the symbolic father (in the same way
> Linus Torvalds is the
> symbolic father of Linux) since he was the person
> who thought of the crazy

Hi Mav

I left a copy of your message on the fr:

summarizing things pretty well :-)

For those of you who understand french, there is a
good translation of Edgar message on meta

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunification
 effort)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Yep - Edgar's perception is unfortunate but ever since we started talking
>about reunification I have come to see that this view is also /completely/
>understandable (especially for people who equate the English language with
>American cultural imperialism - which seems to be increasingly common among
>non-English speakers in the world);
>
>
>
Would it help if I complain loudly about American cultural imperialism,
as a British, English-speaking Wikipedian? ;-)

>
>I would like all the different language Wikipedias to be a family where the
>non-profit Wikipedia Foundation is the symbolic mother and the different
>language Wikipedias are symbolic siblings. In my estimation that would then
>make Jimbo the symbolic father (in the same way Linus Torvalds is the
>symbolic father of Linux) since he was the person who thought of the crazy
>idea of having a free as in Libre encyclopedia
>
cool :-)

Another important thing is Meta-W becoming multilingual . That's started
to happen: french , esperanto, dutch, etc versions of the main page
there are now available.


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
--- Anthere <anthere5 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> - the main list should become the en.list, to make
> it
> clear the list on only for english issues
> - as the other wikis grow, each, if needed, set up a
> de.list, fr.list...
> - the international list, maybe renamed the main
> list,
> deal with global issues

I completely agree. The mailing lists were simply
added as we found a need for them. When we make
www.wikipedia.org the main site for all of the
projects, I think this would be a good time to
reorganize the mailing lists.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Can't you read my message ?
> Or aren't you intrested in my question ?
> Some people on the french's Wikipedia think that anchors are very
> important features and are waiting for your answer...

I seem to remember that Lee half-implemented anchors a while back, but
they're not actually enabled. If nobody else can answer more fully, I'll
go look over the code and see what still needs to be done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:
> - as the other wikis grow, each, if needed, set up a
> de.list, fr.list...

On that note -- for the Esperanto wiki, we've got an occasionally-used
mailing list at (shudder) Yahoo Groups. (Thankfully, most of our
discussion is on the wiki so we don't use it much! ;)

Can we get a 'vikipedio' or 'eo-wiki' list set up at nupedia.com (or,
better yet, can we set up all the Wikipedia lists at the wikipedia.org
domain)?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
> > Some people on the french's Wikipedia think that anchors are very
> > important features and are waiting for your answer...
>
> I seem to remember that Lee half-implemented anchors a while back, but
> they're not actually enabled. If nobody else can answer more fully,
I'll
> go look over the code and see what still needs to be done.

We've had a discussion about anchors on wikipedia-l, and there were
serious arguments against anchors. I short: Anchors are subpages through
the backdoor. If an article is so long that it really needs anchors:
split it! Shorten it and put the delailed parts in their own articles.

Please read my message on wikipedia-l from july:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-July/002791.html
and all others titled "page fragment links" (and some of the "Numbered
section headings" may contain discussion about this, too).
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-July/thread.html

We've hat some kind of compromise that an index function could be
implemented, that shows the headlines at the beginning of an article.

If you really think anchors should be implemented please ask for it on
wikipedia-l and we can go through this again.

Kurt


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00703B5@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 09:15:17AM -0400

body:
Uh, let's take this offlist.  Discussion of political topics is fine and all, but
let's stick to wikipedia here.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> >In my not-so-humble opinion, terrorism results when
> >people are reminded constantly that they have no
> >voice in their own government.  As an aside, I'm
> >rather surprised there hasn't been more terrorism
> >inside the U.S. since the public was told exactly
> >that in November 2000.  But, alas, I am not a
> >political scientist, nor am I anyone famous &
> >profound, so I'll continue leaving that out of
> >wikipedia.  :-)
> >
> >kq
>
> I couldn't disagree more with kq's opinion about the U.S., its government and the American people's voice -- but I'll defend to the death his right to express that opinion!
>
> The U.S. is both the modern pioneer and the world's leader in giving its citizens a "voice in their own government". We have elections on the national, state and local level. Our freedom of speech and press permits full discussion of every aspect of all issues. Anyone can form a political party or run for office independently.
>
> I'd like to ask kq: did you mean that literally, or were you exaggerating something to make a point? If the latter, what were you exaggerating, and what was your point?
>
> Ed Poor
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Don't stay logged in

body:
I have been logged out twice in the past day while browsing Wikipedia. Is
someone fiddling with the login code?

phma


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
>In my not-so-humble opinion, terrorism results when
>people are reminded constantly that they have no
>voice in their own government.  As an aside, I'm
>rather surprised there hasn't been more terrorism
>inside the U.S. since the public was told exactly
>that in November 2000.  But, alas, I am not a
>political scientist, nor am I anyone famous &
>profound, so I'll continue leaving that out of
>wikipedia.  :-)
>
>kq

I couldn't disagree more with kq's opinion about the U.S., its government and the American people's voice -- but I'll defend to the death his right to express that opinion!

The U.S. is both the modern pioneer and the world's leader in giving its citizens a "voice in their own government". We have elections on the national, state and local level. Our freedom of speech and press permits full discussion of every aspect of all issues. Anyone can form a political party or run for office independently.

