from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
However, it also says that the purpose of Wikipedia comes first, the spirit
of the rules second, and the letter of the rules third.

Those who treat the rules as a game to be played and loopholed around are
well advised to remember this.

-Matt

On 9/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This has been the most oligarchic policy on wikipedia since it was
> created. Obviously an anon can't "Ignore All Rules", he'll be banned.
> When an admin "ignores all rules" and is justly banned, he unblocks
> himself. Thats the spirit oif the rule.
>
> In my experience this policy is yet another excuse for the old hands
> to bite newbies and those outside their clique. It's an unprofessional
> policy, in fundamental contradiction of the rigour required for the
> creation of an authoritative book of reference.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] English orthographies

body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:

>Can't we just have a list of checkboxes for each dialect of a given
>language for each meaning of a word? For words like "to be" or "dog"
>we could just check boxes for every dialect, while we wouldn't for
>words like petrol or gasoline...
>
How many different orthographies / dialects are there for English. I
would not dare to presume that a word is truly shared between the less
well known versions of English. There are also the "true" dialects like
Geordie that have to be considered. Creating check boxes assumes in a
way that the editors /know/ these different versions of English well
enough. Technically it can be done, but the spelling of the text in a
meaning, an etymology needs to be adapted anyway. You have to realise
that certain meanings do not travel well. It is therefore not only the
orthography but also the Meanings of a word that needs to be considered.

Consequently, a simple check box is problematic in itself.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] English orthographies


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:

> What is this "English English" to which you refer then, if it is only
> "more or less the same" as actual existing varieties of English? Who
> speaks or spoke it? You? Your wife? William Shakespere?

An idle thought: there is a family of four currently living in this
house, all lifetime residents of the UK. Every single one speaks a
different dialect of English...

> "Proper English" is a meaningless term. The first systematic efforts
> to standardise English to any extent came with the invention of the
> printing press, when it became possible to distribute documents en
> masse all across the country (William Caxton wrote an oft-quoted
> "prologue" regarding the difficulties of making printed material
> understandable by all its readers).

Several, indeed. For those who've not encountered them, they bear
reading. One rather endearing anecdote:

(Some merchants have stopped beside the Thames to buy lunch)
"And one of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, came in-to an hows and
exed for mete; and specyally he axyd after eggys; And the good wyf
answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry
for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she
vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde
haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel. Loo,
what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren; certaynly
it is harde to playse euery man by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of
langage."

Mutual intelligibility of dialects leaped ahead through printing, and
again from the railways. Then another with radio and television, and
modern communications generally - the Internet is simply just the next
step.

> Like I say, read some books about the history of English - it's really
> quite fascinating, and should correct any misapprehensions you have of
> a "pure" English ever having existed, even if you still remain on the
> side of the "prescriptivists" who wish to create such a thing.

Especially Mencken. It's wonderful.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: SPOF notes

body:
Austin Hair wrote:
>>However we are reading a few bits off of zwinger's NFS (some block lists
>>etc, some lock files) and sometimes writing (logs). Insofar as those are
>>currently used they should be either migrated to a more survivable
>>situation or should be able to fail gracefully. NFS should be set up if
>>it's not in a way that will fail cleanly after a short timeout.
>
>
> Linux mount option "soft" will cause an I/O error to be returned after
> a "major timeout," the definition of which varies.  "intr" in
> combination with "hard" will allow the program to respond to signals,
> which is in most cases preferable to having an uninterruptable process
> sitting there until reboot.

We mount NFS with soft and timeo=14. I imagine retrans is at its default
value of 3, so if I understand the manual correctly, that gives a major
timeout of 9.8 seconds. That would be consistent with what we saw in the
crash -- most apps don't seem to abort when they get one of these
timeouts, they just treat it as an ordinary read error and continue
their execution. It's not surprising that everything locked up,
including root logins.

What about using a detachable filesystem like Coda, or a spare NFS
server with automatic failover?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Making NFS reliable?

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Am I correct in thinking that the problem seems to be centred on
> Zwinger's being a central NFS server for a number of crucial read-only
> configuration files used by a large number of servers, and apps behaving
> in a peculiar (and usually disastrous) way when NFS dies?
>
> How about just keeping local copies on each server, running rsync,
[snip]

Did you see my previous mail to this list on this topic, subject "SPOF
notes"?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
> I see no reason for there to be a greater prevalence of stewards (we
> just had a large-ish selection of new ones); the need to remove people's
> sysop or bureaucrat flags is very rare.
And in the case of a rogue admin emergency, such as something that
recently happened on EN Wiktionary, if no stewards are alive, a few
developers also have the power to do this.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, James R. Johnson <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> But the issue is (to me, at least), that I can understand you, even if you
> spell funny (honour, colour, etc.) and have funny words (lift, pavement
> instead of elevator and sidewalk).  And do understand that I'm being
> slightly sarcastic here, please don't rant-reply.  Americans have some
> spellings, English have some spellings, but we can understand each other,
> except when we use our dialect-specific words.  I don't really think it
> appropriate to dialectualize the wikipedia unless there's mutual
> unintelligibility (as in the Frisian case, I think it was).

And even with those dialect-specific words, there *are* points of
absolute mutual unintelligibility - table as a verb, what pavement is,
what a thong is - but we handle them just fine in wiki, by
common-sense disambiguation. For example -

[[Table (verb)]] discusses both instances, though I suspect we might
need to make sure that where possible we use different terminology in
actual articles.

[[Pavement]] directs to [[Pavement (disambiguation)]], which links to
both, though it's not a very clear disambig notice - if you've not
encountered the word "sidewalk" before you'd be forgiven for thinking
the UKian use would be under [[Pavement (roads)]]. Will rewrite that
later on.

[[Thong]] doesn't even bother mentioning dialects of English, just
points to various meanings.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: DF

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/19/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
wrote:
>One of the major subtexts of IAR is that policy is
there to help write an encyclopedia; if policy gets in
the way of that, policy is and should be ignored.

And why is that subtext, and not say in the text of
the text?  That is the essence of the point I was
trying to make before.

-DF


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
I would like to thank everyone involved for a delightfully useless
thread.  Thanks, Jack and Naree!

Jack, the serious answer to your question is: try to relax, ok?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reboots of doom

body:
> I changed the bash prompt for root on zwinger to something distinctive.
> It's all very well to say "be careful", but unfortunately our simple
> mammalian brains aren't designed to detect when one familiar bit of
> english text is replaced by another. Colours, flashing lights, pretty
> pictures -- these work better. They allow faster recognition and require
> less concentration.

Of course I fully agree.  No human can really be blamed for this sort of
error, our simple mammalian brains are simply not suitable for this type
of repetitive work.  (Jeronim typed reboot about 100 times that day, on
purpose, on other servers.)

