from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Foundation-l] .eu domains lost (Was:  .eu domains soon)

body:
Hi,

after less than a year .eu registration finally have results

wikipedia.eu was finaly lost to subject actively hostile to
Wikimedia, see www.wikipedia.eu. (It's not because they were
that clever or agressive, but because Wikimedia wasnt much
active)

wikimedia.eu is probably going to be lost as Wikimedia didnt
even applied

Jan Kulveit (Wikimol)

On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 01:49:36PM +0100, Jan Kulveit wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the 1st sunrise period for .eu domain registration is going
> to begin soon - 7 December 2005
> only domain names which are registred EU community/national
> trademarks will be registered.
>
> I'm not sure about the status of Wikimedia trademarks, but
> guess at least Wikipedia a Wikimedia are suitable. IMO
> "we" should apply at least for wikipedia.eu and wikimedia.eu.
>
> Because of trademark issues and eu regulations concernig
> who can apply for .eu, I'm affraid it will be a bit
> complicated. I hope someone from the foundation can take care
> of it.
>
> (If the process is allready going, sorry :-)
>
> Jan Kulveit ([[USEr:Wikimol]])


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
David Gerard schrieb am 30.08.2006 16:09:
> At present a small percentage of
> articles (a few hundred out of 1.5 million on the English language
> Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/) are locked or partially locked
> from editing.

FYI: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~avatar/protected.php?wiki=en

The approved version feature won't help open up protected pages (but
semi-protected).

> These features are not finished, so we don't have a lot of fine detail
> as to how it will all work as yet. But we hope this change will allow
> us to do things such as open up the George W. Bush article or even the
> front page itself to full unrestricted editing.

Most german newspapers/newsmagazines don't get, that most of the german
frontpage IS open (pictures and text via templates). This is a bit
strange, because they also write about penises on it...

Bye, avatar.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

references:
<20060830042446.GH430@cgi.jachomes.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEINIMAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<20060830150609.GE2624@cgi.jachomes.com>

body:
On 30/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Someone has to be more Catholic than the pope, for progress to happen
> -- but that's rms' job.

*snigger*

Cue the usual "Stallman is our god! He is the second coming and He
will save us all!" vs. "He's an unwashed hippie hacker" arguments.

We have JWPII's sometimes. Thank god for The Brion; he weilds the
WONTFIX to end all WONTFIXes. Or something clich? like that. Given
some of the crap that comes out of BugZilla, this is quite a sensible
suggestion, but ultimately, I personally think it conflicts with the
whole "wiki, open editing, vandalism free-for-all" spirit of
MediaWiki.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 30/08/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> I would tend to agree.  But three people at AOL lost their jobs
> because of something they honestly thought there was "no harm" in
> doing.  And it's very difficult (if not impossible) to guarantee
> that something gets kept for only a day.

I plead ignorance, sir. Do provide a URL?

Wait, since when have AOL had ethics of any sort!?

Rob Church


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wmfcc-l] [Wikipedia-l] "Approved" versions on
	Wikipedia FAQ

body:
On 30/08/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does this make the 5 minute cut? :)

I sent it to a couple of places just now, including Bill Thompson
(BBC) who sent a very nice reply. So not quite ;-)

I've put it on Meta. Please hack away at will, and move somewhere
better if sensible:

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits

(that's a terrible article name. You can tell I've been writing on the
work wiki too much. Even if it is MoinMoin.)

> I think the premise of the FAQ is off in its current form. I am
> worried by the "we" part, meaning the mythical monolithic Wikipedia
> community. (ie. Why not make this an opportunity to show that
> Wikipedias have their distinct culture and are at different stages of
> development?)

In this case because it was an immediate response to the Bill Thompson
and Platinax articles. I was trying very hard to keep it *really
simple* and clear because journalists don't have time to read press
releases closely - they have to be able to get your message by
skimming.

There's huge piles of detail I left out ...

> I think the announcement should make clear:
> - There has always been a desire for a better reader experience
> - The larger Wikipedia communities have turned their attention from
> growth to quality

yep, these are important.

> - The German Wikipedia has initiated an experiment with a
> "nonvandalized" and "checked" versions (nb: terminology may need to be
> tweaked)

Yeah. I didn't give them names, but I hope I got this idea across.

> - This "potentially" may allow for a mechanism other than blunt
> protection for preventing vandalism

Jimbo wanted to emphasise "this is to make things wide-open" because
the press coverage had been "OH NOEZ WIKI IS CLOSED", so this probably
isn't as neutral as it might ideally be.

> - The greater Wikipedia community hopes to learn from this pilot project

I think I've got that in. Platinax emailed me to clarify and I said
that it's quite possible it might go badly and we cancel the idea -
but we're giving it a go.

> - The English and other Wikipedias, with their own norms and cultures,
> may or may not adopt the German initiatives

I left out that bit, but I think I have in that we are trying.

> PS: Would be nice to have a pointer to a meta page (if it exists)
> describing the German initiative. If I had not attended the Wikimania
> 2006 summit on the top floor of Pound Hall with Danny, Kurt, G.
> Maxwell, Jimmy, Raul654, Kelly Martin, et al, I would not have known
> these things. And I'm a bit concerned we're neglecting to use the wiki
> to share this knowledge.

It wasn't a matter of fuss until the press grabbed it and ran with it,
conclusively describing the Wikipedia elephant to the public as a rope
holding together walls in a fan shape at the top of several trees with
a spear and thirty snakes sticking out the side [*]. The feature is
probably still way too premature to warrant this attention ... but
it's got it anyway.

- d.

[*] http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/1/?letter=B&spage=3


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] [Wmfcc-l] "Approved" versions on
	Wikipedia FAQ

body:
On 30/08/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does this make the 5 minute cut? :)

I sent it to a couple of places just now, including Bill Thompson
(BBC) who sent a very nice reply. So not quite ;-)

I've put it on Meta. Please hack away at will, and move somewhere
better if sensible:

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits

(that's a terrible article name. You can tell I've been writing on the
work wiki too much. Even if it is MoinMoin.)

> I think the premise of the FAQ is off in its current form. I am
> worried by the "we" part, meaning the mythical monolithic Wikipedia
> community. (ie. Why not make this an opportunity to show that
> Wikipedias have their distinct culture and are at different stages of
> development?)

In this case because it was an immediate response to the Bill Thompson
and Platinax articles. I was trying very hard to keep it *really
simple* and clear because journalists don't have time to read press
releases closely - they have to be able to get your message by
skimming.

There's huge piles of detail I left out ...

> I think the announcement should make clear:
> - There has always been a desire for a better reader experience
> - The larger Wikipedia communities have turned their attention from
> growth to quality

yep, these are important.

> - The German Wikipedia has initiated an experiment with a
> "nonvandalized" and "checked" versions (nb: terminology may need to be
> tweaked)

Yeah. I didn't give them names, but I hope I got this idea across.

> - This "potentially" may allow for a mechanism other than blunt
> protection for preventing vandalism

Jimbo wanted to emphasise "this is to make things wide-open" because
the press coverage had been "OH NOEZ WIKI IS CLOSED", so this probably
isn't as neutral as it might ideally be.

> - The greater Wikipedia community hopes to learn from this pilot project

I think I've got that in. Platinax emailed me to clarify and I said
that it's quite possible it might go badly and we cancel the idea -
but we're giving it a go.

> - The English and other Wikipedias, with their own norms and cultures,
> may or may not adopt the German initiatives

I left out that bit, but I think I have in that we are trying.

> PS: Would be nice to have a pointer to a meta page (if it exists)
> describing the German initiative. If I had not attended the Wikimania
> 2006 summit on the top floor of Pound Hall with Danny, Kurt, G.
> Maxwell, Jimmy, Raul654, Kelly Martin, et al, I would not have known
> these things. And I'm a bit concerned we're neglecting to use the wiki
> to share this knowledge.

It wasn't a matter of fuss until the press grabbed it and ran with it,
conclusively describing the Wikipedia elephant to the public as a rope
holding together walls in a fan shape at the top of several trees with
a spear and thirty snakes sticking out the side [*]. The feature is
probably still way too premature to warrant this attention ... but
it's got it anyway.

- d.

[*] http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/1/?letter=B&spage=3
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wmfcc-l]  "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ


subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 30/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I plead ignorance, sir. Do provide a URL?
>
> I believe you introduced me to www.justfuckinggoogleit.com, Rob.  ;)

Yes, but because I'm special and so well loved, and so damn irritating
when I don't get my own way, you'd never DREAM of using that on me,
would you now?