I'd like to ask kq: did you mean that literally, or were you exaggerating something to make a point? If the latter, what were you exaggerating, and what was your point?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spirited Away (was: memepool.com)

body:
If we're getting a lot of hits for Miyazaki, perhaps it's because of "Spirited Away", the phenomenally popular Japanese movie he made. I heard it even beat out "Titanic" at the box office in Japan.

We should get cracking on writing a "Spirited Away" article, don't you think?

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] memepool.com

body:
Oops. I guess my seach engine skills suffer from mispeelings. There already is a fine "Spirited Away" article.

Ed Poor


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
Can't you read my message ?
Or aren't you intrested in my question ?
Some people on the french's Wikipedia think that anchors are very important features and are waiting for your answer...

Guillaume
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from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
>> Can't you read my message ?
>> Or aren't you intrested in my question ?
>> Some people on the french's Wikipedia think that anchors are very
>> important features and are waiting for your answer...

> I seem to remember that Lee half-implemented anchors a while back,
> but they're not actually enabled. If nobody else can answer more
> fully, I'll go look over the code and see what still needs to be
> done.

Yes, they were fully implemented, but then I disabled them upon
request and discussion by the list, because the syntax for
specifying them was awkward and others felt the ability was
premature and likely to be abused.  I'm still working (slowly) on
reforming wikitext syntax in general, so I hadn't gotten back to
the issue of anchor syntax specifically, but if the list agrees
to a syntax it will be trivial to re-enable the code.

The link code is in fact still present; [[page#anchor]] and
[[#localanchor]] will produce a link exactly as expected.  My
original syntax for placing the anchor itself as [[##anchor]],
but other suggestions are welcome.


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> It's not better for the project if everyone just sticks to their native
> language.

Agreed -- that's why I don't work *just* on the English wiki.

> Just trying to keep things in perspective,

Same here.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Jimmy Wrote:
>Uh, let's take this offlist.  Discussion of political topics is fine and all, but
>let's stick to wikipedia here.

Apologies again, everyone.

kq


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunification
	effort)

body:
At the same time, I want to point out that having one Wikipedia be the
default one (e.g. www.wikipedia.org goes to a particular (the English
language, in this case) Wikipedia) has real benefits for the goals of
the project.

In short, we want to avoid balkanization of wikipedia. We need French,
Spanish, Chinese, Madagascaran nationals working on the English-language
Wikipedia if we want to head toward an overall NPOV.

There's a reason that science, diplomacy, and academia always
consolidate around a particular language (Latin -> French -> English).
It's because those disciplines need a pool of neutrality that's as large
as possible.

It's not better for the project if everyone just sticks to their native
language.

Just trying to keep things in perspective,
tc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunificationeffort)

body:
Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with the Cunctator: English is the default international language. Air traffic control, computer languages, scientific journals and a whole lot more use English to communicate.

Why? Because the world needs a lingua franca, a common language in which everyone can express their ideas.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of people who have no intention of learning English. They will get little or no benefit from an "international" encyclopedia which isn't written in a language they can understand. Maybe that's one reason some people want to make a Spanish-language encyclopedia.

Another reason is that language communicates culture. Spanish-speaking people have different interests and attitudes, on the whole, than English-speakers in general. There's what we might call a "Latino" community.

Additionally, there are those who feel that English is a language of cultural imperialism, intrinsically oppressive and restrictive rather than being responsive to the linguistic needs of non-English speakers. I can't argue with that, if for no other reason than my inability to communicate in any language other than English.

Just some thoughts.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
Thank you Brion & Kurt.
I read all post about the subject on wikipedia-l and founded this :

    That's another thing to think about.  BTW, I implemented page
    fragment links (e.g., [[Chemistry#history]], which links to
    [[##history]] on the Chemistry page), though I haven't made much
    noise about it because I'm still not sure they're needed--for one
    thing, they encourage long pages, and I don't like my syntax.  But
    headings do seem like a natural match there.

Does this system still alive ?
The french Wikipedians agree (in the majority) about the fact that too long
articles need to be slice in sub-articles, but perhaps we don't have the
same definition of what a  TOO LONG article is.
For exemple, I don't think this article
http://fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Pharaon is too long.
Instead, I think in this case, anchors sould be really a usefull feature.
The other case where we NEED achors, is for discussions.
For exemple our vote page (http://fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Wikipedia-Vote)
is a vote only page.
To make this page more readable, we moved discussion about the voting
subject on other pages.
We want to be able to target an exact place in this discussion pages.
I disagree the argument that implement anchors will encourage people to make
more long articles.
We have to trust people to be enough mature to understand the benefit of
having short articles.
Even if someone write too long article, it's really easy to cut it in small
part if you think it is necessary.
Do you think I had better to post this message on wikipedia-l ?
Cheers,

Guillaume (Aoineko)


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Dutch Wikipedia upgraded to phase III

in_reply_to: <3D9ECFE3.10908@pobox.com>; from brion@pobox.com on Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 03:41:23AM -0800

body:
I made the current (old) wiki read-only, as requested...

