from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:13:11AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 22:12, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 02:50:24AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > >How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?
> > >
> > >Wikipedia script when rendering should find all <math>.*</math> in markup,
> > >call this program (which is very fast if images are already rendered)
> > >and get info provided by it to render a page. I'm not even sure what should
> > >that program return.
>
> We would be best served by not duplicating the efforts of
> http://planetmath.org, a GFDL math encyclopedia.
>
> I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
> what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
> planetmath.org.

Neither of these two solutions would work well, nor would "upload pngs".

First, math in HTML is way too ugly. Even things so simple as fractions
and integrals are impossible to render well.

Second, if we want to export Wikipedia to different formats, in particular dict,
Wikipedia markup model will have to change from "parse fragments you understand
leave everything else" to "parse everything, if you don't understand something
then it is not markup". This is good step in this direction - contributors will
be able to use more powerful markup and it will be renderable as plain text too.

Third, planetmath.org is TeX-only math-only project and not a Wiki, so technically
it is very different, and we need special markup for other purposes like chemistry
too.

Oh, and fourth:
* <math>.*</math> is much easier for parsers to live with than [[math:.*]],
  as `]]' is much more likely to happen in equations than `</math>',
* it can be easily extended to different math syntax <math syntax=foo></math>
  (TeX syntax is very good, but many people don't know it)
* and `> <' are visually more delimiters-like than [[math: ]].
* this isn't a link, it's markup.
So i prefer <math></math> to [[math: ]]


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question about current code

in_reply_to: <20021127170806.GA1284@tavaiah>; from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 06:08:06PM +0100

body:
Why don't we just implement a generic tag (or namespace, or whatever)
for generation of images from some sort of text.  Really, it shouldn't
matter what the source of the image looks like (TeX, HTML, some crazy
mix or something homespun).

The images can be generated by some sort of "plugin".  The person
entering the code could choose from a list of possible plugins.  This
way, we could have somebody who sees the value in using planetmath
write a planetmath parsing plugin, and other plugins can be written as
necessary.

If we tie ourselves to any one thing (like we did with MySQL), we're
bound to end up spending a lot of time rewriting it all...

Jason

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 11:49:28AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 08:00, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:13:11AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > > > I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
> > > > what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
> > > > planetmath.org.
> > >
> > > Neither of these two solutions would work well, nor would "upload pngs".
> >
> > I fail to see how the second method wouldn't work well-it's a philosophical
> > approach, not a particular method. All I'm saying is that we should
> > figure out ways to work with planetmath.org, not duplicate their effort.
>
> It seems to me that our needs and theirs differ too much.
> Some efford could be saved but it's almost impossible that one
> solution would fit both problems.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
> Yelling, certainly, doesn't help.  Shaming, in an atmosphere where
> there
> is strong general support for certain principles that are
> *egregiously*
> violated, *can* help and *has* helped upon occasion.
>
> It is *precisely* in a medium of collaboration where shaming can
> help!
>
> I'm not going to stop doing it, myself, and I continue to advocate
> its
> tasteful, usually tongue-in-cheek, winking, use.  Treating others
> with
> respect is important as well; but I wouldn't attempt to shame
> someone that
> I didn't have at least enough respect to think that they'd react
> appropriately.

When you shame someone, you demonstrate a lack of respect. Jokingly
shaming someone is still shaming someone.
I don't like it.

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

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: bderksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Question about current code

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>How to integrate it with Wikipedia script ?

Perhaps you could add an optional setting to have the formula presented in
mathML instead of as an image, for those of us who use browsers that support
it? It'd be off by default, of course, since PNG is much more widely supported
than mathML is.

Also, I'm not suggesting that the formula be _edited_ in mathML; from what
I've seen it's rather cumbersome to write by hand. :)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop status request by Tucci (aka Tokerboy?)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>BTW our current primary naming convention is to use what most English speakers
>would know and recognize as article titles with a reasonable minimum of
>ambiguity and do any usage explanation in the article itself.
>
Emperor "Franz Josef" of Austria: 203,000 Google hits; "Francis Joseph":
24,500 Google hits yet we persist in using Francis Joseph pretending
that it is most recognizable by English speakers

Eclecticology


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] more on the watchlist error

body:
On Mit, 2002-11-27 at 16:56, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> It only happens when I edit pages I am "watching"... if I uncheck the
> "watch this page" checkbox, the edit succeeds.  Then I have to re-watch
> the page again.  Aargh.

I've fixed this in CVS.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 11:49:28AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-11-27 at 08:00, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:13:11AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > > I recommend that Wikipedia either 1) not use Tex-graphics, and stick to
> > > what can be done with plain-jane wiki/HTML, or 2) integrate efforts with
> > > planetmath.org.
> >
> > Neither of these two solutions would work well, nor would "upload pngs".
>
> I fail to see how the second method wouldn't work well-it's a philosophical
> approach, not a particular method. All I'm saying is that we should
> figure out ways to work with planetmath.org, not duplicate their effort.

It seems to me that our needs and theirs differ too much.
Some efford could be saved but it's almost impossible that one
solution would fit both problems.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete _

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> There is a page called "_" which was a redirect to [[Geography of Poland]]
> and is on the delenda list. As far as I can figure out, it was originally
> linked to from a template of a WikiProject (_, Geography of _, etc.) and
> remained in some articles (e.g. [[Ununbium]]). I tried to delete and got
> Internal error. I tried these names: "_", "+", "%5F", "%20". All got the same
> error. Can someone delete it manually?

Done.

It's an invalid title, and wouldn't (or shouldn't!) be creatable now. It
was apparently created in a renaming accident back in July; I've taken
the liberty of restoring the page's history to [[Geography of Poland]].

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anglicization convention

body:
Eclecticology wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>BTW our current primary naming convention is to use what most
>>English speakers would know and recognize as article titles with a
>>reasonable minimum of ambiguity and do any usage explanation in
>>the article itself.
>>
>Emperor "Franz Josef" of Austria: 203,000 Google hits; "Francis Joseph":
>24,500 Google hits yet we persist in using Francis Joseph pretending
>that it is most recognizable by English speakers
>
>Eclecticology

Doing a vanilla Google search is useless because it also searches non-English
pages. But I did redo the search only looking at English language pages and I
confirmed you results.

So what is the problem then? I'm not insisting that we should have an article
at [[Francis Joseph of Austria]]. In this case the article, per the
Anglicization and Names and Titles conventions, should be at [[Franz Josef of
Austria]].

I think the much of the problem that many people have about the Anglicization
convention is that they HAVEN'T READ THE DAMN THING IN CONTEXT WITH THE
OVERRIDING CONVENTION EXPRESSED IN THE GENERAL STATEMENT. Please do so now;

Anglicization convention:

   Convention: Name your pages in English and place the
   native transliteration on the first line of the article
   unless the native form is almost always used in English.

Notice: "...unless the native form is almost always used in English."

I am all for making that sound even more permissive (and a better reflection
of the current practice I understand and help enforce) to read;

"... unless the native form or transliteration is used by English speakers
more often than the Anglicized or English translation."

General statement:

   Generally, article naming should give priority to what the
   majority of English speakers would most easily recognize
   with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same
   time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

Notice: "....article naming should give priority to what the majority of
English speakers would most easily recognize..."

I am also all for making this even more clear to reflect my longstanding
interpretation and enforcement criteria:
"....article naming should give priority to what the majority of English
speakers at all familiar with the subject would most easily recognize and
likely to use...."

Notice the addition of: "at all familiar with the subject" (this includes all
interested English speaking parties, not just the experts).

We should use what most English speakers who are aware of the subject would
most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity (with at least a
slight preference for English to decide toss-ups). Whether or not that is an
English translation, a transliteration, native form or is Anglicized is
really immaterial.

