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

body:
An interesting quote from this blog:

Basically, what is happening here is the building of a parallel World Wide
Web inside the wikipedia.org domain

Fred

> From: Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:24:27 +0200
> To: Mailingliste der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia <wikide-l at Wikipedia.org>,
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Why Wikipedia Sucks. Big Time"
>
> http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/blog/archives/2004/06/index.html
> #000623
>
> Eine Perle:
>
> "Text and concepts for Wikipedia entries are often blatantly copied from
> other websites. To avoid instant recognition, the text is sometimes
> rewritten, adding inaccuracies, inconsistencies or even errors. Due to
> the nature of the content and the open format of Wikipedia, no copyright
> holder can do anything about this."
>
>
> (I don't agree with this text but I find it interesting to read most
> objections to wikipedia condensed on a single non-wikipedia-affiliated page)
>
> Sonnenscheinverw?hnte bitte wegschauen..
> Nicht, da? ich glaube, da? er das Prinzip in der letzten Konsequenz
> verstanden hat...
>
> Mathias
> --
> nach uns der synflood.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > Anthere wrote:
> >
> >> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
> >>
> >> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
> >
> > Wikipedians are not a representative sample of the general population. 8-)
>
> I think it much more important to realise that the people who put their
> name on such a list is also not a representative sample of all Wikipedians.
>
> What I'm saying is, maybe NTs are just more likely to put their name up
> there.

NTs are also probably much more likely to take such a test when not prompted to
do so (such as in a study). I've known my MBTI type for nearly 10 years now.

--mav

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

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

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> "senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback"

Here is a typical example of 172's ad hominem that really ought to be
out of bounds, and yet quite a few people seem to be OK with it.
Why is anybody willing to put up with these kinds of low attacks?

Stan


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

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

The font size is also one or two steps too small on the English Wikipedia as
well (not to mention Meta and Wikibooks). I have pretty good eyesight and I had
to increase the font size in my browser - never had to do that before.
Wikipedis must be much harder to read for people with poor vision (esp for
those who need reading glasses).

Developers: Please increase the default font size. And while you are at it,
please also bring back the old link colors - that light blue/gray is very hard
to read (links should stand out a bit, not blend into the background!).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Commons

body:
"Karl Eichwalder" <ke at gnu.franken.de> schrieb:
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:
>
> > I think it would be very nice to be able to have portfolios of images
> > of specific topics, even when we only use 1 or 2 of the images in a
> > particular article on a particular wikipedia.
>
> I'd like to support your proposal.
>
> > For example, we might quickly end up with 50 different pictures of the
> > Leaning Tower of Pisa.
>
> Yes, those series are very useful.  Don't hesitate to upload detailed
> pictures (with descriptions, of course) and link them together on a main
> page.

In my opinion, it kind of depends on what the pictures show, and on what
descriptions are given. I don't want 50 similar pictures of the tower of
Pisa. I do want 50 pictures if this one is taking at sunset, that one shows
the surroundings as well and the third one is from an unusual direction.

I have said something against this kind of thing on the Wikicommons discussion
page, but please understand that I am not against having many pictures on
one subject. I am against having many very similar pictures and against
pictures with insufficient description.

I don't want 100 pictures of "a yellow flower". I do want 10 pictures each
of a 1000 different yellow flowers. I don't want 50 portraits of George W.
Bush. I do want 200 pictures of George W. Bush if some are portraits,
others show him sign a law as governor of Texas, others show him speaking
to the congress, others show him among soldiers in Iraq, etcetera.

In short, what I want is to request that pictures are either
* because of what they show (the 50th tower of Pisa, but only the second
  one from this angle)
* because of the additional information (the 30th George W. Bush signing
  a law, but we are being told _which_ law is being signed)
duplicates of not more than a few pictures in the collection.

Andre Engels


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jakob

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS-Feeds

body:
Hi,

[[meta:MediaWiki_roadmap]] states that RSS syndication is available for many
special pages, such as Special:Newpages. Which special pages are you talking
of?

* wiki.phtml?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

is ok. But all the other pages I tried do not work

* Special:Recentchangeslinked
* Special:Whatlinkshere
* Special:Watchlist
* Special:Categories
* ...

Have a look at

http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Categories

There is a Link in the Toolbox (rss/atom) but it does not work?

Thanks,
  Jakob


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Chinese wiki

body:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116323,00.asp

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040602/7c8898ce/attachment.htm


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: will overheating?

body:
Jerome Jamnicky wrote:
> I noticed some messages while logged in to will today:
>
> Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
> will kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold
>
> Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
> will kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold
>
> Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
> will kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode
>
> Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
> will kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode
>
> .. and so on, continuing until 20:41 - which suggests that someone might have
> forgotten to plug in a fan or two.  Jimbo, if you're heading to the colo
> tomorrow, could you take a look at it please?

It was outputting these messages to my terminal constantly, as soon as I
logged in. I switched it off to avoid damage. Note that it's not on the
remote power switch so there's no way to tell if it's really off, or if
it just crashed during shutdown.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] 404 Handler Caching Revisited

body:
So, I mentioned the idea of doing 404-handler caching on this list a
while ago. There's a page about it on meta:

      http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/404_handler_caching

I coded up a very simple Wiki engine that uses this technique, just to
prove to myself it would work. It does, and quite nicely. The code is
here for anyone who wants to take a peek:

      http://wikitravel.org/~evan/wormwiki-0.1.tar.gz

I'm going to try to shoehorn this code into MediaWiki in the near
future. I think it should significantly reduce load on servers.

~ESP

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


body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Re: "Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be
> nice to one
> another!"
>
> -- mav
>
> I'm already calm, so I don't need to take a deep breath. I'm just
> sitting here at my desk, kind of tired after not getting much sleep,
> looking over some papers and research, checking e-mail in various
> accounts, checking news sites, and the like.
>
> But I am fed up with Wikipedia, though, and especially people like
> Stan and Fred. I doubt that I'll be able to be nice to either of them
> until they stop spreading these lies about me being a Stalinist...

I've never said you were a Stalinist. I do think you're heavily biased;
you always have an excuse or apology for a leftwinger's action, and
are always ready to blame a rightwinger for engaging in exactly the
same kinds of actions. As it happens, there's a strain of academic
history for which this degree of bias is considered normal, and another
strain on the rightwing side too; an unfortunate state of affairs. It's
gotten so bad these days that you can't usefully read anything on
20th-century history before finding out the left/right bias of the writer.

Stan


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parser testing page

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> anyone with a knowledge of our syntax

Has anyone ever written a context-free grammar to describe our syntax?

I think if I can be sufficiently bothered, I'll do that after the exams.
Then someone else can write a recursive-descent parser from it.

> I also think that we shouldn't use stuff like "left"
> and "50px" as image alt text.

For obvious reasons, the software cannot know if "left"/"50px" is
actually supposed to be the alt text. I think our syntax works so that
for [[Image:Filename.ext|50px]], this is correct behaviour. To actually
make an image 50px wide, it should be [[Image:Filename.ext|50px|]], and
that should generate an empty alt text.

Timwi


body:
I totally agree with Stan on this.  172 is always using ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with him.  Usually in the style of, "I am the only one with the Received Wisdom (TM) on this subject, and you are an ignorant loser who has no worthy input to this subject."  But he gets away with it time and time again.  RickK

Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> "senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback"

Here is a typical example of 172's ad hominem that really ought to be
out of bounds, and yet quite a few people seem to be OK with it.
Why is anybody willing to put up with these kinds of low attacks?

Stan

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040602/197eb830/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What's really the deal with categories?

body:
K Forstner wrote:

> It seems anyone (a single contributor) can
> create a new category, merge existing ones, rename them, whatever.

Merging and renaming large categories involves a large number of edits
(one per article in the category/-ies). Few intelligent people will go
for that trouble if they think it will be reverted anyway.

In contrast, you have complained about the categorisation of only one
article. Changing that category tag back and forth is completely trivial.

Timwi


body:
Please.  Have you EVER made an edit that didn't attack the US and defend all of these dictators?  If so, please point it out.

RickK

Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
Re: "Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be nice to
one
another!"

-- mav

I'm already calm, so I don't need to take a deep breath. I'm just sitting
here at my desk, kind of tired after not getting much sleep, looking over
some papers and research, checking e-mail in various accounts, checking news
sites, and the like.

But I am fed up with Wikipedia, though, and especially people like Stan and
Fred. I doubt that I'll be able to be nice to either of them until they stop
spreading these lies about me being a Stalinist in order to attack my
academic credibility. I've been donating so much time to Wikipedia over the
course of the past 18 months, and I'm tired of the same clowns distorting
the substance of what contribute to articles over and over again all the
time.

Now, if Wikipedia's giving up on academic professionalism, I'll leave
without much of a fuss. I have no problem bailing out on a lost cause.

_________________________________________________________________
Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win
a trip to NY
http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040602/767ebb0e/attachment.htm


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

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Re: "Here is a typical example of 172's ad hominem that really ought
> to be
> out of bounds, and yet quite a few people seem to be OK with it.
> Why is anybody willing to put up with these kinds of low attacks?"
>
> Why didn't you quote me in full, huh?
>
Because there's no possible excuse for personal attacks. It doesn't
matter how strongly you feel about the issue, your personal history,
nothing. Critiquing behavior and statements, sure, go wild - if Fred
or I say something stupid, it's perfectly fine to respond "that was
a stupid thing to say". But to go from that to "Fred is senile", that
is not OK. Calling it "harshness" or "ineloquence" is not an excuse;
I know you're smart enough to know full well the difference between
an attack on what someone says, and an attack on them personally.