Jason

Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Since testing of the Dutch localization of the new software has been
> going pretty smoothly and a final upgrade was requested, I've gone ahead
> and upgraded the Dutch Wikipedia to the phase III Wikipedia software.
> There may be some remaining rough spots, please let me know!
>
> The wiki's new home is http://nl.wikipedia.org ; the old UseMod wiki
> will remain at http://nl.wikipedia.com for a few days so that anything
> that may have accidentally vanished in conversion can be copied over.
> Then, the .com address will become an alias to the new .org address. (If
> there's a way to make the .com one read-only for the interval, that
> might be a good idea.)
>
> A list of pages on the English wiki that include interlanguage links to
> the Dutch wiki is at:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dutch_Wikipedia_language_links
> volunteers to help go through the list and make sure links to the
> English and other wikis are put into the Dutch articles are welcome.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at nupedia.com
> http://nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS-Feeds

body:
We used to have an rss feed for every article in the original
wikipedia.  It was used for the main Bomis.com search engine, so we
could import enough data to index wikipedia.  We have been using an
outdated .rss file ever since the conversion to the new software...

Jason Richey

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Some anonymous user today made a very interesting proposal on the German
> Wp:
> You should offer an RSS-Feed!
>
> I had no idea what this was, but it sounded interesting. So I surfed a
> bit around and found this German description:
> http://derschockwellenreiter.editthispage.com/rss.html
> with some links, most of them in English:
> http://www.schockwellenreiter.de/directory/techZeuch/rss/index.html
>
> Here's a nice English article which introduces to the concept:
> http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_tech
> nology/4203205.htm
>
> I think this is a great idea! We could offer a RecentChanges-Feed, a
> NewArticle-Feed, a ArticleNowBiggerThen1500Chars-Feed or whatever. It's
> just two hours ago that I read about this thing for the first time, so
> I'm still thinking about it ... :-)
>
> What do you think? Is this doable?
>
> Kurt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at nupedia.com
> http://nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Wikpedia family

body:
On Monday 07 October 2002 12:03 pm, Eclecticology wrote:
> ....but the PR advantage of having no single
> nation able to control the project would be tremendous.

Now that you put it that way I completely agree.

> There already appears to be a consensus about having the project in a
> non-profit corporation.  That's a little past pre-planning.  It opens up
> a whole lot of questions about corporate structure and what would go
> into the constitution and by-laws.  What would be the most appropriate
> jurisdiction for incorporation?  How many directors should there be?
> What constitutes a meeting of directors when those directors are
> scattered around the world?  How do we insure maximum accessibility to
> members for corporate decision making, while protecting the vision and
> investment that went into the project in the first place, and at the
> same time maintaining enough flexibility in our rules so that the rules
> themselves don't bring the whole thing to a screeching halt? Etc., etc.,
> etc.,

Point taken. These are very good questions that need to be worked out on the
mailing lists and on Metapedia. A good thing to do would be to copy your
questions into a Metapedia page and then we can go from there.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family and the Spanish reunification

body:
On Monday 07 October 2002 12:03 pm,The Cunctator wrote:
> At the same time, I want to point out that having one Wikipedia be the
> default one (e.g. www.wikipedia.org goes to a particular (the English
> language, in this case) Wikipedia) has real benefits for the goals of
> the project.

www.wikipedia.org can and should be where the wiki for the non-profit exists.
That main page would act as a portal to the various project and the Recent
Changes at www.wikipedia.org could display Recent Changes for all Wikipedia
Encyclopedias. I see greater benefits with this plan than the status quo.

> In short, we want to avoid balkanization of wikipedia. We need French,
> Spanish, Chinese, Madagascaran nationals working on the English-language
> Wikipedia if we want to head toward an overall NPOV.

But we /will/ have people of all languages working on Wikipedia. Interlanguage
links and having the ability to set your preferences to show Recent Changes
in as many languages as you want will make it easy to work on several
different language projects at once.

> There's a reason that science, diplomacy, and academia always
> consolidate around a particular language (Latin -> French -> English).
> It's because those disciplines need a pool of neutrality that's as large
> as possible.

So we should discard the non-English Wikipedias then? Doesn't their very
existence tend to take bi/multi-lingual people away from the English
Wikipedia (which is the lingua Franca of the Internet)? Rubbish. Having
integration will benefit all Wikipedia encyclopedia's.

> It's not better for the project if everyone just sticks to their native
> language.

But they won't if we add additional interlanguage functionality. Even if we
only have interlanguage links as we do now people will drift back and forth a
lot.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family

body:
On Monday 07 October 2002 12:03 pm Kurt wrote:
> Want annoyed me when changing to Phase III was, that people mentioned
> dates that were unrealistic. Please don't make this mistake again when
> building the non-profit. Open source releases are driven by resolved
> bugs, not by dates. If you say that it will take much time that's okay.

What dates are you talking about? Was there a promise that the German
Wikipedia would be running on Phase III by a specific date? If that is what
you are talking about then I agree. "It's done when it is mostly bug-free and
by the way you can help squash bugs" should be the main message with maybe a
rough estimate on a range of dates it might be finished.

> Maybe you can keep us informed how things are going.
>
> Kurt

Yep - this is one of the things the Wikipedia Embassies will be used for.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] memepool.com

body:
www.memepool.com, link collection and repository for the weird and wonderful
on t'interweb is linking to www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Miyazaki_Hayao from their
front page today.  Which probably explains the 3000+ views that page now has.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The shadows of Comic-Book Guy

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> The more I find entried like [[SCSI voodoo]], the
> more I wonder what to
> do about them.