Like I already said in a previous post, subjects like Mein Kampf, Les
Miserables and Sinn Fein should be at these titles because few people would
recognize "My Struggle", "Poor Wretches" or "Ourselves Alone" as the correct
subjects.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Payment for this post:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid (In progress)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Design of TeX generator

body:
I have a program whih reads something like this:

    string text_in, text_out;
    tex_tree tree;
    int hash;

    text_in = read_whole (stdin);
    tree = parse (text_in);
    if (tree == null)
    {
	print ("failure " + text_out);
	return;
    }
    text_out = regenerate (tree);
    hash = md5(text_out);
    if (!file_exists(filesystem_path + string(hash) + ".png"))
	if (fork() == 0)
	{
	    // validation ensures that latex won't fail too often
	    call_latex_to_generate_that_file(text_out, filesystem_path + hash + ".png");
	    _exit();
	}
    print ("<img alt=" + text_in + " src = " + http_path + md5 + ".png>");
    return;

Now, the problem is - it can be external program, but 1 fork/exec is required
per TeX equation. Parsing and checking if image is already generated is very
fast, but all these fork/execs are unnecessary overhead. I see a few solutions:
* pass all equations at once, just 1 fork/exec per article would be neccesary.
* make a table of already generated TeX - "input TeX, hash(output TeX)", and let
  php code check if image already exists without having to parse TeX. The problem
  is, database is quite slow, and these computations are rather simple.
* make a table of "hash(input TeX), hash(output TeX)". I don't know if it will
  be significantly faster
* providing symlinks from (path + hash(input TeX) + ".png") to
  (path + hash(output TeX) + ".png") this way PHP can check if image is already
  generated. If image is generated but from different input TeX (for example "x+y"
  is already generated, we ask for "x + y"), then that program will just add
  a symlink.
* change that program into shared library. That was my initial idea, but it
  seems to be quite hard with PHP.
* rewrite that program in PHP (will be slow, unless PHP features LALR parsers
  generator)


subject: [Wikitech-l] how many namespaces are there (currently)?

body:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 10:38:56AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> 2 - 'User' (user pages; names coincide with user names -- but there are
> also crudely made slash-subpages in user namespace)

User's subpages are very useful. Can we add some support for them ?
For example by automatically adding links from User:X to all User:X/*
and link from every User:X/* to User:X ?


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete _

body:
There is a page called "_" which was a redirect to [[Geography of Poland]]
and is on the delenda list. As far as I can figure out, it was originally
linked to from a template of a WikiProject (_, Geography of _, etc.) and
remained in some articles (e.g. [[Ununbium]]). I tried to delete and got
Internal error. I tried these names: "_", "+", "%5F", "%20". All got the same
error. Can someone delete it manually?

phma


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<3DE55F83.2040905@telus.net> (message from Ray Saintonge on Wed,
	27 Nov 2002 16:12:51 -0800)

body:
|From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
|X-Accept-Language: en-us
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 16:12:51 -0800
|
|Daniel Mayer wrote:
|
|>BTW our current primary naming convention is to use what most English speakers
|>would know and recognize as article titles with a reasonable minimum of
|>ambiguity and do any usage explanation in the article itself.
|>
|Emperor "Franz Josef" of Austria: 203,000 Google hits; "Francis Joseph":
|24,500 Google hits yet we persist in using Francis Joseph pretending
|that it is most recognizable by English speakers
|
|Eclecticology

I think that is confusing "most recognizable by English speakers" with
"English instead of something else".  Franz Josef is much more
recognizable than Francis Joseph in this case.  Charlemagne is much
more recognizable than Karl der Gross or Charles the Great.

I have been pretty pro-English in all this, but Francis Joseph is
silly.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Long term plans for scalability

body:
Nick Hill wrote:
> I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by private
> individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system of mirror FTP
> and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in real time from the
> core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective, all are equivalent.

My experience from situations like the one you describe tells me that
the designed system can easily get more complex and cause more
overhead than the needed performance gain, and that Moores law will
give us the speed that we need in time when we need it.

Do you have any experience from designing systems like this? Would you
write a prototype for this system that could be tested?  The vision
sounds like science fiction to me, but a prototype that I can run is
not science fiction, so that would make all the difference.

Here is another vision: I envision a system where I can synchronize
my laptop or PDA with a wiki, then go offline and use it, update it,
and when I return to my office I can resynchronize the two again.
I have no idea on how to implement this vision.  I think it would be a
lot of work.  But I think the result could be really useful.

I also see there are similarities between your vision and mine.  The
idea is to express the update activity as a series of transactions
(update submits) that can be transfered to another instance or
multiple instances and be applied there.  In either case, one must
take care of the case that the transmission of updates gets
interrupted or delayed, and the potential "edit conflicts" that would
result.  It doesn't seem trivial to me.

--
  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/


list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] We're online!

body:
On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Larry managed to get us a live, working version of my initial Gnupedia
> software. It runs at
>
>     http://seeatown.com/misc/main.php
>
> I have transfered the few user accounts from the old site. For the
> others, just get yourself a user name, wait until you're approved
> (yes!), and start importing articles.
>
> Again, this is the "it runs, barely" version; I'd rather have a basic
> discussion about the basic concept of the software than about some
> broken function, at this moment.

I did hardly anything.  You can thank Magnus and Jason.

For purposes of testing, we can make all new applicants sysops.  I made
several people sysops, and feel free to do that yourselves.

Where and how should we give feedback on the program (bug reports, feature
requests, etc.), Magnus?

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anglicization convention

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I think the much of the problem that many people have about the Anglicization
>convention is that they HAVEN'T READ THE DAMN THING IN CONTEXT WITH THE
>OVERRIDING CONVENTION EXPRESSED IN THE GENERAL STATEMENT. Please do so now;
>
>

We have to recognise that underlying this problem is a change in attitudes:

In previous centuries, foreign names were anglicized (likewise in other
languages). So we have Columbus, we have Charles of Spain, Munich, etc.
(placenames have also acquired several names in Europe because of
shifting boundaries)

Nowadays, we don't.
We refer to foreign people by their names as in their language (or best
approximation, Boris Yeltsin is called "Eltsine" in French)
So we some foreign names anglicized and some not.
To thicken the plot, some names are being *unanglicized* -- I would
agree that Franz Josef is called thus in English

Key thing to bear in mind: this mixup is not our fault! :-)

>
>


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] Polish Wikipedia language links

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Could someone please create a page similar to
> [[Wikipedia:German Wikipedia language links]] now that the Polish Wikipedia
> has been moved to the Phase III software and fully supports interwiki
> links ?

Done, see:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polish_language_links
and also
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanto_language_links

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Do these red links have a name?  I used to call them "question mark
> links", but now they are "red links" instead.  Saying "links to pages
> that don't yet exist" (LTPTDYE, the exact phrase actually gets 8 hits
> on Google) is just as tedious as "the artist formerly known as Prince"
> (TAFKAP).  What about "empty links", "blank links", "open links",
> "future links" or "suggested links"?  Is there a word that people
> frequently use?

I call 'em "edit links". The code calls them "broken links".

> BTW, could this wiki idea spread to science, so that a paper would
> cite other papers that might come into existence?  :-)

Why not? It works in finance, where we call them credit cards. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
> Nick Hill wrote:
>>I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by private
>>individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system of mirror FTP
>>and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in real time from the
>>core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective, all are equivalent.

Having read-only database copies with MySQL's replication sounds doable,
at least in theory. All edits would be directed to the mama website.
User accounts (ie for watchlists) are maybe a trickier matter, as we'd
rather not send passwords and e-mail addresses around willy-nilly.

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Here is another vision: I envision a system where I can synchronize
> my laptop or PDA with a wiki, then go offline and use it, update it,
> and when I return to my office I can resynchronize the two again.
> I have no idea on how to implement this vision.  I think it would be a
> lot of work.  But I think the result could be really useful.
>
> I also see there are similarities between your vision and mine.  The
> idea is to express the update activity as a series of transactions
> (update submits) that can be transfered to another instance or
> multiple instances and be applied there.  In either case, one must
> take care of the case that the transmission of updates gets
> interrupted or delayed, and the potential "edit conflicts" that would
> result.  It doesn't seem trivial to me.

Distributed editing is, indeed, a rather bit tricker than distributed
reading, and not something I really want to touch with a ten foot pole
right now. :)

See also discussion on a client-side Wikipedia reader/editor at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedicated_Wikipedia_editor

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anglicization convention

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I think the much of the problem that many people have about the Anglicization
>convention is that they HAVEN'T READ THE DAMN THING IN CONTEXT WITH THE
>OVERRIDING CONVENTION EXPRESSED IN THE GENERAL STATEMENT. Please do so now;
>
>Anglicization convention:
>
>   Convention: Name your pages in English and place the
>   native transliteration on the first line of the article
>   unless the native form is almost always used in English.
>
>Notice: "...unless the native form is almost always used in English."
>
It seems that Mav doesn't hasn't even read his own policy.  Before
responding I just made a point of reading it at [[Wikipedia:Naming
conventions (anglicization)]].  Even the qualification that he
emphasizes is simply NOT THERE.  Admittedly, even that qualification is
better than nothing.

>I am all for making that sound even more permissive (and a better reflection
>of the current practice I understand and help enforce) to read;
>
>"... unless the native form or transliteration is used by English speakers
>more often than the Anglicized or English translation."
>
>General statement:
>
>   Generally, article naming should give priority to what the
>   majority of English speakers would most easily recognize
>   with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same
>   time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
>
>Notice: "....article naming should give priority to what the majority of
>English speakers would most easily recognize..."
>
Who determines that majority?