If that's not convincing, then consider the likely outcome if
*everybody* on WP is allowed to cut loose with the personal attacks
all the time. Rest assured, I have some pretty nasty thoughts about
people here, plus the vocabulary and creativity to make attacks that
will amuse the audience while ulcerating the victim. (Fish with
Google Groups to get a partial sample of my youthful and less-honed
flaming - alas, some of my best material seems not have been archived.)

Stan


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You fail to mention that the mainstream you speak of is called the
revisionist school.

Fred

> From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:52:58 +0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Stan)
>
> As mentioned, my contributions on Soviet history on
> Wikipedia are entirely in mainstream of Western academic Soviet and Russia
> studies.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request to rename zh-cfr.wikipedia to zh-min-nan

body:
Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan) wrote:
> Hi There,
>
> The user community on "southern min" (min-nan) wikipedia would like
> to request to rename the currently used "zh-cfr" to "zh-min-nan".
> The tag "cfr" makes no sense to the native speaker and the user community.
> The tag "zh-min-nan" makes sense and is a registered RFC 3066 tag.
> Please rename the name of southern min wikipedia a.s.a.p, thanks!
>
> pektiong

How about minnan.wikipedia.org? It's shorter, doesn't conflict with
anything, and is easy to remember.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: contributions to HU wiki

body:
On Jun 2, 2004, at 1:05 PM, Timwi wrote:
> You don't seem to have any idea what it is like to be completely at
> the mercy of someone who is in a position of greater power, who abuses
> that power and is unwillig to grant it to others, who is extremely
> difficult to convince of anything other than what is already their
> opinion, etc. It feels like an insurmountable wall, and every time you
> slightly kick it, a brick hits you on the head.

Having power is sometimes like volunteering to be kicked in the head.

Thanks to the masochists.

-Bop


from_name: Arnaud G

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Commons

body:
>In my opinion, it kind of depends on what the pictures show, and on what
>descriptions are given. I don't want 50 similar pictures of the tower of
>Pisa. I do want 50 pictures if this one is taking at sunset, that one shows
>the surroundings as well and the third one is from an unusual direction.
>
>
I agree with you each picture should bring some information, it unuseful
to have 30 time the same picture.  I think that it's very useful to have
many picture (and detailed one) of the same object. Picture ofen bring
more information than a long text. Currently I have also a problem on
how to incorporate those images in an article. Currently I m creating a
gallery where I m putting all the images with a short comment on each
picture.
see for instance:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath%C3%A9drale_de_Lausanne/galerie
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris/galerie

Greatpatton


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Commons

body:
>In my opinion, it kind of depends on what the pictures show, and on what
>descriptions are given. I don't want 50 similar pictures of the tower of
>Pisa. I do want 50 pictures if this one is taking at sunset, that one shows
>the surroundings as well and the third one is from an unusual direction.
>
>
I agree with you each picture should bring some information, it unuseful
to have 30 time the same picture.  I think that it's very useful to have
many picture (and detailed one) of the same object. Picture ofen bring
more information than a long text. Currently I have also a problem on
how to incorporate those images in an article. Currently I m creating a
gallery where I m putting all the images with a short comment on each
picture. see for instance:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath%C3%A9drale_de_Lausanne/galerie
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris/galerie

Greatpatton


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parser testing page

body:
On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 12:43:03PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Has anyone ever written a context-free grammar to describe our syntax?

     I  had been playing with a flex/bison combo, but Wiki's
not suited to LALR; should be  trivial  to  switch  out  the
lexer for something in-house, though.

     Bison, on the other hand, seemed to do the trick.

     ~Peter


from_name: Abe Sokolov

body:
Over the past 18 months that I've been contributing to Wikipedia, I've been
asking Fred over and over again to stop charging that I am a Stalinist, a
Communist, or a Soviet supporter. These are outright lies. **I am not a
Stalinist or a Communist.**

However, I do not ask that readers of the mailing list believe take my word
for it, but rather judge me by the work I've contributed to WP, as opposed
to the second-hand lies and distortions on the mailing list. Enclosed in
this e-mail below is an example of some of my work, which should put these
stale lies and slandars to rest once and for all.

As sources, I've used, e.g., Gregory, Stuart, Goldman, Lewin, McCauley--
sources that are wholly within the mainstream of Western Soviet and Russian
studies (btw, my user page can direct you to links on the leading academic
journals in the field).

Incidentally, my work on the Soviet economy and history on Wiki owes more to
the likes of Friedrich Hayek than anything coming from the Stalinist USSR.
As an example, here is my article on the economy of the Soviet Union. Yes, I
do avoid lacing my writing on Soviet histroy with emotive, bellicose,
Reaganite anticommunist rhetoric, but this is a matter of style and not
substance per se and staying on topic (hence, I don't bring up the Gulags,
the Great Purges, the terror-famines, the deportations, etc. when it isn't
on topic).

Note my recomendations for further reading in this article and the listing
of [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives /
Paul R. Gregory] in particular in the external links.

-172

The '''economy of the Soviet Union''' was based on a system of state
ownership and administrative planning. Like other [[Communist state]]s in
the former [[Warsaw Pact]], the Soviet Union forged a [[centrally planned
economy]]. Since the dissolution of the [[Soviet Union]] ([[1991]]), all but
a handful of the 15 former Soviet republics have dismantled their
Soviet-style economies (''see'' [[History of the Soviet Union
(1985-1991)#Restructuring the Soviet system|Transition from economic
planning in the former Soviet Union]]).

==Planning==

Based on a system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was controlled
through ''[[Gosplan]]'' (the State Planning Commission) and ''[[Gosbank]]''
(the State Bank). The economy was directed from [[1928]] by a series of
five-year plans. For every enterprise planning ministries (also known as the
"fund holders" or ''fondoderzhateli'') defined the mix of economic inputs
(e.g., labor and raw materials), a schedule for completion, and wholesale
and almost all retail prices.

Industry was long concentrated after 1928 on the production of [[capital
goods]] through [[metallurgy]], machine manufacture, and chemical industry.
In the Soviet terminology, the capital goods are known as ''group A goods'',
or ''means of production''. This emphasis was based on the Marxist economic
theory about the necessity of a more rapid growth of the ''production of
means of production''. Since the death of Stalin ([[1953]]), consumer goods
(''group B goods'') received more emphasis.

===Drafting the five-year plans===

Under [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s tutelage, a complex system of planning
arrangements had developed since the introduction of the first five-year
plan in 1928. Until the late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]], when economic
reforms backed by Soviet leader [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] introduced significant
changes in the traditional system (''see'' ''[[Perestroika]]''), the
allocation of resources was directed by a planning apparatus rather than
through the interplay of [[market economy|market]] forces.

'''Timeframe.''' From the Stalin-era through the late-[[1980s]], the [[Five
year plan|five-year plan]] integrated short-range planning into a longer
timeframe. It delineated the chief thrust of the country's economic
development and specified the way the economy could meet the desired goals
of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]]. Although the
five-year plan was enacted into law, it contained a series of guidelines
rather than a set of direct orders.

Periods covered by the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the
gatherings of the [[Congress of the CPSU|CPSU Party Congress]]. At each CPSU
Congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next five-year
plan. Thus, each plan had the approval of the most authoritative body of the
country's leading political institution.

'''Guidelines for the plan.''' The [[Central Committee of the CPSU]] and,
more specifically, its [[Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee|Politburo]]
set basic guidelines for planning. The Politburo determined the general
direction of the economy via control figures (preliminary plan targets),
major investment projects (capacity creation), and general economic
policies.

The Politburo sent its list of priorities for the five-year plan to the
[[Sovnarkom|Council of Ministers]], which constituted the government
bureaucracy of the USSR. The Council of Ministers was composed of industrial
ministers, chairmen of various state committees, and chairmen of agencies
with ministerial status. This committee stood at the apex of the vast
economic bureaucracy, including the state planning apparatus, the industrial
ministries, the trusts (the intermediate between the ministries and the
enterprises), and finally, the state enterprises. The Council of Ministers
elaborated on Politburo plan targets and sent them to ''[[Gosplan]]'', which
gathered data on plan fulfillment.

'''Gosplan.''' Combining the broad goals laid out by the Council of
Ministers with data supplied by lower administrative levels regarding the
current state of the economy, ''Gosplan'' worked out, through trial and
error, a set of preliminary plan targets. Among more than twenty state
committees, ''Gosplan'' headed the government's planning apparatus and was
by far the most important agency in the state bureaucracy. The task of
planners was to balance resources and requirements to ensure that the
necessary inputs were provided for the planned output. The planning
apparatus alone was a vast organizational arrangement consisting of
councils, commissions, governmental officials, specialists, etc. charged
with executing and monitoring economic policy.

The state planning agency was subdivided into its own industrial
departments, such as [[coal]], [[iron]], and [[machine]] building. It also
had summary departments such as [[finance]], dealing with issues that
crossed functional boundaries. With the exception of a brief experiment with
regional planning during the [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khrushchev]] era in the
[[1950s]], Soviet planning was done on a sectoral basis rather than on a
regional basis. The departments of the state planning agency aided the state
agency's development of a full set of plan targets along with input
requirements, a process involving bargaining between the ministries and
their superiors.

'''Planning ministries.''' Economic ministries performed key roles in the
Soviet organizational structure. When the planning goals had been
established by ''Gosplan'', economic ministries drafted plans within their
jurisdictions and disseminated planning data to the subordinate enterprises.

The planning data  were sent downward through the planning hierarchy for
progressively more detailed elaboration. The ministry received its control
targets, which were then disaggregated by branches within the ministry then
by lower units, eventually until each enterprise received its own control
figures (production targets).

'''Enterprises.''' Enterprises were called upon to develop the most detailed
plans covering all aspects of their operations so that they could assess the
feasibility of targets, thus opening up the most intense bargaining phase in
the planning process. As the individual enterprise drafted its detailed
production plans, the flow of information was reversed; enterprise managers
and even rank-and-file workers often participated in the planning process at
this level. According to Soviet reports, roughly 110 million Soviet workers
took part in discussions in the final period of state planning in the
late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]].