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
On 30/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I think the premise of the FAQ is off in its current form. I am
> > worried by the "we" part, meaning the mythical monolithic Wikipedia
> > community. (ie. Why not make this an opportunity to show that
> > Wikipedias have their distinct culture and are at different stages of
> > development?)

> In this case because it was an immediate response to the Bill Thompson
> and Platinax articles. I was trying very hard to keep it *really
> simple* and clear because journalists don't have time to read press
> releases closely - they have to be able to get your message by
> skimming.

Further, I should note: as far as the English-language press is
concerned, all of Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia is the English
Wikipedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com/ , no matter I do my best to
say otherwise every time I speak to them ...

I made a point of mentioning the de: release versions here so as to
put across that en: may be bigger, but de: is arguably more advanced
in some ways. Other press, I try to mention local language Wikipedias,
which are usually quite small and offer an interesting contrast to the
huge Wikipedias.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
On 30/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I think the premise of the FAQ is off in its current form. I am
> > worried by the "we" part, meaning the mythical monolithic Wikipedia
> > community. (ie. Why not make this an opportunity to show that
> > Wikipedias have their distinct culture and are at different stages of
> > development?)

> In this case because it was an immediate response to the Bill Thompson
> and Platinax articles. I was trying very hard to keep it *really
> simple* and clear because journalists don't have time to read press
> releases closely - they have to be able to get your message by
> skimming.

Further, I should note: as far as the English-language press is
concerned, all of Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia is the English
Wikipedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com/ , no matter I do my best to
say otherwise every time I speak to them ...

I made a point of mentioning the de: release versions here so as to
put across that en: may be bigger, but de: is arguably more advanced
in some ways. Other press, I try to mention local language Wikipedias,
which are usually quite small and offer an interesting contrast to the
huge Wikipedias.

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


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
Hey,

I've put together an extension for rating articles if anyone is
interested. It's just a first version and hasn't been tested much, but
the details can be found here:

http://www.wikihow.com/WikiHow:RateArticle-Extension

You can see an example here on our development server:

http://wiki16.wikidiy.com/Get-a-Better-Deal-on-a-Home-Loan

(username password wikihow / wikihow2006) - scroll down to the bottom
of the page for the checkmarks.

I'd appreciate feedback if anyone has any. If someone wants to add
this to extensions in svn, that'd be great.

Thanks,
Travis


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
I think it's unlikely to significantly skew the results. A few extra hits
compared to the thousands received on popular pages isn't an issue. I even
tried to artifically inflate the results for one page and had no luck
whatsoever :) The only concern would be if certain "types" of pages
encouraged rapid refreshing, like if for some reason pokemon pages were
refreshed much faster than normal pages, they would be over-reported. But if
it's just individual random editors who skew the results of whatever page
they edit, there should be no overall bias.

Steve

On 8/30/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> One significant potential source of error in Leon's (marvelous!)
> new hitcount stats is the possibility that one reader is for
> whatever reason fetching the same page multiple times (perhaps
> due to nothing more than a prolonged edit).
>
> Obviously it would be best to filter out multiple fetches of the
> same page from the same IP address over some interval, probably
> one day.  (Yes, this could then undercount hits from behind NAT
> firewalls and proxies, but I think it'd still be worth it overall.)
>
> I know that Leon's scheme is currently not logging IP addresses,
> and given AOL's recent high-profile screwup I have to agree that
> not logging IP addresses in this context is probably a good idea.
> But what if we logged a one-way hash of the IP address, that
> couldn't be correlated with anything else?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l]  "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>You might want to clarify what "new and anonymous" means - is this
>going to be a time-lapse job like sprotection, or a manually enabled
>flag? Because people may well assume the latter, and SFAIK that isn't
>being considered...

O rly? I understood it would indeed be a "tick each and every edit
before it shows by default" thing. I guess the feature isn't finished
yet then.

(I like the idea of it being queued for approval for a few days and
passing through then if it hasn't already - but note me not working on
the code.)

- d,


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Did what? You deny he's restricted editing in the past, or that he
> > > called it becoming more open?
> >
> > Where did Jimbo "decide to restrict editing" and then "called it
> > becoming more open".
> >
> I have no idea where he did it, but one instance would be when
> creation of new articles was restricted.
...

He said it on his blog, IIRC. It was in reply to (I believe) that
textfiles.com guy, Scott something (or was it Nicholas Carr?), who was
going around saying that semi-protection proved Wikipedia was a
failure. It was mentioned here several times.

Here we go: http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/archives/2006/06/17/the-new-york-times-gets-it-exactly-backwards/

:"Let me rewrite the headline and first paragraph for them: "Wikipedia
Becomes More Open""

~maru


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 30/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> >You might want to clarify what "new and anonymous" means - is this
> >going to be a time-lapse job like sprotection, or a manually enabled
> >flag? Because people may well assume the latter, and SFAIK that isn't
> >being considered...
>
>
> O rly? I understood it would indeed be a "tick each and every edit
> before it shows by default" thing. I guess the feature isn't finished
> yet then.

I dunno, this is just the gossip I picked up. I may have entirely
grasped the wrong end of the stick...

> (I like the idea of it being queued for approval for a few days and
> passing through then if it hasn't already - but note me not working on
> the code.)

It's such a lovely comfortable club to be in, this one.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Drive-by tagging" advice needed

body:
On 30/08/06, Maury Markowitz <maury_markowitz at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to hear any comments you all may have on this topic. Is it OK
> to simply remove vague tags if the article in question does not appear to
> have a problem related to the tag and there is no comment? I ask because, as
> I noted, the last time I removed tags the tagger then stamped the article
> with a PROD, their argument being that removing tags is PRODable.

It's possible you're dealing with a procedure-bound idiot. Delete the
tags saying "see talk page" and ask on the talk page why not.
Procedure then says discuss it there.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 8/30/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> However, this wouldn't require that, and indeed, a server-side
> solution would be impossible: 99.9% of page hits won't go to the
> server to start with.  Since JavaScript is being used anyway, you can
> just have the script only run the first time you visit a given page
> per session.

Actually now that I think about this, does this actually sufficiently model
the data we want to collect? Are we interested only in "how many people
visit a certain page" and not also in "how many times a certain page is
viewed"? If 5 users spend a whole day arguing back on forth on Wikipedia
talk:Pok?mon, is 5 or 200 a more interesting/useful/relevant metric for that
page?

We should probably start thinking about exactly why we want this data, and
what we should do with the results of it.

Steve


from_name: Ian Woollard

body:
It sounds similar to the proposal:

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

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sebastian Moleski

subject: [Foundation-l] .eu domains lost (Was: .eu domains soon)

body:
Hello,

I took the liberty to register the two remaining .EU domains commonly
associated with Wikimedia (wikiversity.eu and wikimediafoundation.eu). Both
are currently redirects to the respective .org pages. Since eurid (the EU
domain registration authority) just suspended thousands of .EU domains for
not being particularly "European", I'd suggest that portals be placed on
those two domains with links to European versions of Wikiversity and
Wikimedia chapters, respectively.

Regards,

Sebastian Moleski

On 8/30/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikifound at ks.cz> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> after less than a year .eu registration finally have results
>
> wikipedia.eu was finaly lost to subject actively hostile to
> Wikimedia, see www.wikipedia.eu. (It's not because they were
> that clever or agressive, but because Wikimedia wasnt much
> active)
>
> wikimedia.eu is probably going to be lost as Wikimedia didnt
> even applied
>
> Jan Kulveit (Wikimol)
>
> On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 01:49:36PM +0100, Jan Kulveit wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > the 1st sunrise period for .eu domain registration is going
> > to begin soon - 7 December 2005
> > only domain names which are registred EU community/national
> > trademarks will be registered.
> >
> > I'm not sure about the status of Wikimedia trademarks, but
> > guess at least Wikipedia a Wikimedia are suitable. IMO
> > "we" should apply at least for wikipedia.eu and wikimedia.eu.
> >
> > Because of trademark issues and eu regulations concernig
> > who can apply for .eu, I'm affraid it will be a bit
> > complicated. I hope someone from the foundation can take care
> > of it.
> >
> > (If the process is allready going, sorry :-)
> >
> > Jan Kulveit ([[USEr:Wikimol]])
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Michael Bimmler

body:
On 8/30/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikifound at ks.cz> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> after less than a year .eu registration finally have results
>
> wikipedia.eu was finaly lost to subject actively hostile to
> Wikimedia, see www.wikipedia.eu. (It's not because they were
> that clever or agressive, but because Wikimedia wasnt much
> active)
And they didn't exactly wait long to fill it with content, see
wikipedia.eu , a link to a non.existant wiki + a long linklist
Michael


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy across different languages

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Yeah, totally. I have been to Russia and I hung out with some of the
>
>Russian Wikipedians.  They'll be fine. :)  It'll be a noisy fight with
>good people coming down in subtly different but respectable places, a
>few trolls trying to cause trouble, a few idiots blathering on about
>nothing, and in the end the middle way will more or less prevail to
>reasonably good results.
>
Sounds like they are conforming to some kind of template. :-)

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> By definition, any information which can be added automatically and
> never improved on does not strike me as exceptionally encyclopaedic.
> But then, I've already said this is a probably an irrational distaste,
> and I don't know if there are really any good reasons for not wanting
> 20,000 articles about unnamed, insignificant asteroids.