<snip>

> Perhaps one step would be to merge all the articles
> on voodoo-inspired
> hacker lingo into just that: [[voodoo-inspired
> hacker slang]]. At least
> that would stand some chance of being more than
> disctionary entries:
> there would be potential for an overview of the
> linguistic trend,
> reasons, etc.
> (suggestions for a better page name on a postcard ;)

I've always been in favour of simply removing hacker
slang. The Jaron File already does it better, and it's
public domain. Why duplicate the effort, especially
since it arguably falls outside of our scope?

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Monday 07 October 2002 12:03 pm, Eclecticology
> wrote:
>
> > There already appears to be a consensus about
> > having the project in a
> > non-profit corporation.  That's a little past
> > pre-planning.  It opens up
> > a whole lot of questions about corporate
> > structure
> > and what would go
> > into the constitution and by-laws.  What would
> > be
> > the most appropriate
> > jurisdiction for incorporation?  How many
> > directors should there be?
> > What constitutes a meeting of directors when
> > those
> > directors are
> > scattered around the world?  How do we insure
> > maximum accessibility to
> > members for corporate decision making, while
> > protecting the vision and
> > investment that went into the project in the
> > first
> > place, and at the
> > same time maintaining enough flexibility in our
> > rules so that the rules
> > themselves don't bring the whole thing to a
> > screeching halt? Etc., etc.,
> > etc.,
> >
> Point taken. These are very good questions that
> need
> to be worked out on the
> mailing lists and on Metapedia. A good thing to do
> would be to copy your
> questions into a Metapedia page and then we can go
> from there.
>
We might want to ask Rusty from Kuro5hin for some
advice. He is in the process of setting up a
non-profit, the Collaborative Media Foundation, and
is
hashing out all the nasty details.

If we want to do this, it would probably be best to
have Jimmy email him, rather than one of us random
foot soldiers.

Stephen

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


body:
> What can Jimbo and the English Wikipedia community reasonably do to
make you
> feel more comfortable and a part of a larger multilingual Wikipedia
> community? I of course only speak for myself and only ask this
question to
> gather information and spark discussion.

I guess the German Wikipedians are quite happy now. There are still some
things on our bug report page/sourceforge, and of course you can never
have enough contributors, but we are quite aware that we profit very
much from the other, and especially the Englisch Wikipedia. We can take
many good articles from you and translate them, we get visitors through
links from your articles, and many articles have a great google ranking,
which I think is caused by those links or by being on wikipedia.org.

Thank you!

> I would like all the different language Wikipedias to be a family
where the
> non-profit Wikipedia Foundation is the symbolic mother and the
different
> language Wikipedias are symbolic siblings.

I think we share this vision :-)

Want annoyed me when changing to Phase III was, that people mentioned
dates that were unrealistic. Please don't make this mistake again when
building the non-profit. Open source releases are driven by resolved
bugs, not by dates. If you say that it will take much time that's okay.
Maybe you can keep us informed how things are going.

Kurt


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Not sure what the subject is, but it's no longer re: [Wikipedia-l]
 spanish wikipedia

body:
Lars Aronssen wrote:
> I don't know why, but your words sound hard to me, and they sounded
> hard last year when you backed them up by being the official editor.

Lars,

Well, it's pretty obvious why my words sounded hard to you: it's because
they were!  If I accept your complaints about this hardness, will you
allow me to complain in turn that you took the time to take me to task for
writing "hard words," and otherwise writing about events that are now well
over a year old, while pretty much ignoring the substance of my replies to
what you wrote?  Now if you actually do want an explanation as to why the
words sounded "hard," you won't do better than to examine the actual
claims that you were making, that I was replying to.  In each case, it
seemed to me there were some subtle, and in some cases not-so-subtle,
implications about Jimbo, Wikipedia, and Wikipedians that were, shall we
say, extremely unfair.  (I thought this was clear.)  You should know by
now that I do not take kindly to extremely unfair criticisms of Wikipedia
and my friends.  If someone were to take these criticisms seriously, he or
she might easily form quite a negative, inaccurate impression of the
project, the people behind it, and what motivates them.

(Just by the way, I was never "the official editor" of Wikipedia; saying
that accords me more authority than I ever even *presumed* to have.)

> I might have misunderstood all of this, and I could blame it all on
> the fact that English is not my native language, but the factual
> consequence is that I went away and started my own project because of
> this.

It isn't necessary we work this out now, long after the fact, but since
you bring it up, maybe we can clear the air about it.  I always thought
you left basically because you misunderstood the situation: I had stated
an *opinion* (you were putting a zillion stubs in the database, as I
recall, and I opined that this was a bad idea); you interpreted this as if
it were handed down as *editorial policy* (which it wasn't); and you left
abruptly.  It happened rather suddenly, and without any chance for us to
have a dialogue with you about what had happened, though we very much
wanted to.  In fact, I and many others were urging you to come back (I
suppose you might not have noticed that), and we were bewildered by your
abrupt departure.  I'm sure a few other listmembers remember this.

As to the rest of your post, I wasn't really engaged in criticizing
Susning.nu, so it really wasn't necessary to defend it.  Does a defense of
Wikipedia imply a criticism of Susning?  Of course not; all the best to
your project.

