from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
> Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work.
> But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status
> and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.

Even if they did the situation for their original work would be the same: It
would have fallen into the public domain by the time Disney got their hands
onto it.

> >My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those
> >proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never
> be
> >combined to create something better.
>
> Even in the case of Disney, this is not entirely true!
> Disney's proprietary fork on the Snow White fairy tale
> feeds back to the free storytellers' community in parodies.
> That's not very much, and as I indicated in my previous post,
> I'd be much happier if Disney couldn't create such forks.
> But even this situation is not as absolute as you claim.

When content goes into the public domain anybody can do whatever they want with
it. This is especially fine by me for reference works since by the time its
copyright expires it is already old and probably way out of date. I see nothing
wrong with that. I just want to make sure that before that happens the
reference content Wikimedia creates is protected by copyleft. Eventually all
Wikimedia content will also enter the public domain, but so long as derivative
works are being made, then the most recent and useful versions of that content
will be copyleft.

> The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better.
> But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact,
> that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't.
> The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less.
> The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft
> does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.

Hm. Proving a negative. Interesting logic.  Prove to me that UFOs do not exist!
;)

> Let's go through the argument carefully:
>
> * There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B).
> * Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works
>   can be fed back into the original programme.
> * Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back,
>   while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not.
> * Conclusion: More deriviative works will be available for positive feedback
>   under (A) than under (B).

Yes, possibility B creates more forks. Exactly my point - thank you for proving
it for me. :) Under possibility B the number of content forks (not just
mirrors) is greatly increased, thus update energy is diluted. Under possibility
A update energy is concentrated on a smaller number of forks and when there are
forks any modifications made to them can be used by all the others. This
reduces duplicated effort and gives more time to create more content (mirrors
will and abridged versions will also propogate all over the place). Let me
illustrate:

All content created by U.S. federal employees as part of their work immediately
goes into the public domain. But this work is very often rather rough and needs
to be fixed and streamlined - which thousands of different organizations and
individuals do (there is a whole industry for this surrounding census and GIS
data). And by default, none of those improvements can be back-ported to improve
the original or any other fork.

As a matter of fact, I've never heard of this ever happening for federal data
(I'm sure it has, but not on any significant scale I've seen). Yet, by default,
anything under a copyleft license *can* be backported to improve the original
or any other fork. This encourages cooperation and discourages forks. That in
turn increases the number of eyes on any particular version of the content.

> Now, this conclusion does not in fact follow.
> Here is a conclusion that ''does'' follow:
> * Valid conclusion: A greater proportion of derivative works
>   will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
>
> Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
>
> * Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).

If I indicated that (which I'm pretty sure I did not), then I was mistaken. See
above why having a greater number of derivative works is a bad thing and why
copyleft discourages that by default whereas PD and attribution-only encourages
it. What matters is the amount of effort that goes into creating the content vs
the number of end users who use the information contained in it.

> ...
> In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome
> before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence.
> But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections,
> then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.

By-laws can be changed by a simple majority of the trustees. If in the future
we find that a particular project, such as Wikinews, isn't doing so well and we
suspect it is the fact that it is using a copyleft license, then a change can
be made to make an exception.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia

body:
--- Gabriel Wicke <lists at wikidev.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 20:48 +0800, yuanml wrote:
> > Hi, everybody, I'm an administrator in Chinese Wikipedia - User:Mountain.
> >
> > I have a request: Who can help us to change the default font size on
> Chinese Wikipedia.
> >
> > Now the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia is too small, many users
> required us to change it.
> > we can change the default css to that:
> >
> > body, #globalWrapper { font-size:11pt }
> >
> > It looks better for most users.
>
> Please don't use this rule as it would prevent the entire skin from
> scaling with the user's browser font size.
>
> I'd propose something like #globalWrapper { font-size:130%; } instead.

Whatever the specific percentage, I agree that the font size should be
relative.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Template initialisation script

body:
To complete the conversion of the wikipedias to MediaWiki 1.3, I'm going
to run a script which does the following:

* Moves every page in the MediaWiki namespace which is not an internal
message, to the Template namespace, unless there is already a page at
the target location
* In all pages linking to the moved pages, or including a template,
{{msg:pagename}} will be converted to {{pagename}}, and
[[MediaWiki:pagename]] will be converted to [[Template:pagename]], where
pagename is the name of the moved page.

After this is done, a few technical problems involving clearing caches
when templates are changed will be fixed.

This will probably take a while. There won't be any downtime. Edits will
be attributed to "Template namespace initialisation script".

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiReader Free Software and Free Contents

body:
Hi folks,

As you might have read on wikipedia-l or de:Wikipedia we have started
to make PDFs out of our contents at de:
Today I want announce to those who haven't heard about it yet, that
I'm planning to do a WikiReader on Free Software and Free Contents.
The plan is to get it done by June 9th as a kind of gift for
the WOS3 conference in Berlin. Jimbo and Eloqunce will held speeches and
there's the "Wikipedia Community Day".

Generating the PDF and such is easy, but the time consumpting thing
is finding a final TOC and extending some of the articles.

I hope that some of you are interested in the topic and take a look at
the current TOC.

ciao, tom

== External Links ==
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader/Free_Software_and_Free_Contents
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: A parallel World Wide Web?

body:
On Thursday, June 03, 2004 1:18 AM
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

>> Encyclopedia != "database containing all human knowledge". An
>> encyclopedia is an encyclopedia.
>
> Oh, OK. It's an encyclopedia -- so let's take a look at Wiktionary to
> find out what an encyclopedia is:
>
> A reference work (often in several volumes) containing in-depth
> articles on various topics (often arranged in alphabetical
> order) dealing with a wide range of subjects or with some
> particular specialty.
>
> This doesn't seem to exclude any human knowledge, neither explicitly
> nor implicitly. What parts of human knowledge should in your view not
> be covered in an encyclopedia, and why?

According to the quoted definition an encyclopedia is 'dealing with a
wide range of subjects'. This implicits that each encyclopedia has
to define this range. So let's start thinking about wikipedias range.

I don't think that we are able to draw an exact line (somewhere between
the [[left screw of the rear break of the bicycle of Uli Fuchs]] and the
[[Mona Lisa]]). But at least an idea where this line could be would help
us a lot in beeing an encyclopedia and not just a parallel World Wide
Web.

Arne
[[de:Benutzer:Akl]]


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> To complete the conversion of the wikipedias to MediaWiki 1.3, I'm going
> to run a script which does the following:
>
> * Moves every page in the MediaWiki namespace which is not an internal
> message, to the Template namespace, unless there is already a page at
> the target location
> * In all pages linking to the moved pages, or including a template,
> {{msg:pagename}} will be converted to {{pagename}}, and
> [[MediaWiki:pagename]] will be converted to [[Template:pagename]], where
> pagename is the name of the moved page.
>
> After this is done, a few technical problems involving clearing caches
> when templates are changed will be fixed.
>
> This will probably take a while. There won't be any downtime. Edits will
> be attributed to "Template namespace initialisation script".
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

On fr: most, if not all, of these have normaly already been moved from the MediaWiki: namespace
the Template: namespace (Mod?le: in french). The REDIRECT is still in place.

-- Looxix


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiReader Free Software and Free Contents

body:
Neat ! I like the idea of double language.

Who is reviewing the contents of the articles just before you generate
the pdf ?

Ant

Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> As you might have read on wikipedia-l or de:Wikipedia we have started
> to make PDFs out of our contents at de:
> Today I want announce to those who haven't heard about it yet, that
> I'm planning to do a WikiReader on Free Software and Free Contents.
> The plan is to get it done by June 9th as a kind of gift for
> the WOS3 conference in Berlin. Jimbo and Eloqunce will held speeches and
> there's the "Wikipedia Community Day".
>
> Generating the PDF and such is easy, but the time consumpting thing
> is finding a final TOC and extending some of the articles.
>
> I hope that some of you are interested in the topic and take a look at
> the current TOC.
>
> ciao, tom
>
> == External Links ==
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader/Free_Software_and_Free_Contents
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Correstponding language logos for each wiki

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:
> With the new look to the wiki,
> (congrats on its appeal!) the logo
> is back to English in the other lang
> wikis. What needs to be done to
> display the corresponding language
> logo?

Could you be more specific about which wikis you're talking about? I
spot-checked de, vi, he, ar, and eo and they look fine.

> I've translated the logos for several
> wikis last time around and I'm
> willing to do this again if needed.
>
> Simply uploading the file doesn't
> do the trick... I believe.

That's right. That just uploads a file.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Major contributions bug

body:
I'd like to report a major bug

I lost contributions (ie some contributions I made are not listed in my
contributions list) and I have contributions listed, that I never made.

See my contributions list

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Anthere

------

According to that list, I made only 4 contribs these past 3 days
     * 2 jun 2004 ? 19:52 (hist) Discuter:M?tazoaire  (derni?re) [r?voquer]
     * 2 jun 2004 ? 19:50 (hist) Zoologie (derni?re) [r?voquer]
     * 2 jun 2004 ? 19:48 (hist) Animal (derni?re) [r?voquer]
     * 1 jun 2004 ? 13:59 (hist) M Wikip?dia:Statuts de la Fondation
Wikimedia (test) (derni?re) [r?voquer]

Well, I am sure I did many more.