The one thing that came to my mind is: why does anyone log into zwinger
in the first place?  Since it's this horribly frightening SPOF, ought we
to not avoid even _looking_ at it funny?

--Jimbo


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mirror the talks in a mailing list?

references:
<871x3p9vqy.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dgjfki$hq2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dgkb96$ko8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Jamie Bliss wrote:
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>>In preferences: "Editing" > check "Use external editor by default" ,
>>will send you the file for editing in whatever editor. Not sure how it
>>works exactly though ;)
>
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:External_editors
>
> Basically, you associate a program (currently a perl script) with the
> application/x-external-editor MIME type.

I was missing the perl script :)  thanks !
--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


list: foundation-l

from_name: Poe, Marshall

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

body:
Thanks for your comments, Lars.

I agree with most of what you said. The primary mission of a library of memoirs like
Wikimemory is to collect, maintain and disseminate memoirs. As Anthere rightly said the
other day, there are already ways of doing this. People do write memoirs, those memoirs
are sometimes printed, and the resulting books are sometimes deposited  and cataloged in
libraries (or even made available in bookstores). Oral history projects (such as that funded
by Steven Spielberg for Holocaust Survivors) also exist. The problem with all
existing ?memory? projects, however, is that they just don?t end up recording very much.

I have been a historian of Russia for two decades, and am currently writing a book on
Stalin?s Purges (?The Great Terror?) of the 1930s. I would love to have a huge repository
of memoirs on the subject. True, a few exist, and some are very good. But there just aren?t
enough to get a really good, on-the-ground picture of what happened. The same can be
said, I think, of almost every major historical event of the 20th century and before, with the
possible exceptions of the Holocaust and the American Civil Rights movement, both of
which were the focus of very well funded oral history projects.

The reason good memoirs are so few and poorly disseminated is simple: they are mostly in
books.  Books are hard to write, hard to publish, hard to move, and hard to store. It is
true, as Lars says, there are ways to avoid book (and wikis) and record memoirs on the web
(blogs and such). But isolated blogs a mode for building a massive memoir library (MML)
 have problems.

1. Very few people will write blog-memoirs, so the present would still be lost to the future.
 If, on the other hand, the publicity engine that is Wikimedia got behind WikiMemory, then
it might become common to write your memoirs (because it was easy, fashionable, and
?everyone?s doing it.?

2. Isolated blog memoirs would be ephemeral.  More than likely that your website (blog)
 will die when you do, so the info will be practically lost). If, on the other hand, WikiMedia
dedicated itself to the long term preservation of the memoirs, they would be more likely to
survive.

3. Even if they did survive in the long term, isolated memoirs would be lost *without some
central repository or index.* If, on the other hand, all the memoirs were in one place
(WikiMemory) and indexed by users, then they would be pretty easy to find in 500 years.

Perhaps, as Lars suggests, a wiki might not be the right software for the project.  As long as
the software allows the easy entry, preservation and dissemination of the memoirs in one
place, the goal will be achieved.  And while we might be able to build a massive memoir
library (MML) without a universally editable wiki, it seems to me that it will be difficult
to build it without WikiMedia.

Respectfully, Marshall

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org on behalf of Lars Aronsson
Sent: Mon 9/19/2005 5:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

Robin Shannon asked:
> 4. Why a Wiki (or, To edit or not to edit)?

And I agree that this is the important question.

Marshall Poe answered:

> To me, this is the most interesting question of all because it
> points up a conflict between two principles.  On the one hand,
> we want to be open and allow everyone to edit all content.  On
> the other hand, we want to gather and disseminate the sum of
> human knowledge to everyone, free.

In mathematical terminology, the sum (e.g. "7") is not the same
thing as its terms (e.g. "3 + 4").  The sum can be computed from
the terms, but once you have the sum you can no longer determine
which the terms were.  I think that Wikipedia, using wikis, should
disseminate the *sum* of human knowledge, because one person could
enter 3 and another could add 4 to it, resulting in the sum. But
this new proposed memoir project instead aims to present the
individual components or terms, each on their own.  Other tools
than wikis, such as blogs, are better suited for that task.

There are plenty of technical tools out there for people who want
to set up their own blog, to report their individual memoirs.
There are also tools that help coordinate blogging on a larger
scale, such as del.icio.us for tagging, flickr for adding photos,
geobloggers.com for adding geographic coordinates, and most
recently the Google Blogsearch.

Wikipedia is also such a tool, as it allows bloggers to link to
encyclopedic articles that provide background knowledge on places,
people, and events.  The occurance of such links is indeed a kind
of tagging.  You can do a Google blogsearch to find 8 known blog
entries that link to the article [[en:Great Chicago Fire]],
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGreat_Chicago_Fire
which is 8 times more than you'll find through
http://del.icio.us/tag/ChicagoFire

Some future incarnation of Wiktionary could also become such a
useful resource, but it isn't really there yet.

> but the Wikisource *edition* of the ?Magna Carta? will only
> become less valuable as it is edited further away from its
> original, canonical state (the words as they were written in
> 1215).

Quite correctly, this is a weakness of Wikisource as it is now
conceived, and hardly a valid argument for using wikis for
memoirs.

> Which is the superior principle?  I?d say it?s the
> all-human-knowledge principle.

Nothing says one tool has to be useful for all situations.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Michael Turley wrote:

> On 9/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> >
> > > It was my understanding that they could... or am I wrong?
> >
> > Removeing is stewards only. There is a case for more stewards but I
> > don't think there will be another election for a while.
>
> Either add more stewards, or move this permission one level down.

Stewards are global. They can set arbitrary permissions on anyone in any
Wikimedia wiki. There's a reason that this is not given to every random
bureaucrat. :-)

> Without any REAL knowledge of any other differences between the roles,
> I prefer the latter.  However my opinion is, as stated, pretty
> uninformed.

I see no reason for there to be a greater prevalence of stewards (we
just had a large-ish selection of new ones); the need to remove people's
sysop or bureaucrat flags is very rare.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: geni

body:
On 9/19/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:

> I see no reason for there to be a greater prevalence of stewards (we
> just had a large-ish selection of new ones); the need to remove people's
> sysop or bureaucrat flags is very rare.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> - --
> James D. Forrester

I took far to long for the donation notices to removed from wikis with
less active admins (It doesn't help that a lot of admins don't really
know thier way arounf the mediawiki namespace but no matter).

--
geni


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive admins

body:
Thanks for clearing that up.  I think we should have either more stewards, or give bureaucrats the ability to desysop, assuming, of course, that stewards have other things to attend to.  The English Wikipedia seems to be the largest, and may be a special case, no?