The enterprises' draft plans of the were then sent back up through the
planning ministries for review. This process entailed intensive bargaining,
with all parties seeking the target levels and input figures that best
suited their interests.

'''Redrafting the plan.''' After this bargaining process, ''Gosplan''
received the revised estimates and re-aggregated them as it saw fit. Then,
the redrafted plan was sent to the Council of Ministers and the Party's
Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat for approval. The Council of
Ministers submitted the Plan to the [[Supreme Soviet]] (the rubber-stamp
parliament) and the Central Committee submitted the plan to the Party
Congress, both for rubber stamp approval. By this time, the process had been
completed and the plan became law.

'''Approval of the plan.''' The review, revision, and approval of the
five-year plan were followed by another downward flow of information, this
time with the amended and final plans containing the specific targets for
sector of the economy. At this point, implementation began and was largely
the responsibility of enterprise managers.

==Economic development==

Starting in 1928, the [[five year plan]]s began building a heavy industrial
base at once in an underdeveloped economy without waiting years for capital
to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, and without reliance
on external financing. The country now became industrialized at an
unbelievable pace, perhaps surpassing [[Germany]]'s pace of
industrialization in the nineteenth century and [[Japan]]'s earlier in the
twentieth.

Industrialization came with the extension of medical services, which
improved labor productivity. Campaigns were carried out against [[typhus]],
[[cholera]], and [[malaria]]; the number of physicans increased as rapidly
as facilities and training would permit; and death and [[infant mortality]]
rates steadily decreased.

As weighed growth rates, economic planning performed reasonably well during
the early and mid-[[1930s]], [[World War II]]-era mobilization, and for the
first two decades of the postwar era. The Soviet economy became the largest
and the strongest after that of the [[United States]]. The Soviet Union
became the world's leading producer of [[oil]], [[coal]], [[iron ore]],
[[cement]], and [[steel]]; [[manganese]], [[gold]], [[natural gas]] and
other [[minerals]] were also of major importance.

Growth slowed after [[1960]], but this was considered characteristic of a
mature, industrialized economy at the time. However, the planning ministries
had failed to loosen their control of the enterprise level in time to stem
the prolonged stagnation of the [[1970s]] and [[1980s]], which showed signs
of deep flaws in the Soviet model.

The planned economy was not tailored at a sufficient pace to the demands of
the more complex modern economy it had helped to forge. As the economy grew,
the volume of decisions facing planners in [[Moscow]] grew overwhelming. The
cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration did not enable the
free communication and flexible response required at the enterprise level
for dealing with worker alienation, innovation, customers, and suppliers.

As growth rates sank, supply shortages of food and consumer goods became
more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for
managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining
influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and
1980s. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all but a handful of the
15 former Soviet republics scrapped their Soviet-era systems of centralized
planning and state ownership (''see'' [[History of post-Communist Russia]]).

==Agriculture==

[[Agriculture]] was organized into a system of state and collective farms.
Organized on a large scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one
of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in
[[1972]] and [[1975]]) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The
[[1976]]-[[1980]] five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and
[[1978]] saw a record harvest. [[Cotton]], [[sugar beet]]s, [[potato]]es,
and [[flax]] were also major crops.

Despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries,
and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively
unproductive, hampered in many areas by the [[climate]] (only 10 percent of
the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker [[productivity]].

Conditions were best in the temperate black-earth belt stretching from the
Ukraine through southern [[Russia]] into the west spanning the extreme
southern portions of [[Siberia]].

Stalin established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he
moved to replaced the NEP with collective farming in 1928, which grouped
peasants into collective farms (''[[kolkhoz]]es'') and state farms
(''[[sovkhoz]]es'').

===Agricultural labor===

Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major factor explaining
the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms,
outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account.
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred
resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some
landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was
catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a
consequence for decades to come.

The ''sovkhozy'' tended to focus on larger scale production than the
''kolkhozy'' and had the ability to specialize in certain crops. The
government tended to supply them with better machinery and [[fertilizer]]s.
Labor productivity (and in turn incomes) tended to be higher on the
''sovkhozy''. Workers in state farms received wages and social benefits,
whereas those on the collective farms tended to receive a portion of the net
income of their farm based, in part, on the success (or better yet lack of
success) of the [[harvest]] and their individual contribution.

Although accounting for a small share of cultivated area, private plots
produced a substantial share of the country's [[meat]], [[milk]], [[egg]]s,
and [[vegetable]]s. Private plots were among many attempts made to
restructure Soviet farming. However, the weakness worker incentives and
managerial autonomy, which were the crux of the problem, were not addressed.

Although the Soviet Union was the world's second leading agricultural
producer and ranked first in the production of numerous commodities,
agriculture was a net drain on the economy.

==Trade and currency==

Largely self-sufficient, the Soviet Union traded little in comparison to its
economic strength. However, trade with noncommunist countries increased in
the [[1970s]] as the government sought to compensate gaps in domestic
production with imports.

In general [[fuel]]s, [[metal]]s, and [[timber]] were exported.
[[Machinery]], [[consumer goods]], and sometimes [[grain]] were imported. In
the [[1980]] trade with the [[Council for Mutual Economic Assistance]]
(COMECON) member states accounted for about half the country's volume of
trade.

The Soviet currency was non-convertible between [[1926]] and [[1937]]. Since
1937, the exchange rate was pegged by [[Gosbank]], the state bank,
responsive to the fulfillment of the government's economic plans. Soviet
[[bank]]s furnished short-term credit to state-owned enterprises.

==Further reading==

* Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart, ''Soviet and Post Soviet Economic
Structure and Performance'' 7th edition (Boston: Addison Wesley, 2001).
* Marshall Goldman, ''What Went Wrong With Perestroika'' (New York: Norton,
1991).
* Marshall Goldman, ''Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia Have
Not Worked'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).
* Moshe Lewin, ''The Making of the Soviet System'' (New Press, 1994)
* Mary McCauley, ''Soviet Politics 1917-1991'' (Oxford University Press,
1992).

==External links==

* [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives /
Paul R. Gregory]
* [http://www.hubbertpeak.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm Douglas B.
Reynolds, "Soviet Economic Decline: Did an Oil Crisis Cause the Transition
in the Soviet Union?"]
* [http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/afganwar.pdf Rafael Reuveny and Aseem
Prakash, "The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union," Review
of International Studies, 25 (1999), 25, 693-708].
* [http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/what_went_wrong.html Andre Gunder
Frank, "What Went Wrong in the 'Socialist' East?"]

_________________________________________________________________
Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win
a trip to NY
http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can of worms: my new diet

body:
I'm sorry I opened this can of worms. I'm going to go out into my garden
and eat worms now... :-(

I did not intend to get Abe and Fred and Stan fighting about whose
writing is more objective. But I would like us all to try harder to find
ways to write good articles about bad historical happenings.

I don't really know how to do this. I don't know how to write articles
about famine and mass murder, without becoming either too sad to type
straight or to mad to think straight! And someone who doesn't really
care about the plight of the unfortunarte and downtrodden wouldn't be
able to do the job either.

So we need to help each other with editing. Some way other than
repeatedly reverting, please...

Thanks.

Sad ol' Uncle Ed Poor


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Monobook

body:
Ralph Ballier wrote:
> I have install mediawiki.
>
> Where I can get skin monobook? How I have to install a skin? I am
> very new for mediawiki.

Monobook is the default skin for MediaWiki 1.3, which is now in testing
prior to release. We haven't released a beta package yet, so you'll have
to get it from CVS or wait for the beta release.

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

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040602/6812b8df/attachment.pgp>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Toby Bartels

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

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant!
>>The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft.
>>And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works
>>more readily than copyleft material is.

>Copyleft for content has existed for a very small part of the history of
>copyright, so I wouldn't expect anything else at this point. The volume of PD
>content vs copyleft content also does not compare (lots more PD but most of it
>isn't very good).

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

>My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those
>proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never be
>combined to create something better.

Even in the case of Disney, this is not entirely true!
Disney's proprietary fork on the Snow White fairy tale
feeds back to the free storytellers' community in parodies.
That's not very much, and as I indicated in my previous post,
I'd be much happier if Disney couldn't create such forks.
But even this situation is not as absolute as you claim.

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

>Effort is wasted making the same
>improvements in many different ways when that effort ''could'' have been
>condensed and combined into a smaller set of forks that could exchange bits and
>pieces back and forth as needed. The time saved could be used to write more
>content or further improve the wording of the old.

>Proprietary forks dilute effort permanently while improvements to copyleft
>forks can be backported to the original - or any other copyleft fork for that
>matter. Thus copyleft encourages the freer exchange of knowledge (PD and
>attribution-only licenses encourage the exchange in just one direction).

Let's go through the argument carefully:

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

Please let me know if I'm misstating your position!

Now, this conclusion does not in fact follow.
Here is a conclusion that ''does'' follow:
* Valid conclusion: A greater proportion of derivative works
  will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).

Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:

* Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).

But that premise is certainly false in many situations!
I rather doubt this premise would be true for WikiNews;
even CC-by-sa would not be as attractive as CC-by to a printed paper.
In fact, judging from the way that people have misused Wikipedia,
I don't think that it's even true for Wikipedia;
surely even more people would create improperly FDLed forks
if that were legal!

Now, this doesn't at all mean that your original conclusion is false.
The argument is invalid, but the conclusion may still be true.
I'm confident that the missing premise is false quite often,
but I'm not so certain that the original conclusion is ever false.
Erik gave a vague argument as to why it might be false for WikiNews,
which you didn't accept -- and I'm just not sure about it either way.
(As a matter of fact, I don't even believe that Erik is sure about it;
he just described how it ''might'' be false.)