But why don't you help develop the Swedish Wikipedia?  If Susning is a
different sort of project, albeit closely enough related, then clearly the
reason the articles are of better quality (if they are; I'll believe you)
is that it's the more active project and you've been plugging it very
actively on Wikipedia and through your own channels.  But wouldn't it be
more appropriate to be supporting the Swedish Wikipedia when writing on
Wikipedia-L, if indeed Susning is so different that it will never evolve
into the Swedish Wikipedia?

I promise I won't be there to complain about your stubs.  :-)

Larry


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] i8n, templantes, and introduction

body:
Hi, I am Lightning.. Thats also my username in wikipedia. Seems like there's
this whole big hoop-la about i8n, and translation and yadda yadda yadda. I
was kind of thinking, since some languages dont translate so easily, (as to
say you cant just change that string and it will look right), are templates
a possibility? I was looking through the code, and it looks pretty straight
forward, but all the HTML in the code is just kinda, nasty and crowds the
code.. I think a separation of the code and markup would be a really good
thing. new themes would be easy to make, and it would allow for a lot more
formatting options and easier changing of the look and feel of the page.
Anyone have any opinions? has this been brought up before?

Oh and also.. anyone ever consider adding a spellcheck feature? Because I
have been thinking about it, but I'd like to know if this has been an idea
shot down before for a reason, you know, so I dont waste my time
[attempting] implementing it.

Lightning


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family

body:
> On Monday 07 October 2002 12:03 pm Kurt wrote:
> > Want annoyed me when changing to Phase III was, that people
mentioned
> > dates that were unrealistic. Please don't make this mistake again
when
> > building the non-profit. Open source releases are driven by resolved
> > bugs, not by dates. If you say that it will take much time that's
okay.
>
> What dates are you talking about? Was there a promise that the German
> Wikipedia would be running on Phase III by a specific date? If that is
what
> you are talking about then I agree.

Yes, but I hope it didn't sound like an accusation. I'm referring to
statements like "short after ...", "in about ..." and such. Sorry for
not being clearer.

> "It's done when it is mostly bug-free and
> by the way you can help squash bugs" should be the main message with
maybe a
> rough estimate on a range of dates it might be finished.

Exactly.
Is there anything we can help with when founding the non-profit?

BTW, it seems I was unsubscribed from intlwiki-l at the end of
september. Am I the only one?

Kurt


from_name: tarquin

body:
The more I find entried like [[SCSI voodoo]], the more I wonder what to
do about them.

I've just added an opening paragraph, explaining
a) the context
b) the fact that it's obscure computing slang
c) the fact that the rest of the article is not to be taken *entirely*
seriously

Jimbo recently said that one long-term goal of Wikipedia is the
production of cheap paper encyclopedias for developing countries. This
is something I would fully support -- it would be tremendous if what we
do here reaches more than just the lucky few who have net access.

But now I keep having visions of kids in a school somewhere reading
about SCSI voodoo and not realising it's tongue-in-cheek. (the same
argument goes for slapping the words "fictional character" on many, many
articles)

FOLDOC is a good source: it's a cleanly-written documentation.
Some entries from the Jargon File are good, but so many of them strike
me as a microcommunity writing about itself -- it's not an encyclopedia,
but a parody of one. I can even hear Comic-Book Guy's voice reading them.

Perhaps one step would be to merge all the articles on voodoo-inspired
hacker lingo into just that: [[voodoo-inspired hacker slang]]. At least
that would stand some chance of being more than disctionary entries:
there would be potential for an overview of the linguistic trend,
reasons, etc.
(suggestions for a better page name on a postcard ;)


body:
> We might want to ask Rusty from Kuro5hin for some
> advice. He is in the process of setting up a
> non-profit, the Collaborative Media Foundation, and
> is
> hashing out all the nasty details.

talking about K5... did anyone see the wikipedia article on k5 yesterday?

i wonder who posted that....

Lightning


subject: [Wikitech-l] multiple language relations

body:
You know what.. multi languages are a pain in the ass.

People need to keep putting links on all these pages by hand. And sometimes
like what happened with the dutch wikipedia, links are wrong... heres the
lodown.. all the days of the year pages, pointed to the dutch days of the
year pages.. and all 365 links were wrong.. because the dutch dont
capitalize months. hours and hours and hours of wasted work as well as a
bunch of dead links... no good. How to avoid it.. a table, or a system in
which we cross link article names eg

id | name      | language
1  | January   | en
1  | januari     | nl
1  | Enero   | sp

so when we go to a page, the page runs a select for what the article would
be called in other languages, and makes links that way.. so much easier..
all you need is one table and ALL the wikipedia's can work from it.  oh, and
anyone have any comments on tighter integration amongst wikipedias? I think
there's lots of room for improvement there...


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Lightning wrote:

>Hi, I am Lightning.. Thats also my username in wikipedia.
>
Hi, and welcome!

> Seems like there's
>this whole big hoop-la about i8n, and translation and yadda yadda yadda. I
>was kind of thinking, since some languages dont translate so easily, (as to
>say you cant just change that string and it will look right), are templates
>a possibility? I was looking through the code, and it looks pretty straight
>forward, but all the HTML in the code is just kinda, nasty and crowds the
>code.. I think a separation of the code and markup would be a really good
>thing. new themes would be easy to make, and it would allow for a lot more
>formatting options and easier changing of the look and feel of the page.
>Anyone have any opinions? has this been brought up before?
>
I suggested an "universal" skin once, as a HTML page with
pseudo-variables (e.g., "$articlebody$" or "<articletitle>") and
conditions (e.g., "<loggedin>...</loggedin>") to be replaced with the
values from LocalSettings and Language files. Never got around
implementing it, though.