--Ryan

> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Desysopping inactive
> 	admins
>
> On 9/19/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > It was my understanding that they could... or am I wrong?
> >
> > --Ryan
>
> Removeing is stewards only. There is a case for more stewards but I
> don't think there will be another election for a while.
> --
> geni

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

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

Mark Williamson wrote:

> I have a sneaking suspiscion that in the Commonwealth the
> word "eggplant" will be understood well enough.

You'd be wrong. :-)

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> To explain to the people on the Wiktionary mailinglist where this
>> comes from, there is a huge debate on the Wikipedia-l mailinglist
>> about having a seperate English and American English wikipedia.
>
>
> I wouldn't characterize it as huge.  One person made the proposal, and
> no-one who replied considered it realistic.
>
>> In the plans for Ultimate Wiktionary there are three ways in which
>> words can be destinguished as being of a particular orthography. I
>> will describe these here and hope to use the energy of this
>> discussion for this question that needs a resolution at some stage.
>>
>>
>> Please let me know what you think and particularly why.
>
>
> It's premature to get into this kind of debate before the software is
> in place, but I suspect that the preferred option will vary from one
> term to the next.
>
> Ec

Hoi,
Ultimate Wiktionary will use relational data that will be served by
Wikidata. With related data it is not really possible for behaviour to
be arbitrary different from one term to the next. As I mentioned there
are three basic choises. As far as I can see, there are only variations
possible within the three choises that I mentioned. The point with a
data design is that it is the basis for what the functionality will be like.

Waiting untill the database has been implemented is not that great a
strategy. It is akin to building a house and only decide where the
windows, doors and rooms will be after the completion of the house. It
is much better to look at the design now, while we still can change
things relatively easy. We are now still at the stage where we still
change the "house" on paper.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/19/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, it also says that the purpose of Wikipedia comes first, the spirit
> of the rules second, and the letter of the rules third.
>
> Those who treat the rules as a game to be played and loopholed around are
> well advised to remember this.

Indeed.  One of the major subtexts of IAR is that policy is there to
help write an encyclopedia; if policy gets in the way of that, policy
is and should be ignored.  Wikipedia is not a place for people to play
at (or practice at) being lawyers, and people who wish to "wikilawyer"
need to find somewhere else to do it.  Wikipedia is not a Nomic.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/19/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Due to a widespread confusion regarding the
> application of IAR as a policy, rather than simply an
> informal guideline, I propose deleting the third leg
> of the so-called policy trifecta.

I say, what is it that you people have against the Trifecta?  First
you go after WP:DICK (moved it to meta, and then tried to delete it
from there), and then you go after IAR.  Are you going to go after
WP:NPOV next?

Sigh.

Kelly


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:

> But then, those are French, with a *cugh cugh* unusual *cugh cugh* way
> to count to 100.

France, famously, is hard to govern because it has 246 types of
cheese. But add another ten, and you've got the base for the world's
weirdest number system...

(damn. I so want to try this now.)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
(note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)

Jack wrote:
> I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> English - this would mean copying
>
> I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> responding to any response, later.
>
> I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
>
> I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
>

I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.

> It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
>
> If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> on Wikipedia.
>
> Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> speakers and so on...
>
> Whereas the term "American English" is not.
>
> When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> vocab and grammar can begin.
>

I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.

Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
the amount of server space we could save!

Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!

> The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> fluency):
>
<snip overly long list>
>  The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but American-English
> has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
> reflect this.
>

I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
your newsletter/journal.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:
> Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with
> proper English being treated like this.
>
> You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in Scots
> (and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct English as
> American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can
> probably read it.
>

Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon. It's a Wikicity, which
is hosted by Wikia, *not* the Wikimedia Foundation.

BTW, have you considered contributing to sco.wikipedia?

>  "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
> useful insight into our language policy :-)"
>  Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should we
> (and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept
> Americanisms?

Really? I thought it was en.wikipedia.org...

> If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to
> American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
>  someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine for
> articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to their
> subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in
> English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called
> English - and he said he was British!

Actually, the policy is (or at least was):

* If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
* If subject of article is USian, use US English
* If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
author is preferred.

>  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage), and
> English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans - why
> is it wrong to resist that?
>

You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
English, provided you comply with the GFDL.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:
<snip>
>  If you want to go academic - which is surely the best way to back this
> whole argument up, you should scan this (ironically american) leading
> insitute of linguistic research:
>  http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng

Interesting, the language I speak is further removed from the langauge
you speak - I speak a dialect called Australian Standard English, but
people in the USA just speak English.

Well, join the UK chapter of the WMF (if it's been created yet) and
things might happen.

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from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:
> When I went to London, I did have to ask what a secre tree was (any relation
> to the oak tree?).  And a labora tree and an observa tree and a 'lie bree'
> and the 'straw bree'... :)  Were I able to stay longer, perhaps I would have
> understood better.

Since English is really a dialect of French, a lie bree is probably a
place where you buy your books, as it is in any "proper language" (-:

> And at least we pronounce the 'r' at the ends of words. :)

Like I said, English English English English is a dialect of French (-:

I find the concept of "proper English" quite funny, because
if there is one language that is not properly pronounced ([[en:List of
names in English with non-intuitive pronunciations]] would be quite
short in, say, Italian.

Gerrit.

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from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Just a note on cultural imperialism, which many seem to attach an almost
unanimous bad stigma.  The British Empire used its navy to impose its views
on slavery on the rest of the world, and it halted slavery in many places.
Just a thought to ponder.  (To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped
the Modern World by Arthur Herman)

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lars Aronsson
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 3:36 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

Jack & Naree wrote:

>  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism,

Cultural imperialism is of course the very reason that Americans
(and people in the rest of the world) speak English at all.  All
of the Louisiana Purchase area could speak French.  The East Coast
could speak Pennsylvania Dutch.  Minnesota could speak Norwegian,
and California Spanish.  But no, they all speak some kind of
English.  And this is not good enough for you?  I've even heard
that some of the Americans aren't of the "proper" white skin
color.  Horrible!  What's next?  Perhaps the world will start to
drive on the wrong side of the road?  Oh, they do already?

I suggest you give up on en.w and start to contribute to the
German Wikipedia instead.  Even if they tried once or twice, the
Germans have really failed to make theirs a world language.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
> >What about the French Wikipedia? How do they feel?
> If I'm not mistaken, the Quebec dialect of French and the Brazilian
> dialect of Portuguese are considered acceptable in the French and
> Portuguese Wikipedias, respectively.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_%28nombre%29
Quatre-vingt-dix ou Nonante redirige ici.

I think that if the original posters' thought would be followed,
'nonante' would not be acceptable on French Wikipedia. Note that
'quatre-vingt-dix ' has 97 Google hits on fr.wikipedia.org, whereare
'nonante' has 43.