See for example

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impuissance
History :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Impuissance&action=history

That article I created is listed no where in my contributions.

------

According to that contribution list, I made no contribution between the
17th of may to the 28th of may. Which I very strongly doubt, as I make
edits basically everyday.

------

According to my contribution list, I contributed to
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia-garbage

while history shows...

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia-garbage&action=history

And I am really sure I never did anything on that article

-------

According to that list, I have not edited the bistro since many many
days, when I made a lot of clean up on the 30th.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le+Bistro&limit=100&offset=100&action=history

In short, the contribution list is ALL MESSED UP.

Is it the same for other users ?


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work.
>>But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status
>>and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.

>Even if they did the situation for their original work would be the same: It
>would have fallen into the public domain by the time Disney got their hands
>onto it.

Well, if we're going to consider what it might have been like
if copyleft had been thought of back in the Grimms' day,
then we might as well consider what it might have been like
if copyrights had lasted as long then as they do now.
If so, then the standard 7th edition could still have been copyright
when Disney made his movie. ^_^

Of course, the point is not what the Grimms' ''should'' have done;
they had no choice in the matter.  The point is what would have happened
under various circumstances.  Such hypothesising won't be very historical.

>>The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better.
>>But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact,
>>that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't.
>>The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less.
>>The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft
>>does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.

>Hm. Proving a negative. Interesting logic.
>Prove to me that UFOs do not exist! ;)

You smile, but this would be an absolutely legitimate demand
if I were to propose a policy that would only be a good policy
if UFOs did not exist.

Keep in mind, you're the one that's proposing a stricter policy.
So it's no surprise that I'm asking you to justify assumptions
that go into making that policy!

Of course, you don't really have to ''prove'' anything absolutely;
in this analogy, it'd enough to explain why UFOs are implausible.
And it's quite possible that I could do that, if I had to.

>>Let's go through the argument carefully:
>>* There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B).
>>* Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works
>>  can be fed back into the original programme.
>>* Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back,
>>  while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not.
>>* Conclusion: More derivative works will be available for positive feedback
>>  under (A) than under (B).

>Yes, possibility B creates more forks. Exactly my point - thank you for
>proving it for me. :)

Aargh!!!  No, I did ''not'' prove it for you!

I went through the argument carefully, so that anybody could see
that in fact the conclusion remains ''unproven''.
I mean, the conclusion definitely does not follow
from the argument that I wrote above!

There is a difference between ?greater proportion? (proven)
and ?greater amount? (unproven).  Ignoring this difference
leads to a host of statistical fallacies.

However, all of this may be moot now:

>Under possibility B the number of content forks (not just
>mirrors) is greatly increased, thus update energy is diluted.

Now, ''this'' is a new argument.  This is a premise that I never stated,
and I never noticed before that you were claiming it to be true.
So now maybe this will fill in the logical gap! ^_^

So, let me see if I have this straight.  First, you're saying
that there will be more derivative works with (B) than with (A).
I have to agree that I find this quite plausible. ^_^

Then, this introduces a new factor, which is dilution of effort;
presumably lowering the average quality of each fork
(even ''before'' we consider whether they can be recombined).
I don't think that I agree with this,
since more derivative works may be spread more widely,
causing more people to work on improvement in the first place.
This is particularly likely in the WikiNews example,
since any hesitation on the part of news organisations
to redistribute GNU FDL or CC-by-sa stories
translates directly into a less widespread audience.
I expect that the greatest positive feedback from WikiNews
will come not from how news redistributors edit our dispatches
but from readers flocking back to WikiNews through an attribution link.
After all, once the newspaper prints it, it's no longer news. ^_^

>Under possibility A
>update energy is concentrated on a smaller number of forks and when there are
>forks any modifications made to them can be used by all the others. This
>reduces duplicated effort and gives more time to create more content (mirrors
>will and abridged versions will also propogate all over the place).

OK, this is a very important point.
Again, I don't believe that this would apply to WikiNews;
I doubt that WikiNews could develop from reiincorporating forks,
since the lifetime of a news article would be so short.
Instead, WikiNews would benefit from wide distribution
by attracting new editors.  Forks would still be a bad thing,
but any fork of WikiNews would fork only the editing community,
not very much of the content.  A fork could be brought back in,
with only a few days' delay to wait for the old articles
to become obsolete.

In fact, this reminds me of what you wrote earlier in your post,
which I skipped earlier in this reply:

>When content goes into the public domain anybody can do whatever they want
>with it. This is especially fine by me for reference works since by the time
>its copyright expires it is already old and probably way out of date. I see
>nothing wrong with that. I just want to make sure that before that happens the
>reference content Wikimedia creates is protected by copyleft. Eventually all
>Wikimedia content will also enter the public domain, but so long as derivative
>works are being made, then the most recent and useful versions of that content
>will be copyleft.

In the case of Wikipedia, there are several forks (all defunct,
I believe, except for EL) whose content remains up to date,
and our copyleft licence insures that none of these
will have to remain forked permanently for copyright reasons.
However, after 95 years (or even the 14 years of the first US statute),
a new fork of the (by then PD) 2004 material in 2099 (or even 2018)
would be hopelessly out of date and thus nothing to worry about.

With Wikinews, however, this deadline would arrive even faster.
As 95 years is an insanely long time to protect an encyclopaedia article,
so even 14 years would be an insanely long time to protect a news story.
One day might be enough, and one week would surely suffice;
so this makes it less significant if the protection dwindles to zero.
Any proprietary fork would have only a week's worth of useful material.

>>Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
>>* Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).

>If I indicated that (which I'm pretty sure I did not), then I was mistaken.

Don't worry, I didn't think that you had indicated this.
This premise would fill the logical gap in the bullet-point argument,
so I mentioned it in order to clarify the nature of that gap.
I'm glad that you don't actually believe this, because neither do I! ^_^

But now you've given more detailed reasoning in another direction,
so if you agree that the bullet-point argument in insufficient by itself,
then we can set the above mistaken premise aside.

----

So let me summarise the ideas at hand.

First of all, free noncopyleft documents (like CC-by and PD documents)
will be more widely distributed and will generate more derivative works.
On the one hand, this will generate more public interest in the project
(especially if there is attribution, as a CC-by licence would enforce),
causing more people to get involved in it.  But on the other hand,
these derivative works may fork the project, and such a fork
might get saddled with a nonfree licence, making the fork permanent.

Thus the danger of copyleft is that people may redistribute fewer documents,
depressing the growth in Wikimedia popularity and new editors,
not to mention the value that seeing the documents brings to the public.
But at the same time, the value of copyleft is that any forks
can definitely be brought back to the original project if wanted,
and if nothing else, they will necessarily remain free for future users.

So there is a tension between wanting wide distribution to a point,
so that many people get to use the work, some of whom will contribute,
and wanting to keep things close enough to home to prevent forking
and the saddling of our free content with proprietary crap.
This is reflected in the tension over the pragmatic case for copyleft.

Now, assuming that I understand your position correctly,
you believe that the tension should always resolve in the same way.
It's always better that the material stay cohesive,
with contributors working under a single free licence
right here on Wikimedia.

That's certainly a reasonable pragmatic position for Wikipedia;
there is little point in having encyclopaedia articles mirrored,
since people only look in an encyclopaedia on special occasions.
When they want to search for information, they'll use Google
and we're much better off if they hit Wikipedia consistently.
(Here I'm ignoring the people without access to the Internet
who will eventually look stuff up in printed excerpts from Wikipedia,
because that situation isn't conducive to forking in the first place.)

But the situation with WikiNews will probably be very different.
First of all, many people consistently look for news every day,
and they often want to get their news from a local source
(like a newspaper or radio wave broadcast) that covers local events.
So WikiNews will be useful to them only if local media picks it up.
But also, if it gets redistributed ''too'' far away,
to the point that a new project with forked content appears,
then even if this fork uses proprietary copyright content,
those copyrights won't prevent combining the forked project with WikiNews,
should its editors agree -- only the archives would have to remain separate.

Would WikiNews be so different from Wikipedia
that the tension should be resolved in a different way?
Since WikiNews is now only an idea, not yet begun
even in the sense of developing policies and a userbase,
I don't think that any of us is in much of a position to judge.
It should be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy
that, whatever may come up in the future (like WikiNews),
our goal shall be to develop content for free use by others.
But it should not be the Wikimedia Foundation's policy
that copyleft shall always be the best way to realise that goal.
We may yet find ourselves in a situation where it isn't.

>>In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome
>>before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence.
>>But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections,
>>then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.

>By-laws can be changed by a simple majority of the trustees. If in the future
>we find that a particular project, such as Wikinews, isn't doing so well and
>we suspect it is the fact that it is using a copyleft license, then a change
>can be made to make an exception.