The "never improved on" is the key here. There's nothing wrong with
automating addition of large amounts of data, like census data or
geographical data, even to create stubs, when there's a prospect the
stubs will turn into full articles.

I don't think that asteroid stubs would never be improved, but they
would not be in the foreseeable future, unless they were among the
small number singled out for study (or at least the ones with a name
and not a number), in which case we'll probably have an article on
them anyway.

One could of course put the data in a table in a list article,
although it would be one mighty list.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 30/08/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Non-logged in editors are not anonymous.  In fact, the only way to
> effectively be anonymous is to create an account for every edit and
> log in.

You seem to be assuming that the wikipedia is not recording IP
addresses, because it does not appear to. I wouldn't bet on it.
There's probably logs.

> Anthony

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:LIVING and "sensitivity" again

body:
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Very much agreed.  I am very against any suggestion that strongly
> sourced, accurate negative information that is relevant to the
> person's notability/notoriety should be removed from articles for
> 'sensitivity'.
>
> I am in favor of being very tough about the 'well sourced' part,
> though, and about the notability of life details.  Not everything
> about their private lives that has been e.g. dragged out in divorce
> court is really notable.

The term "sensitivity" is somewhat awkward, and needs defining. To me
it's a manifestation of the undue weight problem recognised by NPOV,
the problem that comes when well sourced, accurate negative
information is given disproportionate attention.

I'm sure we've all seen bios on WP which consist of not much more than
negative information, which people have trouble editing down, or
editing back into context, because it's sourced and thus sacrosanct.

Undue weight happens everywhere, and we want to correct it everywhere,
we just like to say what we're doing is "sensitivity" on BLP articles
because it's a little more human.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 30/08/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> > > Non-logged in editors are not anonymous.  In fact, the only way to
> > > effectively be anonymous is to create an account for every edit and
> > > log in.

> > Technically, the word anonymous means without a name.

> So a user who logs in as "88 dot 33 dot 23 dot 23" is anonymous?

Then it's Wikipedia jargon. (And probably shouldn't go in the press version.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Well darn, Pokemon is important after all.

body:
On 8/30/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> -333 has been there since the beginning; I'm guessing it's something
> to do with the algorithm used, but I dunno what. I'll ask Leon if I
> see him - I'm curious now!

I'm guessing it's a division by three.

As in yesterday was the third day the script was running, and all the
numbers ended in 0, 333 of 666 (or 667, I didn't look too closely).
Today is the fourth day and all the numbers end in 0, 250, 500 or 750.
Tomorrow they'll all end in 0, 200, 400, 600 or 800.

I would think that the script extrapolates the number of hits per page
by multiplying the actual hits by the number used to set the sample
frequency, 5000. It then divides by the number of days so far in the
collection period (a month) to get hits per day.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 30/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> > Did what?  You deny he's restricted editing in the past, or that he
> > called it becoming more open?

> Where did Jimbo "decide to restrict editing" and then "called it
> becoming more open".

Please don't feed the troll.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/30/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> You seem to be assuming that the wikipedia is not recording IP
> addresses, because it does not appear to. I wouldn't bet on it.
> There's probably logs.
>

Assumeing the system hasn't changed since I last herd there are logs
going back as far as 31 July.

--
geni


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disabling users

body:
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 09:12:47PM -0700, George Herbert wrote:
> > > You have a pot of screws and a hammer. Purchase a screwdriver.
> >
> > I have a real document management system.  Several, in fact.
> >
> > [..Snip..]
> >
> > Some of these environments will benefit from Wikis; many of them will
> > require additional access control.  It's unreasonable to expect that
> > MediaWiki would never find itself installed in such a situation.
>
> You're missing his point, though, George:
>
> MediaWiki happily doesn't claim to provide those features, so if you
> spec it into those environments, *you've* screwed up.  You're welcome
> to patch it to do anything you like, or pay someone else to, though.
>
> If MediaWiki doesn't fill your needs, and you can't patch it to do so,
> you're welcome to use something else; Tim and brion won't be offended.

I think George's point was that there are many intranet environments (not just his) where easier access-control would be a useful
addition to the software.

One need only look at bugzilla, and the access-control request bugs, to verify this as being correct.

That said, this behaviour (e.g. restricting read access) is not desired on an open collaborative site like the Wikipedia.

Basically there's a tension between the real-world ways in which people want to use MediaWiki the software "product", and the
primary raison d'etre of MediaWiki as an open-to-everyone collaborative platform.

The more interesting question is: If people can find a way of adding this type of functionality to the default install (but
disabling it by default) so that it doesn't impact you, should it be added?

On the plus side, it'd most likely lead to more deployments of the software, and hence more people familiar with the syntax, and
more people familiar with wikis in general, and what people get used to at work they tend to use at home too (with potential
positive impact). On the negative side, maybe it's seen as complicating the software, and endorsing a feature that's opposed to the
fundamental aim of open knowledge.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia now used as spammer's keyword

body:
Spam e-mail messages these days tend to be full of weird words,
designed apparently to fool filtering programs. Several times
lately, I've spotted "Wikipedia" among these words. The latest
example is a message with the bizarre subject line "Safely Their
iPods Toilet" (which brings some pretty odd imagery to mind), which
then opens its body with:

Agreed for: Price Launch
Make Dangerous Says Thanks Wikipedia Posts Football
revealed wanted codevelop

Now, is the football that Wikipedia posts the American variety or is
it soccer? Inquiring minds want to know.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


list: commons-l

from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Commons-l] Response from the USGS image purchaser

body:
I'm very glad to see people involving themselves in this project, and
Jared's answer is fantastic :)

g.

On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/30/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> > I emailed Jared (the person that bought the maps) just to say that
> > there was interest in uploading them to commons, and he offered to
> > mail a hard drive with all the images! I was thinking we would
> > probably just grab them from the Archive, but I thought I would let
> > everyone know of this offer in case anyone wanted to do it that way.
> >
> > It is a lot of data, and in tiff format.
>
> Anyone know the status of Djvu support in mediawiki?  I know brion was
> working on it for Wikisource.
>
> Djvu would be the most correct format for the distribution of this data.
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.
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from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
	Wikipedia Pr...

body:
On 8/29/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nod.
> There are a couple of things we can do, I think, without being
> paternalistic. It is simply to "tell them". To tell them about our
> projects. To tell them about "free content". To tell them how they can
> participate and develop their own language project.

True, if you have a chance to talk with them either online or offline.

> And to make suggestions about how they could push more (maybe by paying
> an editor in chief, maybe by organising a conference, maybe by having
> advertisment on Wikipedia in a local journal, maybe by visiting a
> school). But then, I think that's their business to do what is needed
> once they have the cards in hand (the platform).

There is another kind of helping you can offer. Visit those wikis
regurally. Patrol their RC, removing spams, invite anon editors to
register (sadly perhaps not in their own language, but something is
better than nothing in most cases),  encourage registered editors to
get more involved into projects: localize their interface, be familiar
with some MediaWiki gimicks (e.g. Template etc), share the Wikimedia
Project know-how (Meta:Request for permissions etc. Most of newbies
have no clue on that at first time), suggest them some useful
communication channels, just as like you talk to a newcomer on your
home wiki. Or formerl test wiki on meta or now on Incubator. You can
do those without being patarnalistic, you just have them shorten the
time they need to be more involved just from the Wikilove for your
co-editors.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Matter of interest, why let the Germans have all the fun?