In other words, I'm confident that WikiNews would be used more often
to create derivative works if it's not copyleft (B) than if it is (A).
But since many of the derivative works under possibility (B)
would not be useful for positive feedback, I obviously can't conclude
that possibility (A) will actually result in less positive feedback.
But by the same token, you can't assume that it will result in more.
It's a matter of how the effects will balance.

Now, I don't intend to convince you that your conclusion is ''ever'' false.
I'm only pointing out that we cannot know that it will ''always'' be true.
In that case, it would be foolish to adopt a Foundation policy
that is based on the assumption that the conclusion is always true.
The wording that Erik suggested leaves our choices open.

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

-- Toby


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

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

Hmm!  Sounds like Bill Cosby blaming African-Americans for the condition
they're in.

Ec


body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Now, regarding "the personal attacks," if Fred stops practicing
> McCarthyism against me on the mailing list, I will have no need to
> defend myself (in a sometimes ineloquent manner, I admit) against his
> attacks on my academic credibility and character on the mailing list.
> If he can apologize and agree to quit slandering me, I'll retract
> those comments and agree to stay cordial in my dealings with him in
> the future. The same goes for you.

You really shouldn't take it so personally.  If I remember the McCarthy
hearings correctly, being a Communist was not a pre-requisite to being
called one.

Ec


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Abe Sokolov wrote:
>
>> Re: "Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be
>> nice to one
>> another!"
>> -- mav
>>
>> I'm already calm, so I don't need to take a deep breath. I'm just
>> sitting here at my desk, kind of tired after not getting much sleep,
>> looking over some papers and research, checking e-mail in various
>> accounts, checking news sites, and the like.
>>
>> But I am fed up with Wikipedia, though, and especially people like
>> Stan and Fred. I doubt that I'll be able to be nice to either of them
>> until they stop spreading these lies about me being a Stalinist...
>
>
> I've never said you were a Stalinist. I do think you're heavily biased;
> you always have an excuse or apology for a leftwinger's action, and
> are always ready to blame a rightwinger for engaging in exactly the
> same kinds of actions. As it happens, there's a strain of academic
> history for which this degree of bias is considered normal, and another
> strain on the rightwing side too; an unfortunate state of affairs. It's
> gotten so bad these days that you can't usefully read anything on
> 20th-century history before finding out the left/right bias of the
> writer.

I agree that you weren't the one to introduce the term Stalinist.  It
can be difficult to steer a middle course between the blind idealism of
the left, and the blind realism of the right.

Ec


body:
Rick wrote:

>I totally agree with Stan on this.  172 is always using ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with him.  Usually in the style of, "I am the only one with the Received Wisdom (TM) on this subject, and you are an ignorant loser who has no worthy input to this subject."  But he gets away with it time and time again.  RickK
>
>
It's clear that with the words "always", "Received Wisdom", and
"ignorant loser" you show that you are well versed in the art of "ad
hominem" attacks. :-P

Ec


body:
BRAVO!!  It's refreshing to hear from someone with an understanding of
history!

The gulf between scholar and non-scholar is more important for us than
the left/right gulf.  The study of history makes that gulf more
apparent.  It's a matter of taking the best qualities of academia, and
bringing them to the common man who has never learned the skill of
critical thinking.  Early education  tends to discredit critical thinking.

 Ec

steven l. rubenstein wrote:

> I am very sorry to hear that 172 is considering leaving the project.
> I am also disturbed by the nature of this discussion.
>
> To be clear, I myself have had frustrating, caustic, and even
> exasperating arguments over edits with 172 myself.  I do not always
> find his presentation of self to be very congenial, although I am in
> no position to throw stones.  Nevertheless, I am convinced of the
> integrity of his historical research, and his sincerity in applying
> the standards of sound scholarship to Wikipedia.  while we are not and
> ought not to be constrained by the limits of conventional
> encyclopedias and scholarly research, academic historians are people
> who dedicate the better part of their lives to learning about and
> understanding events.  In my experience they generally hold themselves
> to high standards, and I think Wikipedia can benefit from those
> standards and the work of such historians.  In these terms 172 has
> made many valuable contributions.
>
> It disturbs me that some -- I think VV, Fred, Stan and perhaps others
> -- characterize this as a right/left argument.  Even they understand
> that 172 himself sees it as a scholar/non-scholar argument.  I have
> gone over the articles in question and I think that this is indeed the
> root issue.  Of course, many people in the US (and perhaps other
> countries) sees the difference between academia and non-academia in
> terms of politics (scholars are liberal or Marxist), but I do not
> think this is constructive.
>
> Every Soviet scholar understands that Stalin played a key role in many
> awful things, involving millions of deaths.  I don't think 172 has
> ever denied this.  I do, however, think that he has tried to establish
> a framework for understanding Soviet history that is grounded in
> scholarly research and not just Cold War rhetoric.  My sense is that
> anyone who has studied history at the graduate level (although I am
> sure this is true of many non-scholars too!) has had to slog through
> now only huge amounts of historical material, but some pretty
> complicated historical debates.  Of course in the process one learns
> just how bad things were in the Soviet Union, especially during
> certain periods and for particular groups of people.  But academic
> historians have to go beyond just saying "SU = bad" or "Stalin = bad"
> to say something more insightful about how and why whatever happened
> happened.  I think 172's contributions have been informed by this
> concern, and I think some people here systematically misunderstand it.
>
> Steve


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
I am very sorry to hear that 172 is considering leaving the project.  I am
also disturbed by the nature of this discussion.

To be clear, I myself have had frustrating, caustic, and even exasperating
arguments over edits with 172 myself.  I do not always find his
presentation of self to be very congenial, although I am in no position to
throw stones.  Nevertheless, I am convinced of the integrity of his
historical research, and his sincerity in applying the standards of sound
scholarship to Wikipedia.  while we are not and ought not to be constrained
by the limits of conventional encyclopedias and scholarly research,
academic historians are people who dedicate the better part of their lives
to learning about and understanding events.  In my experience they
generally hold themselves to high standards, and I think Wikipedia can
benefit from those standards and the work of such historians.  In these
terms 172 has made many valuable contributions.

It disturbs me that some -- I think VV, Fred, Stan and perhaps others --
characterize this as a right/left argument.  Even they understand that 172
himself sees it as a scholar/non-scholar argument.  I have gone over the
articles in question and I think that this is indeed the root issue.  Of
course, many people in the US (and perhaps other countries) sees the
difference between academia and non-academia in terms of politics (scholars
are liberal or Marxist), but I do not think this is constructive.

Every Soviet scholar understands that Stalin played a key role in many
awful things, involving millions of deaths.  I don't think 172 has ever
denied this.  I do, however, think that he has tried to establish a
framework for understanding Soviet history that is grounded in scholarly
research and not just Cold War rhetoric.  My sense is that anyone who has
studied history at the graduate level (although I am sure this is true of
many non-scholars too!) has had to slog through now only huge amounts of
historical material, but some pretty complicated historical debates.  Of
course in the process one learns just how bad things were in the Soviet
Union, especially during certain periods and for particular groups of
people.  But academic historians have to go beyond just saying "SU = bad"
or "Stalin = bad" to say something more insightful about how and why
whatever happened happened.  I think 172's contributions have been informed
by this concern, and I think some people here systematically misunderstand it.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
-------------- next part --------------

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.690 / Virus Database: 451 - Release Date: 5/22/2004


from_name: Stan Shebs

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

references:
<00c601c448de$4cddf250$7731fea9@Andrew>
	<871xkx7ehe.fsf@unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
	<c9lnae$flv$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

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

There's an implicit assumption (myself included) that the encyclopedia
is a condensation or summary of knowledge. However, I think this is a
pragmatic position that's developed as a response to the massive
increases in human knowledge - print encyclopedias were never going
to be a million volumes in length to document the contents of
libraries that had grown to multiple millions of volumes. Even
online, 20 million 300-page nonfiction books would turn into some
400 million 30K articles if there's no summarization - a rather
daunting prospect!

Still, it's an interesting thought experiment to take a random
nonfiction book from your shelf and ask "what if I just wikified
the entire contents verbatim".

Stan


body:
Re: "You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent
example,
no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most especially,
no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people."

Fred,

Did you look at the title? The article is on the "economy of the Soviet
Union," focusing on the Soviet Union right before its collapse, the Soviet
Union of the 1980s-- not the Stalinist USSR of the 1930s. In addition, the
article compares well to Encarta's entry in both tone and substance
(http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553017_2/Union_of_Soviet_Socialist_Republics.html#s13).

Also note this except taken from the article: "As growth rates sank, supply
shortages of food and consumer goods became
more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for
managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining
influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and
1980s."

Again, note: "Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major
factor explaining
the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms,
outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account.
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred
resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some
landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was
catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a
consequence for decades to come."

BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one
surviving sibling, the rest of her family was murdered by Nazi Germany. I
don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback lecturing me
about totalitarianism.

_________________________________________________________________
Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://youroffers.msn.com


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sorry- we have a problem...

body:
This message I see quite often:

Sorry- we have a problem...
The wikimedia.org servers are currently overloaded, or down.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon; please check back in a few minutes, as the problem is most likely temporary
To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia.
An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts.
Donations
Due to the ever-increasing number of people visiting Wikipedia and its sister Wikimedia projects, we have a constant need to buy new hardware to keep the site running. If you'd like to help, please donate.
Some links to pass the time:

    * Wikipedia's ever-increasing popularity
    * Paper describing the wikimedia network structure

Generated Wed, 02 Jun 2004 15:17:04 GMT by wikipedia.org
(squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

but I can edit another article without delay.  And I can also save the
article in question if I play with logout/login.  Looks like a cache
problem to me.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Parser testing page

references:
<9A6tIhDSpVB@erik_moeller> <c9kehm$kmr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040602120443.GA7840@localhost.localdomain>

body:
>>Has anyone ever written a context-free grammar to describe our syntax?
>
>      I  had been playing with a flex/bison combo, but Wiki's
> not suited to LALR; should be  trivial  to  switch  out  the
> lexer for something in-house, though.
>
>      Bison, on the other hand, seemed to do the trick.