>Oh and also.. anyone ever consider adding a spellcheck feature? Because I
>have been thinking about it, but I'd like to know if this has been an idea
>shot down before for a reason, you know, so I dont waste my time
>[attempting] implementing it.
>
There was talk about this, but never any concrete plans. Implementation
could be tricky. Maybe that would be something to implement in an
"offline wikipedia editor"? There was brief talk about such a thing as well.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Middle East articles and NPOV.

body:
I must say I am delighted that some of us Wikipedians have been able to work together on our mutual goal of creating a balanced and neutral encyclopedia article. Since Uri, Elian and Jacob know a great deal about the subject and I know next to nothing, I will probably not contribute much information to this process. I hope more to "grease the gears" so we can work together as a "well-oiled machine" (sorry for the technical metaphor, but I am, after all, an engineer by profession).

See http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Palestinian_territories&oldid=343685

Ed Poor


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

in_reply_to: <3DA20771.8000001@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 08:15:13 +1000

body:
On Tue, 08 Oct 2002 08:15:13 tarquin wrote:

> Perhaps one step would be to merge all the articles on voodoo-inspired
> hacker lingo into just that: [[voodoo-inspired hacker slang]]. At least
> that would stand some chance of being more than disctionary entries:
> there would be potential for an overview of the linguistic trend,
> reasons, etc.
> (suggestions for a better page name on a postcard ;)
>

Yep.

I think it's instructive to note that the print version of the
Jargon File is known as "The New Hacker's *Dictionary*".  Not,
"The New Hacker's Encyclopedia".

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

"...the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an
environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more
serious than those raised by sex" -- Peter Singer
------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re:  Re: [Intlwiki-l] The Wikpedia family

body:
On Tuesday 08 October 2002 10:51 am Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> We might want to ask Rusty from Kuro5hin for some
> advice. He is in the process of setting up a
> non-profit, the Collaborative Media Foundation, and
> is
> hashing out all the nasty details.
>
> If we want to do this, it would probably be best to
> have Jimmy email him, rather than one of us random
> foot soldiers.
>
> Stephen

Sounds like a good idea to me. I copied your post at;
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Wikipedia_and_corporate_structure
So we won't forget the idea.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Wikpedia family

body:
On Tuesday 08 October 2002 10:51 Kurt Jansson wrote:
> > "It's done when it is mostly bug-free and
> > by the way you can help squash bugs" should be the main message with
>> maybe a rough estimate on a range of dates it might be finished.
>
> Exactly.
> Is there anything we can help with when founding the non-profit?

Yes. Some of us are informally trying to work out what such a non-profit might
look like at;
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_and_corporate_structure

> BTW, it seems I was unsubscribed from intlwiki-l at the end of
> september. Am I the only one?
>
> Kurt

I don't know about everyone else but I wan't unsubscribed.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Anchor

body:
>The link code is in fact still present; [[page#anchor]] and
>[[#localanchor]] will produce a link exactly as expected.  My
>original syntax for placing the anchor itself as [[##anchor]],
>but other suggestions are welcome.

For link, [[page#anchor]] and [[#localanchor]] seem to be natural because I
proposed the same syntax without knowing of your proposition ;o)
For anchor creation syntax, I though about [[anchor:MyAnchorName]].
Where "anchor" will be translate in the local language file to be more
comprehensible.
One more time I think it's really sad to deprive ourself of using a good
feature just because of the fear that someone use it in "bad" way.

Guillaume (Aoineko)

PS : other proposition : #ANCHOR anchorname (like #REDIRECT article)


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Power Search

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Since I got no feedback about the extended search on Lee's test site, I

Well, I never heard about it so...

> went ahead and put it into the CVS. It is also running on
> de.wikipedia.org now.
>
> All it does is append a form at the end of the search results where one
> can choose to search other namespaces, as well as turn off redirects as
> results. Both functions were requeseted on the lists. Not very pretty,
> but a start.

Cool! I've installed it on the other wikis. Localized strings will have
to be done at some point, it shows up in English in the meantime.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Power Search


subject: [Wikitech-l] Power Search

body:
I wrote:
> Cool! I've installed it on the other wikis. Localized strings will have
> to be done at some point, it shows up in English in the meantime.

FYI, there's a funny interaction between the sidebar and tables with
"width" specified in Internet Explorer; 'width=100%' makes the table as
wide as the entire browser window, not just the wrappable area, and it
overlaps the sidebar or even runs offscreen.

Since this was just an area with a border and background color, I've
replaced it with a <div> tag which seems to work more cleanly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
>I suggested an "universal" skin once, as a HTML page with
>pseudo-variables (e.g., "$articlebody$" or "<articletitle>") and
>conditions (e.g., "<loggedin>...</loggedin>") to be replaced with the
>values from LocalSettings and Language files. Never got around
>implementing it, though.