This is why getting the right policy now is not absolutely necessary.
Still, I believe that getting the right policy now is a good idea.
Otherwise, we'll just have to go through this whole discussion again
at the trustees' meeting. ^_^

Perhaps the discussion will be easier to do in that future potientiality,
when there will be more concrete issues at hand.
Maybe we should just retain the ambiguous wording
that Anth?re first asked about???

-- Toby


from_name: Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] request "sysop" status on zh-cfr/minnan

body:
Hi there,

  Can I obtain the "sysop" privilege on zh-cfr/minnan.wikipedia.org so
that I can continue to coordinate the interface L10N? We have done some of
the translation but now the system message pages are locked, and we can't
continue the L10N work.

my username is pektiong
http://minnan.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pektiong

best
pektiong


subject: [Wikitech-l] request "sysop" status on zh-cfr/minnan


subject: [Wikitech-l] ZH wp don't work!?

body:
ZH Wikipedia wrote:
>  why?

It looks fine to me. Can you describe the problem?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jim Cecropia

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia blanked?

body:
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from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: localization

references:
<409EE684.4050008@telus.net>
	<409EE684.4050008-EynCeXvFgoheoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org>
	<20040510035205.29035.qmail@web13426.mail.yahoo.com>
	<haQFQBWQQ+nAFwnr@cartref.demon.co.uk> <c9mp6n$k38$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
In message <c9mp6n$k38$1 at sea.gmane.org>, Henry H. Tan-Tenn
<share2002nov at lomaji.com> writes
>Arwel Parry wrote:
>> In message <20040510035205.29035.qmail at web13426.mail.yahoo.com>, Volkan
>> HATEM <volkanh-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>>
>>>I'm not sure if this is the right list to ask a localization related
>>>question but I guess it is not totally irrelevant.
>>>
>>>On MediaWiki:All_Messages there are no strings related to date and
>>>time.
>>>How can we localize date/time?
>>>
>>>-volkan
>>   It's done in your LanguageXX.php file.
>
>Hi,
>
>Suppose I've already localized strings via the namespace method, would
>the strings on this file overwrite those?

My understanding is that the namespace strings take priority over the
ones in LanguageXX.php

>And what's the difference between Special:Allmessages and
>MediaWiki:All_system_messages?  The latter was apparently created
>yesterday by "MediaWiki default" on the new Minnan wiki.  (It is, btw,
>quite useful to have the English strings juxtaposed.)

I'm not sure that there is a difference!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Major contributions bug

body:
Shai indicated to me a reason why I contributed to articles to which I
never contributed. It seems it was a bug. Well.....

As for my lost contributions, I found them. Contributions are not sorted
by date. So, I had to go back in time to find the recent ones. Odd.

Could we have date-sorted contributions ?

Anthere wrote:
> I'd like to report a major bug


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: DifferenceEngine and ISO nbsp

body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> define('NBSP', "\xA0");			// iso-8859-x non-breaking space.
>
> I've never witnessed that this is causing any trouble, but shouldn't it cause
> trouble on non-ISO Wikipedias? Shouldn't it be best that it is changed to
> " " which would work everywhere?

I don't understand your concern. *Especially* on non-ISO Wikipedias
(i.e. UTF-8) it should not be a problem.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Performance problems due to message caching

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> In 1.2, only the internal messages from the MediaWiki namespace were cached.
> In 1.3, custom messages are moved to the Template namespace and the whole
> namespace is cached. [...] The first
> web request after that should then cache the namespace successfully.

Why exactly are you trying to cache the entire namespace on a single Web
request?  Shouldn't you cache only those that the Web request actually
requested?  In other words, it should not have tried to cache all the
templates in the MediaWiki namespace, but only those that were actually
used by the Web requests.  I would have thought this is the purpose of a
cache: to store that which is commonly or recently accessed.

Timwi


from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia blanked?

body:
Jim Cecropia wrote:
 > At 2204 EDT I'm drawing a complete blank on accessing English Wikipedia.
 > I don't mean a 404 error, I mean all URLs raise a blank page. Anyone
 > else experience this?

I had the same problem (on Meta too), but it straightened itself out
within a couple minutes.

-jredmond


from_name: asda asdas

subject: [WikiEN-l] I was banned unfairly

body:
My account has been banned by Guanaco. I was attempting to note at the page re: Saddam Hussein; that it is inappropriate to refer to him as "Saddam". Guanaco apparently decided to take it upon himself to ban me without warning, over an edit war in which he was involved.

Guanaco should be desysoped immediately.

Not only has he committed this crime, he has also removed my vote from Requests for Adminship. This is a clear example of the cabal at work -- there is a cabal, and it just removed my vote.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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body:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
>> Jay Bowks wrote:
>>> the logo is back to English in the other lang wikis.
>
> el for example.

el is fixed now, thanks for pointing it out.

> As for the new look its nice but has messed up so many things
> (at least in the el world ) that am I supposed to start translating
> again?
> Could all this mess be avoided? Why wasn't it?

We operate in the WikiWay; things are always fluid. If you want to get a
jump on changes and make translations before new releases, you are
welcome to follow development more closely. Sorry if that's a pain... :(

We have some scripts in the maintenance dir for listing messages that
need yet to be translated for each language; it would be super great if
someone could adapt these to generate automated notices when new
messages arise. Volunteers are welcome!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
I respect what the Arbitration Committee is trying to do, but I have
a distinct lack of respect about the way they're going about it.

User JRR Trollkien (who, it is increasingly clear, is either a
reincarnation of a previously permanently-banned user, or so close to
him as not to make a difference) was blocked by an administrator
before he had made 20 edits.  He has now racked up 1500, which will
someday have to be gone through, each one, in an effort to remove the
introduced crap, due in large part to the fact that it has taken:

a) over a month to even get the Arbitration Committee to accept this case;
b) two months and counting while it's been sitting in Arbitration
Committee being mulled over;
c) at least a month of which was caused by some sort of crazy
departure from the case itself ("JRR Trollkien is an offensive name".
Where did that come from? Why was that even put forth?)

The end effect of the Arbitration Committee so far is that virtually
no users have been blocked (with the notable exception of Wik, who
should have been blocked almost a *year* ago anyway). It would be an
understatement to say that I'm not pleased with current affairs.
Several other valuable users have left because of this.

The end effect is that serious contributors are leaving this place to
let the rest of us play with the trolls. All due to an apparent
distinct inability to use common sense.
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from_name: Jay Bowks

body:
With the new look to the wiki,
(congrats on its appeal!) the logo
is back to English in the other lang
wikis. What needs to be done to
display the corresponding language
logo?

I've translated the logos for several
wikis last time around and I'm
willing to do this again if needed.

Simply uploading the file doesn't
do the trick... I believe.

With regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for
	determinationof	language inclusion

body:
From: "Andre Engels" <engelsAG at t-online.de>
> As strange as it may sound, it is not fully nonsense. As
> I understand, our own contributor and Steward Arno Lagrange
> grew up in a family where Esperanto was the language spoken
> at home, and thus can be considered a native speaker of the
> language.

No, you misunderstand my
intention. I've actually met
a family from Rochester NY
who are raising their children
with Esperanto as the lang
in the home. And I was
delighted to speak with
the little boy in Esperanto.
That wasn't my intention.
The fact that the Ethnologue
mentions that Esperanto is
a language native to France
and has 200-2000 native
speakers there is highly
irregular. In fact it is a lie.
Esperanto was Zamenhof's
invention and he wasn't
French, perhaps they meant
"Ido". Gasp!

But really, if the info here
is flawed and they have no
respect for the truth in this
matter how can you trust
what else they claim. I've
been a World Language
teacher for 18 years (and
a professional translator).
In my evaluation these errors
make the Ethnologue list highly
flawed and very suspect.

If a language has documents
published in a certain language,
and has a following of active
users. And the ISO recognizes
this and assigns an abbrev. this
in my opinion is a much better
standard than some biased and
prejudiced linguist list. Not that
the Ethnologue list doesn't have
it's merits, and it is usable for
some research purposes, but
definitely not for the purpose
of basing a decision on whether
a language merits inclusion in
the wikipedia project or not.

I maintain that the ISO list is
a much better standard in this
respect. And the Wikipedia may
actually help some minor languages
be included in the ISO list in the
future... consider this. A minor
language of Latin America,
spoken by some few folks in
the jungle and having no
written standard form is assigned
some other subdomain name.
(e.g. Guarani-dialect-B.wikipedia.org,
not that there's anithing such, I think.)
If they get a hundred articles
written in a common acceptable
or unagreed standard it could
be brought to the attention of
the ISO, they get a shorter
address after they are assigned
an abbrev. and the Ethnologue
gets a hold of their existence
(and would probably mention
that there are actually 100-1000
native speakers in France, as well,
by the way, maybe the emigrated ;-)

But we have gl.wikipedia.org and
there are still arguments pro or
con a standard written form for
Gallician/Galego. There's a lot
of other languages out there who
are minority languages which
may be recognized by the ISO
but which don't actually yet
have the necessary standardization
that would bring a common look
to the articles in a Wikipedia
project based on multiple persons
editing a specific article. One could
use one spelling another yet some
other prefered spelling etc.