As i'm working on a wikipedia-related project involving parsing
articles, that really interests me. I've been thinking of lex/bison
too, didn't yet do it :)
So lex isn't that great? Could you send grammars you defined?

>      ~Peter

Nicolas 'Ryo'


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Commons

in_reply_to:
<1BVTnb-1Y4ONk0@fwd08.sul.t-online.com> (Andre Engels's message
	of "02 Jun 2004 11:20 GMT")

body:
engelsAG at t-online.de (Andre Engels) writes:

> I don't want 50 similar pictures of the tower of Pisa. I do want 50
> pictures if this one is taking at sunset, that one shows the
> surroundings as well and the third one is from an unusual direction.

Yes, I agree with you.  And I want details.  Similar pictures are also
okay if they were taken at different times (every year or so); this way
you can see what happened to the monument.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] doBlockLevels and stripping <nowiki>

body:
Tim asked me to write this mail some 10 hours ago. In a hurry,
I didn't press the "send" button and just found this open edit
window when returning home. So this is for documentation
purposes only.

	Regards,

		jens
----------------------------------8<--------------------------
Hello,

due to some changes, doBlockLevels() is called after unstrip().
This results in some trouble with <nowiki>, esp.

<nowiki>* this is a line that starts with an asterisk</nowiki>

Yesterday's fix to this broke other things:

*this is <nowiki>rendered as a line with a star!</nowiki>

instead of a bulleted line. Other text completely disappeared.
(SF BUG #964477)

I changed the code to insert the <nowiki> again when unstripping
and call strip() a second time inside of doBlockLevels. The
transclusion-strips will be unfolded, and <nowiki> is folded
again.

This has two downsides:
* illegal HTML-Tags are added (<nowiki> is still in the output)
* it's not that efficient to call strip twice

This is a workaround to address the current bugs and should be
looked at by someone with more than 20 minutes time.

Regards,

jeluf


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon Wikipedia

body:
Andr? M?ller wrote:

> and the vocabulary and grammar is
> large enough as well (a fact that in my opinion doesn?t really apply for
> Sindarin/Quenya, for example).

But Toki Pona? ;-)


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> It starts with an ad hominem attack ("censoring").

Hi Brion,

of course, all you say is kind of true, and I understand you found the
initial message a little vague. But at the same time, I must frankly say
that I find your handling of this case rather cold and inconsiderate.
You dismiss it as "not a problem" simply because there is not enough
information *to you* to conclude that there is a problem.

You don't seem to have any idea what it is like to be completely at the
mercy of someone who is in a position of greater power, who abuses that
power and is unwillig to grant it to others, who is extremely difficult
to convince of anything other than what is already their opinion, etc.
It feels like an insurmountable wall, and every time you slightly kick
it, a brick hits you on the head. I have been to several volunteer
projects across the Internet where a situation similar to this was at
work, and it's extremely disappointing and frustrating when there are
higher-ups who just don't care, much less act.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>>
>> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>
> Wikipedians are not a representative sample of the general population. 8-)

I think it much more important to realise that the people who put their
name on such a list is also not a representative sample of all Wikipedians.

What I'm saying is, maybe NTs are just more likely to put their name up
there.

Timwi


body:
Re: "Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be nice to
one
another!"

-- mav

I'm already calm, so I don't need to take a deep breath. I'm just sitting
here at my desk, kind of tired after not getting much sleep, looking over
some papers and research, checking e-mail in various accounts, checking news
sites, and the like.

But I am fed up with Wikipedia, though, and especially people like Stan and
Fred. I doubt that I'll be able to be nice to either of them until they stop
spreading these lies about me being a Stalinist in order to attack my
academic credibility. I've been donating so much time to Wikipedia over the
course of the past 18 months, and I'm tired of the same clowns distorting
the substance of what contribute to articles over and over again all the
time.

Now, if Wikipedia's giving up on academic professionalism, I'll leave
without much of a fuss. I have no problem bailing out on a lost cause.

_________________________________________________________________
Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win
a trip to NY
http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Why Wikipedia Sucks. Big Time"

body:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/blog/archives/2004/06/index.html#000623

Eine Perle:

"Text and concepts for Wikipedia entries are often blatantly copied from
other websites. To avoid instant recognition, the text is sometimes
rewritten, adding inaccuracies, inconsistencies or even errors. Due to
the nature of the content and the open format of Wikipedia, no copyright
holder can do anything about this."

(I don't agree with this text but I find it interesting to read most
objections to wikipedia condensed on a single non-wikipedia-affiliated page)

Sonnenscheinverw?hnte bitte wegschauen..
Nicht, da? ich glaube, da? er das Prinzip in der letzten Konsequenz
verstanden hat...

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


body:
Re: "Here is a typical example of 172's ad hominem that really ought to be
out of bounds, and yet quite a few people seem to be OK with it.
Why is anybody willing to put up with these kinds of low attacks?"

Why didn't you quote me in full, huh?

Here's the full quotation: "BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the
Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one surviving sibling, the rest of her family
was murdered by Nazi Germany. I don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S.
McCarthyite throwback lecturing me about totalitarianism."

Sure, this is harsh. But the difference is that I didn't jump into the
mailing list discussion out of the blue to attack Fred Bauder; instead, I
was defending myself. As mentioned, my contributions on Soviet history on
Wikipedia are entirely in mainstream of Western academic Soviet and Russia
studies. If you have any evidence to the contrary, this is a matter to bring
up on the individual talk pages of articles.

Now, regarding "the personal attacks," if Fred stops practicing McCarthyism
against me on the mailing list, I will have no need to defend myself (in a
sometimes ineloquent manner, I admit) against his attacks on my academic
credibility and character on the mailing list. If he can apologize and agree
to quit slandering me, I'll retract those comments and agree to stay cordial
in my dealings with him in the future. The same goes for you.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Looking to buy a house? Get informed with the Home Buying Guide from MSN
House & Home. http://coldwellbanker.msn.com/


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
>>>>> "AM" == Andr? M?ller <Andr> writes:

    AM> The aim of the Wikipedia - in Esperanto I'd call it the "fina
    AM> venko" - is to create an encyclopedia or database containing
    AM> all the human knowledge.

No, it's not.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not

Encyclopedia != "database containing all human knowledge". An
encyclopedia is an encyclopedia.

~ESP

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


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Status with Will

body:
An update regarding Will (one of the new 1Us): due to previous
overheating problems, jeronim had shut down will yesterday. We suspected
a disconnected fan or other airflow problems. Earlier today, Jimbo
visited the colo and found that the fans were working very well, and
that there were no visible airflow issues. After he left, we continued
having temperature problems:

PU1: Temperature above threshold
CPU0: Temperature above threshold
CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode
CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode

The CPU was running at about 62 celsius, which while not horrible is not
temperature that we want to run a production server on. I suggested that
the machine be powered off until we can look at it further, and jeronim
did so at about 7:15PM EST. There's some consensus that the next most
likely problem is an unseated (or improperly seated) heatsink, while the
less likely option is a bad CPU.

Jimbo mentioned a person in Florida who might be able to come to the
colo and help us out, so that's our plan of action for the moment.

Cheers,
Ivan.


from_name: Fennec Foxen

body:
On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 17:20:06 +0000, Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one
> surviving sibling, the rest of her family was murdered by Nazi Germany. I
> don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback lecturing me
> about totalitarianism.

Fascinating family history, but not particuarly relevant to the
article. Insofar as the above paragraph is indicative of your personal
view, stances and opinions: I do not think you have gauged the
attitudes of your audience effectively. Language which appears to be
designed to make us think less of people in the manner which the above
paragraph seems to be attempting to sway opinion (in part through
association of the person in question with groups, movements, and
ideoligies which are potentially undesirable and in part through
indicating that the person's mental facilities are suboptimal) usually
backfire and result in the audience thinking less of the person who is
levelling such accusations. You should stop. It does not help your
cause.


from_name: apogr

body:
Hi, Timwi and Brion,

Being blocked from making modest experimental contibutions is not a big
issue after all, so forget it. But if it happens to other people in the
Huwiki as well, you will not have the discussions going on any term, a
proposition that can be easily asserted by looking at the number of
contributors for each item/term.
And in that case the number of potential wikipedians will not grow in HUW,
and neither will the number of entries properly produced.
On the other hand, if HUWP is a one man show only, it must be no fun for any
other volunteers either
Also, seeing that huge amount of work you have already put in the Works, I
wonder whether anybody in this forum is willing to discuss some related and
maybe topical questions of alternative methods of "creating verbal
buildings" - not to cause a problem or discourage the participants, but to
show how wikipedia or anything of that sort could be different from a
traditional book form and using currently non-dyamic paradigm to describe
knowledge.

Ferenc Kovacs

----- Original Message -----
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 7:05 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: contributions to HU wiki

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > It starts with an ad hominem attack ("censoring").
>
> Hi Brion,
>
> of course, all you say is kind of true, and I understand you found the
> initial message a little vague. But at the same time, I must frankly say
> that I find your handling of this case rather cold and inconsiderate.
> You dismiss it as "not a problem" simply because there is not enough
> information *to you* to conclude that there is a problem.
>
> You don't seem to have any idea what it is like to be completely at the
> mercy of someone who is in a position of greater power, who abuses that
> power and is unwillig to grant it to others, who is extremely difficult
> to convince of anything other than what is already their opinion, etc.
> It feels like an insurmountable wall, and every time you slightly kick
> it, a brick hits you on the head. I have been to several volunteer
> projects across the Internet where a situation similar to this was at
> work, and it's extremely disappointing and frustrating when there are
> higher-ups who just don't care, much less act.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 21:34:20 +0200, Ulrich Fuchs <mail at ulrich-fuchs.de> wrote:
> As an encyclopaedia, we should reduce noise. Instead we are creating noise by
> accepting articles on any subject. For me - opposing that
> noise-accepting-policy since one and a half years now - that outsiders
> statement is very interesting.