Iwas more thinking of a fast template style thing. no language files,
instead.. language themes, language files work, but its not that great, plus
they add potential for formatting errors because of lengths of words and
phrases.. however i do like the tags thing... bml-ish almost

>>Oh and also.. anyone ever consider adding a spellcheck feature? Because I
>>have been thinking about it, but I'd like to know if this has been an idea
>>shot down before for a reason, you know, so I dont waste my time
>>[attempting] implementing it.
>>
>There was talk about this, but never any concrete plans. Implementation
>could be tricky. Maybe that would be something to implement in an
>"offline wikipedia editor"? There was brief talk about such a thing as
well.

I dont like the sound of "offline" editor. but with the built-in pspell
functionality in PHP spellchecking would'nt be hard to implement, i think
the easiest way would be to add a third button at the bottom of the "edit
article" page that say's "Preview with spellcheck" since spellchecking is a
resource hog, and shouldnt really be run when not needed. I think the best
way to implement this would be to highlight each misspelled word using css,
and adding a small superscript number to the right of the word linking to an
anchor at the bottom of the page, which says,

Words: that may be misspelled:

1.) ofline
     ---suggestions: offline
2.).....

get me? of course if the software ran with templates this would be a matter
of a couple lines of code anda new theme, but as thesoftware stands it could
pose a bit of a problem and WOULD crowd the article page... of course i
could just move all that to a separate page.. that'd be no biggie.

I just really think that all classes should be in separate files and
included into the pages, it would make for much, much cleaner code.. you
know separating code from HTML... this would also allow for easy creation of
front ends.. an XML front end, an RSS, front end, XHTML., older more
old-browser-compatible HTML, text only, bigger fonts for people with bad
eyesight... its a whole accesibility feature.

Lightning


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search question

body:
Lightning wrote:

>I kinda don't like how you can see markup in a search results page.. in
>fact.. you see a lot of markup in the exerpt from the webpage.. I really
>don't think that should be the acse.. Is there a way to strip that out
>before that text is shown? It just looks ugly, and confusing and crowds
>everything.. on the case of redirects, maybe we could change it to "This
>page is an alias to ..." ? Any onpinions on this?
>
I've always considered that having the markup appearing that way to be
an advantage, especially when I'm looking for links to fix, or to create.

I don't see the point or need for changing the redirects to what you
suggest.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Power Search

body:
Since I got no feedback about the extended search on Lee's test site, I
went ahead and put it into the CVS. It is also running on
de.wikipedia.org now.

All it does is append a form at the end of the search results where one
can choose to search other namespaces, as well as turn off redirects as
results. Both functions were requeseted on the lists. Not very pretty,
but a start.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Power Search


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search question

body:
I kinda don't like how you can see markup in a search results page.. in
fact.. you see a lot of markup in the exerpt from the webpage.. I really
don't think that should be the acse.. Is there a way to strip that out
before that text is shown? It just looks ugly, and confusing and crowds
everything.. on the case of redirects, maybe we could change it to "This
page is an alias to ..." ? Any onpinions on this?

Lightning


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Power Search

body:
> Since I got no feedback about the extended search on Lee's test site,
I
> went ahead and put it into the CVS. It is also running on
> de.wikipedia.org now.

Thanks Magnus, it works fine! I really missed this.

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Power Search


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search question

body:
> Lightning wrote:
>
> >I kinda don't like how you can see markup in a search results page.. in
> >fact.. you see a lot of markup in the exerpt from the webpage.. I really
> >don't think that should be the acse.. Is there a way to strip that out
> >before that text is shown? It just looks ugly, and confusing and crowds
> >everything.. on the case of redirects, maybe we could change it to "This
> >page is an alias to ..." ? Any onpinions on this?
> >
> I've always considered that having the markup appearing that way to be
> an advantage, especially when I'm looking for links to fix, or to create.
>
> I don't see the point or need for changing the redirects to what you
> suggest.
>
I see what you are saying, this is really useful from an editorial
standpoint, but if I'm just looking for an article on say "Johnson" because
i dont remember the first name, the last thing i want to see is..

"
'''Andrew Johnson'''
 "

if the html doesnt show:
"<caption><font size="+1">'''Andrew
Johnson'''</font></caption> "

when "Andrew Johnson" would have been more appropriate and helpful..

Lightning

Ps these are actual results i got


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RFC on a few feature requests

body:
There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd
like some comments from other developers and power users before I go
trashing the code on my own...

* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number
of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_.
Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games
might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game
listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_
that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree.
This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple
SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

* On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by
username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by
sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP
addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow
usernames to be blocked?

* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find
and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying
a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

* While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel"
etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence
monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly
hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most
annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English
name of the function which implements the special page. A table of
equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable
localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

* For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as
"Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept
namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I
intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:

   'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
   be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
   into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/? as
   equal in the namespace portion?'

In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] RFC on a few feature requests


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Power Search

body:
--- wojtek pobratyn <wojtek.pobratyn at gmx.net> wrote:
> At 19:46 08.10.2002, you wrote:
> > > Since I got no feedback about the extended
> search on Lee's test site,
> >I
> > > went ahead and put it into the CVS. It is also
> running on
> > > de.wikipedia.org now.
> >
> >Thanks Magnus, it works fine! I really missed this.
> >
> >Kurt
> >
> >[Wikipedia-l]
> >To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> >http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> yep, thanks a lot from me too. this is great!
> WojPob

Yes, it's just what we needed. Now we just need a link
to the advanced search under the normal searchbox.