It should be possible to build a prototype test-filter webserver.

As in, it doesn't have any content itself, it just scrounges it all
off the real wikipedia, but behaves the same as if we had implemented
it on the wikipedia.

So, when you go to an article it checks the history list and pulls the
most appropriate version.

Performance would probably suck, but it should be Ok for light use.

On 28/08/06, Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/28/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > so we can not waste time discussing
> > in a vacuum.
>
>
> That's ruining our fun. :)
>
> I am curious to see how it works on the german wikipedia. How long will this
> expiriment last btw?
>
> Garion96
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> (in en.wp normal parlance, "new and anonymous" means first-four-days,
> so I'm guessing it's intended to be something like that)

Yes, 'new and anonymous' means first-four-days.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

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

Moin,

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 18:12, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are only about four billion possible IP addresses.  Anyone could
> > just do a brute-force execution of whatever hashing algorithm we use
> > on every IP address.  Really, though, there's no harm in storing IP
> > address-pageview links for a short period of time, like a day.
>
> [snip]
>
> H(secret + ip)  can only be inverted by exhaustive search of both the
> secret and the IP (or the secret if you happen to have some known H(),
> IP pairs)... and the secret can be much longer than 32 bits.

So, if you can't guarantee that the hashes of the IP (including the log)
don't leak out, how can you guarantee that the secret doesn't leak out?
Answer: You can't.

The only safe way to not leak these information out is not even to store
them.

If you log this data, expect law inforcement knocking on your door next week
and ask "for all information pertaining the view of pages X, Y, Z, ...
(continue for 1000 more), or IP adresses U, V, W, ... (continue for 1000
more, in regard to $alleged_terrorist_attack_of_the_week".

> However the fuss about the AOL logs showed that, at least for search
> strings, mere correlation of requests was enough to leak too much
> data.   I do not believe that the same is true for page hits, but
> thats the consideration.
>
> To me it seems a bit foolish of an argument though... any one of our
> admins could add such a bug... any upstream ISP could sniff the
> traffic.... and we all know that the US Government is already doing
> so. ;)  but it is what it is..... and for some reason people don't
> like the prospects of the world figuring out that they have a venereal
> disease. Silly people.

Maybe they just don't want the whole [censored] world to know what they
read, search, use, write, or like. See: AOL.

The next time you enter by accident your CC number, SSN, or any other data
that identifies you into the seach box of mediawiki, consider how much
better you would feel if you nobody recorded, logged, backed up, stored,
processed, and then made public your data.

Just because someone _could_ collect the data already doesn't mean Mediawiki
foundation should do,  too.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Aug 30 19:14:35 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Boooooooring!" - Dot, the Warner sister

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body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Um, Anthony is referring to it becoming less possible for new users to
> > > > make accounts (certainly a drop in open-ness)
>
> > > Er, when did this happen?
>
> > Um, I naturally meant "less possible for new users to make article".
> > I don't understand how you misunderstood...
>
>
> Gosh darn this fiendish "words" thing!
>
>
> - d.

I blame the developers. If they weren't so hung up on
internationalization things or things like bug 550, they'd've uploaded
the telepath patch and we could finally start on WikiMind: the
intelligence anyone can edit!

~maru
Real Soon Now


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 30/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It should be possible to build a prototype test-filter webserver.
>
> Nope. It's not.

Really? Do you have a cite for that?

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


body:
jayjg wrote:
> It appears that Russian Wikipedia is about to reject Verifiability as a policy:
>
> http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F:%D0%93%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C
>
> Verifiability is usually considered one of the 3 core content policies
> on English Wikipedia.
>
> This leads to a question; must the different Wikipedias have the same
> core policies? Could Russian Wikipedia do away with NPOV and NOR as
> well?  Could some other language Wikipedia do away with WP:CIVIL,
> etc.?

Well, it seems more that they are having some discussions over the
precisely implementation, not over the policy in the broadest sense.

One of the things that I have enjoyed about travelling all over the
world to visit with Wikipedians is the realization that people are more
or less basically sane everywhere.  So I try not to panic about what is
going on in languages I don't read.

There are some great Russian wikipedians.  They will see to it that
everything is more or less ok. :)

--Jimbo


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
cohesion wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ]
>> Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
>>
>> g.
>
> Not that I know of, I don't think they are completely uploaded yet,
> but I would be glad to help if one gets started. I emailed the person
> that did this and said we might be interested :) Apparently when the
> upload is complete his project page will have more details about where
> they are. There are a lot, so a commons project might be a good idea
> :)

   For sure, if a project gets set up (or just instructions are made
available) someon should drop a note on here.  I'd be happy to help too.

SKL


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>> I think Jimbo needs to step in and talk to some bigwigs at
>> ru.wikipedia.org and sort this out. Maybe even wave his magic wand if
>> need be (after all, he more than anyone else has been arguing for this
>> for a long time). We cannot have an encyclopedia without a
>> verifiability policy, it's just not possible in the long run.
>>
>
> Given the translation, I'm not sure that's necessary.  It appears only a
> handful of people really oppose verifiability in general, and most of
> the worry is that this is going to be some draconian policy where any
> uncited sentence is going to be deleted 48 hours from now or something.
> I'd be inclined to see what happens and allow the community to craft
> their policy, only stepping in if it goes horribly awry or something.

Yeah, totally.  I have been to Russia and I hung out with some of the
Russian Wikipedians.  They'll be fine. :)  It'll be a noisy fight with
good people coming down in subtly different but respectable places, a
few trolls trying to cause trouble, a few idiots blathering on about
nothing, and in the end the middle way will more or less prevail to
reasonably good results.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Sounds good. But fergoshsakes just put the info in a table. Worst
>>> thing about the town rambot articles is that they're pretty crappy
>>> prose but it never gets edited, ever; second is that the demographic
>>> information came from a table and should be presented as a table, not
>>> as crappy prose.
>> Yeah. I bet over time the crappy prose of all these town articles will
>> slowly be edited in different directions, becoming different, equally
>> crappy, prose.
>>
>> I was tempted to edit one once, then realised how many times I'd have
>> to repeat my work. Eek.
>>
>> And since we're having a whinge, the other problem with an article
>> like that is you think it's actually fairly complete. You'd think that
>> 3-4 paragraphs of text would be a decent amount for a small town.
>> Whereas it covers the demographics, and that's it - no history, no
>> geography, no "the construction of a Walmart caused uproar in 2005".
>>
>> Steve
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> G'day folks,
>
> Personally, I think that a comprehensive coverage of towns is one of our
> strengths at least in the first world. If there was verifiable concern in a
> town over the construction of a Walmart, I have no problem with our article
> saying it.
>
> If someone wants to write about the history and geography of their local
> area from reliable sources more power to their arm. We have had a number of
> Featured Articles on towns and things that wouldn't be listed in traditional
> encyclopedias. This, in my view, is a good thing.
>
> We probably need more on local areas in third world countries but that will
> come. We had a featured article on Central Asian history recently for
> example which is encouraging.
>
> If someone wants to write articles on asteroids and other astronomical
> bodies from reliable sources, good on them. If people looking for that
> information come to Wikipedia, that is beneficial.
>
> It definitely falls within my understanding of the Sum of all Human
> Knowledge.
>
> Regards to all
>
>
> Keith Old

   Yea but, I agree with the statement above that such imported data is
best represented as an infobox.  So I suspect most of these will be one
sentence and one info-box stubs.  That is a very tempting AfD target to
some.  Perhaps irresistible.

SKL


subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
 Wikipedia Pr...

body:
Delirium wrote:
> A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we
> treat all other languages.  Even though quite a few Westerners are
> interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for
> example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.

Ok.  But that's because there *is* a Chinese community, quite healthy
and active.

It is a bit harder when, 5 years on, we seen little signs of life, and
some good ideas about why we don't see signs of life.  In such cases, I
think it is not paternalistic to think about how we can proactively help
to create a community there.  A community, I hasten to add, of native
speakers.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Not a good idea since that is all we know about most asteroids and those data would be far more
>> useful in a big table of asteroids, not on individual pages for each space rock.
>> In fact, the basics are already in the List of asteroids tables.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids_%2839001-40000%29
>> We can just add to the table.
>
>
> Excellent! So what we need then is a forest of redirects.
>
>
> - d.