>I am also all for making this even more clear to reflect my longstanding
>interpretation and enforcement criteria:
>"....article naming should give priority to what the majority of English
>speakers at all familiar with the subject would most easily recognize and
>likely to use...."
>
>Notice the addition of: "at all familiar with the subject" (this includes all
>interested English speaking parties, not just the experts).
>
"at all familiar" is a step in the right direction.

>We should use what most English speakers who are aware of the subject would
>most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity (with at least a
>slight preference for English to decide toss-ups). Whether or not that is an
>English translation, a transliteration, native form or is Anglicized is
>really immaterial.
>
I would give preference to the native form in a toss-up, with a wide
attitude about what we mean by "toss-up".  But even better, a flexible
attitude that does not insist that a borderline case has to be in either
form will turn down the heat on this subject.

We don't need for people to be self-appointed enforcers except in the
most egregious cases; enforcement actions only irritate people.  If any
kind of enforcement is appropriate on borderline cases it is to ensure
that there is a redirect from the alternate form to the one actually
used in whatever direction is needed.

>Like I already said in a previous post, subjects like Mein Kampf, Les
>Miserables and Sinn Fein should be at these titles because few people would
>recognize "My Struggle", "Poor Wretches" or "Ourselves Alone" as the correct
>subjects.
>
Although I have argued, with apparent success, for [[Franz Josef of
Austria]] you may remain confident that I do NOT support the format
[[Franz Josef von ?sterreich]].

I have another example from German where the zeal for correction
actually creates a more surprising result for English speakers: the
artist, Albrecht D?rer.  (Fortunately nobody is trying to call him
Albert)  I know very well that "?" may be treated as equivalent to "ue",
but do most English speakers know that?  Without knowing that, how
likely is it that they will look for "Duerer" where the article
currently is.  From what I've seen English speakers tend to be blind to
diacritics.  They will see "D?rer" as "Durer".

I would thus favour that when the difference between the native form and
the usual English form is a matter only of diacritics that are a part of
ISO 8859-1 the standard form should be the one with full ISO 8859-1
diacritics.  The search function should include a provision that allows
the plain character to be treated as equivalent to the one with
diacritics.

This may not be possible with terms that include non 8859-1 characters,
in which case the standard form should have the characters without
diacritics.

In consideration of the "payment" for posts provision, I undertake to
sort out the Franz Josef articles.
Eclecticology


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Sifter-l] We're online!

body:
Hi all,

Larry managed to get us a live, working version of my initial Gnupedia
software. It runs at

    http://seeatown.com/misc/main.php

I have transfered the few user accounts from the old site. For the
others, just get yourself a user name, wait until you're approved
(yes!), and start importing articles.

Again, this is the "it runs, barely" version; I'd rather have a basic
discussion about the basic concept of the software than about some
broken function, at this moment.

Magnus


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> >Do these red links have a name?  I used to call
> them "question mark
> >links", but now they are "red links" instead.
> Saying "links to pages
> >that don't yet exist" (LTPTDYE, the exact phrase
> actually gets 8 hits
> >on Google) is just as tedious as "the artist
> formerly known as Prince"
> >(TAFKAP).  What about "empty links", "blank links",
> "open links",
> >"future links" or "suggested links"?  Is there a
> word that people
> >frequently use?
> >
> >
> >
> I call them "ghost links" -- they lead to pages that
> don't exist.

They are ghost links ''only'' as long as you ''don't''
click on them. Once *lead*, the page exist somehow,
since you are proposed to edit it ;-) So, I call them
empty links.

Contrarywise, the international links can really lead
you to a "non-existant" page, which is rather
embarassing from a conceptual point of view.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Impact_of_global_climate_changes_on_agriculture&diff=0&oldid=446519

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
Hello all,

Could someone please create a page similar to
[[Wikipedia:German Wikipedia language links]] now that the Polish Wikipedia
has been moved to the Phase III software and fully supports interwiki
links ?

Thank you.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
Do these red links have a name?  I used to call them "question mark
links", but now they are "red links" instead.  Saying "links to pages
that don't yet exist" (LTPTDYE, the exact phrase actually gets 8 hits
on Google) is just as tedious as "the artist formerly known as Prince"
(TAFKAP).  What about "empty links", "blank links", "open links",
"future links" or "suggested links"?  Is there a word that people
frequently use?

BTW, could this wiki idea spread to science, so that a paper would
cite other papers that might come into existence?  :-)

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II
 [...])

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> For Gothenburg/G?teborg I see the issue as more in transition than
> unstable.  I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book
> of Facts, 1998" and it uses "G?teborg".  This seems to reflect a modern
> trend.  My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds
> both alternatives and show "G?theborg" with the extra "h" as an
> alternative Swedish spelling..

I doubt that "G?theborg" was used in Sweden after 1860. It was in use
earlier, when Swedish spelling was more random and before "foreign
elements" like "th" were weeded out.

Yes, this is probably in transition.  Today, the non-Swedes who
discover G?teborg do so on the web or as tourists.  They *read* the
name and it is spelled "G?teborg" on Swedish street signs and maps.
These tourists seldom need to learn how to pronounce the name.

The city was founded as a sea port in 1621 after Sweden got access to
the west coast, which used to be Danish/Norwegian. Many of the people
who "built" the new city were merchants from England and Scotland with
names like "Chalmers" (see www.chalmers.se), resulting in English
often being *spoken* in the city, both by visiting sailors and the
locals who catered to them.

The same transition might happen to Hanover/Hannover and
Munich/M?nchen, but hardly to Germany/Deutschland or Sweden/Sverige.
Hanover used to have strong ties with England, but that is not the
case anymore, and Swedes who write English texts about the CeBIT expo
don't know there is an English spelling that differs from the
German/Swedish one.

(How long will it take for the spelling in my .signature to catch on?)

--
  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] terminology

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Do these red links have a name?  I used to call them "question mark
>links", but now they are "red links" instead.  Saying "links to pages
>that don't yet exist" (LTPTDYE, the exact phrase actually gets 8 hits
>on Google) is just as tedious as "the artist formerly known as Prince"
>(TAFKAP).  What about "empty links", "blank links", "open links",
>"future links" or "suggested links"?  Is there a word that people
>frequently use?
>
>
>
I call them "ghost links" -- they lead to pages that don't exist.

>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> How to link to image and set alt= with wiki markup ?
> IMG has been banned in phase 3.

[[image:foo.png|alt text]]

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Rob Brewer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anglicization convention

body:
At 12:11 28/11/02 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>It seems that Mav doesn't hasn't even read his own policy.  Before
>responding I just made a point of reading it at [[Wikipedia:Naming
>conventions (anglicization)]].  Even the qualification that he emphasizes
>is simply NOT THERE.

It's at [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]], under "Use English words".

Rob
([[Paddington station]] - new article)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Just a note on bug reports

body:
Just a note -- since Lee hasn't been around lately, I've taken over
admin of our bugs and feature requests tracker on sourceforge
(http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192 ). I now get
automatic e-mail notification of any reports, so things should be a
little more responsive there.

I know the site's cluttered and kind of hard to use; but I'd like to get
the existing bugs fixed and cleared out before spending time setting up
a new bug tracking system. (Bugzilla was once suggested; in theory we
could modify it to integrate the user accounts with the wiki.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Data on status of English

body:
At 13:48 27/11/02 -0500, Tom Parmenter wrote:

>According to this source, Great Britain is in the first group and the
>US is in the second group.  Another source, somewhat older, says GB
>only gives unofficial status to English.

I am not a lawyer, but the best information I have is that there is
no concept of an "official language" in English or Scottish law. The
Welsh Language Act affirms a general principle that "the English and
Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality" in public
business in Wales, but doesn't use the term "official language".

The procedure for giving Royal Assent to bills and passing them into
law involves a proclamation in Norman French, so maybe that's our
official language...

Rob

([[River Avon, Bristol]] at 23:13 GMT)


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 10:02:17PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>>
>>>How to link to image and set alt= with wiki markup ?
>>>IMG has been banned in phase 3.
>>
>>[[image:foo.png|alt text]]
>
>
> Not that thing !
> External image.

Upload the image to the Wikipedia server and link as above.

Non-local inline images are inherently unreliable; the source may move
or delete the image without warning, may consider us to be bandwidth
thieves and block anything with a referrer from Wikipedia, may just be
down when we're up, may not be copyright-compatible, and could be
unhelpful to attempts to set up offline mirrors.

(IMHO)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
How to link to image and set alt= with wiki markup ?
IMG has been banned in phase 3.


from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
I must insist upon "unlinks"

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021129/5b256fd6/attachment.htm


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:51:21PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>I was trying to put Math parsing somewhere into 15-passes Wikipedia
>markup parsing. Because there is no way to protect math markup from
>interpretation by Wiki, I had to put it before removeHTMLtags.
>But then, removeHTMLtags breaks <img src="" alt=""> tag.
>Even if I tell removeHTMLtags to accept IMG ALT and SRC,
>replaceExternalLinks would kill url in src="".
>
>Any ideas ?
>
>And some day we should make that parser a single-pass LALR ...