But then, those are French, with a *cugh cugh* unusual *cugh cugh* way
to count to 100. But then, we, the Dutch, are also quite unusual (well,
like German), so it's not up to me to make a mockery (-:

Gerrit.

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>It's a stick of dynamite. If for the sake of the project you need to do
>something and the rules are in the way, you may take it upon yourself to
>emply the dynamite.
>
>If when the smoke clears there is agreement that things are better than they
>would have been otherwise, there may be a little polite applause. Otherwise
>you'd better just reverse what you did, apologise, and move on.
>
Uncle Ed is very good at that. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
You can always trust the French for a quickie! :)  Just slip out the back
before they wake up.

James

PS - This is sarcasm.  Get over it.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rowan Collins
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 6:25 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Since English is really a dialect of French, a lie bree is probably a
> place where you buy your books, as it is in any "proper language" (-:

I'm not 100% sure if you were joking or just labouring under a
misunderstanding, so I thought I'd point out that English is largely a
Germanic language, closely related to the various modern Scandinavian
tongues, and also to modern Dutch and German.

French is like a distant cousin (sharing
great-great-great-great-grandparents in Proto-Indo-European) which
recently had a quick affair, so that a few of her features show up in
the offspring ;)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]
_______________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack wrote:
<snip>
>>Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
>>
>>* If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
>>English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
>>* If subject of article is USian, use US English
>>* If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
>>author is preferred.
>
>
>  And what of "Aubergines" and "Eggplants"? "Colour" and "Color"
>

Aubergine is a French word left over from the 1800s - 1900s when it
became popular in England to use French culinary terms. Everyone else
had already taken Eggplant and run with it.

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body:
Actually, Germans don't understand sarcasm.  I know, I lived there.  I
tried.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Giuseppe DAngelo
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 7:13 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 40

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:37:42 -0400
From: "James R. Johnson"
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
To:
Message-ID: <20050919173748.B0D44115841E at mail.wikimedia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

When I went to London, I did have to ask what a secre tree was (any relation
to the oak tree?). And a labora tree and an observa tree and a 'lie bree'
and the 'straw bree'... :) Were I able to stay longer, perhaps I would have
understood better.

And at least we pronounce the 'r' at the ends of words. :)

James

PS - note that this is a sarcastic e-mail. Don't take it that seriously.

A sarcastic e-mail?  That's not possible, americans don't understand sarcasm
:-)

pippu d'angelo

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:

>Just a note on cultural imperialism, which many seem to attach an almost
>unanimous bad stigma.  The British Empire used its navy to impose its views
>on slavery on the rest of the world, and it halted slavery in many places.
>Just a thought to ponder.  (To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped
>the Modern World by Arthur Herman)
>
>
Hmmm.  This happened both before and after the abolition of slavery.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Delirium wrote:
> (Although it seems the Scandinavian Wikipedias are going the opposite
> direction, creating a separate Wikipedia for each mutually-intelligible
> dialect.)

Well...:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skanwiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/Skandinavisk/Hovudside

They're creating one wikipedia for three languages - Swedish, Danish and
Norwegian. That's quite a very different direction, really.

Gerrit.

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from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Nah - not all US accents are rhotic, and the UK has some rhotic accents
too..

Prescriptiveness doesn't work for language, ever.

English imperialism actually offends me more than US imperialism. It's nice
to think that nationalists exist only on the other side of the Atlantic but
it certainly isn't true..

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James R. Johnson
Sent: 19 September 2005 18:38
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

When I went to London, I did have to ask what a secre tree was (any relation
to the oak tree?).  And a labora tree and an observa tree and a 'lie bree'
and the 'straw bree'... :)  Were I able to stay longer, perhaps I would have
understood better.

And at least we pronounce the 'r' at the ends of words. :)

James

PS - note that this is a sarcastic e-mail.  Don't take it that seriously.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pawel Dembowski
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 10:37 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

>>Americans seem to want to believe that they speak English, and we
>>speak British English in England (meaning Britain!). They are wrong.
>>They speak
a
>>dialect of our language, called American-English, an offshoot from the
main
>>trunk if you will, which has evolved somewhat independently of English.
>> American-English is an out and out dialect of English. How can
>>English English be a dialect of English?
> I presume you are referring to the dialect of the ruling classes.

American pronunciation is definitely more similar to 17th century English
than British RP.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org

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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/19/05, Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
> Prescriptiveness doesn't work for language, ever.

Tell the French.

Sam


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/19/05, Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
> > Prescriptiveness doesn't work for language, ever.
>
> Tell the French.

But it's so much more amusing to pretend it does and let them keep trying...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/19/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/19/05, Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
> > > Prescriptiveness doesn't work for language, ever.
> >
> > Tell the French.
>
> But it's so much more amusing to pretend it does and let them keep trying...

Oh, I won't disagree there.

Sam


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:

>  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism,

Cultural imperialism is of course the very reason that Americans
(and people in the rest of the world) speak English at all.  All
of the Louisiana Purchase area could speak French.  The East Coast
could speak Pennsylvania Dutch.  Minnesota could speak Norwegian,
and California Spanish.  But no, they all speak some kind of
English.  And this is not good enough for you?  I've even heard
that some of the Americans aren't of the "proper" white skin
color.  Horrible!  What's next?  Perhaps the world will start to
drive on the wrong side of the road?  Oh, they do already?

I suggest you give up on en.w and start to contribute to the
German Wikipedia instead.  Even if they tried once or twice, the
Germans have really failed to make theirs a world language.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Scr?obh Jack & Naree:

> Have you seen the "Scot's English" one? Do you not call that
Balkanisation?

If you're talking about sco.wikipedia - they don't even claim to be an
English dialect.  And to be honest, the language on sco is about as similar
to the language on en, that ga is to gd.

I write all my articles in Australian English, but I think that your
proposal is just daft.  Honestly ;-).  Reading the odd Americanised word
doesn't fill me with seething rage, just like reading the odd Australianised
word hopefully doesn't fill my American brothers with murderous hatred.

Sl?inte,
- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.