Noise- what is noise? Perhaps you don't care for articles on the
[[chicken sexer]], and you may not care about an article on [[Badger
Badger Badger]], or [[AYBABTU]], but who are you to decide what is a
valid topic? (Who am I?)

Many seem to feel that as long as a topic can have an encyclopedic
type article written about it, it should probably be there. What is
the alternative to "accepting articles on any subject"? Would you have
us replace Votes for Deletion with, say, Votes for Inclusion, where
people have to propose a new page and get it approved before it's up?

Wikipedia doesn't work that way. Wikipedia is fast. You edit it and
it's there- pow. A fundamental change such as that you propose is not
going to happen. Perhaps you'd like to read [[Wikipedia:Mirrors and
forks]] and create your own site where you can decide how to deal with
this issue.


from_name: Ralesk Ne'vennoyx

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The font size is also one or two steps too small on the English Wikipedia as
> well (not to mention Meta and Wikibooks). I have pretty good eyesight and I had
> to increase the font size in my browser - never had to do that before.
> Wikipedis must be much harder to read for people with poor vision (esp for
> those who need reading glasses).
>
> Developers: Please increase the default font size. And while you are at it,
> please also bring back the old link colors - that light blue/gray is very hard
> to read (links should stand out a bit, not blend into the background!).
>

I have more problems with the lack of underlining of links than their
colour, as such.  It could be a little bit stronger blue, yes.


body:
attached is the original entry word and some correspondence
_______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: sz?t?r.txt
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20040602/5bf0f5ea/attachment.txt


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

in_reply_to:
<40BE1BF9.5050809@livejournal.com> (Ralesk Ne'vennoyx's message
	of "Wed, 02 Jun 2004 20:27:05 +0200")

body:
Ralesk Ne'vennoyx <ralesk at livejournal.com> writes:

> I have more problems with the lack of underlining of links than their
> colour, as such.  It could be a little bit stronger blue, yes.

Probably, you are right.  But please, stop changing monobook - I start
getting used to it; instead create monobook2 and apply changes to the
new style.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Default font size on Chinese Wikipedia is too small

body:
Hi, everybody, I'm an administrator in Chinese Wikipedia - User:Mountain.

I have a request: Who can help us to change the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia.

Now the default font size on Chinese Wikipedia is too small, many users required us to change it.
we can change the default css to that:

body, #globalWrapper { font-size:11pt }

It looks better for most users.

Thanks for your help.


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to RickK

body:
Re: "Please.  Have you EVER made an edit that didn't attack the US and
defend all of these dictators?  If so, please point it out."

Responding to this should be beneath my dignity, but anyway here's one
example. Another user who is a critic of "anti-Americanism," like yourself,
wrote the following about my article on Franco-U.S. relations: "172, thank
you for this article. ''That'' is the way an encyclopedia article,
especially about a subject many think sensitive, should be written." (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:172&diff=3774174&oldid=3769240)

_________________________________________________________________
Looking to buy a house? Get informed with the Home Buying Guide from MSN
House & Home. http://coldwellbanker.msn.com/


body:
Situation.  User:B?g?ly has been writing an article under their User
area.  The article was going to be about dictionary.  According to the
content -- which is quite freeworded at parts, not written in
"officialspeek" if you get me -- this is a quite good definition for
what is a dictionary.  At this point I do not see why Grin so adamantly
(later in the discussion) stood up for the point that Wikipedia is not a
dictionary.  How else should one write an encyclopaedia entry on a
'dictionary' if not by defining what all kinds of dictionaries exist?

Anyway, from the discussion, I see a misunderstanding, or as we would
say "egym?s mellett elbesz?lni".  Grin was wondering about the
following: why not write the article in the article space, where it
belongs; who would be interested in this article and why would it belong
here (as wikipedia is not a dictionary); and third, he didn't really
look but wonders whether B?g?ly wrote this or not (and hopes they did,
else he would have to go and erase after them).  But anyway, if it makes
B?g?ly feel good, they can continue their secret whatever, Grin just
doesn't understand why it is being done here.

B?g?ly replies:  This is a stub for an article, and it has been said
that such may be developed in the Sandbox or the userspace, thus B?g?ly
decided their stubs would be developed in userspace [and when the
content is agreed upon, it would be moved to articlespace -- translator
guessing from questions placed directly after the two article stubs,
directed towards the readership].  Why does Grin regard this some
"secret project"?  B?g?ly is aware of the difference between WP and
Wiktionary, and points out there exists a WP article on 'dictionary' in
the English Wikipedia.

My humble conclusion is that Grin is a bit overprotective about the
content put on WP and assumes that people are completely unaware of the
rules regarding copying.  I do see why he is being regarded as paranoid
in the other post.  B?g?ly, meanwhile, misunderstood Grin's intention
and took it tougher than they should have.

I know not more.