In this regard several conlangs,
constructed languages, are actually
more settled, Occidental/Interlingue
comes to mind, there is a small
group of speakers who are active
and use it in publications even today.
It has an ISO code "ie" and it has
almost a century long history of
use and a library of publications,
an extensive and detailed vocabulary
in the sciences and yet it doesn't
have a wikipedia namespace.

But let's move the discussion
to Wikipedia-l and consider
what needs to happen for some
acceptable stipulations to be
accepted which will result in
the inclusion or exclusion of
a certain language. This would
be very helpful although it does
seem quite difficult.

With regards,
Jay B.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for
	determinationof	language inclusion


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Anthere schrieb:

> As for my lost contributions, I found them. Contributions are not sorted
> by date. So, I had to go back in time to find the recent ones. Odd.

Not only contributions, the same bug seems to influence the article
history. Take a look here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Vorlage:Hauptseite_Wikipedia_aktuell&action=history

Kurt

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> > I find this a rather disappointing compromise.
> I sure hope that it is temporary. If after a year the Klingon Wikipedia
> does turn out to be a real success, I'm pretty sure nobody will mind if
> we add inter-wiki links then. If by then the Klingon Wikipedia is quite
> obviously dead, nobody will mind getting rid of it again.

But the fact that inter-wiki
links are disallowed does
hinder progress in some
manner to this Wikipedia
language project. Imagine
if we did that to say French.

The premise is that Klingon
isn't worthy of having inter-wiki
links just because it is a
constructed language.

I'm sure that there are by now
more people in the world that
have heard of Klingon as a
language, than of many minor
natural languages. And even
some major constructed
languages, also.

I'm not a user of Klingon but
I do support the right of any
community using a standardized
form of communication to be
recognized and considered
worthy of inclusion as a
wikipedia language project.

To place restrictions on a
certain language do to the
bias and prejudice of some
is unjust, it hinders the progress
of the wiki in question and it
gives it a mark of doom from
the start.

Let's face it whether we may
want it or not there are actually
some folks out there who are
quite into this language. It is
by no means an easy language
to learn. It is used in other projects
like Google without bringing
reproach to that website. For
Wikipedia to make exclusions
and restrictions seems highly
unfair and biased.

Sincerely,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon

body:
From: "Joachim Schiele" <js at dune2.de>
> But if it's just a flaming war related to the Klingons or their language,
post
> somewhere else. Go and create your own wiki-server. It's easy to setup and
> maintain a wiki which is _as_ good as the mediawiki is.
>
> Thank you,
> Joachim

Hi, Joachin,
I understand your concern.
But the issue of having a
namespace/subdomain does
involve tech know-how and
help. The issue goes beyond
Klingon language itself since
the precedent would extend
to other languages.

The end result may set a
pecedent for other languages
being assigned a wikipedia
subdomain, and maybe even
the removal of some existing
wikis, like the toki-pona one,
if the discussion goes that way.

I understand this discussion
should go to wikipedia-l
where it may be discussed
at more detail and perhaps
some concensus or vote
being taken.

Sincerely,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Community, Culture and Language precedents

body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> Given that we already *have* Toki Pona, my main interest is that we
> all understand that whatever we end up doing with it, it is an
> historical anomoly that should not be viewed as precedent setting for
> the future.

Hi Jimbo,
I'm not very familiar with
the details on Toki-Pona,
but if it does have some
active users, and a supportive
community of folks who are
willing to contribute articles
then what makes this language
less worthy of inclusion than
some minority natural languages?

I believe the precedent will be
established. Whether it is viewed
as a precedent or a loosely put
together guideline of what to
accept for inclusion and what
to exclude. The goal, I'm sure
you'd agree would be to respect
the community of active users.
If they are actively working with
the language then one can say
that a culture building process
is taking place. To deny inclusion
would actually deny recognition
for a culture, a community and
a different take on the world
we all share. I've never met an
active user of Toki-Pona, although
I did visit their webpage a long
while ago when it first appeared
on the web and it was mentioned
in linguistic circles I frequent.
However, I have met some
folks who use Klingon, and are
devoted to its development and
active practice. And they're take
on life and the world is, shall
we say, a bit different than mine.
But I respect their point of view
even if different from mine.

(But then again Sapir and Whorf
would have probably fit in as
Klingon-lubbers... wasn't Whorf
the security officer in the NG
trek series :-)

Culture and language go hand in
hand. To exclude a language is
the same as not including a certain
culture or a community's point
of view. I'd support the right of
a minority community to be
recognized as worthy of having
their own language namespace
in the Wikipedia project.

with regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: request "sysop" status on zh-cfr/minnan

body:
Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan) wrote:
>   Can I obtain the "sysop" privilege on zh-cfr/minnan.wikipedia.org so
> that I can continue to coordinate the interface L10N?

Please apply at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Performance problems due to message caching

body:
I ran some aggregate live profiling on en, and noticed that wfMsg was
responsible for 70% of request time. Each wfMsg() call was leading to a
database query. Investigating, I noticed that the memcached key for messages
was set to "error" -- this indicates that the script attempted to load
messages from the database and save them to memcached, but setting the large
value failed. This error is typical of the old slabs reassignment problem.
However that wasn't the problem in this case, none of the memcached servers
were at their memory quota.

In 1.2, only the internal messages from the MediaWiki namespace were cached.
In 1.3, custom messages are moved to the Template namespace and the whole
namespace is cached. But since I only just started running the move script,
we've been attempting to cache the whole namespace, including all the
templates, for the last week. Presumably the size of the namespace was
larger than memcached's value size limit, so it failed.

To restore site performance adversely affected by loading the messages, I
temporarily switched off $wgUseDatabaseMessages. Then I ran the move script
on en. It is still running as I type. When it is finished, I will clear the
error value from memcached and re-enable $wgUseDatabaseMessages. The first
web request after that should then cache the namespace successfully.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Chinese WP fonts unreadably small

body:
On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 21:38 +0000, Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
> Kaixo!
> Li Wed, 2 Jun 2004 06:36:24 -0700,
>  ZH Wikipedia <zh.wikipedia at gmail.com> scrijheut:
>
>  ZW> Chinese characters have many many more strokes than Roman letters. So
>  ZW> the current MonoBook font size at Chinese WP is very hard on the eye.
>
> That is also the case for Arabic script (that means the following
> wikipedias: ar, fa, ur, ug), not because of lot of strokes, but because
> for a given font nominal size, the actual height of the glyphs is
> smaller on arabic script, that makes it harder to read).
> Just go to http://ar.wikipedia.org/ for an example, only the ==titles==
> are easily readable. (look also at the list of "wikipedia in other languages",
> between "Suomi" and "Euskara" there is "Farsi" in arabic script, see how
> the actual height of the letters is smaller compared to latin ones).
>
>  ZW> Please increase it to at least 11pt so ZH WP is ... minimally readable.
>
> It should probably be done on ja: and ko: too, I suppose.
>

Sysops can drop something like

#globalWrapper { font-size: 129%; }

in MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Default is 123%.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] zh wp don't work

body:
Brion checked it, and it was fine. I just checked it now, and it's fine
from my end as well. Can you access any WP wiki (try
http://en.wikipedia.org)? If not, you, your ISP, or one of their uplinks
is experiencing connectivity issues.

Cheers,
Ivan.

ZH Wikipedia wrote:
> mozilla display:
>
> The document contains data.
>
> IE:
>
> ?????? (not find page)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

body:
--- yuanml <yuanml at pku.org.cn> wrote:
> Several users in China had repoerted that they can't visite the whole
> Wikipedia today.
>
> China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia, because today is the 15th
> commemoration day
> for the Tiananmen Square Event.
>
> So far it is not sure whether Wikipedia is blocked, more infomation is needed
> for confirmation.
>
> I'm an administrator for Chinese Wikipedia in P.R.China.

You sure that isn't just due to really slow response times from our server? The
English Wikipedia is crawling for me right now.

Either way I hope we are all back online soon.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 20:48 +0800, yuanml wrote:
> Hi, everybody, I'm an administrator in Chinese Wikipedia - User:Mountain.
>
> I have a request: Who can help us to change the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia.
>
> Now the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia is too small, many users required us to change it.
> we can change the default css to that:
>
> body, #globalWrapper { font-size:11pt }
>
> It looks better for most users.

Please don't use this rule as it would prevent the entire skin from
scaling with the user's browser font size.

I'd propose something like #globalWrapper { font-size:130%; } instead.

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Ralesk Ne'vennoyx

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 20:48 +0800, yuanml wrote:
>
>>Hi, everybody, I'm an administrator in Chinese Wikipedia - User:Mountain.
>>
>>I have a request: Who can help us to change the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia.
>>
>>Now the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia is too small, many users required us to change it.
>>we can change the default css to that:
>>
>>body, #globalWrapper { font-size:11pt }
>>
>>It looks better for most users.
>
>
> Please don't use this rule as it would prevent the entire skin from
> scaling with the user's browser font size.
>
> I'd propose something like #globalWrapper { font-size:130%; } instead.
>
Of course only in Explorer.