----- Original Message -----
From: <wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 8:44 PM
Subject: [work] Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 32

> Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Wikipedia English English (Jack & Naree)
>    2. Re: Wikipedia English English (Alphax)
>    3. Re: Wikipedia English English (Jack & Naree)
>    4. Re: Wikipedia English English (Alphax)
>    5. Re: Wikipedia English English (Jack & Naree)
>    6. Re: Wikipedia English English (Jack & Naree)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:23:07 +0100
> From: Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk, wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <c822ae8d050919032327091418 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with
> proper English being treated like this.
> You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in Scots
> (and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct English
as
> American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can
> probably read it.
>  "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
> useful insight into our language policy :-)"
>  Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should we
> (and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept
> Americanisms?
> If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to
> American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
>  someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine for
> articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to their
> subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in
> English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called
> English - and he said he was British!
>  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage),
and
> English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans -
why
> is it wrong to resist that?
>   On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 19/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Does your e-mail have a point?
> >
> > I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> > yesterday about the issue.
> >
> > As this rant included (edited highlights) -
> >
> > "It's bad enough that the British invention of HTML won't let you type
> > colour correctly in tags, without having the world's largest free
> > online dictionary purporting to display information in English, but in
> > fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
> > Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
> > English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
> > in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
> > English. ... I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> > "English" and "American". We can copy and paste and run spellcheck to
> > iron out the mangled American illiteracy, no worries. ... It is a
> > scandal to actively promote the butchering of English..."
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > - Andrew Gray
> > andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:53:55 +0930
> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <432E91BB.5080301 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> (note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)
>
> Jack wrote:
> > I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> > English - this would mean copying
> >
> > I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> > responding to any response, later.
> >
> > I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> > however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
> >
> > I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> > think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> > dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> > languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> > English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> > request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> > seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
> >
>
> I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.
>
> > It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> > dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> > I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> > similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
> >
> > If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> > Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> > and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> > languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> > and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> > Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> > *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> > on Wikipedia.
> >
> > Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> > (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> > British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> > the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> > "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> > (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> > Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> > speakers and so on...
> >
> > Whereas the term "American English" is not.
> >
> > When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> > should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> > spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> > of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> > *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> > to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> > wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> > the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> > type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> > "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> > spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> > strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> > English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> > the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> > vocab and grammar can begin.
> >
>
> I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
>
> Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
> the amount of server space we could save!
>
> Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!
>
> > The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> > fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> > of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> > and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> > but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> > fluency):
> >
> <snip overly long list>
> >  The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but
American-English
> > has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
> > reflect this.
> >
>
> I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
> your newsletter/journal.
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:28:49 +0100
> From: Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: palnatoke at gmail.com, wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <c822ae8d05091903286779959 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 19/09/05, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> > > yesterday about the issue.
> > >
> > > As this rant included (edited highlights) -
> > >
> > ...
> > > I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> > > "English" and "American".
> >
> > It could be done, of course. We could also have Australian, Indian and
> > South African English. If we wanted to do so, that is.
>
>  I don't think there is significant difference - I think it's really a
split
> between "Commonwealth English" and "American English".
> The cultural ties - even down to soap operas on telly mean that Aussies
and
> Pommes and South Africans have much more affinity and familiarity with
each
> other, and this also extends to language.
>  When it comes to Americans, however, there really is a gulf of
> (mis)understanding (and misspelling).
>  But I think you miss the point in that - I'm not talking about making a
> "British English" wikipedia (In fact I don't believe the ?British English?
> article should exist, becuase the term does not make any sense outside
> America) - I want the English Wikipedia to be reclaimed by English or
> Commonwealth English speakers, and the Americans given their own "/am-en"
> American-English wikipedia.
>
> --
> > http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
> > CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc
> > ICQ: 86989486 phone: +45 22 34 72 92
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:59:12 +0930
> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <432E92F8.2060609 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Jack & Naree wrote:
> > Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with
> > proper English being treated like this.
> >
> > You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in
Scots
> > (and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct
English as
> > American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can
> > probably read it.
> >
>
> Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon. It's a Wikicity, which
> is hosted by Wikia, *not* the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> BTW, have you considered contributing to sco.wikipedia?
>
> >  "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
> > useful insight into our language policy :-)"
> >  Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should
we
> > (and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept
> > Americanisms?
>
> Really? I thought it was en.wikipedia.org...
>
> > If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to
> > American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
> >  someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine
for
> > articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to
their
> > subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in
> > English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called
> > English - and he said he was British!
>
> Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
>
> * If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
> English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
> * If subject of article is USian, use US English
> * If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
> author is preferred.
>
> >  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> > (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage),
and
> > English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans -
why
> > is it wrong to resist that?
> >
>
> You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
> English, provided you comply with the GFDL.
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:39:13 +0100
> From: Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <c822ae8d05091903397112343 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Cool, mockery is for trolls.
>  This is not about Balkanisation, it's about separating American-English
> from English.
>  But come to think of it - yes, have one for every variation you like, and
> let natural selection take care of the rest. Just as long as English is
> English, and not American.
>  Have you seen the "Scot's English" one? Do you not call that
Balkanisation?
>  If you want to have a legitimate criteria for a language, a different
> orthography has got to be a clear one.
> In English there are two - American and non-American.
> Orthography is the main issue, meaning is another.
>  If you want to go academic - which is surely the best way to back this
> whole argument up, you should scan this (ironically american) leading
> insitute of linguistic research:
>  http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng
>  On 19/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > (note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)
> >
> > Jack wrote:
> > > I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> > > English - this would mean copying
> > >
> > > I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> > > responding to any response, later.
> > >
> > > I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> > > however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
> > >
> > > I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> > > think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> > > dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> > > languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> > > English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> > > request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> > > seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
> > >
> >
> > I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.
> >
> > > It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> > > dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> > > I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> > > similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
> > >
> > > If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> > > Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> > > and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> > > languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> > > and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> > > Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> > > *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> > > on Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> > > (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> > > British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> > > the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> > > "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> > > (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> > > Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> > > speakers and so on...
> > >
> > > Whereas the term "American English" is not.
> > >
> > > When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> > > should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> > > spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> > > of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> > > *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> > > to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> > > wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> > > the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> > > type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> > > "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> > > spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> > > strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> > > English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> > > the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> > > vocab and grammar can begin.
> > >
> >
> > I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> > English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> > differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> > Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> > the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> > for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> > number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> > and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
> >
> > Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
> > the amount of server space we could save!
> >
> > Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!
> >
> > > The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> > > fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> > > of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> > > and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> > > but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> > > fluency):
> > >
> > <snip overly long list>
> > > The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but
> > American-English
> > > has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia
should
> > > reflect this.
> > >
> >
> > I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
> > your newsletter/journal.
> >
> > --
> > Alphax | /"\
> > Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> > OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> > http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:44:11 +0100
> From: Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <c822ae8d0509190344505522cf at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> >
> > Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon.
>
>  that's a surprise
>
> BTW, have you considered contributing to sco.wikipedia?
>
>  no
>
> >
> > Really? I thought it was en.wikipedia.org...
>
>  - I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
> useful insight into our language policy :-)
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>  - Show quoted text -
>  my turn to do a "..."
>
>
> >
> > Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
> >
> > * If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
> > English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
> > * If subject of article is USian, use US English
> > * If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
> > author is preferred.
>
>  And what of "Aubergines" and "Eggplants"? "Colour" and "Color"
>
> > I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation
> > > (because of the many differences in American-English and English
usage),
> > and
> > > English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like
Americans -
> > why
> > > is it wrong to resist that?
> > >
> >
> > You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
> > English, provided you comply with the GFDL.
>
>  Happy to do so, but what I really want is a fork called
"American-English".
>
> --
> > Alphax | /"\
> > Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> > OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> > http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> End of Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 32
> *******************************************
>
>


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
This only went to steve, oops.

