subject: [Wikipedia-l] media

body:
Wow Pippu, that's wonderful!

So scn.wikipedia is getting some publicity? I wonder if there will be
a sudden influx of new arrivals...

Mark

On 20/06/05, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> I finally got round to chasing down the edition of Time with the wikipedia article in it.  I thought it was quite a good article.  Best of all, I got to see a picture of our founder.  Jimbo looks like a pretty normal bloke - in fact, weren't you standing next to me at the footy the other day?
>
> You might recall that around the time this article appeared there was some talk about the press not being interested in the smaller wiki projects, etc.  Anyway, as chance would have it, a couple of days ago I get an e-mail from a lady saying she is a journalist with some Italian newspaper and wants to write about my web site (presumably that meant scn.wiki, but I wasn't sure).  Being a competent, modern male, I did what comes naturally and absolutely panicked - flick passing the message to some of my fellow wikipedians who might be better positioned geographically (is that a tautology?).   The thought of trying to speak Italian over a bad line from Tuggeranong, and trying to pronounce my unaccented O's and E's correctly was more than I could stand.
>
> Anyway, my colleague, Peppi (who is actually based in Switzerland), did get through to her.  As it turns out, she is writing about a number of sicilian websites, but it looks like we are getting a definite mention.  In case you are anywhere near Palermo in the next few days, you might be able to catch the article in the Palermo edition of La Repubblica (I hope I spelled that correctly).
>
> Tanti cosi beddi e salutamu.
>
> pippu d'angelo, tuggeranong (yes, it's spelled correctly)
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] we need responsive servers on Tuesday

body:
> on Tuesday, 2005-06-21, I will do a small presentation about Wikipedia on German
> television. It will be *live*, so it would be very helpful to have the servers
> online and responsive at that time :-)

Don't worry, Kurt, during my last live appearance on media all our squid caches
collapsed throwing really unfriendly errors. Shit happens. As you're going live,
prepare for anything.

Cheers,
Domas


list: wikien-l

from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] I will be leaving the project

body:
Really? Good riddance. You've caused far more trouble than you've been
worth.

Even the way you're leaving is an example. You could have appealed to
soft-hearted old Uncle Ed. But, no, you've got to run off in a snit.

But if you change your mind, let me know. "For there is more rejoicing",
etc. for the lost sheep.

Ed Poor


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
subject-area advisory panels for the ArbCom (was Re: [WikiEN-l]
	Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment)

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The Njyoder case involves [[gender]], an article which makes sense in
> a subcultural context but not much sense to Njyoder. A content
> inquiry as to whether within the subcultural context there there is
> significant content which might go into the article is helpful.

Very well put. Thus my idea of having advisory panels in various fields that
the ArbCom can consult to help it find out just who is and is not following our
content-related policies. 12 people simply do not have enough combined
knowledge about everything needed to make this effective except in the most
obvious of cases.

> I think the test is whether without some reference to content
> questions, the disputes remain unresolved and unresolvable under a
> theory that one opinion is as good as another. LIke I said earlier, a
> theory of a flat earth is fine in [[flat earth]] but out of place in
> [[astrophysics]].

Another excellent point. If we only looked at violations of purely behavioral
policies, then all a POV/OR-pusher would need to do is be persistent and
provoke editors working against them into violations of our behavioral policies
and guidelines.

It can be *very* frustrating to know what is NPOV and what is and is not
original research in an area and have somebody very persistently try to push a
POV or OR. Thus I can understand why some outbursts from good editors can
happen. Such outbursts can not be condoned, but the reason why they happened
should be considered and that information should mitigate any remedy for the
outburst and the person provoking the outburst should be sanctioned.

If we (the ArbCom) ding the good editor for violating a behavioral policy and
leave the bad editor alone just because we either did not understand the
content policy violation or because we are gun-shy from enforcing those
policies except in the most blatant of cases, then we have failed in our
primary goal; to provide an environment where good editors can create the best
encyclopedia possible.

That's why I want the ArbCom to have the ability to consult subject-area
advisory panels when needed.

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
Ambi wrote:
> ... While double standards are not a good thing,
> sometimes discretion is really useful. Blocking a really good
> and long-term contributor over a one-off 3RR violation is
> madness. If it happens a few times, then that may be
> justified, but else it just serves to infuriate and
> potentially encourage them to quit the project.

I think double standards are an excellent idea, but not the way Ambi
means.

They're not good when you hold others to a higher standard
than yourself, of course, as when political POV pushers excuse torture
and mass murder when carried out "for the sake of the cause" but profess
to despise it (for its own sake) when carried out by "opponents of the
cause".

But it's good when one holds *oneself* to a higher standard than you
demand from others. One of the reasons I'm so popular around here is
that I've always assumed that I should strive, and be judged by, a
higher standard than anyone else here. Call it pride, if you like, but
who's the most successful Mediator we have? And how many NPOV disputes
have I permanently settled?

[cringes while tomatoes and dead cats are thrown]

Let's stop all this fussing about who's allowed to do what and get back
to the actual work of this project. I don't give a dry-eyed duck about
B.C./A.D versus BCE/CE or centre/center or Danzig/Gdansk or how
disgusting a photo we can upload "informing" our readers about [[human
feces]]. All that childishness does is distract us from real work.