Feel free to contribute to the mod_wiki design document; since it is
written in C, you can use lex and yacc for the parser.  I assumed
Clutch was going to use a simple state machine; no overhead from regex
libraries, and lex and yacc have always been fairly finicky. But if
they are copacetic to your way of coding, by all means, bring it on.

Beginnings of the design document:

    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clutch/mod_wiki

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021129/4df74133/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:07jjackson

body:
Someone other than 07jjackson has created a user page with that name
containing the following:

Put your text for the new page here.

"Watchlist"{

{\b rte}

Does this user exist? Should the page be deleted?

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 10:02:17PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >How to link to image and set alt= with wiki markup ?
> >IMG has been banned in phase 3.
>
> [[image:foo.png|alt text]]

Not that thing !
External image.


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
I thought we decided that external images are evil (TM)?

Magnus

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 10:02:17PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>
>
>>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>>
>>
>>>How to link to image and set alt= with wiki markup ?
>>>IMG has been banned in phase 3.
>>>
>>>
>>[[image:foo.png|alt text]]
>>
>>
>
>Not that thing !
>External image.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Nick Hill

body:
On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 03:24:43 +0100 (CET)
Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Nick Hill wrote:
> > I envisage many wikipedia servers around the world, supported by
> > private individuals, companies and universities. Much like the system
> > of mirror FTP and mirror web sites. All these servers are updated in
> > real time from the core wikipedia server. From the user's perspective,
> > all are equivalent.
>
> My experience from situations like the one you describe tells me that
> the designed system can easily get more complex

Systems can always become complex in an unworkable sense. If the
implementation is carefully managed, the complexity can be kept under
control.

The system I suggested, in effect, distributes chunks of data. The issue is
will these chunks of data, at some point, become incompatible with the
systems which are supposed to read them? Is a degree of non-fatal
incompatibility allowed?

example:
As the definition for tags changes, the front end will interpret them
differently, making the pages look different between newer and older
implementations.

> and cause more
> overhead than the needed performance gain,
Technical or computing overhead? How do you convert technical overhead to
computing overhead?  What is the needed performance gain?

> and that Moores law will
> give us the speed that we need in time when we need it.
Several variables in the wikipedia system self-multiply. As the size of
database multiplies, the demands on the database system grow. As the size
of the database grows, the system becomes more attractive, bringing more
people to Wikipedia. We may currently be in a situation where we have
latent demand, which has been held back by system overload. Whilst the size
of wikipedia may approximate moore's law, the demand will probably exceed
it. The demand x size product is likely to far exceed moore's law.

We need more analysis on these issues. We need forecasts which the
architecture can be moulded around.

> Do you have any experience from designing systems like this? Would you
> write a prototype for this system that could be tested?

I have designed database systems. I have not designed a system of exactly
this sort. I don't think the system I proposed is complex. It uses known
database tecniques combined with public key and email. All of which are
well matured and understood technologies which have extensibility built
into the current free software code base. If it becomes clear to me no-one
else is prepared to pick up the gauntlet, I will do so if I get time. A lot
of my time is being spent on the GNU project.

> The vision
> sounds like science fiction to me, but a prototype that I can run is
> not science fiction, so that would make all the difference.

'still haven't made the transporter! :-(

>
> Here is another vision: I envision a system where I can synchronize
> my laptop or PDA with a wiki, then go offline and use it, update it,
> and when I return to my office I can resynchronize the two again.
> I have no idea on how to implement this vision.  I think it would be a
> lot of work.  But I think the result could be really useful.

The system I mentioned would work for this purpose. The PDA could collect
the update emails then integrate them into the database. Porting Wiki and
the supporting technology to the PDA would be a lot of work.

>
> I also see there are similarities between your vision and mine.  The
> idea is to express the update activity as a series of transactions
> (update submits) that can be transfered to another instance or
> multiple instances and be applied there.  In either case, one must
> take care of the case that the transmission of updates gets
> interrupted or delayed, and the potential "edit conflicts" that would
> result.  It doesn't seem trivial to me.

The solution I proposed is
1) To have edits serialised. They can only be applied in the specific order
 they were generated. 2) The pipermail mailing list will give sysadmins the
facility of downloading missed updates. 3) Spoof edits would be filtered-
the attachments from the main wiki server would be signed using a
private/public key pair and verified at the receiving end.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Do these red links have a name?

I call them "nonexistent links", which is patently false,
or sometimes ""?" links" to be nostalgic.
(Then "stub links" are also ""!" links".)

>BTW, could this wiki idea spread to science, so that a paper would
>cite other papers that might come into existence?  :-)

This is already done.  The paper is cited as "to appear".
You're only supposed to do this when you expect the paper to appear soon,
but sometimes it never does, and several decades later,
people reading your paper will waste days trying to track it down.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anglicization convention

body:
Eclecticology wrote in small part:

>The search function should include a provision that allows
>the plain character to be treated as equivalent to the one with
>diacritics.

This is a good idea regardless of anything else that we discuss here.
It's much like the case insensitivity of our searches.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anglicization convention

body:
On Friday 29 November 2002 04:00 am, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> It seems that Mav doesn't hasn't even read his own policy.  Before
> responding I just made a point of reading it at [[Wikipedia:Naming
> conventions (anglicization)]].  Even the qualification that he
> emphasizes is simply NOT THERE.  Admittedly, even that qualification is
> better than nothing.

It is on the actual naming convention page. The parenthetical subpages are for
"Rationale and specifics" and are not the actual conventions (the conventions
are restated for convenience though.. that is where the trouble lies). Alas I
did not copy over the convention correctly when I moved the detailed
explanation off the main naming conventions page. I have already fixed my
blunder.

>Who determines that majority?

The involved parties doing research and practicing common sense. Just as you,
me and Ortolan did with the Franz Josef. Google was a useful tool but not the
last word.

> >Notice the addition of: "at all familiar with the subject" (this includes
> > all interested English speaking parties, not just the experts).
>
> "at all familiar" is a step in the right direction.

Then if nobody objects I will make this change to the general statement on the
main naming conventions page. Also if nobody objects I will add "... unless
the native form or transliteration is used by English speakers more often
than the Anglicized or English translation." to the actual Anglicization
convention on the main naming convention page and its re-statement on the
"Rationale and specifics" subpage.

> We don't need for people to be self-appointed enforcers except in the
> most egregious cases; enforcement actions only irritate people.  If any
> kind of enforcement is appropriate on borderline cases it is to ensure
> that there is a redirect from the alternate form to the one actually
> used in whatever direction is needed.

I think you are reading too much into the word "enforcer." Moving a page is
analogous to fixing many bad spellings, or wikifing and reformatting a page
so that it follows our style guide. So that makes Ortolan a style enforcer,
Axel a spelling enforcer, me a naming convention enforcer and everybody here
'add useful content' enforcers. All these things aim to improve the articles,
not punish the original author.

> I would thus favour that when the difference between the native form and
> the usual English form is a matter only of diacritics that are a part of
> ISO 8859-1 the standard form should be the one with full ISO 8859-1
> diacritics.  The search function should include a provision that allows
> the plain character to be treated as equivalent to the one with
> diacritics.

This is where we differ. I am content with the current preference for English
in the English language Wikipedia in toss-ups. The use of diacritics is a bit
more problematic - if and when a non-diacritic form is in very wide used, we
should prefer to use that form. But you will notice I haven't been moving
other cases from their diacritical forms and have simply been making
redirects for the (vast majority) of English speaking netcitizens that don't
know how to create diacritics with their keyboards.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Payment for this post:

Several more paras to the Billy the Kid article;
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Billy_the_Kid&diff=450052&oldid=450047

Creation of a stub for a recent celebrity death;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verne_Winchell


subject: Re: [Sifter-l] We're online!

body:
On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Larry Sanger wrote:
>
> >For purposes of testing, we can make all new applicants sysops.  I made
> >several people sysops, and feel free to do that yourselves.
> >
> Sounds good.
>
> >Where and how should we give feedback on the program (bug reports, feature
> >requests, etc.), Magnus?
> >
> How about [[wikipedia:Gnupedia]], on wikipedia? Gnupedia (assuming we
> use that name) is, after all, closely related to wikipedia.
> Or should we go to meta? (I think not).

Well, I personally don't like the name "Gnupedia": it's aesthetically
unappealing to me (even less so than the word "Wikipedia" which many
people have complained about); it reminds me of the old FSF project which
is very different from this one in important points of policy; use of the
name presumes that the FSF will want to get behind it, which seems likely
but nonetheless is presumptuous; with one letter difference from
"Nupedia," the name makes me wonder what relation the project has to
Nupedia; and the uninitiated will pronounce it in a way identical to how
"Nupedia" is pronounced.