   Ok, this is an even better idea.  I am a strong believer in the idea
that 50 articles that have no hope of ever becoming more than a stub can
(sometimes) make a single good article.  We might want to add links to
the various online DB's that are essentially the primary sources for
most of this as well.  I think most of the major astro catalogs are
available online now days.

SKL


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 30/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It should be possible to build a prototype test-filter webserver.
>
> Nope. It's not.

I mean just a website you go to that has no log-in support that picks
time-delayed version of articles from the wikipedia for display; so
you can click and search and stuff.

All the server would need to do is rewrite the response from the
wikipedia so that links point back at itself, and have some code so
that any attempt to access a current article checks the history list
and picks one.

It doesn't have to be perfect or fast, it's a *prototype*.

If you're really claiming that that's impossible, then I flat-out
don't believe you.

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 30/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Think for a moment, a vandal puts up an image of a penis... it says up
> for 5 minutes.. then it is removed. Then we sit around, and in 5
> minutes a penis is displayed on an article and we are powerless to
> stop it.

Oh that; yes that would be very stupid indeed.

No.

> Gee.. that would help a lot.

Try implementing this as a server filter:

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

Which doesn't behave like that.

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 8/30/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > It appears that Russian Wikipedia is about to reject Verifiability as a policy:
> >
> > http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F:%D0%93%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C
> >
> > Verifiability is usually considered one of the 3 core content policies
> > on English Wikipedia.
> >
> > This leads to a question; must the different Wikipedias have the same
> > core policies? Could Russian Wikipedia do away with NPOV and NOR as
> > well?  Could some other language Wikipedia do away with WP:CIVIL,
> > etc.?
>
> Well, it seems more that they are having some discussions over the
> precisely implementation, not over the policy in the broadest sense.

As far as I can tell, the vote has been closed and the policy has failed.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:NPOV and images (possible policy update)

body:
On 30 Aug 2006 at 10:10, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem is that once people think that a decision is going to
> result in a president they tend to bring up a load of annoying side
> issues.

There was a series of high-profile court cases in the late part of
the year 2000 that did have the effect of resulting in a president
(some say the wrong one), but most legal cases only result in a
"precedent" instead.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/30/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/31/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> >
> > David Gerard wrote:
> > > On 30/08/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Not a good idea since that is all we know about most asteroids and
> > those data would be far more
> > >> useful in a big table of asteroids, not on individual pages for each
> > space rock.
> > >> In fact, the basics are already in the List of asteroids tables.
> > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids_%2839001-40000%29
> > >> We can just add to the table.
> > >
> > >
> > > Excellent! So what we need then is a forest of redirects.
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> >
> >   Ok, this is an even better idea.  I am a strong believer in the idea
> > that 50 articles that have no hope of ever becoming more than a stub can
> > (sometimes) make a single good article.  We might want to add links to
> > the various online DB's that are essentially the primary sources for
> > most of this as well.  I think most of the major astro catalogs are
> > available online now days.
> >
> >
> > SKL
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> Folks,
>
> I would be happy with that if we don't have a lot  of information
> about them.
>
> I suspect that over time with researchers working on studies of these
> bodies
> more information will become available about them and we will be able to
> expand some of them into legitimate articles.
>
> Regards
>
>
> *Keith Old*
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I'm not an asteroids expert, but I follow the Minor Planets Mailing List,
IAU announcements, and new discoveries fairly closely.  For most of the
umpteen-tens-of-thousands of objects, all we essentially have are orbital
elements, some sighting dates and positions, a magnitude, spectra, and
deduced size and class.  In some cases, there's not even a spectrum or
officially deduced size or class.

Various spacecraft missions are planned to get a whole lot more data on some
of the more interesting ones, and distant remote observation programs are
being considered which would fill in a lot of the gaps now in basic
magnitude / spectrum / orbital path details to high precision / etc.  But
it's going to be hard.  Most of these are far enough away and small enough
that they're only at best roughly pixel sized for Hubble or even the Next
Generation Space Telescope, so getting a "better picture" necessarily means
a spacecraft, and at tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars per
spacecraft, the fraction of asteroids we'll visit up close in the next few
decades seems likely to be small.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/30/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>
> cohesion wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> [ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ]
> >> Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
> >>
> >> g.
> >
> > Not that I know of, I don't think they are completely uploaded yet,
> > but I would be glad to help if one gets started. I emailed the person
> > that did this and said we might be interested :) Apparently when the
> > upload is complete his project page will have more details about where
> > they are. There are a lot, so a commons project might be a good idea
> > :)
>
>
>    For sure, if a project gets set up (or just instructions are made
> available) someon should drop a note on here.  I'd be happy to help too.
>
> SKL
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I'm bugging a friend who works at the Internet Archive for information on
when these will be done uploading and how they will be available, though it
might go faster if Jimmy asks Brewster Kahle directly...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Agreed.  However, if the birthdate is already public information, I
> see no point in censoring Wikipedia about it.  Verifiability works
> quite well in this regard; if it's already in reliable source
> material, then the cat is out of the bag and deleting it from
> Wikipedia serves no practical good.
>
> -Matt

But we include a birthdate for [[James Randi]] when it is no secret
that certianly the normal sources include false dates.

--
geni


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 8/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think anyone is contesting these issues.  The only issue under
> > contention is whether this should be stated explicitly for fear of
> > causing even more hagiography.
>
> I think it already *is* stated. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind the
> bit about not including birthdate information for fear of "identity
> theft" being removed - sheer paranoia.

I equally don't think that it *is* is under question, just that
whether it *should* be.  :)

--
Sam


body:
On 8/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> > On day 3, they were all multiples of 1000/3
> >
> > On day 4, they are all multiples of 1000/4...
>
> I swear there's a pattern, but damned if I can figure it out...
>
> Incidentally, Irukandji jellyfish is hanging in there, 6th position at
> +-19%. The top 10 is actually pretty stable, pluto down a bit and
> "list of big-bust models and performers" (what a mouthful) up.
>
> The worst thing about stats like this is they really raise more
> questions than they give answers. Why Jeff Hardy? The next
> professional wrestler isn't until #36.

we are top result on google for Jeff Hardy

we are not the top result for Kurt Angle

--
geni


from_name: Carl Peterson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fighting over (R) and (tm) symbols

body:
I thought that a basic rule of thumb was to use a trademark (r, tm, or
p) symbol at the first usage of that word. However, in my experience, it is
usually accompanied by a footnote specifying the owner of said trademarks,
and, as you have stated, is not typically utilized in encyclopedic
materials.

I went back and looked at the history to see what you were talking about
(current version doesn't have them). My main comment is that the trademark
symbols should have been inserted correctly, using the actual (r) symbol
instead of the (R), which is just distracting. The trademark (tm) should
have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.

Carl
On 8/30/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> There seems to be ongoing fighting over at the [[Certified Financial
> Planner]] page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Financial_Planner
>
> over whether the page should be festooned with (r) and (tm) symbols
> everywhere the trademarked title of the article occurs, including as
> part of the article's title itself.
>
> It is my impression (IANAL) that such usages are not necessary, nor
> are they standard in English-language writing style, when the usage
> is of a journalistic or encyclopedic nature rather than as part of
> marketing materials.  After all, Wikipedia has many articles, like
> [[Coca-Cola]], that are named after trademarks, but don't display the
> symbols demanded by the lawyers.
>
> At any rate, if such symbols do remain in the article, they ought to
> be done with proper Unicode characters (technically feasible now that
> the site is entirely in UTF-8) rather than their ugly ASCII
> imitations.
>
> --
> Dan
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 30/08/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> > > I have no idea where he did it

> > Then buzz off, troll.

> You intentionally misquoted me, but I'm the troll?

In this case, whether your querulousness is intentional (as "trolling"
is something done deliberately) or just a personality flaw isn't
really an issue. Stop it or leave the list. Thanks.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 8/30/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
>
> Whoa!  I missed the announcement of implementing the marvelous new
> hitcounter.  What happened to concerns about spoofing hits by way of
> bypassing the sampling - is it a non-javascript thingy that is therefore
> impervious to spoofing?  I'd love to see the logic/code.

We should bear in mind that for the moment, there is no value in spoofing
it. Why? Because there's no value in having a popular article. Yet.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds good. But fergoshsakes just put the info in a table. Worst
> thing about the town rambot articles is that they're pretty crappy
> prose but it never gets edited, ever; second is that the demographic
> information came from a table and should be presented as a table, not
> as crappy prose.