>>sz?t?r (dictionary)
>>Egy nyelv szavainak rendszerint ?b?c?be rendezett jegyz?ke f?leg k?nyv alakban. Az els? sz?t?rak eredetileg "neh?z" szavak gy?jtem?nyei voltak, illetve eredetileg nem ?b?c? rendben szerepeltek benn?k a szavak. Ezek a sz?t?rak t?meges, k?zc?lra k?sz?ltek, ma is nagy p?ld?nysz?mban nyomtatj?k ki ?ket.
>>Sz?t?rat sz?kebb, saj?t haszn?latra is k?sz?tenek az emberek pl. egy idegennyelv? sz?veg tanul?sakor. Ezek a szavak sz?vegbeli el?fordul?s szerint szoktak ?sszegy?lni, a nev?k sz?szedet (glossary). Ugyanezek kinyomtatott k?nyvek v?g?n index n?ven szerepelnek ?s m?r rendszerint ?b?c?be vannak rendezve.
>>A szavak ?gy ker?lnek a sz?t?rakba, hogy megfosztjuk ?ket k?rnyezet?kt?l (pl. ragok, v?gz?d?sek ?s m?s szavak) (lemmatisation ?s decontextualisation). A k?zvetlen k?rnyezet term?szetesen f?leg szavakat jelent az indo-europai nyelvekben, amelyek mint tudjuk, kifejez?seket, mondatokat, bekezd?seket, stb. alkotnak. Mindezek nyelvi, nyelvtani tulajdons?gait a nyelvtan ?s a le?r? nyelv?szet fogalmai adj?k megy, melyek k?z?l egyre nagyobb sz?m? elem, egyre t?bb inform?ci? kezd beker?lni a sz?t?rban szerepl? szavak (sz?cikkek) (headwords, entries) mell?, k?zel?be. Van olyan (angol) sz?t?r is, amely azt is felt?nteti, hogy az adott sz? haszn?lati gyakoris?g szempontj?b?l "mennyire fontos" az adott nyelvben, pl. mert benne van a leggyakrabban haszn?lt els? ezerben.
>>A magyar nyelv eset?ben azonban m?g el?z?leg a szavakat sz?t?ri alakra is kell hozni, vagyis alaposan meg kell fosztanunk szinte minden nyelvi-nyelvtani kontextusb?li inform?ci?j?t?l.
>>A szavak nem nyelvi, hanem logikai, ismeretelm?leti vagy egy?b kognit?v rel?ci?s ism?rvei is fontos ism?rvek lehetnek, ez?rt ezek jel?l?se, megad?sa is ma m?r ig?ny a sz?t?rak k?sz?t?s?n?l, k?l?n?sen, ha azok elektronikus form?ban (pl. online el?rhet?s?ggel) k?sz?lnek. A szavak ilyen ?sszef?gg?sei szerint m?r nem ?b?c?ben csoportos?tott gy?jtem?nyeket vagy sz?t?rakat tezaurusznak (thesaurus) nevezz?k.
>>Az eddig k?sz?lt sz?t?rak, ak?r ?b?c?ben, ak?r tezauruszk?nt azonban sajna, statikus szeml?let?ek. (Egy?bk?nt a kontextus, ha nincs explicit m?don jel?lve a sz?t?rban, az aktu?lis olvas? fej?ben kell, hogy meglegyen - ebb?l k?vetkezik, hogy minden r?gz?tett ismeret csak egyik fele a val?s?gnak, a m?sik fele az ?rtelmez?n?l kell, hogy rendelkez?sre ?lljon.) Ebb?l l?tszik, hogy a statikus szeml?let? sz?t?rk?sz?t?s nem sz?mol a sz?t?r haszn?l?k k?l?nb?z? ig?nyeivel.
>>Egy viszonylag friss p?lda egy statikus szeml?let? egynyelv? elektronikus sz?t?rra megtal?lhat? a k?vetkez? c?men: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/index.jsp
>>tralla-la, ?s ?gy mehetne tov?bb, ha tetszik.
>>b?g?ly
>>Sz?t?r (folyt.) (Sz?t?raz?s)
>>Olyan nyelvekn?l, amelyeknek nem fonetikus a helyes?r?sa, a leggyakrabban a sz?t?rak a helyes?r?s mellett a kiejt?st adj?k meg nemzetk?zi fonetikai jelekkel. Nem ?gy persze ma, az online sz?t?rak kor?ban, ahol m?sra is lehet?s?g van. Ha valaki ?ppen az eredeti az angol kiejt?st akarja gyakorolni ? de nemcsak, hanem britt, amerikai, kanadai, ausztr?l vagy ?ppen sk?t v?ltozatban, ugorjon el a http://www.fonetiks.org/ c?mre.
>>A leggyakoribb probl?ma, ami miatt az embeek a sz?t?rakhoz ny?lnak, az az, hogy megakadnak egy sz?veg olvas?sa/?r?sa k?zben egy sz?n?l. Att?l f?gg?en, hogy ez az anyanyelv?k?n vagy a tanult nyelven fordul el?, t?bb lehet?s?g?nk is van. Vagy egy egynyelv? (angol) ?rtelmez? sz?t?rban n?zz?k meg, ahol minden bizonnyal ott lesz a sz? jelent?s?nek meghat?roz?sa, vagy egy olyan sz?t?rban, amelyikben a rokon jelent?s? szavak hierarchikus rendben t?rt?n? csoportos?t?s?val a sz? jelent?s?nek m?sfajta megk?zel?t?s?vel tal?lkozhatunk. Az el?bbi sz?t?rat http://dictionary.reference.com/ aj?nljuk a keresend? f?nevek eset?ben, m?g a m?sodikat http://thesaurus.reference.com/ ink?bb ig?k keres?s?ben fogjuk hasznosnak tal?lni.
>>Ha sem egyik, sem m?sik megold?s nem volt el?g az adott sz? jelent?s?nek tiszt?z?s?hoz, akkor n?zz?nk meg egy k?tnyelv?, angol-magyar sz?t?rt, pl. a http://dict.sztaki.hu/english-hungarian -t. Az?rt aj?nlottuk ezt, mert ez egyben magyar-angol sz?t?r is, ha a megfelel? be?ll?t?st elv?gezt?k, de ne nagyon b?zzunk benne. Ha itt sem j?runk eredm?nnyel, keress?nk tov?bb a m?g mindig ingyenes, hasonl? k?tnyelv? sz?t?rak k?z?tt. Ilyen a http://www.cab.u-szeged.hu/cgi-bin/szotar, vagy a http://dictionaries.travlang.com/EnglishHungarian/ , illetve annak magyar angol p?rja a http://dictionaries.travlang.com/HungarianEnglish/.
>>Most m?r ismerve a sz? jelent?s?t, elmehet?nk egy m?g gazdagabb ismeretforr?shoz, ami m?r nem is sz?t?r, hanem enciklop?dia: olyan ismerett?rh?z, ahol a keresett sz?t sz?vegk?rnyezetben tal?ljuk meg m?g akkor is, ha maga a sz? a c?mszavak k?z?tt nem szerepel http://www.encyclopedia.com/ vagy maga a wikipedia, amelyben vagyunk.
>>Persze egy id? ut?n m?r nem egy sz?t?rban keres az ember, hanem sz?les fronton, sz?les s?von t?mad, egyszerre, egy l?p?ssel t?bb sz?t?rban is ut?na n?z?nk egy-egy sz? jelent?s?nek. Erre val? a http://www.onelook.com/ weboldal, ahol tucatnyi sz?t?rb?l keresi el? b?ng?sz? programunk a lehets?ges jelent?sv?ltozatokat. Ne legy?nk restek, n?zz?k ?ket v?gig egyenk?nt, mert k?zt?k mindj?rt ott lesz egy olyan is, http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/Dictionary/DictionaryHome.aspx amely hajland? sz?munkra az adott sz? kiejt?s?t is megsz?laltatni. Vigy?zat, mert ha nem vagyunk el?g ?vatosak, akkor abba se akarja hagyni az adott sz? ism?tl?s?t? (Mindenesetre ?ll?tsuk le a Real Player-t h?tha az seg?t.)
>>Nem sorolom fel, hogy a ?onelook? seg?ts?g?vel h?ny sz?t?rt lehet fel?tni. Ez?rt miel?tt nagyon belemelegedn?nk a keres?sbe ?s a gy?jt?get?sbe, m?ris kider?lt, hogy alkalmas, rendszerez? eszk?zre is sz?ks?g?nk van, amit jobb h?j?n sz?t?rf?zetnek vagy glossz?riumnak nevez?nk, van aki szakmai szer?nys?ggel adatb?zisnak. Az egyik ilyen weboldal vagy c?m http://glossword.info/dev/glossword1/en/doc/23.xhtml. ahonnan let?lt?ssel beszrezhet? egy ilyen eszk?z, a m?sik eszk?znek ez a http://www.vocatude.com/ lel?helye. A harmadik m?g enn?l is ig?nyes feladatokra alkalmas, de m?r nem ingyenes, csak egy kipr?b?l?si id?re, itt tal?lhat?: http://www.wordfisher.com/wf4.htm.
>>Annak, akinek a fenti v?laszt?k sem lenne el?g, aj?nljuk, hogy n?zzen k?r?l ezen a helyen is http://www.freelang.net/, mert itt tov?bbi sz?t?rakr?l tal?lhat inform?ci?kat.
>>A sz?t?r elvileg arra is szolg?l, hogy helyet kapjanak benne egy-egy nyelv fontos szavai, sz?kincse, mintegy megtestes?ts?k a nyelvtud?st. Vajon h?ny sz?t tudunk, ha j?l ismer?nk egy nyelvet, ?s mit tudunk, amikor egyetlen sz?t ismer?nk?
>>Kezdj?k a v?g?vel. Arra vagyunk k?pesek, hogy els? hall?sra megjegyezz?k, ut?na felid?zz?k, helyesen le?rjuk, helyesen kiejts?k, megfelel? helyzetben, nyelvtani szab?lyok szerinti j?l haszn?ljuk, egy m?sik hasonl? ?rtelm? sz?val helyettes?ts?k, ragozzuk, vagy m?s v?gz?d?sekkel, toldal?kokkal abb?l m?s jelent?s?, sz?faj?, stb. szavakat k?pezz?nk, ismerj?k r?vid?tett, ?s m?s v?ltozat? alakjait, milyen szavakkal j?r egy?tt, mi a sz?faja, meghat?roz?sa, jelent?se, milyen szavak ?llnak alatta ?s felette a szavakkal jelzett dolgok hierachi?j?ban, stb. Ennek megfelel?en a sz?t?rak is tartalmazz?k egy?tt, vagy k?l?n a szavak fenti ism?rveit. A sz?kincs b?v?t?s?t k?v?natos dolgonak tartjuk, szeg?nys?g?t el?t?lj?k. Van, aki a sz?t?rakat tanul?si c?llal forgatja, nem csak probl?ma megold?shoz.
>>Akit nem a speci?lis szaksz?kincs ?rdekel, hanem valami ?nagyon mindennapi?, az l?togasson el a: http://a4esl.org/a/v.html c?mre, ahol sok sz?kincsre vonakoz? feladatot tal?l, neh?zs?gi fok szerint csoportos?tva. ?s ha megtetszik neki a hely, akkor menjen el az elej?re http://a4esl.org/ c?mre, ahol m?g t?bb, m?s jelleg? nyelvi feladat v?r r?.
>>Visszat?rve a sz?tanul?s k?l?nb?z? aspektusaira, nagyon j?nak fogj?k tal?lni a http://www.vocabulary.com/ c?met. M?g enn?l is komfortosabb egy igazi cyber nyelvlaborat?rium a http://www.esl-lab.com/ illetve a http://www.esl-lab.com/index.htm c?men, amelynek f?leg a nem kezd? angolosok ?r?lhetnek. Az amerikai nyelvhaszn?lat szerelmesei a http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/vocabulary.html helyet fogj?k ?rt?kelni, m?g az egyszerre t?bb nyelvet tanul?k a http://www.vokabel.com/ c?men kereskedjenek.
>>Aki a k?l?nlegeset szereti, ?s idiom?kat akar meg?rteni, megtanulni, az menjen el a http://www.eslcafe.com/idioms/ c?mre, aki j?tszani ?s rejtv?nyt fejteni az ide: http://www.manythings.org/ . A mindent egy helyen keres?nek a legjobban http://www.better-english.com/vocabulary.htm c?men tal?lhat? anyag fog tetszeni, amivel nem is fog v?gezni a h?nap v?g?ig. A sz?tanul?sban ?gyorstalpal?? megold?sra v?gy?knak a http://vocabulary.englishclub.com/ c?met aj?nlom, m?g a feleletv?lasztos, k?ppel seg?tett sz?tanul?st kedvel?knek a http://iteslj.org/v/ei/ c?met. Csak t?relmesen v?rj?k meg, m?g a k?p is el?ker?l, ?gy kell a feladatokat megcsin?lni.
>>J?het m?g?
>>B?g?ly
>>Tov?bb pergettem a sz?lat - v?rom a v?lem?nyt a tartalomr?l. b?g?ly
>>Kedves B?g?ly,
>>Ha itt helyben l?sz le ?rte sem tudom, hogy mit csin?lsz, mi?rt ?rod azt a userlapodra, amit. Egyr?szt nem tudom, mi?rt ?rsz oda cikket, amikor ott ink?bb magadr?l szok?s ?rni; m?sr?sz nem tudom, mi?rt vagy kinek ?rdekes a cikk, vagy hogy j?n ide (hiszen a Wikip?dia lexikon, ?s nem sz?t?r); harmadr?szt azt sem n?ztem, hogy te ?rtad, vagy valaki m?s - rem?lem, az el?bbi, mert k?l?nben lehet ut?nad t?r?lgetni. Sz?val... szerintem, ha j?l esik, vagy valami titkos c?llal teszed, folytasd csak, senki nem fog megakad?lyozni, de ?n legal?bbis nem ?rtem, hogy mire j? az, amit teszel. --grin ? 2004 m?jus 7, 15:56 (CEST)
>>--- Kedves Grin! Ez egy sz?cikk pr?b?lkoz?s, azt olvastam, hogy ide vagy a homokoz?ba ?rhatok kezdem?nyt. Nem tudom, hogyan lesz-e, lesz-e bel?le sz?cikk. Mi?rt titkos c?l, ha valaki ?r valamit a wikip?di?ba? Tudom, hogy mi a k?l?nbs?g az enciklop?dia ?s a vikip?dia k?z?tt - az angol wikip?di?ban van dictionary sz?cikk - mi?rt ne lehetne itt is? b?g?ly ---
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan)

body:
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Pochung Chen wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan) wrote:
> >> Hi There,
> >> The user community on "southern min" (min-nan) wikipedia would like
> >> to request to rename the currently used "zh-cfr" to "zh-min-nan".
> >> The tag "cfr" makes no sense to the native speaker and the user
> >> community.
> >> The tag "zh-min-nan" makes sense and is a registered RFC 3066 tag.
> >> Please rename the name of southern min wikipedia a.s.a.p, thanks!
> >> pektiong
> >
> >
> > How about minnan.wikipedia.org? It's shorter, doesn't conflict with
> > anything, and is easy to remember.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling

Please use zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org. This name is the consensus of the
community. And following are some rationals.