On 9/19/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> But IAR is *good*. We aren't overly legalistic, bureaucratic, etc.
>
> On 9/19/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Due to a widespread confusion regarding the
> > application of IAR as a policy, rather than simply an
> > informal guideline, I propose deleting the third leg
> > of the so-called policy trifecta.
> >
> > NPOV was always the prime directive, and some tussles
> > we came up with the word "civility"(*) to shape a good
> > secondary. The third leg, although necessary to
> > satisfy the requirements of standing furniture and
> > designated "trifecta" was never quite as clear.
> > Perhaps we should vote if there is actually a third,
> > and if so what that should be. Drawing from a list of
> > actual policy, of course and not just this "flimsy
> > whimsy trumps policy history" nonsense.
> >
> > SV
> > *
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/007069.html
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adler's dead again

body:
Adler crashed this evening; I had the colo reboot it, but it crashed
again within a couple hours.

We're running on samuel plus the smaller servers for now, but some of
the smaller boxes also seem a bit flaky as well (suda's been responding
oddly, ariel is out).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Delete IAR

body:
DF wrote:

>>>Maybe having the fluffy stuff is good too, but if IAR
>>>is going to be a core principle is should more clearly
>>>state when and why admins choose to ignore all rules.
>>>
>>>
It is effectively impossible to anticipate in advance the circumstances
and reasons in which "Ignore all rules" would apply. That's in the very
nature of the statement and a key reason for its existence.

This is not to deny that attempts to invoke the principle must have a
supporting rationale when the situation presents itself. The fact that
the page closes by saying "ignore all rules...including this one" should
be a clear signal that as policies go, the principle is a flimsy twig
and will not serve to justify anything by itself.

Incidentally, I would also point out that the application of "Ignore all
rules" does not limit itself to the actions of administrators.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

body:
On 19/09/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Jack & Naree wrote:
>
> >Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take arms
> >against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and arrows of
> >their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have American friends!)
> >
> Then I guarantee you won't want to have anything to do with
> WP. The minute you try to "clean up" [[United States Constitution]],
> you're going to get into the mother of all edit wars!

Someone posted to the en: Help Desk telling us, very smugly, they'd
found a typo in one of our articles on the Constitution (or the
Declaration of Independence), and explaining patiently that this was
the *English* way of spelling the word not the *American*.

Much to my delight, it turned out to have been spelt that way in the
original (though a lot of online transcriptions silently corrected
it...)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
Does IAR not have significant consensus as a guideline?

On 9/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's never been a very widely applicable rule, but it's not our custom to
> delete policy pages with which we happen to disagree. Just pop something at
> the top to say it isn't an official policy or guideline, if you disagree
> with it.


from_name: ilooy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Approved requests for new languages page listing Ladino

body:
Hi,
Now that on Meta the
Approved requests for new languages
page includes the Ladino language
I'd like to request the help of one
of our developers in setting up the
subdomains:
http://lad.wikipedia.org/
and
http://lad.wiktionary.org/

I'd also like to request admin access
as things get underway in those wikis.
Could someone help out with these
tasks.

With much appreciation and many thanks,
Jay B.

[[meta:User:ILVI]]
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Giant Message

body:
Ahh, my mistake.  My apologies.

- Craig

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On the contrary.  IAR is crucial to Wikipedia, because it allows us a
"common sense override". This means that we can always act in the best
interests of the encyclopaedia, even when it is not directly allowed
in policy.

IAR is a vital part of the "Wiki" part of Wikipedia, just as NPOV is
vital to the "pedia".

Sam


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to implement an [edit] for {{:subpages}} ?

body:
On 19/09/05, topi <topologis at t-online.de> wrote:
> I often use subpages in my wiki. Therefor the subpages shall be edited by
> clicking [edit]. This works for pages with enough headings but not for pages
> without them..  I  also know solutions, using a template like "edit
> subpage". But the next problem the [edit]-buttons are hidden and the
> [edit-subpage] buttons are still visible when a user is not logged in.
>
> So i'm looking for a php-solution when using the {{:subpage}} syntax.

Er, I was a little confused at first as to what you were trying to do
- which if I understand rightly has nothing to do with what are
commonly called subpages (things like [[Talk:Foo/Archive 1]]). What I
*think* you're asking is: how can you have an automatic "edit" button
next to every included *template* (or in the case of {{:subpage}}, a
page from the Main namespace being included as a template).

I've seen this suggested before, but it was pointed out that many
templates are very small, aren't necessarily designed to be visibly
separate from the rest of the page, and generally vary too much for an
automated way of placing the links.

However, if they're used in a fairly uniform way on your wiki, you
could hack the part of Parser.php which deals with template inclusions
to add text to the page its including - somewhere in the
braceSubstitution() function, perhaps.

Another alternative might be to write an extension (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Write_your_own_MediaWiki_extension)
which displays an edit link if the user is logged in, and nothing
otherwise; or one which displays its input if logged in, and nothing
otherwise, which you can then put inside a template. A simple version
might be something like this (from memory and what other people have
put on meta):

---------------------------
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "registerLoggedInOnly";

function registerLoggedInOnly() {
   global $wgParser;
   $wgParser->setHook( "ifloggedin", "loggedInOnlyCallback");
}

function loggedInOnlyCallback($input, $args) {
  global $wgUser;
  if ( ! $wgUser->isLoggedIn() ) {
     return ""; # do nothing for logged out users
  } else {
     global $wgUser, $wgTitle;
     $parserOptions = ParserOptions::newFromUser( $wgUser );
     $parser = & new Parser();
     return $parser->parse($input, $wgTitle, $parserOptions);
  }
}
---------------------------

You could then create a template at "Template:Editlink" like:
<ifloggedin><small>[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{{1}}}|action=edit}}
(edit)]</small></ifloggedin>

And use it in your other template pages like:
{{editlink|name of template}}

A more advanced version might try and work out what the name of the
template was automatically, but that's kind of complicated, because
variables like {{PAGENAME}} get set to the page being *viewed*, not
the one containing the text, and I can't think off the top of my head
how to get hold of the latter...