But yea, the percentage (or em-based sizing) can help (unless applied to
elements that can often nest, such as td :P)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
--- John Robinson <john at freeq.com> wrote:
> I respect what the Arbitration Committee is trying to do, but I have
> a distinct lack of respect about the way they're going about it.
>
> User JRR Trollkien (who, it is increasingly clear, is either a
> reincarnation of a previously permanently-banned user, or so close to
> him as not to make a difference) was blocked by an administrator
> before he had made 20 edits.  He has now racked up 1500, which will
> someday have to be gone through, each one, in an effort to remove the
> introduced crap, due in large part to the fact that it has taken:
>
> a) over a month to even get the Arbitration Committee to accept this case;
> b) two months and counting while it's been sitting in Arbitration
> Committee being mulled over;
> c) at least a month of which was caused by some sort of crazy
> departure from the case itself ("JRR Trollkien is an offensive name".
> Where did that come from? Why was that even put forth?)

Yes, this case is taking too long. I already voted on this case a month ago and
still await votes by the other members of the AC.

> The end effect of the Arbitration Committee so far is that virtually
> no users have been blocked (with the notable exception of Wik, who
> should have been blocked almost a *year* ago anyway). It would be an
> understatement to say that I'm not pleased with current affairs.

Check your facts before making ad hominen statements - K? By my estimation in
the last 6 months the AC has issued more user bans than Jimbo did two years
before that (when re-incarnations are not counted).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Completed_requests

> The end effect is that serious contributors are leaving this place to
> let the rest of us play with the trolls. All due to an apparent
> distinct inability to use common sense.>

Are you volunteering to be a member of the AC? It's a great job - you get to
spend hours researching a case to try to come up with a fair ruling and end up
getting cursed at by both sides of the dispute and blamed for the downfall of
the whole project. Not to mention the lovely time we have arguing over what the
best remedies are for a case.

Oh what great fun! Please join us!!

But seriously, I think that the AC needs to be tripled in size and also serve
as an appeals board for non-vandalism temp-blocks by our hopefully
soon-to-be-deputized admins who will hopefully be given the authority to
enforce our policies soon (IMO, it would have to take 3 non-AC member admins to
do such a block and a quorum of the AC to decide to extend or suspend the block
for the duration of the arbitration).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
John Robinson wrote:

> User JRR Trollkien (who, it is increasingly clear, is either a
> reincarnation of a previously permanently-banned user, or so close to
> him as not to make a difference) was blocked by an administrator
> before he had made 20 edits.  He has now racked up 1500, which will
> someday have to be gone through, each one, in an effort to remove the
> introduced crap, due in large part to the fact that it has taken:

If you feel that crap needs to be edited out from these 1500 articles,
why do you need to wait for the arbitration committee to do anything.
Crap is crap, whether or not the contributor is banned.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
My fault, but it seemed a simple way to deal with it. The person running JRR
Trollkin always choses a name that says, "I'm I troll; I dare you to ban
me". Not terribly sophisticated. It seemed a simple way to deal with the
troll movement (probably only one person) as a whole.

We bogged down on the notion that a person could chose a "troll" name and
still be a useful and responsible contributor. Which is true in theory, but
someone who innocently did that would probably also be willing to select a
name that did not include "troll" without a fuss.

Fred

From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 23:16:17 -0500
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

c) at least a month of which was caused by some sort of crazy departure from
the case itself ("JRR Trollkien is an offensive name". Where did that come
from? Why was that even put forth?)

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from_name: Anthere

body:
Well, thanks. I hope it is fixed eventually, because typically, if one
want to follow the contributions of a vandal or only a problematic user,
one can't be sure he reached all this person contributions if they are
mixed.

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
>> Anthere schrieb:
>>
>>> As for my lost contributions, I found them. Contributions are not
>>> sorted by date. So, I had to go back in time to find the recent ones.
>>> Odd.
>>
>>
>> Not only contributions, the same bug seems to influence the article
>> history. Take a look here:
>> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Vorlage:Hauptseite_Wikipedia_aktuell&action=history
>
>
>
> Something is or was sometimes not updating inverse_timestamp, which is
> used to do the date sorting in history and contribs (because MySQL 3.x
> couldn't optimize a descending sort on an index). I've fixed that
> particular page, but the bug needs to be fixed if it's still there.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I have been banned unfairly

body:
I have been banned due to my efforts at [[Saddam Hussein]], where I have been attempting to (at the very least) leave a notice that it is highly inappropriate and offensive to refer to him as "Saddam". I have been banned without warning or justification.

In addition, my vote at [[Requests for adminship]] was deleted -- this is clear evidence of the cabal at work.

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

body:
Viajero wrote:

> Without these kinds of articles, we are basically just a bunch of stamp collectors.
>
What have you got against stamp collectors? :-)

Ec


from_name: Jiong Sheng

body:
It seems that PRC has indeed blocked Chinese Wikipedia. I reckon (and
hope) that it is only temporary, as today is June 4 and usually many
foreign websites are inaccessible on this particular day. But some
also suspect that it may be because of some artciles relating to
Taiwanese independence written by Taiwanese contributors.

Currently Chinese Wiktionary is still accessible from mainland China,
and we are calling all Chinese Wikipedians that have read this message
to go to http://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:%E5%95%A4%E9%85%92%E9%A6%86#%E5%B0%81%E9%94%81
for discussion.

Chinese Wikipedia Administrator
formulax

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:57:06 +0800, yuanml <yuanml at pku.org.cn> wrote:
>
> Several users in China had repoerted that they can't visite the whole Wikipedia today.
>
> China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia, because today is the 15th commemoration day
> for the Tiananmen Square Event.
>
> So far it is not sure whether Wikipedia is blocked, more infomation is needed for confirmation.
>
> I'm an administrator for Chinese Wikipedia in P.R.China.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andreas Kasenides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Correstponding language logos for each wiki

references:
<99vqxSCxpVB@erik_moeller>	<043101c449e2$58d531e0$67c56bd8@impressario>
	<40BFEE94.7020304@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Jay Bowks wrote:
>
>> With the new look to the wiki,
>> (congrats on its appeal!) the logo
>> is back to English in the other lang
>> wikis. What needs to be done to
>> display the corresponding language
>> logo?
>
>
> Could you be more specific about which wikis you're talking about? I
> spot-checked de, vi, he, ar, and eo and they look fine.

el for example.
As for the new look its nice but has messed up so many things
(at least in the el world ) that am I supposed to start translating
again?
Could all this mess be avoided? Why wasn't it?

--

Andreas Kasenides
e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
<mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
(replace the _at_ above with @)

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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Viajero wrote:

>Too much of the current discussion is centered on 172's alleged shortcomings and not enough on his abilities and contributions.
>
>There is, IMO, not a single other contributor to Wikipedia who has a similar grasp of the Big Picture; no one else has his resources and ability to tackle these big, overarching topics like New Imperialism; no one else has his virtually encyclopedic knowledge of Third World politics and social movements. Abe is not interested the personification of history, trite Big Man bedtime stories, he is interested in analyzing complex, long-term trends in economic and social development, something far more difficult but far more rewarding. Without these kinds of articles, we are basically just a bunch of stamp collectors.
>
>
Indeed, I applaud him for making the effort. However, troubled by
the obvious leftwing slant (keep in mind that I lean left myself),
and wondering if maybe I was just ignorant, I went to the university
library and did a paragraph-by-paragraph comparison of various accounts
of US history in the 1980s, and various accounts of the Cold War,
particularly Gaddis and LaFeber. I found that it was indeed possible
to write US history without mentioning trivialities like Nancy Reagan's
astrologer (no personification of history? uh-huh), and that it was
possible to have accounts of the Cold War that didn't cast every
incident as ultimately due to US aggression against the Soviets.
I brought these observations up on the relevant talk pages, and got
a combination of nonresponsiveness, excuses, and truculence from 172,
and in the end I decided I was wasting my time.

Something to think about when sneering at "Americans living in
tooth-fairy land" is that for every editor that tries to "fix"
an article and is reverted, there are 500 readers that are silently
drawing conclusions about WP in general. When article content
is different from the actual authorities and doesn't have a good
explanation or references (172 is very bad about adding supporting
references to these articles), those Americans are not going to
become better informed, they're just going to dismiss WP as a whole.

So I feel a little cowardly about not continuing to stand up to 172
on content, but discussion has not proven productive and I'm not
going to engage in edit wars. I've thought about trying to recruit
more academics; it would be a big win to have Gaddis work over the
Cold War article for instance.

Stan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to	Fred
	Bauder)

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent
>> example,
>> no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most
>> especially,
>> no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people.
>>
>>
>>
> No, he explains it right there where it's the people's fault for
> having "poor
> worker productivity" even though the main agricultural areas had produced
> surpluses for export since ancient times.