Yeah. I bet over time the crappy prose of all these town articles will
slowly be edited in different directions, becoming different, equally
crappy, prose.

I was tempted to edit one once, then realised how many times I'd have
to repeat my work. Eek.

And since we're having a whinge, the other problem with an article
like that is you think it's actually fairly complete. You'd think that
3-4 paragraphs of text would be a decent amount for a small town.
Whereas it covers the demographics, and that's it - no history, no
geography, no "the construction of a Walmart caused uproar in 2005".

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> On day 3, they were all multiples of 1000/3
>
> On day 4, they are all multiples of 1000/4...

I swear there's a pattern, but damned if I can figure it out...

Incidentally, Irukandji jellyfish is hanging in there, 6th position at
+-19%. The top 10 is actually pretty stable, pluto down a bit and
"list of big-bust models and performers" (what a mouthful) up.

The worst thing about stats like this is they really raise more
questions than they give answers. Why Jeff Hardy? The next
professional wrestler isn't until #36. But then again there are quite
a few - it would seem that professional wrestling is actually more
popular than pok?mon. God help us.

More analysis needed.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/30/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>   It is actually called "United States Geological Survey" not service.
>  In this case it is pretty self evident.  If were called "Lunar
> Geological Survey" .....

Ah, Survey changes everything.

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> As far as I recall, there is no legal requirement to use either
> symbol.  (r) and ? are used by trademark holders to inform you that
> they consider the terms trademarks.  It is not commonplace to use
> those symbols when you are NOT claiming trademark status on the terms
> yourself.

Yes, it's up to the person who owns the trademark to spray them around
everywhere. If we do it, we're just being chumps.

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Of course the fact that it's not useful information combined with the
> fact that it's almost never an easily verified fact is an equally good
> reason.

It's extremely useful information for the purpose of disambiguating.
How do you know that semi-notable Jim Smith who lives in Sydney, born
1957 is or isn't Jim Smith (born Australia 1957, lives in New York)?
Knowing their birthdates helps a huge amount.

Also, you don't need a birth certificate to source it. Any published
source is a pretty good start.

Steve


body:
On 8/30/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip?dia:Pages_?_supprimer/Wikip?dia:Ignorez_les_r?gles
>
> I'm not sure what you would all have made of this if I just left it without
> comment.
>
> Instead I will mention that a translation of an old version of the english IAR
> was already (and still is) written right into the main rules page.

Yeah judging from the discussion this page appeared out of nowhere and
looks alarming. If it's not part of your established tradition, then
there's no point in having it.

And besides, there's no point telling French people to "ignore all
rules" - they do that by default anyway. <g,d,r>

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/30/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyone know the status of Djvu support in mediawiki?  I know brion was
> > working on it for Wikisource.
> >
> > Djvu would be the most correct format for the distribution of this data.
>
> It was announced a few weeks ago that DJVu is an accepted file format now.

Yes, but do we support adding the embede tags for viewing with the
DJVu plugin? or automagic conversion to png or jpeg for unequipted
browsers?


body:
Maury Markowitz wrote:
> I recently got into a minor squable that started with another example of
> what I refer to as "drive-by tagging". Basically someone comes by an article
> and inserts a whole bunch of tags without any comment. Some of these may be
> valid, others less so, but very often its impossible to know one way or the
> other without the original "tagger" pointing out the problems.
>
> For instance, consider this example I came across recently: Mirror Fusion
> Test Facility. The "tagger" inserted a needs cats and needs wikification.
> The cats one was entirely valid and I added one, but I can't for the life of
> me even imagine what needs additional wikification. It seems to follow the
> style guide perfectly. I wrote to the tagger, but he responded saying "by
> following the link within the tag for all you need to know about wikifying
> an article", which is a non-answer.
>
> I would like to hear any comments you all may have on this topic. Is it OK
> to simply remove vague tags if the article in question does not appear to
> have a problem related to the tag and there is no comment? I ask because, as
> I noted, the last time I removed tags the tagger then stamped the article
> with a PROD, their argument being that removing tags is PRODable.
>
> Maury

   I think procedure for most of these is tag the article AND leave a
note on the talk page.  This may not apply to {{wikify}} but then I
don't there there is any "burden of prof" to removing {{wikify}}.  If
you remove it then and they put it back then you have a legatimate
content dispute which policy says shoudl be discussed.  Either way you
get them on the talk page.

   As for PROD is that not {{PROD}} which simply if I am not mistaken
says that ANYONE can remove it with only the reason that they disagree?
  The template itself says "If this template is removed, it should not
be replaced."

SKL


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Annoucement re: Mark Bergsma

body:
I am pleased to announce that WMF has hired Mark Bergsma to serve as
Networking Coordinator for the Foundation.  Due to Mark's continuing
studies, the position will be part-time.  Mark has distinguished himself
with his work on the Wikimedia infrastructure.  In light of the recent
concerns about network reliability, network independence, etc.,
dedicated manpower for this function is critical.  We welcome him and
look forward to his work in the future.

-Brad

Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


body:
On 8/30/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I have no idea where he did it, but one instance would be when
> > creation of new articles was restricted.
> ...
>
> He said it on his blog, IIRC. It was in reply to (I believe) that
> textfiles.com guy, Scott something (or was it Nicholas Carr?), who was
> going around saying that semi-protection proved Wikipedia was a
> failure.

Um, Anthony is referring to it becoming less possible for new users to
make accounts (certainly a drop in open-ness); you are referring to
semi-protection (something different entirely and _arguably_ an
improvement in open-ness).

--
Sam


body:
On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Um, Anthony is referring to it becoming less possible for new users to
> make accounts (certainly a drop in open-ness)

Er, when did this happen?

- d.


body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Um, Anthony is referring to it becoming less possible for new users to
> > make accounts (certainly a drop in open-ness)
>
>
> Er, when did this happen?

Um, I naturally meant "less possible for new users to make article".

I don't understand how you misunderstood...

--
Sam


body:
On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 30/08/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Um, Anthony is referring to it becoming less possible for new users to
> > > make accounts (certainly a drop in open-ness)

> > Er, when did this happen?

> Um, I naturally meant "less possible for new users to make article".
> I don't understand how you misunderstood...

Gosh darn this fiendish "words" thing!

- d.


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Commons-l] Commons SumItUp

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

Magnus Manske schrieb:
> I've worked some more on my SumIrUp tool [1], which can generate a list
> of language templates with one-line descriptions for a new article. All
> it needs is a starting point, namely this article in any language. From
> there, it will spider all the language links, and gather the initial
> paragraph/sentence of each article. It then generates a
> copy-and-paste-ready text, including language links.
>
> I was wondering - why not link to this tool in the instructions text for
> new articles? There could be a link to this tool using the name of the
> page to be created, and en.wikipedia as default. If an article with that
> name exists on en.wikipedia, it will generate said list of one-line
> descriptions which can be copied into that article. As this is exactly
> what commons articles/categories *should* contain, it might be a huge help.
>
> Magnus
>
> [1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commons_sumitup.php
>
>

A very very nice tool. It's new to me and I will use it in the future.

But we need on Commons a technique to show only those translations of
the users language (stored in preferences) with a fallback option to
englisch and/or all.

Also usefull for the display of multilanguage descriptions in galleries.

Raymond.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE9gXup+qUcbEr56YRAlF6AKDBzm+hczS8mEZBXMJShViXTdzzlwCfZ7HO
5yiBLqpNLOJgd4G6k3QQ/3U=
=Eg/i
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] I couldn't do a better press release if I tried

body:
>David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits&diff=422263&oldid=422067

Damn. That is good.

-sv.

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


from_name: Sam Pointon

body:
On 30/08/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Spam e-mail messages these days tend to be full of weird words,
> designed apparently to fool filtering programs. Several times
> lately, I've spotted "Wikipedia" among these words. The latest
> example is a message with the bizarre subject line "Safely Their
> iPods Toilet" (which brings some pretty odd imagery to mind), which
> then opens its body with:

iPods most certainly do -not- safely toilet (at least, that's what the
airlines think):
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=6a11bd67-f717-4aa3-80a9-840c07949730&k=28503

--Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?

body:
Deep thoughts:

Noting certain deficiencies in areas of advanced physics
- bleeding edge stuff in particular seems to be a bit disorganised.
Few qualified editors and things are no doubt lonely at the top.

Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase
away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science
articles?

-SV

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikien-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?

body:
> What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science
> articles?

Er, "topics"

-SV

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-31

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Progress on WiktionaryZ

body:
Hoi,
We have reached another nice number at WiktionaryZ.. We have our 500th
user.. As you may know, we are quite happy to increase not only our
number of editors (please let us know when you have your Babel templates
and have read [[DefinedMeaning]]) we have also slowly but surely
expanded the number of languages that we support, Thai Ido and Serbian
among the ones that have added lately.

In the background there have been many interesting discussions about all
kinds of everything, many of the suggestions made are feasible but are
reliant of the state of the software and the availability of people
willing to program for us. The first volunteer contribution is about to
be go life in a few days time; this is software that will change the
behaviour of the screen. The way you like to have your screen configured
will get some stickiness. Thanks Rod :) The first stage of versioning is
likely to go life next week.

We have had a setback with the development of the "Mulitlingual
MediaWiki", the guy who started to work on it fell sick and the money
promised for it has become uncertain for now due to legal problems at
the donor side. We now have the funding to make this happen thanks to
Wikia and the University Bamberg. We even have some money to create some
new functionality to make the life of our editors and users a bit more
sweet; things like lists of the words in a language and/or a collection
or the words where there is content in language A and there is no
content in language B...

 From a content point of view, I do not have a clue how many "articles"
WiktionaryZ has, I do know that it grows rapidly certainly when you
consider that the growth is based on what is done manually. Our Alexa
ranking has some amusement value;
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wiktionaryz.org
and we have our own stats as well; http://wiktionaryz.org/stats/

When you have not visited us yet, this is as great a time as any, if it
were only to boost the "Alexa" ratings :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Progress on WiktionaryZ


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Progress on WiktionaryZ


subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 8/31/06, Leon Weber <leon.weber at leonweber.de> wrote:
> Possibly it already does, I think the index.png image gets cached in the
> browser.
> I wanted to avoid that once by adding a timestamp to the image URL.

Of course, their whole request might get cached as well. :) Unless
they shift reload, and that should regrab the image as well.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
On 31/08/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:

> I blame the developers. If they weren't so hung up on
> internationalization things or things like bug 550, they'd've uploaded
> the telepath patch and we could finally start on WikiMind: the
> intelligence anyone can edit!

/me ducks for cover

If you think the flamewars are bad now, just imagine if we knew what
each other *really* thought and couldn't even pretend to civility ...

- d.


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?

body:
For a long long time it has been the operative assumption that the
Wikimedia Foundation carries the legal liability, and if things go
really really badly wrong, the foundation would sacrifice itself, so
the community, and the content itself could continue elsewhere.

There has however been gradual development of the foundations
structures in two ways that seem to indicate that this operative
assumption (not being anywhere formally enunciated, except in the
tangible fact of working under the GFDL) may not last forever.

Firstly there is the building of increasingly robust defensive
bulwarks against litigation and other forms that the foundation could
be seriously harmed. This is something which is clearly an unequivocal
good in what ever operative assumption the Foundation labors under,
and should continue no matter what. The question on this front rather
is, whether there exists now, or will exist in the foreseeable future,
a sufficient level of robustness for these defenses that the need to
keep the Foundation as expendable, discardable isn't relevant anymore
from a standpoint of necessity?

The other facet of the question is the speed at which the organs of
the foundation develop into integral parts of how our whole greater
endeavour operates. Note I am not saying indispensible in the sense
that those particular organs are locked into place (we are a long way
from that yet), but integral in the sense that should the highly
unlikely eventuality of having to start again occur (as the GFDL
allows), _something_ would have fill their functions in the operation
of the restarted endeavour.

The problem (or non-problem, as the facts may obtain) here lies on
what philosophy do we adopt toward this earlier operative assumption
of sacrificability?

Do we find on reflection, that we have already crossed the Rubicon,
that although theoretically the work could be restarted elsewhere, the
disruption would be high enough, that it is wisest to abandon all
worry about the possibility of sacrificing the Foundation, and
concentrate on making the Foundation functional without regard to what
things it might lock us into, and speed up construction of legal and
other defensive bulwarks into a kind of Fortress Wikimedia Foundation?

Or should we seriously consider examining every new thing the
Foundation takes onto its plate, making doubly sure that it is
something that would compromise our ability to just chuck the
Foundation away like the tail of a lizard, and trust we will have the
resources to grow a new tail, there being no vital organs in it.

Or can someone in one swift stroke demonstrate that all the above is
entirely inconsequential? For me, that would be a great relief, and
good enough.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can't sample unique hits, at least not without first capturing all hits.

Or checking for uniqueness on the JavaScript level.  I doubt this is a
big issue, though, at least for reasonably large articles; undoubtedly
the vast majority of hits we get are readers, who won't reload the
page a lot.


body:
niht-hr?fn wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects
>> everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project
>> (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to
>> collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy
>> sufficient to remove it?
>
> There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ -
> needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the
> community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew,
> Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist...
> "encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's
> also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality
> is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.
>
> Keitei
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei

   Wikia is a totally empty suggestion to the people adding this sort of
content.  It is basically saying "why don't you go put this somewhere
(unassociated with wikipedia) where there will never be any Internet
traffic to it."  Wikipedia had passed some sort of tipping point and
that draws editors who want to be involved.  The original suggestion
that when we needed it we created wikiquotes and wikisource etc was that
if we could make a place with the same prestige as wikipedia where we
could put the pop culture (And link to it form within wikipedia for
those who want to see it (and trust me some people want to read the pop
culture articles)) then we could solve this problem.

   That said if you call it wikitrivia not a single one of your Buffy
editors will touch it.  If the goal is to move some of the lower
notability, lower interest content somewhere then, you have to attract
those editors there.  It cannot sound ... well ... trivial, even if you
think it is.  I think it is a good idea, even though wikipopculture
sounds dumb and wikiculture is misleading so I am not sure what you
would call it.  Either way the key is that it has to on some something
that you can link to with one of those cute little boxes that we get for
wikiquote, and it has to still basically be wikimedia in stile only with
notability rules, and styling that are a bit different.

SKL


body:
On 8/31/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase
> away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science
> articles?

Eek, please separate these questions.. they are very different.

On the first part... I don't think the existence of articles is a
problem. A more interesting subject is the escape of pop-culture
content, often too trivial for the pop-culture articles into other
pages. I believe this is a phenomena made more frequent due our bias
towards pop-culture, especially in terms of what articles we select
for the main page... which seem to be roughly half pop-culture, in
some kind of misguided attempt to show the world what we have but
Britannica doesn't..

How would you feel about adding beautiful and insightful prose to an
article on a university, only to find that someone has later added:
"In a 1999 episode ("Lovers' Walk," Season 3, Episode 8) of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Joyce (Buffy's mother) says to Buffy, "[[Carnegie
Mellon]]has a wonderful design curriculum.""
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carnegie_Mellon_University&oldid=42368976#Carnegie_Mellon_in_fiction]
... Delighted, no doubt!

What historian wouldn't want admit to his peers that he had
involvement in an article on [[John Wilkes Booth]] that tells the
reader more about Bart Simpson's schooling than John Wilkes Booth's?

... and could a serious nuclear physicist allow their audience to walk
away without letting them know that the character "J. Frank Parnell"
in the 1984 film Repo Man mentions the [[neutron bomb]]in the course
of justifying voluntary lobotomies?

Surely an expert in matters of yesterdays culture can understand our
reader's burning need to discover that in the HBO film Something The
Lord Made a comment was made by Alan Rickman as Dr. Alfred Blalock
when a comment was made by his assistant (Vivien Thomas, played by Mos
Def) about the amount of coffee he was drinking, "[[Honor? de
Balzac|Balzac]] once drank 300 cups of coffee in one day...then again,
he died of a perforated ulcer..."

... and what linguist would be disappointed with an article on
[[pejorative]] whos only in context example is a quote from The
Simpsons?

And I'm sure that chefs everywhere will feel honored when they find
that they add their wisdom along side Marge Simpson's in our article
on [[Pressure cooking]].

Please note the linked words above are the articles the content came from.
If you liked these examples hundreds more are only a "what links here"
click away from your favorite pop-culture subject.