Oh, and I've just realised you *might* have problems with caching, but
you might not, because logged in versus logged out is already a
distinction in the caching I think...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> On 19/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon.
>>
>> that's a surprise
>
>
> Why?
>

I think we have an inclusionist on our hands :)

>
>>>Actually, the policy is (or at least was):
>>>
>>>* If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
>>>English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
>>>* If subject of article is USian, use US English
>>>* If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
>>>author is preferred.
>>
>> And what of "Aubergines" and "Eggplants"? "Colour" and "Color"
>
>
> See the 3rd rule. However the original author of the article writes
> it. Colour and color aren't that big of a deal. Any mention of
> "eggplant" or "aubergine" can note the other variant in parentheses,
> although I have a sneaking suspicioun that in the commounwealthe the
> werde "eggplant" will be understode wel enough.
>

Er, Mark, have you been drinking, or have the CIA been reading your
email again? :)

Besides, to many English speakers in the Commonwealth "Aubergine" is an
unknown term. It certainly was to me until I learnt the word in French
back in high school :)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 19/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Since English is really a dialect of French, a lie bree is probably a
> place where you buy your books, as it is in any "proper language" (-:

I'm not 100% sure if you were joking or just labouring under a
misunderstanding, so I thought I'd point out that English is largely a
Germanic language, closely related to the various modern Scandinavian
tongues, and also to modern Dutch and German.

French is like a distant cousin (sharing
great-great-great-great-grandparents in Proto-Indo-European) which
recently had a quick affair, so that a few of her features show up in
the offspring ;)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 19/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>This really depends on who you're talking about, and I'm not sure it is
>>>"most". Most *Europeans* who learn English as a foreign language learn
>>>the UK spellings; most Asians, in my experience, learn the US spellings.
>>
>> Asians - you mean Indians? Pakistanis? Bangladeshis?
>> Of course, you mightn't know that in Britain "Asian" means "south Asian"
>>and the American usage of "Asian" (East Asian) is covered with the word
>>"Oriental".
>
>
> I am rather amused by the juxtaposition that in American usage, Asians
> predominantly get taught American English, and in British usage,
> Asians predominantly get taught British English...
>

You're both wrong, they come to Australia (being closest) and get taught
Australian English :)

(Actually, I thought that in Britain "Asian" meant "West Asian"
(middle-eastern) - where's South Asia? I'm almost in South East Asia...)

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body:
Giuseppe DAngelo wrote:
<snip>
> It hasn't mattered one jot - there are more important things to worry
> about  - like who will win out of the Sydney Swans and West Coast
> Eagles this Saturday at the MCG and will Bazza be rubbed out for a
> week?  And has there truly been a leak in the brownlow voting? Now
> they're important questions!
>

If I had any money, it'd be on West Coast, but based on the way both
teams played last week - the Crows have been up and down all season, and
the Saints weren't exactly favourites either - should be a close one...

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
It's never been a very widely applicable rule, but it's not our custom to
delete policy pages with which we happen to disagree. Just pop something at
the top to say it isn't an official policy or guideline, if you disagree
with it.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's never been a very widely applicable rule, but it's not our custom to
> delete policy pages with which we happen to disagree. Just pop something at
> the top to say it isn't an official policy or guideline, if you disagree
> with it.

Although some of are likely to ignore this.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

body:
Robin Shannon asked:
> 4. Why a Wiki (or, To edit or not to edit)?

And I agree that this is the important question.

Marshall Poe answered:

> To me, this is the most interesting question of all because it
> points up a conflict between two principles.  On the one hand,
> we want to be open and allow everyone to edit all content.  On
> the other hand, we want to gather and disseminate the sum of
> human knowledge to everyone, free.

In mathematical terminology, the sum (e.g. "7") is not the same
thing as its terms (e.g. "3 + 4").  The sum can be computed from
the terms, but once you have the sum you can no longer determine
which the terms were.  I think that Wikipedia, using wikis, should
disseminate the *sum* of human knowledge, because one person could
enter 3 and another could add 4 to it, resulting in the sum. But
this new proposed memoir project instead aims to present the
individual components or terms, each on their own.  Other tools
than wikis, such as blogs, are better suited for that task.

There are plenty of technical tools out there for people who want
to set up their own blog, to report their individual memoirs.
There are also tools that help coordinate blogging on a larger
scale, such as del.icio.us for tagging, flickr for adding photos,
geobloggers.com for adding geographic coordinates, and most
recently the Google Blogsearch.

Wikipedia is also such a tool, as it allows bloggers to link to
encyclopedic articles that provide background knowledge on places,
people, and events.  The occurance of such links is indeed a kind
of tagging.  You can do a Google blogsearch to find 8 known blog
entries that link to the article [[en:Great Chicago Fire]],
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGreat_Chicago_Fire
which is 8 times more than you'll find through
http://del.icio.us/tag/ChicagoFire

Some future incarnation of Wiktionary could also become such a
useful resource, but it isn't really there yet.

> but the Wikisource *edition* of the ?Magna Carta? will only
> become less valuable as it is edited further away from its
> original, canonical state (the words as they were written in
> 1215).

Quite correctly, this is a weakness of Wikisource as it is now
conceived, and hardly a valid argument for using wikis for
memoirs.

> Which is the superior principle?  I?d say it?s the
> all-human-knowledge principle.

Nothing says one tool has to be useful for all situations.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
<snip>
> There are some usages of American English which look glaring to a
> British-trained eye - "In 1945, Churchill wrote Truman that..."

Argh! My eyes!

>> I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism,
>> ambiguation (because of the many differences in American-English
>> and English usage), and English learners learning to spell
>> incorrectly and talk like Americans - why is it wrong to resist
>> that?
>
>
> "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is
> that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just
> borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down
> alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new
> vocabulary."
>

Oh yes, French language has looked /very/ attractive down those dark
alleyways in years past :)

> The concept of English as a monolithic entity living somewhere in
> Kensington from which variants have sprung worldwide is now outdated;
>  from the point of view of the writers of the first edition of the
> Britannica in 1770ish, you and I are speaking a degraded and foreign
> language. (Back then, plural's was still an accepted construction!)
>

(Most likely a contraction of plurales, hence the use of the apostrophe
- which is of course the source of the possesive apostrophe, so if
anyone tells you off for using it, smite them!)

> Recently, I read Alford's "The Queen's English", dated about 1865.
<snip>
> (Though, interestingly, he approves of verbing nouns, noting that a
> century before "to experience" was hated by scholars. Plus ca
> change...)
>

Oh yes, I can't stand it when someone verbs a noun... verb itself being
a noun, I've just verbed verb :) Where will it end!?

> The language changes; there is no sense in fighting it, because one
> may as well try to split atoms with a chisel. The era of modern
> communications will invariably simplify previously divergent
> spellings, just as it has smoothed over the difference in regional
> accents in the past, and caused a small number of languages to become
>  massively dominant. It's all the same process...
>

This just in...