I have to apologize for reacting to the quoted bit out of context; in
the next section of [[Economy of the Soviet Union]] the poor
productivity is indeed attributed to forced collectivization.
Interestingly, that section is so delicately phrased that the average
reader won't actually find out what happened; it just says "the human
toll was catastrophic", which could mean any number of things. There
are details about the famines in WP, I didn't see any links that
would explain "human toll" via connections to any of those articles.

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Greek characters not rendering correctly

references:
<99vqxSCxpVB@erik_moeller>	<043101c449e2$58d531e0$67c56bd8@impressario>	<40C07A8E.1060400@cs.ucy.ac.cy>	<c9pvhc$jb5$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<c9q05g$m05$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>> el.wikipedia.org looks fine to me.
>
> On second inspection, it definitely does *not* look fine!
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/3/38/Greek_problem_screenshot.png
>
> This seems to be a problem with the software. The messages in the
> MediaWiki namespace of [[el:]] are correct.
>
> Someone seriously needs to fix that, quickly.

Use the letter "i" instead of the number "1" in "π" and "φ".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Volkan HATEM

subject: [Wikitech-l] localized domain name

body:
Hi,

At tr.wikipedia we're using the localized name: "vikipedi".
Is it ok if we register

vikipedi.org & vikipedi.org.tr

and direct them to tr.wikipedia.org?

Thanks

-volkan

__________________________________
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http://messenger.yahoo.com/


subject:
[Wikitech-l] bug: HTML tags in some messages stay verbatim (eg:
	MediaWiki:Addedwatchtext)

body:
I don't know if this is a known problem but after the sw was
updated html tags in some messages are not interpreted:

The page "MediaWiki:Addedwatchtext" has been added to your watchlist. Future changes to this
page and its associated Talk page will be listed there, and the page
will appear bolded in the list of
recent changes to make it easier to pick out.

I observed this on "tr.wikipedia".

I tried the latest mozilla and IE that comes with win XP (sorry, I
forgot
to write down revision info).

-volkan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Because there's no possible excuse for personal attacks. It doesn't
>> matter how strongly you feel about the issue, your personal history,
>> nothing.
>
>
> The people who think that Abe *initiated* personal attacks should take
> another look at the title of this thread. This entire discussion is
> taking place in the context of an attack on Abe in which a proposal is
> on the table to ban him. Moreover, the discussion here has been
> mean-spirited and unfair. Abe posted the text of an article he wrote
> about the failings of the Soviet economy. I read the article, and I
> could see that it contained several clear, strong criticisms of
> Stalinist policies that hurt the economy. Nevertheless, Fred and
> others responded to the article by waxing nasty and sarcastic. They
> cherry-picked phrases out of the article that made it sound like Abe
> was blaming workers for poor productivity, and then threw in
> gratuitous accusations of being an apologist for dictators because in
> their opinion Fred's article didn't say enough about the Soviet
> gulags. As far as I can see, Fred is the one who initiated this
> attack, and he did it dishonestly. He has a different POV than Abe,
> and he's trying to resolve it by having him banned and by warring
> about the content of his article on this listserv.
>
Where does Fred ask for banning because of POV? And there's nothing
wrong with criticizing content - an attack on content, even blistering,
is still not a personal attack, by definition. Look at any book review
section in print; if the author says something stupid, the reviewer
relishes the opportunity to slash the book to shreds, using every
creative insult imaginable, but the author is pretty much off-limits.

> Sure, Abe shouldn't have called Fred "senile," but in the overall
> context of nasty discourse that has characterized this thread, I don't
> think Abe's comment stands out as being more egregious than the
> insults that have been thrown his way.

If nothing else, calling someone senile as a way of damaging their
reputation is libel, and it does give Fred legal options, although
I don't expect he'll bother.

As I see it, 172 brings all this on himself by personalizing
criticism of his content and then using that as an excuse for
bad behavior. He has signed up for the Harmonious editing club
though, so that's a positive sign.

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Correstponding language logos for each wiki (tr)

body:
tr too.

-volkan

--- Andreas Kasenides <Andreas.Kasenides at cs.ucy.ac.cy> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > Jay Bowks wrote:
> >
> >> With the new look to the wiki,
> >> (congrats on its appeal!) the logo
> >> is back to English in the other lang
> >> wikis. What needs to be done to
> >> display the corresponding language
> >> logo?
> >
> >
> > Could you be more specific about which wikis you're talking about?
> I
> > spot-checked de, vi, he, ar, and eo and they look fine.
>
>
> el for example.
> As for the new look its nice but has messed up so many things
> (at least in the el world ) that am I supposed to start translating
> again?
> Could all this mess be avoided? Why wasn't it?
>
> --
>
> Andreas Kasenides
> e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
> <mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
> (replace the _at_ above with @)
>
> > _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


body:
Volkan HATEM wrote:
> I don't know if this is a known problem but after the sw was
> updated html tags in some messages are not interpreted:

It was a bug that they were let through before; please remove the comments.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiReader Free Software and Free Contents

body:
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 08:01:48PM +0200, Anthere wrote:
> Neat ! I like the idea of double language.
>
> Who is reviewing the contents of the articles just before you generate
> the pdf ?

I gonna do as much as I can, but I need help in this review process.
There are already a few like CatherineMunro helping and those will
get their name in the impress (there's also a *complete* list of
registered authors).

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to
	Fred Bauder)

body:
Exactly, he spins the facts. Instead of doing the hard work of trying to
figure out, "What were they thinking?". There are answers to that question.

Fred

> From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 09:56:01 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
> Bauder)
>
> that section is so delicately phrased that the average
> reader won't actually find out what happened;


from_name: Mark Horner

subject: [Foundation-l] License dangers

body:
Hi

I am new to your list and browsed the archives briefly. I have a concern
related to the FDL. A little background first - I started a project (
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst ) to do something similar to wikibooks but
not quite as general. We think we'll just upload our books into
wikibooks when we are done.

We decided that in FDL spirit we'd use content from wikipedia and
wikibooks to kickstart some sections etc. One of our members raised the
concern that wikipedia content isn't screened to ensure that the
contributor holds the copyright and may therefore add it to wikipedia
and transfer copyright license to the FDL.

I guess that wikipedia could just remove content that is queried by
someone who claims to have the copyright. Is this what you plan to do
if such a problem arises? I realise that it is clear what license you
are using etc. but who takes the fall if some commits something they
don't hold the copyright to?

Our real concern is that we want to actually print books and raising
money is hard enough. We don't want to risk printing the books again if
something came up. (The quick answer is to write everything ourselves
but thats also the slowest answer and we'd like to act as decisively as
possible too.)

Have all these sorts of issues been resolved for wikipedia?

Thanks,

Mark

--
--
Mark Horner

Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn

Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

Windows 9x, NT & 2K is a 32 bit extension and a graphical shell for a 16
bit
patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit
microprocessor,
written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.


subject: [Foundation-l] License dangers


from_name: Mark Richards

subject:
Are his edits contributing to building an encyclopdia? Was (Re:
	[WikiEN-l] Ban policy)

body:
Ban him or not on the merits of his edits. If he is
adding crap, revert it, if he keeps introducing it,
ban him for it. The name is an irrelevant distraction
from the important thing, which is "Are his edits
contributing towards building an encyclopdia".
Mark

--- John Robinson <john at freeq.com> wrote:
> I respect what the Arbitration Committee is trying
> to do, but I have
> a distinct lack of respect about the way they're
> going about it.
>
> User JRR Trollkien (who, it is increasingly clear,
> is either a
> reincarnation of a previously permanently-banned
> user, or so close to
> him as not to make a difference) was blocked by an
> administrator
> before he had made 20 edits.  He has now racked up
> 1500, which will
> someday have to be gone through, each one, in an
> effort to remove the
> introduced crap, due in large part to the fact that
> it has taken:
>
> a) over a month to even get the Arbitration
> Committee to accept this case;
> b) two months and counting while it's been sitting
> in Arbitration
> Committee being mulled over;
> c) at least a month of which was caused by some sort
> of crazy
> departure from the case itself ("JRR Trollkien is an
> offensive name".
> Where did that come from? Why was that even put
> forth?)
>
> The end effect of the Arbitration Committee so far
> is that virtually
> no users have been blocked (with the notable
> exception of Wik, who
> should have been blocked almost a *year* ago
> anyway). It would be an
> understatement to say that I'm not pleased with
> current affairs.
> Several other valuable users have left because of
> this.
>
> The end effect is that serious contributors are
> leaving this place to
> let the rest of us play with the trolls. All due to
> an apparent
> distinct inability to use common sense.>
_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: ZH Wikipedia

subject: [Wikitech-l] ZH wp don't work!?

body: why?


body:
The problem of systematic point of view editing will always be an important
issue and will be discussed many times on this list as we try to craft
solutions. 172 is by no stretch the most serious offender, if indeed it can
be seen as an offense. It is not covered by the current arbitration 172 is
involved in nor is it a bannable offense.