If we are going to put the bug report page on Wikipedia, sounds good, but
I'd encourage us not to think about the project as a Wikipedia subproject.
I thought a central idea behind the project was that it's supposed to be
independent of Wikipedia--that it is, rather, self-defining.

I think it might be better to use

http://chalkboard.nupedia.com/

which is presently unused by anyone, but best of all would be to have a
page on

http://www.seeatown.com/misc/main.php !

Larry


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 12:53:33AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >Not that thing !
> >External image.
>
> Upload the image to the Wikipedia server and link as above.
>
> Non-local inline images are inherently unreliable; the source may move
> or delete the image without warning, may consider us to be bandwidth
> thieves and block anything with a referrer from Wikipedia, may just be
> down when we're up, may not be copyright-compatible, and could be
> unhelpful to attempts to set up offline mirrors.

Well, images I want won't rally be external, but won't be uploaded either.
In any case, linking to external images should be policy issue,
not something that is forced by software.

I was trying to put Math parsing somewhere into 15-passes Wikipedia
markup parsing. Because there is no way to protect math markup from
interpretation by Wiki, I had to put it before removeHTMLtags.
But then, removeHTMLtags breaks <img src="" alt=""> tag.
Even if I tell removeHTMLtags to accept IMG ALT and SRC,
replaceExternalLinks would kill url in src="".

Any ideas ?

And some day we should make that parser a single-pass LALR ...


subject: [Sifter-l] The issues

body:
I'm taking some idle moments this fine Thanksgiving Day to lay out what I
regard as being the issues that we need to resolve before we "go live"
with the project.

=======
NUPEDIA OR NOT

A prime issue that needs to be resolved sometime, hopefully soon, is
whether the project should be hosted by Nupedia.

News on this front: without soliciting this input, I have found that two
of the most active Nupedia editors are largely supportive of having
Nupedia host it.

I *think* that most of us on the list (maybe all of us, don't know) can
see huge advantages for the project's being associated with Nupedia.  I
certainly do.

The only potential disadvantage that I can see is that Nupedians might be
generally opposed to the idea.  But with two Nupedia editors--whom I might
have thought would be opposed to it--actually at least tentatively in
favor of it, I'm now in favor of our simply *putting the question* to the
thousands of Nupedia members, precisely as Jimbo suggested.

I have two questions to *you* (listmembers):
* Do you in fact support the idea of Nupedia hosting the project?
* What needs to be included in the query to Nupedia members?
* Where should we direct them to reply?

This is probably the most important question:
* Should we begin formulating specific policy *before* or *after* any
potential influx of participation from Nupedians?

More on the latter next!

=======
WHEN DO WE DECIDE ON POLICY?

By "policy," I mean the "sifter" project's policy such as: what criteria
must an article meed to be included?  How is it decided what areas a given
reviewer can approve an article?  What are the criteria for accepting a
reviewer?  Etc.

By "when," I mean: before or after an potential influx of people from
Nupedia?

Of course, we've already started and solicited discussion of policy, so
the question is a little late perhaps, but if we were to say, "We're going
to start discussing policy *in earnest* after we've talked to Nupedia,"
that might help us to take the policy discussion more seriously.

=======
WHAT CRITERIA FOR ARTICLES?

I presently have no definite ideas about this, except this: as far as I'm
concerned, the *whole purpose* of the "sifter" project is to give the
world a body of articles that alleged experts have approved, in such a way
that will be of interest and use to librarians, teachers, and researchers
who care about having content "certified."

There are a few basic principles too that sound plausible to me:
* Approved articles must not be known to contain errors, and any
  questionable factual assertions must be checked.
* Biased articles (per either or both of Wikipedia's and Nupedia's nonbias
  policies) should not be posted.
* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
  the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
  me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
* The content should be of reasonably high quality from a professional
  point of view.  Would you be embarrassed for the leaders in your field
  to see this article as an allegedly authoritative statement about this
  subject?

More later...

Larry


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
Helga is back on the Wikipedia (see the user talk for H. Jonat). As far as
I can tell, she was banned on September 9, for three months. Have I missed
an announcement, or is this return without Jimbo's knowledge/assent?

Vicki

At 10:19 AM 9/9/02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>After much deliberation, and after due consideration for all of the
>arguments and discussions here, and taking into account what appears
>to me to be a general consensus, I have chosen to ban Helga for a
>period of 3 months.
>
>After that time, she can reapply to me personally for re-instatement.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> Helga is back on the Wikipedia (see the user talk for H. Jonat). As
> far as
> I can tell, she was banned on September 9, for three months. Have I
> missed
> an announcement, or is this return without Jimbo's knowledge/assent?

If she's here that's a fact.  The arbitrary 3-month period should not be
treated so significantly.  What's really important is her behaviour from
now forward.  Dwelling on her past sins doesn't help anybody.

Eclecticology


subject: Re: [Sifter-l] We're online!

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>For purposes of testing, we can make all new applicants sysops.  I made
>several people sysops, and feel free to do that yourselves.
>
Sounds good.

>Where and how should we give feedback on the program (bug reports, feature
>requests, etc.), Magnus?
>
How about [[wikipedia:Gnupedia]], on wikipedia? Gnupedia (assuming we
use that name) is, after all, closely related to wikipedia.
Or should we go to meta? (I think not).

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik wrote:
> Er...why was it removed?

Take a look through the old discussions, such as at:

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

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

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

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

(Note that many of the links in the above pages are broken as they were
moved bodily from the English-language encyclopedia wiki to the
meta-discussion wiki.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
One thing I noticed on another wiki(running a perl version of wiki) was the implementation of subpages.  For example, you have page "Rants" and on that page is the link code [[/MyRants]].  MyRants then becomes a subpage of Rants and is linked via /Rants/MyRants.  Has anyone implemented this in Wikipedia?

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021130/ccc213c9/attachment.htm


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
On 11/30/02 2:19 AM, "Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik" <rodzilla at seriouszone.com>
wrote:

> One thing I noticed on another wiki(running a perl version of wiki) was the
> implementation of subpages.  For example, you have page "Rants" and on that
> page is the link code [[/MyRants]].  MyRants then becomes a subpage of Rants
> and is linked via /Rants/MyRants.  Has anyone implemented this in Wikipedia?
>
Wikipedia started with the UseMod code (the one you're talking about) and
used to have that functionality. It was removed about a year ago...there's
plenty of historical discussion on subpages and slash-subpages on
meta.wikipedia.org.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
Er...why was it removed?

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at kband.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

> On 11/30/02 2:19 AM, "Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik" <rodzilla at seriouszone.com>
> wrote:
>
> > One thing I noticed on another wiki(running a perl version of wiki) was
the
> > implementation of subpages.  For example, you have page "Rants" and on
that
> > page is the link code [[/MyRants]].  MyRants then becomes a subpage of
Rants
> > and is linked via /Rants/MyRants.  Has anyone implemented this in
Wikipedia?
> >
> Wikipedia started with the UseMod code (the one you're talking about) and
> used to have that functionality. It was removed about a year ago...there's
> plenty of historical discussion on subpages and slash-subpages on
> meta.wikipedia.org.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tarquin

body:
Plz do not slander or harass me. It is not appropriate.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021130/eac900f4/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:17:21AM -0500, Jason Rodzilla Rodzik wrote:
>Has anyone added this back in for their own personal use?  Sure some people
>might hate them, but they're still useful for keeping things organized and
>having links such as /Part 1, /Part 2, /Changelog, etc...

Subpages are useful for "private" things, but I don't see why the /
should be any sort of special character, and I don't see what special
support is needed; the current flat namespace code accomodates the
subpages about as well as I would like right now.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021130/d509ecdf/attachment.pgp


subject: Copyediting (was Re: [Sifter-l] The issues)

body:
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:

> The primary question is, does "hosted by Nupedia" mean that sifter
> *becomes* Nupedia (or the other way around), or does it mean nupedia.com
> *also* runs sifter?

I don't see any good reason at all to delete the present software and
system.  I don't think that should be part of the proposal.

> >WHEN DO WE DECIDE ON POLICY?
> >
> >
> >By "when," I mean: before or after an potential influx of people from
> >Nupedia?
> >
> Can't harm to have some basics set up before we "officially" announce
> anything to the Nupedia people. It's not like we're hiding right now...

Sure.

> >* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
> >  the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
> >  me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
> >
> I don't follow here. What, exactly, needs not be accessible to whom? The
> certified articles will be accessible to everyone, just like wikipedia
> pages, right? Except fot the editing part, of course.