As far as relaxing NPOV... You must be kidding. In the absence of an
authority structure to make decisions over disagreement NPOV is the
only mechanism we have to reach a stable position in our articles.


from_name: niht-hræfn

body:
On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects
> everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project
> (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to
> collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy
> sufficient to remove it?

There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ -
needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the
community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew,
Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist...
"encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's
also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality
is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.

Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 8/30/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > I have no idea where he did it
> > >
> > > Then buzz off, troll.
> >
> > You intentionally misquoted me, but I'm the troll?
>
> I didn't misquote you.
>
Yes, you did.  You asked the question "where" did this happen, as
though that was a question which had a reasonable answer (in the
study, with a candlestick?).  I pointed out that your question of
"where" was meaningless, and then proceeded to describe what happened.
 You responded by quoting half of this response and then calling me a
troll.

> "The first time Jimbo decided to restrict editing and call it becoming
> more open"
>
> You used the word "and" in your claim. Do trolls come from an
> alternate universe where and has been redefined as OR?
>
Absolutely not.  Again I ask you which part of this claim you're
denying.  Are you saying it was a different person who closed new page
creation and claimed that Wikipedia is getting more open?

> Your logic would have me expecting you to agree with this statement:
> "Anthony is a homicidal pedophile AND he posts to this list."

And your logic would have me responding to that with "where was I a
homicidal pedophile and post to the list".

Anyway, I shouldn't be feeding the troll.  To get back on topic, *this
FAQ* is dishonest, regardless of what happened in the past.  Look at
the very beginning of it: "
* What is changing?

We want to open up editing without damaging the reader's experience."

Is that what's changing?  Wouldn't it be better to answer the question
from the beginning?

As was pointed out by someone else, *who* wants to open up editing?
And who decided this was the best way to do this?

Anthony


from_name: Leon Weber

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

body:
Gregory Maxwell schrieb:
> On 8/30/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>> Greg Maxwell wrote:
>>
>>> It could exclude duplicate sampled hits, but then it's not clear what
>>> the heck it's measuring.. it's not measuring unique views, it's not
>>> measuring pure views.
>>>
>> Sampled unique hits.  What's wrong with that?  (No worse than
>> sampled hits, it seems to me.)
>>
>
> You can't sample unique hits, at least not without first capturing all hits.
>
Possibly it already does, I think the index.png image gets cached in the
browser.
I wanted to avoid that once by adding a timestamp to the image URL.
-- Leon


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Drive-by tagging" advice needed

body:
On 8/31/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 31/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > David Gerard wrote:
>
> > > The interesting bits of life are the grey areas. Wikipedia is not a
> > > refuge from them. How to get this across to those who see the world
> > > entirely in black and white, and think of grey as a kind of defective
> > > stippling?
>
> > Wait until Mediawiki 2.0, which will /finally/ have 40kV through the
> chair.
>
>
> I thought that was set for the III Phase version of the software.

**Groan!**---------------------------^

-Rich Holton
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


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

Gregory Maxwell schrieb:
> On 8/30/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
>
> Anyone know the status of Djvu support in mediawiki?  I know brion was
> working on it for Wikisource.
>
> Djvu would be the most correct format for the distribution of this data.

There exists a testimplemantation for multipage viewing of DjVu on a
testwiki: http://semantic.jeluf.mormo.org/index.php/Image:Test.djvu?page=16

This code is implemented on Wikimedia servers too but not
reviewed/activated. I will ask Jeluf and/or brion today.

Raymond.
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from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids

body:
On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sounds good. But fergoshsakes just put the info in a table. Worst
> > thing about the town rambot articles is that they're pretty crappy
> > prose but it never gets edited, ever; second is that the demographic
> > information came from a table and should be presented as a table, not
> > as crappy prose.
>
> Yeah. I bet over time the crappy prose of all these town articles will
> slowly be edited in different directions, becoming different, equally
> crappy, prose.
>
> I was tempted to edit one once, then realised how many times I'd have
> to repeat my work. Eek.
>
> And since we're having a whinge, the other problem with an article
> like that is you think it's actually fairly complete. You'd think that
> 3-4 paragraphs of text would be a decent amount for a small town.
> Whereas it covers the demographics, and that's it - no history, no
> geography, no "the construction of a Walmart caused uproar in 2005".
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

G'day folks,

Personally, I think that a comprehensive coverage of towns is one of our
strengths at least in the first world. If there was verifiable concern in a
town over the construction of a Walmart, I have no problem with our article
saying it.

If someone wants to write about the history and geography of their local
area from reliable sources more power to their arm. We have had a number of
Featured Articles on towns and things that wouldn't be listed in traditional
encyclopedias. This, in my view, is a good thing.

We probably need more on local areas in third world countries but that will
come. We had a featured article on Central Asian history recently for
example which is encouraging.

If someone wants to write articles on asteroids and other astronomical
bodies from reliable sources, good on them. If people looking for that
information come to Wikipedia, that is beneficial.

It definitely falls within my understanding of the Sum of all Human
Knowledge.

Regards to all

Keith Old


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/29/06, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a
> fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are
> being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here
> http://ransom.redjar.org/
>
> Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers
> eager to get these into wikipedia :D
>
> Judson

This is awesome.  I wonder how long it'll take before someone comes up
with a Wikimapia (http://www.wikimapia.org/) that isn't "powered by
Google".

I just got my GPS a couple months ago and I'm already starting to get
back into the GIS thing.  Rather detailed shapefiles for all of the US
are available for free at
http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html.  I
believe these are also exempt from copyright law as US government
works.

I believe all that's left stopping people from making a copyright-free
google maps would be the intersection/one-way street data.  AFAIK the
only data that exists for that is proprietary.  Maybe it's time to
push again for some sort of GIS-based Wikimedia project.

Anthony


body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits&diff=422263&oldid=422067

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I couldn't do a better press release if I tried


subject: [WikiEN-l] USGS maps are liberated!

body:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to
> the United States, for some funny reason.
>
> Kelly
>
Which branch of the US government releases the satellite images from
around the world?

Anthony


body:
On 8/31/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Pardon my ignorance, but whats the 40kV through the chair?
>
> "40kV" is a reference to electrical voltage. I believe Alphax was making a
non-serious suggestion that a future version of MediaWiki (the software
behind WIkipedia) will allow for the discouragement of unwanted behavior
by... ah... "stimulating" the offender.

-Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] hitcount stats

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

Moin,

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 19:44, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > So, if you can't guarantee that the hashes of the IP (including the
> > log) don't leak out, how can you guarantee that the secret doesn't leak
> > out? Answer: You can't.
> >
> > The only safe way to not leak these information out is not even to
> > store them.
>
> Silly, you store the hashes but not the secret.

The machine doing the hashes needs to know the secret and to make a
meaningfull analysis, you can't change it. (Well, maybe you could change it
once a month).

Still the secret is there and it can be leaked, subpoenaed or just plain be
sent out by a SNAFU.

best wishes,

tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Aug 31 07:46:25 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and
 magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible
 measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's
 uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a
 consequence of quantum uncertainty. What this illustrates is that in
 relation to indeterminacy in precise physical magnitude, the micro and
 macroscopic are inextricably linked, both being a part of the same
 parcel, rather than just a case of the former underlying and
 contributing to the latter." -- Peter Lynd

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body:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> In this case, whether your querulousness is intentional (as "trolling"
> is something done deliberately) or just a personality flaw isn't
> really an issue. Stop it or leave the list. Thanks.
>
Considering that you just gave me a cool link to check out
(http://okfn.org/geo/), I'll agree to drop this thread, and any time I
think about coming back to it I'll check out that and related links
instead.  :)

Thanks.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 31 Aug 2006 at 10:42, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:

> Usually a big document will just say
> "All trademarks acknowledged" once.
> Perhaps Wikipedia could say that on a
> page somewhere.

It does already, on the General Disclaimer:

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

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
On 8/30/06, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
>
> You can see an example here on our development server:
>
> http://wiki16.wikidiy.com/Get-a-Better-Deal-on-a-Home-Loan
>
> (username password wikihow / wikihow2006) - scroll down to the bottom
> of the page for the checkmarks.
>

Seems to work well. Would it be possible to extend it to allow multiple
ratings along different axes? It would depend on the individual wiki, but
it's very likely to be useful to be able to assess quality of writing
separately from comprehensiveness, or importance of topic separetely from
quality of article or whatever...

Steve