Fred

> From: "Nathaniel Krause" <nathanielkrause at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:36:24 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!
>
> I also think that much of the recent traffic on this list about POV issues
> in his articles is irrelevant to arbitration or banning, although it
> arguably merits discussion separately.


body:
Exercising that option would prove the truth of the slur.

Fred

> From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 10:45:39 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!
>
> If nothing else, calling someone senile as a way of damaging their
> reputation is libel, and it does give Fred legal options, although
> I don't expect he'll bother.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs' lies have forced me to leave Wikipedia

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Re: "I have to apologize for reacting to the quoted bit out of
> context; in
> the next section of [[Economy of the Soviet Union]] the poor
> productivity is indeed attributed to forced collectivization.
> Interestingly, that section is so delicately phrased that the average
> reader won't actually find out what happened; it just says "the human
> toll was catastrophic", which could mean any number of things. There
> are details about the famines in WP, I didn't see any links that
> would explain "human toll" via connections to any of those articles."
> - Stan Shebs
>
>
> THIRD: There are numerous links to collective farming-related topics
> as well; thus, it is an OUTRIGHT LIE that there are no links that
> would explain "human toll" via connections to any of those articles.
>
Note that I carefully said "I didn't see any links", not "there are
no links", allowing for the obvious possibility that they were there
and I missed them. So if I'm wrong, what are those links? [[Collective
farming]] and [[Collectivisation in the USSR]] seem like naturals,
but as I write this neither appears to be linked from the economy
article.

> Re: "I found that it was indeed possible
> to write US history without mentioning trivialities like Nancy Reagan's
> astrologer (no personification of history? uh-huh), and that it was
> possible to have accounts of the Cold War that didn't cast every
> incident as ultimately due to US aggression against the Soviets."
>
> FYI, I have contributed over 10,000 edits to WP over the period of 18
> months, yet Stan brings out one or two out of context to perpetuate
> these disgusting lies that I'm somehow pushing a Stalinist agenda.
>
Once again, you're the one using the word "Stalinist", not me.

> BTW, I swear unconditionally that I will not return to Wikipedia until
> Stan Shebs retracts these lies.

Check out [[lie]]. I freely admit to making many mistakes, but
intentional deception? No. So I guess it's goodbye then.

Stan


body:
Why is that insulting? What is the custom?

Fred

From: asda asdas <wikipediaban at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 06:48:28 -0700 (PDT)
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] I have been banned unfairly

I have been banned due to my efforts at [[Saddam Hussein]], where I have
been attempting to (at the very least) leave a notice that it is highly
inappropriate and offensive to refer to him as "Saddam". I have been banned
without warning or justification.

In addition, my vote at [[Requests for adminship]] was deleted -- this is
clear evidence of the cabal at work.

Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
<http://messenger.yahoo.com/>
_______________________________________________
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Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
	Bauder)

references:
<BAY7-F110l6gvdJ4abG000523f3@hotmail.com>
	<40BE2D5B.7020305@apple.com> <40C0C743.1030502@secretlondon.me.uk>

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> [...] It's
>> gotten so bad these days that you can't usefully read anything on
>> 20th-century history before finding out the left/right bias of the
>> writer.
>>
> I disagree - you can always tell the POV of the writer by reading the
> book. I can only think of one book on East Germany for example that
> isn't propaganda for either side.

You're more astute than I am then! I've been led down the garden
path a few times - get partway in, belatedly recognize the
unspoken agenda, then have to start over from the beginning and
reinterpret what I'm reading with a less trustful eye.

Stan


from_name: Nathaniel Krause

body:
>From: Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!
>Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:35:08 +0300
>
>Too much of the current discussion is centered on 172's alleged
>shortcomings and not enough on his abilities and contributions.
>
>There is, IMO, not a single other contributor to Wikipedia who has a
>similar grasp of the Big Picture; no one else has his resources and ability
>to tackle these big, overarching topics like New Imperialism; no one else
>has his virtually encyclopedic knowledge of Third World politics and social
>movements. Abe is not interested the personification of history, trite Big
>Man bedtime stories, he is interested in analyzing complex, long-term
>trends in economic and social development, something far more difficult but
>far more rewarding. Without these kinds of articles, we are basically just
>a bunch of stamp collectors.

I have to take issue with this.  The subject under discussion at Requests
for Comment and Requests for Arbitration is 172 and VV's alleged incivility
and edit-warring.  The fact that 172 can write good articles is irrelevant
to this.  If he writes good articles but is unable to work productively with
other wiki editors, then he should be writing for something other than a
wiki project.

I also think that much of the recent traffic on this list about POV issues
in his articles is irrelevant to arbitration or banning, although it
arguably merits discussion separately.

-Nat Krause (the eponymous user)

_________________________________________________________________
Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up ? now 3 months FREE!
http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Performance problems due to message caching

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> To restore site performance adversely affected by loading the messages, I
> temporarily switched off $wgUseDatabaseMessages. Then I ran the move script
> on en. It is still running as I type. When it is finished, I will clear the
> error value from memcached and re-enable $wgUseDatabaseMessages. The first
> web request after that should then cache the namespace successfully.

Just an update. After fixing this, script execution time was still
fairly slow, around 4.2 seconds. After suppressing caching of redirects
left behind in the MediaWiki namespace and re-enabling the temporarily
disabled linkscc and parser caches, average execution time dropped to
307ms. This was fixed over a period of about 1.5 hours, so traffic may
have changed slightly.

Enabling $wgLinkCacheMemcached should save us another 9ms or so. Does
anyone know why this hasn't been done?

Most recent profiling data is at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling/Live_aggregate_20040604

-- Tim Starling


body:
It is the American journalistic custom to use the last name during the body
of discussion of a person whose name is set forth in full previously. It
appears that Saddam is actually his name while his father's name was
Hussein. Using the name Hussein would be confusing as it is also the name of
the Jordanian royal family and indeed a number of other lines descended from
Mohammed.

I was hoping some Arabic customary usage would surface that we could all use
in the future.

Fred

> From: "Ralesk Ne'vennoyx" <ralesk at livejournal.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:52:13 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I have been banned unfairly
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> Why is that insulting? What is the custom?
>>
>
> I guess this is simply that you also don?t call George Bush ?George? or
> Medgyessy P?ter just ?P?ter? in a document such as an encyclopaedia.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Viajero

body:
Too much of the current discussion is centered on 172's alleged shortcomings and not enough on his abilities and contributions.

There is, IMO, not a single other contributor to Wikipedia who has a similar grasp of the Big Picture; no one else has his resources and ability to tackle these big, overarching topics like New Imperialism; no one else has his virtually encyclopedic knowledge of Third World politics and social movements. Abe is not interested the personification of history, trite Big Man bedtime stories, he is interested in analyzing complex, long-term trends in economic and social development, something far more difficult but far more rewarding. Without these kinds of articles, we are basically just a bunch of stamp collectors.

Another thing: regularly he compares what we have with what Encarta has (frequently not to our favor) and these comparisons are always met with a sneer, as though somehow we "open source" types are by definition producing something superior to anything MS can offer. He is right: at times they do a better job and it might be worthwhile asking ourselves why.

Admittedly, 172 doesn't suffer fools gladly and he can be abrasive, particularly with Americans living in tooth-fairy land with respect to US foreign policy. But I've edit his writing a few times and never had ANY problems, probably because I wasn't trying to insert shallow moralistic platitudes. As for the 50+ revision edit wars, I don't condone them, and I think both he and VV should be banned from editing the relevant articles for a month or so.

V.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki profiling tip

in_reply_to:
<c9q5if$7t8$1@sea.gmane.org> (Ashar Voultoiz's message of "Fri,
	04 Jun 2004 17:47:34 +0200")

body:
Wow! That's _great_ information.

I wonder if it would justify removing the wfProfileX() functions from
MediaWiki. They really, really clutter up the code, and according to
Ashar's graph, they take up almost 4% of the runtime!

Also, could you generate some conclusions from the profiling info?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] zh wp don't work

body:
mozilla display:

The document contains data.

IE:

?????? (not find page)


from_name: yuanml

body:
Several users in China had repoerted that they can't visite the whole Wikipedia today.

China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia, because today is the 15th commemoration day
for the Tiananmen Square Event.

So far it is not sure whether Wikipedia is blocked, more infomation is needed for confirmation.

I'm an administrator for Chinese Wikipedia in P.R.China.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Working together well

body:
I like what Nathaniel said about working together:

"writes good articles but is unable to work productively with
other wiki editors"

...and also what Fennec said about excuses:

"Doing good things is *NOT* an excuse for doing bad things."

...but most of all I agree with Caroline:

"that people are fighting what they see as a moral
crusade - that Wikipedia exists to put the world to rights,
to speak the objective truth about X issue etc etc."

This desire to use Wikipedia to right the world's wrongs, by
getting Wikipedia to endorse the TRUTH, is probably what's behind
the worst of the edit wars. I've tried to set a good example by
ducking out of these once I realize I'm in them. (It often takes a
third party like Caroline, Angela, or Mav, to name just a few -- to
help awaken me to the realization that I have departed from
neutrality into advocacy.