I see Imran made this more accessible to you.  ;-)

> >* The content should be of reasonably high quality from a professional
> >  point of view.  Would you be embarrassed for the leaders in your field
> >  to see this article as an allegedly authoritative statement about this
> >  subject?
> >
> Right. But I worry a little about "style". I consider myself fit to
> certify certain articles in biology and biochemistry, from the
> scientific point of view. But, the absence of a copyediting step might
> lead to ugly wording imported into the sifter, unintentionally of
> course. I am uncertain about how to solve this, except for copyeditors
> sifting again through the sifter Recent Changes.

Good point.  If we are agreed that sifter certification is going to mean
something that librarians can depend upon, being proofread carefully seems
important.  There are at least two possibilities here:

1. Use "the honor system," where we have reviewers say that they have
*thoroughly* copyedited the article, or, if they're not sure they can do
an excellent job at that, they've had someone else who is copyedit it.
We might just add a checkbox to the article import routine (default would
be unchecked) labelled "I have thoroughly copyedited this article, or I am
satisfied that someone else has already done so."

2. Designate a new category of worker in the system, the copyeditor.
Reviewers could be copyeditors, and in that case, any article uploaded by
the reviewer would automatically be posted.  But in cases where reviewers
are not copyeditors, the reviewer could only upload the article into a
staging area where articles would have to be approved--again, just the
press of one button--by *any* copyeditor, before being posted.

Now that I've spelled out these two options, I already favor option 1, as
long as we had set up some page on Wikipedia, on the new project, or via a
special mailing list whereby reviewers could let it be known to
copyeditors that a given article needs to be copyedited *now*.  The reason
I favor this is simply that I think we need to have as few bottlenecks as
possible, and that the dynamic and public nature of the editing medium
(Wikipedia) will make it very easy to correct the more obvious mistakes.
I think having a rule and a checkbox will help, and for reviewers
delinquent on this point, we can simply try to instruct them, as
Wikipedians instruct each other.

I'd be curious to know what Ruth Ifcher has to say about this, since she's
Nupedia's chief copyeditor.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
Could we remove this troll from the mailing list?

Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> I must insist upon "unlinks"

It's amazing how little I care about your opinion, Adam.

>


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:51:21PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 12:53:33AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > >Not that thing !
> > >External image.
> >
> > Upload the image to the Wikipedia server and link as above.
> >
> > Non-local inline images are inherently unreliable; the source may move
> > or delete the image without warning, may consider us to be bandwidth
> > thieves and block anything with a referrer from Wikipedia, may just be
> > down when we're up, may not be copyright-compatible, and could be
> > unhelpful to attempts to set up offline mirrors.
>
> Well, images I want won't rally be external, but won't be uploaded either.
> In any case, linking to external images should be policy issue,
> not something that is forced by software.
>
> I was trying to put Math parsing somewhere into 15-passes Wikipedia
> markup parsing. Because there is no way to protect math markup from
> interpretation by Wiki, I had to put it before removeHTMLtags.
> But then, removeHTMLtags breaks  tag.
> Even if I tell removeHTMLtags to accept IMG ALT and SRC,
> replaceExternalLinks would kill url in src="".
>
> Any ideas ?
>
Did you look into the code I sent you? It parses math formulas as
internal links, but instead of an <A HREF= it generates an
<IMG SRC= -Tag. The PHP-Code can generate IMG-Tags of course, it's
just the wikie markup that can't.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Very serious: please fix <pre> immediately for Polish Wikipedia

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Please restore old meaning of <pre> which suppressed interpretation
> of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
> whether others will have broken markup)
>
> It broke virtually all code examples on Polish Wikipedia !!!

It did the same in the English Wikipedia; they have now been fixed. I
think Lee argued at the time for the new conventions. I don't think it
is a good idea to use differing Wiki markup semantics on the different
language Wikipedias, because then cut-and-paste becomes impossible and
maintaining the code turns into a nightmare.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] terminology

body:
Tarquin wrote:

>Could we remove this troll from the mailing list?

>Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

>>I must insist upon "unlinks"

This seems like acceptable behaviour.

>It's amazing how little I care about your opinion, Adam.

There are some people on this list whose opinions I don't care about.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
Has anyone added this back in for their own personal use?  Sure some people
might hate them, but they're still useful for keeping things organized and
having links such as /Part 1, /Part 2, /Changelog, etc...

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 5:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

> Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik wrote:
> > Er...why was it removed?
>
> Take a look through the old discussions, such as at:
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_case_against_subpages
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_am_suspicious_of_subpages
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_rid_of_subpages_entirely
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary_Save_the_subpages
>
> (Note that many of the links in the above pages are broken as they were
> moved bodily from the English-language encyclopedia wiki to the
> meta-discussion wiki.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

>>Helga is back on the Wikipedia (see the user talk for H. Jonat). As far as
>>I can tell, she was banned on September 9, for three months. Have I missed
>>an announcement, or is this return without Jimbo's knowledge/assent?

>If she's here that's a fact.  The arbitrary 3-month period should not be
>treated so significantly.  What's really important is her behaviour from
>now forward.  Dwelling on her past sins doesn't help anybody.

There is the issue of the integrity of banning procedures.
She can only have been unbanned by an administrator,
and there was discussion earlier on the list that her time was about up.
I suspect that somebody simply messed up the timing.
If this is correct, and there was no subversion of the process,
then you're right, we should concentrate on her behaviour now.
But if she did an end run on the system (and Jimbo's wishes) somehow,
then that shouldn't be rewarded.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
On 11/30/02 11:48 AM, "Jonathan Walther" <krooger at debian.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:17:21AM -0500, Jason Rodzilla Rodzik wrote:
>> Has anyone added this back in for their own personal use?  Sure some people
>> might hate them, but they're still useful for keeping things organized and
>> having links such as /Part 1, /Part 2, /Changelog, etc...
>
> Subpages are useful for "private" things, but I don't see why the /
> should be any sort of special character, and I don't see what special
> support is needed; the current flat namespace code accomodates the
> subpages about as well as I would like right now.

However it's implemented, the subpage magic was very useful for creating and
linking subordinate pages. There's isn't any similar way to easily create
subordinate pages.

I think it would be reasonable to return the subpage magic to the user
namespace.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:07jjackson

body:
>Someone other than 07jjackson has created a user page with that name
>containing the following:

[cut]

>Does this user exist? Should the page be deleted?

The user does exist in the sense that it appears on [[Special:Listusers]],
which (developer please confirm) means that the login account was created.
OTOH, the account has made no contributions.
I'd leave a note on the talk page of the creator of the page,
but we might as well keep it for now.

-- Toby


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
Rodzilla Wrote:
>I see no reason not to include it.  If people don't like it, just
don't use
>it.  It does have a useful purpose, allowing you to make pages that are
>under another page(such as /Changes, /Ideas, /Rants, etc...) without
running
>into a problem where you have a page named Page_1_Rants and
Page_2_Rants and
>so on..

Subpages result in such wonderful and natural sounding titles as
[[China/Politics]] and [[guitar/Bass]] (yes, that was a title at one
time).  Who writes "[[Paul McCartney]] is a well-known [[Guitar/Bass]]
player"?

kq


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Very serious: please fix <pre> immediately for Polish
 Wikipedia

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Please restore old meaning of
 which suppressed interpretation
> of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
> whether others will have broken markup)

I don't remember it ever working differently; I was not aware that the
behavior had been changed. Changing it again now would of course
probably break other code...

> It broke virtually all code examples on Polish Wikipedia !!!

If you want that, use:

<nowiki>
   ...
   </nowiki>

> And don't do any more changes to markup in future without telling
> people about that.

I'll just point out we had a test server running for *months* with the
new software and a copy of the Polish wiki precisely to check for things
that might need to be fixed or changed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:23:08PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>>
>>>Please restore old meaning of
 which suppressed interpretation
>>>of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
>>>whether others will have broken markup)
>>
>>I don't remember it ever working differently; I was not aware that the
>>behavior had been changed. Changing it again now would of course
>>probably break other code...
>
> It always worked differently.

Well, it's worked the present way at least since January on the English
wiki as far as I know. I'll drop a note on the English and general lists
to warn about plans of changing it back.

> If you don't want to mess with code too much, just insert something like:
> if ($language eq "pl")
> {
>     $text =~ s/
/
<nowiki>/g;
>     $text =~ s/<\/pre>/<\/nowiki><\/pre>/g;
> }

I would much prefer that the markup work consistently the same
throughout the 'pedia in all languages.

> Second,
 on wiki has always been meant for listing code,
> so it makes no sense at all to use wiki markup inside
.
> And third, <nowiki> is extremely low level markup. Introducing
> more low level markup is not right direction.

Hmm, come to think of it, there's no good reason to use
 separately
-- putting a space in the first line does preformatting for wikitext.