> The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
> English will be the official language of the European nation rather
> than  German, which was the other possibility.
>
> As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that
> English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a
> 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
>
> In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".  Sertainly, this
> will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c"  will be
> dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion, and
> keyboards kan have one less letter.
>
> There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
> troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words
> like fotograf 20% shorter.
>
> In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
> expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
> possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters
> which have always ben a deterent  to akurate speling. Also, al wil
> agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e"  in  the languag is
> disgrasful and it should go away.
>
> By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing  "th"
>  with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan
> be dropd from vords  kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil
> hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
>
> Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
> understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.  Und
> zen ve vil konker ze verld!!

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/19/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does IAR not have significant consensus as a guideline?
>

IAR in itself isn't a big deal, each individual instance of IAR is different
and should be justifiable on its own. It's not enough to say "look, I was
ignoring all rules, it's in [[WP:IAR]]." You have to be doing something so
manifestly good for the project that there will be little significant
objection.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Making NFS reliable? (was: Reboots of doom)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>I changed the bash prompt for root on zwinger to something distinctive.
>>It's all very well to say "be careful", but unfortunately our simple
>>mammalian brains aren't designed to detect when one familiar bit of
>>english text is replaced by another. Colours, flashing lights, pretty
>>pictures -- these work better. They allow faster recognition and require
>>less concentration.
>>
>>
>
>Of course I fully agree.  No human can really be blamed for this sort of
>error, our simple mammalian brains are simply not suitable for this type
>of repetitive work.  (Jeronim typed reboot about 100 times that day, on
>purpose, on other servers.)
>
>The one thing that came to my mind is: why does anyone log into zwinger
>in the first place?  Since it's this horribly frightening SPOF, ought we
>to not avoid even _looking_ at it funny?
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
>
Am I correct in thinking that the problem seems to be centred on
Zwinger's being a central NFS server for a number of crucial read-only
configuration files used by a large number of servers, and apps behaving
in a peculiar (and usually disastrous) way when NFS dies?

How about just keeping local copies on each server, running rsync,
rather than NFS, on the master, and using rsync to keep all the local
copies on te slaves in sync? The files can even be kept "in the same
place" as currently, using symbolic links. If the master falls over, all
of its clients continue to work, and they will continue updating when
the master is either brought back up, or replaced. A CNAME would
probably be a good way of designating the master.

No new technology needed, which is rather better than my original idea
of implementing reliable NFS failover at the client, which I won't go
into further, other that to say that it seemed a good idea until I
considered (a) the wrongness of re-inventing the wheel in a very complex
way, and (b) the fact that the best way to keep the multiple redundant
NFS servers in sync would be rsync...

-- Neil


from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Stephen Forrest wrote:
> On 9/19/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Americans seem to want to believe that they speak English, and we speak
>>British English in England (meaning Britain!). They are wrong. They speak a
>>dialect of our language, called American-English, an offshoot from the main
>>trunk if you will, which has evolved somewhat independently of English.
>
>
> Look, this is getting tiresome.  The only argument you could provide
> on why written British English has greater legitimacy than written
> American English is that it happens to be written by people who mostly
> still live where the writers of the written language ancestral to both
> once lived.
>

What about the French Wikipedia? How do they feel?

> This is a political consideration, not a linguistic one.  Since this
> political point is not commonly accepted, it is POV and therefore
> unsuitable for Wikipedia.
>

What about the Portuguese Wikipedia? How do they feel?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
On 9/20/05, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Maybe having the fluffy stuff is good too, but if IAR
> is going to be a core principle is should more clearly
> state when and why admins choose to ignore all rules.

when: we can't even bend the dissruption clause far enough to cover
whatever we are doing
why: because we want to.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Oh god... those stupid silent letters.

"Oh gee we like Latin so much!!! Let's insert a letter for no good reason."

Island, receipt, etc

On 20/09/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Jack & Naree wrote:
> > Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take arms
> > against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and arrows of
> > their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have American friends!)
> >  I know it's not going to feed the starving children in Africa, but I simply
> > can't feckin' stand seeing the word "center" and "color" and hearing people
> > raising the intonation at the end of their sentences.
> >  American-English is like a giant linguistic fingernail down the English
> > blackboard.
>
> The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
> for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
> They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept
> historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre
> (e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing
> stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.
>
> It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it be
> nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?
>
> Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of
> Americanisation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
>
> -- Tim Starling (Australian)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete IAR

body:
It's a stick of dynamite. If for the sake of the project you need to do
something and the rules are in the way, you may take it upon yourself to
emply the dynamite.

If when the smoke clears there is agreement that things are better than they
would have been otherwise, there may be a little polite applause. Otherwise
you'd better just reverse what you did, apologise, and move on.


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon wiki

body:
Hi all,

            Just wanted to inform everyone of the newest Anglo-Saxon
article: Janice Rogers Brown.

James


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 40

body:
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:37:42 -0400
From: "James R. Johnson"
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
To:
Message-ID: <20050919173748.B0D44115841E at mail.wikimedia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

When I went to London, I did have to ask what a secre tree was (any relation
to the oak tree?). And a labora tree and an observa tree and a 'lie bree'
and the 'straw bree'... :) Were I able to stay longer, perhaps I would have
understood better.

And at least we pronounce the 'r' at the ends of words. :)

James

PS - note that this is a sarcastic e-mail. Don't take it that seriously.

A sarcastic e-mail?  That's not possible, americans don't understand sarcasm :-)

pippu d'angelo

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 41

body:
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:54:04 -0700
From: Mark Williamson
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <849f98ed050919135443fb84e2 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

> Irrelevent, how?

See, now, this is just what I've been waiting for since the beginning
of this thread. Our little friend here who cares so much about
"correct" spelling and grammar has fouled up our beautiful language by
using an absolutely incorrect spelling, ignorant of the etymology of
the word.

It's "irrelevant". In all English varieties.

Mark

P.S.

That stuff I said about fouling up our beautiful language was a joke.

maybe he meant to say "irreverent" - it fits the context just as well!

pippu d'angelo

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ... English ... 73 emails

body:
73 emails in about the 7 hours that I was gone. Jeeeeeez

W/W


subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting Fatal error by all missed searches

body:
Sascha Brockmeyer wrote:
> Hello, i ve one big problem with my MediaWiki.
>
> I ve installed it @ my localhost (an IIS from Microsoft, with PHP and MySQL)
> and it works fine.
>
> But even when i search for an title that doesnt exist i get the Fatal Error:
> "Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in
> c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\includes\SearchEngine.php on line 36"

You've omitted the version numbers, but it looks like you're running one
of the new versions of PHP which adds fatal errors for what should be
perfectly legitimate constructs. MediaWiki 1.4 does not support these
versions; upgrade to 1.5rc4.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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