Stephen G.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] RFC on a few feature requests

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages
> list the _total_ number
> of links to a page, regardless of how many links
> there are _per page_.
> Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a
> list of video games
> might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each
> Playstation game
> listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is
> a count of _pages_
> that link, rather than the raw number of links. I
> would tend to agree.
> This can be switched by the simple addition of
> "DISTINCT" to a couple
> SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the
> current behavior?

I'm all for a page count rather than an individual
link count. I can't think of any reason to retain the
current behaviour.

> * On blocking vandals; there's still no interface
> for blocking by
> username, and you can't get the IP address of a
> logged-in user except by
> sifting through the server logs. Should we retain
> and display IP
> addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on
> UseMod), and/or allow
> usernames to be blocked?

Blocking a user name without a corresponding IP block
is useless. The vandal can just sign up for another
ID. I'm in favour of the UseMod-style behaviour.

> * The administrative page rename feature on UseMod
> could optionally find
> and change links to point to the new name in
> addition to just supplying
> a redirect. We still haven't implemented this.
> Desirable?

Unsure. My first instinct was to say, "Oh, yeah!", but
I thought about it a little more. Imagine a
hypothetical article named [[English]] that is
entirely about the language. I think it should be
moved to [[English language]], so I do so. The
software "corrects" all the [[English]] links. The
problem is, many of those links were not refering to
to the language, but the nationality. we're left with
a big mess of incorrect links, with no way to correct
them other than examining each one.

> * While the "Special:" namespace may be localized
> ("Spezial", "Speciel"
> etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in
> English (hence
> monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While
> these are mostly
> hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the
> links, URLs, and most
> annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the
> raw internal English
> name of the function which implements the special
> page. A table of
> equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily
> recognizable
> localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

It doesn't seem like a pressing matter to me. All of
the PHP source code is in a form of English too. As
long as the interface is localized, I can't see this
being a problem. Note: I am an English speaker. :)

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is
> tentatively set up as
> "Wikip?dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The
> parser doesn't accept
> namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't
> work, which is a bug I
> intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
>
>    'For the francophone wikipedians without a French
> keyboard, would it
>    be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to
> automatically transform
>    into "Wikip?dia:*"? Or, more simply, could the
> system interpret e/? as
>    equal in the namespace portion?'
>
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea?
> Bad idea?

Sounds good to me. Any downsides?

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthere

body:
> >* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages
> list the _total_ number
> >of links to a page, regardless of how many links
> there are _per page_.
> >Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a
> list of video games
> >might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each
> Playstation game
> >listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is
> a count of _pages_
> >that link, rather than the raw number of links. I
> would tend to agree.
> >This can be switched by the simple addition of
> "DISTINCT" to a couple
> >SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the
> current behavior?

no reason at all. One or several links (or even words
not linked) on the page should count as 1. That 389
number is absolutely ridiculous ;-)

> We should agree in linking the same word within one
> document only once.
> I think this would be the easiest sollution to this
> problem.

strongly disagree with that idea. In a long article,
it makes sense to repeat a link sometimes. And if the
notion is important, it also can make sense to repeat
it in the "see also".

> >* On blocking vandals; there's still no interface
> for blocking by
> >username, and you can't get the IP address of a
> logged-in user except by
> >sifting through the server logs. Should we retain
> and display IP
> >addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on
> UseMod), and/or allow
> >usernames to be blocked?

I feel IP adresses are somehow a little bit personal,
and shouldnot be displayed. Of course, any developper
can see them in the database, and retrieve them if
needed, that doesnot justify public exposure. In
France, where we use a lot dsl connections, or where
name domaines are resolved, just everybody knows the
city we live in, sometimes the university or firm we
work in. Don't even need to do a tracert. I think it
rather unecessarily rude to display that information
publicly.

It would be interesting if user could be banned
through IP but only with username visible (the
software resolving the couple IP/username. Is that a
technical dream ?
Of course, it won't be effective against changing IP,
which is the case in most european countries anyway.

> >* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod
> could optionally find
> >and change links to point to the new name in
> addition to just supplying
> >a redirect. We still haven't implemented this.
> Desirable?

yes

ohoh, overload....
Warning:  Too many connections in
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on
line 17
Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1

Ain't you most north american supposed to sleep right
now ????

__________________________________________________
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http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00703B7@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 09:25:21AM -0400

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> *Jimbo had said that he reserves the right to ban logged-in
>users. Perhaps he meant only people antagonizing others with
>historical revisionism or personal remarks -- not kids who replace
>entire articles with the word "kool" -- but I'd like to see a
>clarification from him.

I see no particular difference between a vandal who logs in and a
vandal who doesn't.  Of course, a person who has bothered to log in is
less likely to be a vandal than someone who doesn't, at least in our
experience so far.  And we've never really had a _persistent_ vandal.

And so, yes, I'd like to say that I'll take the responsibility and
political heat for banning (or failing to ban, as is more likely!) in
cases that don't fit neatly into "simple vandalism", i.e. cases like
'24' and Helga.

And I'll make frowny faces at people who ban people as a method of
settling a debate about content.  That's not WikiLove.

--Jimbo