> In future, some higher level mechanism like
> may be implemented, to get rid of
 and <nowiki> and give some extras
> like downloading examples listed in arcticle, searching for code etc.
> But as for now let
 keep its old meaning.

Something like that might also be nice for citing texts.

>>>And don't do any more changes to markup in future without telling
>>>people about that.
>>
>>I'll just point out we had a test server running for *months* with the
>>new software and a copy of the Polish wiki precisely to check for things
>>that might need to be fixed or changed.
>
> Human testing is always unreliable - people take most efford to check things
> they suspect might be broken, like translation. They don't check things they
> don't expect to break.

This is software -- expect everything to break. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
I see no reason not to include it.  If people don't like it, just don't use
it.  It does have a useful purpose, allowing you to make pages that are
under another page(such as /Changes, /Ideas, /Rants, etc...) without running
into a problem where you have a page named Page_1_Rants and Page_2_Rants and
so on..

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at kband.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

> On 11/30/02 11:48 AM, "Jonathan Walther" <krooger at debian.org> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:17:21AM -0500, Jason Rodzilla Rodzik wrote:
> >> Has anyone added this back in for their own personal use?  Sure some
people
> >> might hate them, but they're still useful for keeping things organized
and
> >> having links such as /Part 1, /Part 2, /Changelog, etc...
> >
> > Subpages are useful for "private" things, but I don't see why the /
> > should be any sort of special character, and I don't see what special
> > support is needed; the current flat namespace code accomodates the
> > subpages about as well as I would like right now.
>
> However it's implemented, the subpage magic was very useful for creating
and
> linking subordinate pages. There's isn't any similar way to easily create
> subordinate pages.
>
> I think it would be reasonable to return the subpage magic to the user
> namespace.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Notice of proposed change to <pre> markup behavior

body:
Taw has pointed out that on the old UseMod wiki software, putting text
in a <pre> tag disabled interpretation of wiki markup as well as being
preformatted. On the Polish wikipedia, this was extensively used for
programming examples, where markup interpretation (links, lists, etc)
could horribly break the code.

At some point this was changed on the new software, so that to get the
same effect you have to also put in a <nowiki> tag inside the <pre> tag;
this means the many code examples are broken until they have yet more
tags added to them; Taw has requested that the old behavior be restored
instead.

Compare old:
  http://simple.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?SandBox
and current:
  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ASandbox

Is there any objection to making this change? Preformatted text with
wikicode interpretation has always been available by putting a blank
space at the beginning of each line, making <pre> redundant.

The change might require some pages on the English wiki to be altered to
remove now-redundant <nowiki> tags.

An additional question: while UseMod's <pre> and <nowiki> tags both
suppressed HTML tags (ie, <b>bold</b> appeared as raw text), neither
suppressed character references (ie, ĉ appeared as
c-with-circumflex, not as raw text). The current <nowiki> behavior
suppresses both tags and char references. Which is preferred?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] ALT=?

body:
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:51:21PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>I was trying to put Math parsing somewhere into 15-passes Wikipedia
>markup parsing. Because there is no way to protect math markup from
>interpretation by Wiki, I had to put it before removeHTMLtags.
>But then, removeHTMLtags breaks <img src="" alt=""> tag.
>Even if I tell removeHTMLtags to accept IMG ALT and SRC,
>replaceExternalLinks would kill url in src="".
>
>Any ideas ?

Ah! Well, that's a different matter then.

Worst case, use a placeholder string; replace all math sections with the
placeholder, store them in a stack, then dump in the interpreted code
after user-supplied tags are dealt with. I believe some pass or another
currently works like this. Ugly, but...

Yes, we need to rewrite the parser sometime! Preferably something that
can guarantee well-formed XHTML, since we keep making noises about
MathML and SVG.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 01:57:01PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>Hmm, come to think of it, there's no good reason to use <pre> separately
>>-- putting a space in the first line does preformatting for wikitext.
>
> But then it wouldn't be (copy;paste;compile)-able any more.

Right, that's a reason why you would want to use <pre> instead.

What I mean is, there's no reason to use <pre> for text that you *do*
want wikicode interpreted in, since there's already a wikicode way to do it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] The issues

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>NUPEDIA OR NOT
>
>A prime issue that needs to be resolved sometime, hopefully soon, is
>whether the project should be hosted by Nupedia.
>
The primary question is, does "hosted by Nupedia" mean that sifter
*becomes* Nupedia (or the other way around), or does it mean nupedia.com
*also* runs sifter?

>WHEN DO WE DECIDE ON POLICY?
>
>
>By "when," I mean: before or after an potential influx of people from
>Nupedia?
>
Can't harm to have some basics set up before we "officially" announce
anything to the Nupedia people. It's not like we're hiding right now...

>WHAT CRITERIA FOR ARTICLES?
>
>I presently have no definite ideas about this, except this: as far as I'm
>concerned, the *whole purpose* of the "sifter" project is to give the
>world a body of articles that alleged experts have approved, in such a way
>that will be of interest and use to librarians, teachers, and researchers
>who care about having content "certified."
>
That's one of the things I meant with "basics".

>There are a few basic principles too that sound plausible to me:
>* Approved articles must not be known to contain errors, and any
>  questionable factual assertions must be checked.
>* Biased articles (per either or both of Wikipedia's and Nupedia's nonbias
>  policies) should not be posted.
>
No complains here.

>* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
>  the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
>  me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
>
I don't follow here. What, exactly, needs not be accessible to whom? The
certified articles will be accessible to everyone, just like wikipedia
pages, right? Except fot the editing part, of course.

>* The content should be of reasonably high quality from a professional
>  point of view.  Would you be embarrassed for the leaders in your field
>  to see this article as an allegedly authoritative statement about this
>  subject?
>
Right. But I worry a little about "style". I consider myself fit to
certify certain articles in biology and biochemistry, from the
scientific point of view. But, the absence of a copyediting step might
lead to ugly wording imported into the sifter, unintentionally of
course. I am uncertain about how to solve this, except for copyeditors
sifting again through the sifter Recent Changes.

Magnus


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] The issues

body:
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Larry Sanger wrote:
> >* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
> >  the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
> >  me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
> >
> I don't follow here. What, exactly, needs not be accessible to whom? The
> certified articles will be accessible to everyone, just like wikipedia
> pages, right? Except fot the editing part, of course.

I believe Larry means accessible as in understandable.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 02:05:43PM -0500, Jason Rodzilla Rodzik wrote:
>I see no reason not to include it.  If people don't like it, just don't use
>it.  It does have a useful purpose, allowing you to make pages that are
>under another page(such as /Changes, /Ideas, /Rants, etc...) without running
>into a problem where you have a page named Page_1_Rants and Page_2_Rants and
>so on..

I guess I just don't see that as a problem.  Also, adding in new code to
the codebase for no good reason enhances the complexity, potential bugs,
slows things down, and for no real benefit.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021130/3bcb0837/attachment.pgp


subject: Re: [Sifter-l] The issues

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:

>On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>
>>Larry Sanger wrote:
>>
>>
>>>* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
>>> the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
>>> me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I don't follow here. What, exactly, needs not be accessible to whom? The
>>certified articles will be accessible to everyone, just like wikipedia
>>pages, right? Except fot the editing part, of course.
>>
>>
>
>I believe Larry means accessible as in understandable.
>
>
Thanks, that's more accessible to me ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

body:
That's a problem with people and not the implementation.

---------------------------------------------------
Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik
Seriously! Owner & Director of Operations
http://www.seriouszone.com

----- Original Message -----
From: <koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Subpages

> Rodzilla Wrote:
> >I see no reason not to include it.  If people don't like it, just
> don't use
> >it.  It does have a useful purpose, allowing you to make pages that are
> >under another page(such as /Changes, /Ideas, /Rants, etc...) without
> running
> >into a problem where you have a page named Page_1_Rants and
> Page_2_Rants and
> >so on..
>
> Subpages result in such wonderful and natural sounding titles as
> [[China/Politics]] and [[guitar/Bass]] (yes, that was a title at one
> time).  Who writes "[[Paul McCartney]] is a well-known [[Guitar/Bass]]
> player"?
>
> kq
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


subject: Re: Copyediting (was Re: [Sifter-l] The issues)

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>>The primary question is, does "hosted by Nupedia" mean that sifter
>>*becomes* Nupedia (or the other way around), or does it mean nupedia.com
>>*also* runs sifter?
>>
>>
>
>I don't see any good reason at all to delete the present software and
>system.  I don't think that should be part of the proposal.
>
That's my opinion as well. Just checking.