What an irony that even someone devoted to avoiding bias can least
detect bias in their own writing. I mean, I wish I could see it
before I click "submit". But, frankly, I can't. I rely on the help
of other Wikipedians to set me straight. It's crucial, because I
have a blind spot when it comes to my own writing.

Perhaps the best any of us can do is to be humble enough to listen
to our colleagues and respect their efforts to steer us back in the
right direction when we stray from the NPOV path.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Ed Poor


from_name: Jared

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A parallel World Wide Web?

body:
This thread seems to have gotten stuck on what is appropriate and what
isn't appropriate for Wikipedia content.  There is _no way_ everyone
will ever agree on that and it seems sort of a pointless argument.  We
might as well try to determine "what is art?".

The argument that was initially stated was that "superfluous trivia"
repels qualified people from participating in the creation of
Wikipedia's content.  I'd be interested in people's opinion of this
statement.  When you first started on Wikipedia, did content that
didn't interest you, or you found to be "superfluous trivia" discourage
your participation.  Do you think it discourages other people's
participation?

In my experience, it had no effect.  If there is content on wikipedia
that I'm not interested in or think is superfluous, it has absolutely
no effect on me. I never see it and doesn't consume any of my time.  If
someone else thinks it is interesting or important then they can spend
their time on it.

The only argument that I can come up with that a prospective
contributor would be put off by superfluous trivia, is that their
initial introduction portrays the project as unprofessional. This is a
real possibility, and is in fact the reason I lost interest in
Everything2 years ago.  However, compare the front page of Everything2
with Wikipedia and you immediately get a different feeling about the
two projects.  The front page is the most likely first introduction
users will get, and I think Wikipedia's front page comes off as very
serious and professional.  The best articles are featured, serious news
is covered, and truly interesting anniversaries and "did you know"
facts are selected.

The greatest thing preventing me from contributing to Wikipedia was the
fear of doing something wrong.  There are so many standards to follow
and a new syntax to learn. While the Community Portal certainly helps,
information is still scattered everywhere.

If people are worried about prospective contributors not participating
I think making it clearer how to do contribute would be much more
effective than telling them their expertise in some esoteric field is
superfluous trivia.

Thanks,
-jared

On Jun 2, 2004, at 3:34 PM, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

> Am Mittwoch, 2. Juni 2004 18:51 schrieb Fred Bauder:
>> An interesting quote from this blog:
>>
>> Basically, what is happening here is the building of a parallel World
>> Wide
>> Web inside the wikipedia.org domain
>
> And actually he is perfectly right: That *is* our biggest problem. Not
> the
> copying, not errors, not the missing editors, not the enthusiasts he
> mentions. But the "superfluous trivia". Our problem is noise, in en:
> even
> more as in de:.  The noise repells qualified authors and editors. This
> is the
> reason why the article quality does not increase the way that should be
> expected given the idea behind wikipedia and the popularity and it
> already
> has.
>
> As an encyclopaedia, we should reduce noise. Instead we are creating
> noise by
> accepting articles on any subject. For me - opposing that
> noise-accepting-policy since one and a half years now - that outsiders
> statement is very interesting.
>
> Uli


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: asda asdas <wikipediaban at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 06:48:28 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] I have been banned unfairly
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
I have been banned due to my efforts at [[Saddam Hussein]], where I
have been attempting to (at the very least) leave a notice that it is
highly inappropriate and offensive to refer to him as "Saddam". I have
been banned without warning or justification.
In addition, my vote at [[Requests for adminship]] was deleted -- this
is clear evidence of the cabal at work.

Hello again. I suppose you don't want me to talk to you. Too bad.
* You're not helping your cause.
* Others should note your activities and discussion thereof at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_review_of_administrative_actions
* I have your conversations in #wikipedia at http://eh.net/fennec/foo.log
** People who wish to respond to this discussion should probably read
those pages first lest they make arguments without all the relevant
information.

Anyway, you should have left a note on the talk page, not the article. - ~~~~

(wiki syntax in mail, whee!!!)


body:
On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:36:24 -0500, Nathaniel Krause
<nathanielkrause at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I have to take issue with this.  The subject under discussion at Requests
> for Comment and Requests for Arbitration is 172 and VV's alleged incivility
> and edit-warring.  The fact that 172 can write good articles is irrelevant
> to this.

Yes. Doing good things is *NOT* an excuse for doing bad things.


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: zh wp don't work

body:
In message <40C00DA2.7060100 at cranbrook.edu>, Ivan Krstic
<ccikrs1 at cranbrook.edu> writes
>Brion checked it, and it was fine. I just checked it now, and it's fine
>from my end as well. Can you access any WP wiki (try
>http://en.wikipedia.org)? If not, you, your ISP, or one of their
>uplinks is experiencing connectivity issues.

Today is the 15th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square "event". It has
been suggested that zh-wp is being blocked (hopefully temporarily) by
the PRC authorities.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: sada asda

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am a victim of the cabal and require assistance

body:
I have been banned for trying to add the following two bits of information to the wikipedia:

*This page refers to Saddam Hussein as "Saddam"; however, doing so may be extremely inapppropriate. See the section below: ==Hussein's Name==. As a result of this, the NPOV of this article is questioned.

*Hussein may not be a surname in the Western sense; however, as his children also bear the name "Hussein"; it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the Hussein family does use a Western surname, and that they chose Hussein as that surname.

**Saddam (pronounced "Sad-DAHM") is his given personal name; Hussein is his father's given personal name; al-Majid is a quasi-familial name, and al-Tikriti is his regional affiliation. It is common for Arab men to add the name of their town or village onto their name, this would give Saddam Hussein al-Awja. In many nations, he is most commonly referred to as Saddam Hussein or Saddam; however in Iraq, he is most commonly referred to by his formal presidential title.

**Some observers have argued that referring to the man as only Saddam may be derogatory and academically inappropriate; especially since it is often mispronounced "Sodom" or "Sa-damn". During the 1990 war, some people in the US began to deragatorily refer to Hussein as: Saddam Insane.

Referring to him as "Saddam" is sort of like referring to Pope John Paul II as "John"; or referring to Bush as "George". It is rude and disparaging, and the article must at least mention (in a visible location) that this issue exists.

As a result Guanaco has banned me unfairly, over an edit war in which he was involved. He then proceeded to remove my vote from Requests for Adminship. He did all these things without warning, attempting to talk to me, or explanation -- I have clearly not met the threshold of "pure vandalism" and should not have been treated in this manner.

It is questionable that I violated the three reverts rule, as he claims -- even if I did; a warning would be more appropriate, prior to banning me. Certainly Guanaco should not have been the one to determine whether I was in violation, since he was involved in the edit war.

After successfully appealing to an admin via the IRC channel (where I was harrassed by several users),  I was then re-banned by RickK; who makes the unfounded claim that I am a sockpuppet account. I am not and these actions towards me are completely inappropriate. The sysops responsible must be desysoped, they must not be allowed to continue abusing their authority and attacking other users.

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] I am a victim of the cabal and require assistance

body:
I have been banned for trying to add the following two bits of information to the wikipedia:

*This page refers to Saddam Hussein as "Saddam"; however, doing so may be extremely inapppropriate. See the section below: ==Hussein's Name==. As a result of this, the NPOV of this article is questioned.

*Hussein may not be a surname in the Western sense; however, as his children also bear the name "Hussein"; it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the Hussein family does use a Western surname, and that they chose Hussein as that surname.

**Saddam (pronounced "Sad-DAHM") is his given personal name; Hussein is his father's given personal name; al-Majid is a quasi-familial name, and al-Tikriti is his regional affiliation. It is common for Arab men to add the name of their town or village onto their name, this would give Saddam Hussein al-Awja. In many nations, he is most commonly referred to as Saddam Hussein or Saddam; however in Iraq, he is most commonly referred to by his formal presidential title.

**Some observers have argued that referring to the man as only Saddam may be derogatory and academically inappropriate; especially since it is often mispronounced "Sodom" or "Sa-damn". During the 1990 war, some people in the US began to deragatorily refer to Hussein as: Saddam Insane.

Referring to him as "Saddam" is sort of like referring to Pope John Paul II as "John"; or referring to Bush as "George". It is rude and disparaging, and the article must at least mention (in a visible location) that this issue exists.

As a result Guanaco has banned me unfairly, over an edit war in which he was involved. He then proceeded to remove my vote from Requests for Adminship. He did all these things without warning, attempting to talk to me, or explanation -- I have clearly not met the threshold of "pure vandalism" and should not have been treated in this manner.

It is questionable that I violated the three reverts rule, as he claims -- even if I did; a warning would be more appropriate, prior to banning me. Certainly Guanaco should not have been the one to determine whether I was in violation, since he was involved in the edit war.

After successfully appealing to an admin via the IRC channel (where I was harrassed by several users),  I was then re-banned by RickK; who makes the unfounded claim that I am a sockpuppet account. I am not and these actions towards me are completely inappropriate. The sysops responsible must be desysoped, they must not be allowed to continue abusing their authority and attacking other users.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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