*most current wikipedia use ISO 639-1/-2 language tag.

*for any new wikipedia whose language doesn't have its own ISO 639-1/-2
language tag, we should use a language tag which is compatible with ISO
639-1/-2.

*we hence should use "RFC 3066 - Tags for the Identification of Languages"
when it is possible.  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3066.html

*note that for RFC 3066 schema,
All 2/3-letter subtags are interpreted according to assignments found in
ISO standard 639-1/2, i.e., RFC 3066 is compatible with ISO 639.

*RFC 3066's tag for Southern min language is zh-min-nan
http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/zh-min-nan

I hope those arguments can convince the people here that the only logical
name should be "zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org". The article
Taiwanese(linguistics) on English wikipedia should provide many useful
informaiton if you fell the need to understand this language more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_%28linguistics%29

best
pektiong


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Request to rename zh-cfr.wikipedia to zh-min-nan


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

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

body:
Am Mittwoch, 2. Juni 2004 18:51 schrieb Fred Bauder:
> An interesting quote from this blog:
>
> Basically, what is happening here is the building of a parallel World Wide
> Web inside the wikipedia.org domain

And actually he is perfectly right: That *is* our biggest problem. Not the
copying, not errors, not the missing editors, not the enthusiasts he
mentions. But the "superfluous trivia". Our problem is noise, in en: even
more as in de:.  The noise repells qualified authors and editors. This is the
reason why the article quality does not increase the way that should be
expected given the idea behind wikipedia and the popularity and it already
has.

As an encyclopaedia, we should reduce noise. Instead we are creating noise by
accepting articles on any subject. For me - opposing that
noise-accepting-policy since one and a half years now - that outsiders
statement is very interesting.

Uli


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

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

body:
Kaixo!
Li Wed, 2 Jun 2004 06:36:24 -0700,
 ZH Wikipedia <zh.wikipedia at gmail.com> scrijheut:

 ZW> Chinese characters have many many more strokes than Roman letters. So
 ZW> the current MonoBook font size at Chinese WP is very hard on the eye.

That is also the case for Arabic script (that means the following
wikipedias: ar, fa, ur, ug), not because of lot of strokes, but because
for a given font nominal size, the actual height of the glyphs is
smaller on arabic script, that makes it harder to read).
Just go to http://ar.wikipedia.org/ for an example, only the ==titles==
are easily readable. (look also at the list of "wikipedia in other languages",
between "Suomi" and "Euskara" there is "Farsi" in arabic script, see how
the actual height of the letters is smaller compared to latin ones).

 ZW> Please increase it to at least 11pt so ZH WP is ... minimally readable.

It should probably be done on ja: and ko: too, I suppose.

--
? bient?t,
Pablo Saratxaga           PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Foundation-l] Editable wiki-wide stylesheets

body:
It seems fairly obvious to me that the next big idea
on the wing for wikimedia is to implement a *software
wiki* (replacing CVS maybe) that is, one that
intelligently can compile various wiki pages of code
into a package for download and building.

S

--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
wrote:
> Thanks to Gabriel Wicke, sysops can now add a
> stylesheet for their wiki
> using [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]]. The content of
> these stylesheets
> should be similar to the user stylesheets. I have
> used this feature to
> increase the font size on the CJK wikis, as
> requested on wikitech-l.
> Stylesheets for the other skins and configurable
> javascript will be
> implemented soon.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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


from_name: H. Tan-Tenn

body:
An updated list of all the RFC 3066 tags is available here:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-tags

This set obviously does not pretend to be a "comprehensive" list of
spoken and written language variations -- but it does go beyond the
extremely narrow set of ISO 639.  Clearly some of the finer distinctions
made are not suitable for Wikipedia (e.g. tags for various British
English dialects, different German orthographies), so I wouldn't
recommend wikis be granted to all variants on this list.  But where a
tag is needed for a language already set up with a wiki, such as Minnan,
  this is an official resource we shouldn't skip over too readily.  For
other languages that will, hopefully, have an Internet presence in the
coming decades, we might well have to consult an alternative resource
such as the Ethnologue.  But I think for Minnan, that wouldn't be necessary.

--a-gi?u on zh-min-nan

Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan) wrote:

> Please use zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org. This name is the consensus of the
> community. And following are some rationals.
>
> *most current wikipedia use ISO 639-1/-2 language tag.
>
> *for any new wikipedia whose language doesn't have its own ISO 639-1/-2
> language tag, we should use a language tag which is compatible with ISO
> 639-1/-2.
>
> *we hence should use "RFC 3066 - Tags for the Identification of Languages"
> when it is possible.  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3066.html
>
> *note that for RFC 3066 schema,
> All 2/3-letter subtags are interpreted according to assignments found in
> ISO standard 639-1/2, i.e., RFC 3066 is compatible with ISO 639.
>
> *RFC 3066's tag for Southern min language is zh-min-nan
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/zh-min-nan
>
> I hope those arguments can convince the people here that the only logical
> name should be "zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org". The article
> Taiwanese(linguistics) on English wikipedia should provide many useful
> informaiton if you fell the need to understand this language more.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_%28linguistics%29
>
> best
> pektiong


from_name: André Müller

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

body:
I'm in the same opinion as Ralesk and Daniel. The font is a little small
and I actually quite liked the old link colors too. Although I like the
new design, I'd be happy to have back the old font size and link colors.
In fact I also used to like that the default font was "Times New Roman",
a font of which I'm kind of a fan of, hehe... but that might be merely
subjective and too much to ask for.
Just wanted to let you know that there are more than 2 who liked the old
colors and sizes.

- Andr?


body:
? littel Kwestchen vor Ulrich Fuchs:

> As an encyclopaedia, we should reduce noise.
> Instead we are creating noise by accepting articles on any subject.

What exactly do you mean by "noise" and "superfluous trivia"? Do you
mean that people tend to add completely unnecessary information to the
entries that can make others lose the overview; and the creation of
entries on subjects no one would ever be looking for?
At least that's how I understood it. If that's what you mean, then I
don't really see a problem in that (or I do not *want* to see it). The
aim of the Wikipedia - in Esperanto I'd call it the "fina venko" - is to
create an encyclopedia or database containing all the human knowledge.
Of course this aim can never be reached, but it should be approximated
as close as possible.

- Andr?


from_name: wikipedia-l at gl00n.net

body:
> And actually he is perfectly right: That *is* our biggest problem. Not the
> copying, not errors, not the missing editors, not the enthusiasts he
> mentions. But the "superfluous trivia". Our problem is noise, in en: even
> more as in de:.  The noise repells qualified authors and editors. This is the
> reason why the article quality does not increase the way that should be
> expected given the idea behind wikipedia and the popularity and it already
> has.
>
> As an encyclopaedia, we should reduce noise. Instead we are creating noise by
> accepting articles on any subject. For me - opposing that
> noise-accepting-policy since one and a half years now - that outsiders
> statement is very interesting.

Can you give a definition of "noise" vs. "non-noise" topics that does not
ultimately boil down to arbitrarily including some while excluding others?

--
10:16PM  up 120 days,  7:31, 1 user, load averages: 0.22, 0.31, 0.25

Every non-empty totally disconnected perfect compact metric space is
homeomorphic to the Cantor set.


from_name: Stan Shebs

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

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:

>
> It disturbs me that some -- I think VV, Fred, Stan and perhaps others
> -- characterize this as a right/left argument.  Even they understand
> that 172 himself sees it as a scholar/non-scholar argument.  I have
> gone over the articles in question and I think that this is indeed the
> root issue.  Of course, many people in the US (and perhaps other
> countries) sees the difference between academia and non-academia in
> terms of politics (scholars are liberal or Marxist), but I do not
> think this is constructive.

It's perhaps unfortunate, but at least in the US, the 20th-century
history specialty has become intensely politicized. It shouldn't be
too surprising perhaps - there are lots of hints scattered through
Wikipedia alone - but I wasn't aware of the full extent of it until
researching some of the material about Robert Conquest, both online
and in print. Revisionism and post-revisionism for Cold War history
is just one facet; you have people being called "court historians" by
their colleagues if they present an establishment point of view, you
have people shopping around for politically-compatible departments,
etc. I think money is a corrupting influence behind the scenes; there
are lots of factions with $$$ to give out to historians who lean one
way or the other. Public universities have also found themselves in
difficult positions, having to choose between a history professor with
locally unpopular views and continued funding from the state
legislature. It's not just "liberal/Marxist scholars" either, there is
a sizeable contingent on the other side too - just think of Daniel
Pipes and his crowd.

The unfortunate aspect for us poor Wikipedians is that it can be very
hard to know what to make of the dueling experts. Is Conquest more or
less authoritative than 172?

Stan