>>>* The content should be of reasonably high quality from a professional
>>> point of view.  Would you be embarrassed for the leaders in your field
>>> to see this article as an allegedly authoritative statement about this
>>> subject?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Right. But I worry a little about "style". I consider myself fit to
>>certify certain articles in biology and biochemistry, from the
>>scientific point of view. But, the absence of a copyediting step might
>>lead to ugly wording imported into the sifter, unintentionally of
>>course. I am uncertain about how to solve this, except for copyeditors
>>sifting again through the sifter Recent Changes.
>>
>>
>
>Good point.  If we are agreed that sifter certification is going to mean
>something that librarians can depend upon, being proofread carefully seems
>important.
>
OK, how about this adaption of your proposal #1:
* Next to the "Import" button, there's a checkbox "this might need
copyediting", unchecked by default
* Pages that were imported with that checkbox set are marked on the
Recent Changes, and/or appear on a special "copyedit" page
* Any reviewer (or just special copyeditors) can go to such an article
and remove that tag with a single click; or, copyedits on wikipedia, and
re-imports without setting the checkbox

Magnus


body:
Please restore old meaning of <pre> which suppressed interpretation
of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
whether others will have broken markup)

It broke virtually all code examples on Polish Wikipedia !!!

And don't do any more changes to markup in future without telling
people about that.


body:
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 11:06:07AM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > Please restore old meaning of <pre> which suppressed interpretation
> > of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
> > whether others will have broken markup)
> >
> > It broke virtually all code examples on Polish Wikipedia !!!
>
> It did the same in the English Wikipedia; they have now been fixed. I
> think Lee argued at the time for the new conventions. I don't think it
> is a good idea to use differing Wiki markup semantics on the different
> language Wikipedias, because then cut-and-paste becomes impossible and
> maintaining the code turns into a nightmare.

Having to fight all these gratuitous changes is a nightmare already.
Please either restore <pre> to old meaning on all Wikipedias or
just on Polish.


subject: [Sifter-l] Copyediting

body:
Hi fellow-sifters,

     I'm writing to let you all know that I have read Larry's email, requesting
input from me on the copy editing function for sifter, and will answer as soon
as I am sure of what I would suggest.
     In the mean time, I have a question about the "sifter" process. I am told
that when a reviewer selects an article for "sifter," if the reviewer wants to
make any changes before approval, they will make them on wikipedia. My question
is, how do we assure that the chosen article remains stable in wikipedia, while
the reviewer makes his/her changes?
     Due to the strange mixture of mark-up in wikipedia, it seems a reviewer
can only check his/her change/changes from within wikipedia. Never the less, it
doesn't make sense to leave the article "unprotected" while the reviewer works;
he might find an article changed by another wikipedian, while he/she is
reviewing it. Worse, in time, as wikipedians become aware that the sifter
process is going on in a particular article, some wikipedian, looking to cause
trouble, may really mess up an article being reviewed. Shouldn't the review
process be protected?

          Remarks on copy editing, later...

                 As Ever,

                    Ruth Ifcher

--

> On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> > The primary question is, does "hosted by Nupedia" mean that sifter
> > *becomes* Nupedia (or the other way around), or does it mean nupedia.com
> > *also* runs sifter?
>
> I don't see any good reason at all to delete the present software and
> system.  I don't think that should be part of the proposal.
>
> > >WHEN DO WE DECIDE ON POLICY?
> > >
> > >
> > >By "when," I mean: before or after an potential influx of people from
> > >Nupedia?
> > >
> > Can't harm to have some basics set up before we "officially" announce
> > anything to the Nupedia people. It's not like we're hiding right now...
>
> Sure.
>
> > >* The content should be accessible to the people who might actually need
> > >  the article.  So some of Axel's math articles need not be accessible to
> > >  me, but they should be accessible to undergrads that study the stuff.
> > >
> > I don't follow here. What, exactly, needs not be accessible to whom? The
> > certified articles will be accessible to everyone, just like wikipedia
> > pages, right? Except fot the editing part, of course.
>
> I see Imran made this more accessible to you.  ;-)
>
> > >* The content should be of reasonably high quality from a professional
> > >  point of view.  Would you be embarrassed for the leaders in your field
> > >  to see this article as an allegedly authoritative statement about this
> > >  subject?
> > >
> > Right. But I worry a little about "style". I consider myself fit to
> > certify certain articles in biology and biochemistry, from the
> > scientific point of view. But, the absence of a copyediting step might
> > lead to ugly wording imported into the sifter, unintentionally of
> > course. I am uncertain about how to solve this, except for copyeditors
> > sifting again through the sifter Recent Changes.
>
> Good point.  If we are agreed that sifter certification is going to mean
> something that librarians can depend upon, being proofread carefully seems
> important.  There are at least two possibilities here:
>
> 1. Use "the honor system," where we have reviewers say that they have
> *thoroughly* copyedited the article, or, if they're not sure they can do
> an excellent job at that, they've had someone else who is copyedit it.
> We might just add a checkbox to the article import routine (default would
> be unchecked) labelled "I have thoroughly copyedited this article, or I am
> satisfied that someone else has already done so."
>
> 2. Designate a new category of worker in the system, the copyeditor.
> Reviewers could be copyeditors, and in that case, any article uploaded by
> the reviewer would automatically be posted.  But in cases where reviewers
> are not copyeditors, the reviewer could only upload the article into a
> staging area where articles would have to be approved--again, just the
> press of one button--by *any* copyeditor, before being posted.
>
> Now that I've spelled out these two options, I already favor option 1, as
> long as we had set up some page on Wikipedia, on the new project, or via a
> special mailing list whereby reviewers could let it be known to
> copyeditors that a given article needs to be copyedited *now*.  The reason
> I favor this is simply that I think we need to have as few bottlenecks as
> possible, and that the dynamic and public nature of the editing medium
> (Wikipedia) will make it very easy to correct the more obvious mistakes.
> I think having a rule and a checkbox will help, and for reviewers
> delinquent on this point, we can simply try to instruct them, as
> Wikipedians instruct each other.
>
> I'd be curious to know what Ruth Ifcher has to say about this, since she's
> Nupedia's chief copyeditor.
>
> Larry
> --
> "We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
> the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sifter-l mailing list
> Sifter-l@nupedia.com
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l


body:
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:23:08PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >Please restore old meaning of
 which suppressed interpretation
> >of wiki markup ! (for Polish Wikipedia at least, I don't care much
> >whether others will have broken markup)
>
> I don't remember it ever working differently; I was not aware that the
> behavior had been changed. Changing it again now would of course
> probably break other code...

It always worked differently.

If you don't want to mess with code too much, just insert something like:
if ($language eq "pl")
{
    $text =~ s/
/
<nowiki>/g;
    $text =~ s/<\/pre>/<\/nowiki><\/pre>/g;
}

> >It broke virtually all code examples on Polish Wikipedia !!!
>
> If you want that, use:
>
<nowiki>
>   ...
>   </nowiki>

Some 90% of
 would need such change.
First, it would mean lot of wasted effort.
Second,
 on wiki has always been meant for listing code,
so it makes no sense at all to use wiki markup inside
.
And third, <nowiki> is extremely low level markup. Introducing
more low level markup is not right direction.

In future, some higher level mechanism like
may be implemented, to get rid of
 and <nowiki> and give some extras
like downloading examples listed in arcticle, searching for code etc.
But as for now let
 keep its old meaning.

> >And don't do any more changes to markup in future without telling
> >people about that.
>
> I'll just point out we had a test server running for *months* with the
> new software and a copy of the Polish wiki precisely to check for things
> that might need to be fixed or changed.

Human testing is always unreliable - people take most efford to check things
they suspect might be broken, like translation. They don't check things they
don't expect to break.


body:
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 01:57:01PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >Second, <pre> on wiki has always been meant for listing code,
> >so it makes no sense at all to use wiki markup inside <pre>.
> >And third, <nowiki> is extremely low level markup. Introducing
> >more low level markup is not right direction.
>
> Hmm, come to think of it, there's no good reason to use <pre> separately
> -- putting a space in the first line does preformatting for wikitext.

But then it wouldn't be (copy;paste;compile)-able any more.


subject: [Wikitech-l] more on namespaces

body:
Namespaces appear to exist so that actual encyclopedia articles can be
distinguished from everything else. Instead of namespaces, could
Wikipedia live with a flag that said "This is an article" for each
article?

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021130/89a38035/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] more on namespaces

body:
On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 08:51:48AM +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
>What is the problem you have with namespaces? Namespaces provide
>much more information than a binary article/no article. Page layout
>is different for talk than for user pages: User pages have links
>like "user contributions". Talk pages have not. And image-pages
>bevave very differently to the above. That's why there are namespaces.

Thank you Jens.  Thats the kind of information I was looking for.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021130/875c9b68/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] dealing with deletions

body:
What is the desired behavior?  If someone creates an article that was
previously deleted, should the articles previous history get restored?

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021201/35578af5/attachment.pgp>