Uncle Ed


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic dash conversion removed

body:
On 6/20/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-06-19 at 22:05 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > I've removed the automatic substitution of – and — for
> > hyphen sequences from 1.5, as it seems to simply cause a neverending
> > sequence of breakage of links and markup...
>
> I was planning to add that feature to the parser code I'm currently
> working on (as well as something for curly-quotes).  I get the
> impression from your note that the problems are all related to the
> current parser misinterpreting what is displayed text and what is
> markup, is that right?  If so, my adding that feature to sample code
> for a spec that eliminates any such ambiguity should not be a problem.
> Or is there some other problem?

No, there's no other problem, first we had an issue with it because it
changed - to ? in image names, and of course there was no image by the
dash name so the image failed to render at all, and presently (before
brion took it out) it was changing - to ? in ISO 8601 dates and
failing to change - between two wikilinked years to ? (because they
had already been changed to html at that point so the previous regex
didn't cut it.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page

body:
>Yes, since a few of the Wikipedias you removed weren't because they
>were old or because they failed, but because you decided they were
>"rediculous".
>
And few did not agree with me.

Judge yourself: Pig Latin, Parseltongue, Silbo Gomero, Simple German,
Sindarin (which /nota bene/ both had my support but FAILED!), and a hell of
a lot of mainly African languages being placed months ago, supported by
NO-ONE, posted anonymously and even without any discussion!

W.

_________________________________________________________________
Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision againstjguk

body:
Exactly. And in my opinion that include the arbitrators who are in
full retreat because a "good" editor has decided to pack it up
because there was a PROPOSED decision he found offensive.

Fred

On Jun 20, 2005, at 9:59 AM, Karl A. Krueger wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 02:24:15AM +0100, James D. Forrester wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:32 PM, Fred Bauder
>> <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> | Under the existing style guide, either style is acceptable.
>> Changing an
>> | article with both forms to use just one is, also, acceptable, a
>> useful
>> | bit of copyediting. However, changing an article from style to
>> the other,
>> | in whichever direction, is not, and should be reverted.
>>
>> The lack of everything after the first full stop is what is
>> worrying in your
>> answers; I hope that it was missed off purely for brevity.
>>
>
> The way it sounds to me, acceptable conduct is to not make a big deal
> out of the issue.  Anyone who makes a big deal about it is in
> violation
> of policy.  :)
>
> --
> Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
>>* Lack of HTML-safety on the UI interface: as a quick hack I added
>>htmlspecialchars() guards, but things really should be changed to use
>>wikitext where appropriate; several of the UI messages are currently
>>displaying raw HTML tags.
>
>
> Well, they didn't show that raw HTML when I checked 'em in. I'm pretty
> sure of that one. I'll see if I can fix that.

Well, when you checked it in there were several cross-site scripting
vulnerabilities. :)

I did a fairly blanket addition of protection by escaping output,
including the UI messages, but some of the messages are apparently meant
to be HTML. These should if possible be rewritten; where not possible
they should be carefully examined.

Note that we're working on a progressive replacement of all raw HTML
user-editable UI messages with explicit plaintext (originally implied)
or formatted wikitext. Right now sysops have to be trusted enough not to
insert JavaScript or other attacks which could strike at every visitor
to the site; with hundreds of sysops on our largest projects it's
dubious that we really can extend that degree of trust indefinitely.

> Anyway, we can turn this on with a few days (weeks?) delay, just in
> case. No need to rush, at least not a technical one ;-)

Right.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] jguk case: amended FoF brought

body:
On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, David Gerard wrote:

>
> I've noted that the proposed FoF 6 is trivially factually incorrect - it
> only applies to US academia, and even then only a certain portion thereof.
> It notably does not apply to e.g. UK academia. I've written a proposed FoF
> 6.01. Comments welcomed. (The sentence construction could almost certainly
> do with improvement, for instance.)
>
> FoF 6:
>
>   6) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and
>   those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out
>   in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year
>   of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by
>   El_C.
>
> FoF 6.01:
>
>   6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain
>   portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in
>   inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno
>   Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus
>   regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does
>   not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
>
> This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content
> arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to
> use in pushing a POV.
>
I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6;
what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears
that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.

I, for one, would be far happier if the Committee simply dropped all
comment about the AD/BC - CE/BCE controversy; I think it is clear to all
but a few that there is no consensus either on Wikipedia or in the
larger world about which style is preferred.

But if the members feel compelled to make a statement, I would hope
they limit it to the observation that both styles are widely used in the
English-spekaing world, & that there many arguments for & against each --
acknowledging that for Wikipedia to embrace either exclusively would
be to violate our core value of NPOV.

Geoff


body:
 From votes on the subject I would say Wikipedia opinion is about
evenly divided, thus the style guide which permits both usages.

Fred

On Jun 20, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Fastfission wrote:

> By the way, on this question in specific: I can't search the full Web
> of Knowledge, apparently (I'm only getting the Web of Science), but it
> seems in the results I am getting (and logically speaking) that "BC"
> can stand for a lot of things besides a date usage, whereas BCE seems
> to be primarily only used in designating eras. Additionally I'm having
> a hard time telling if searches for "BC" don't also bring up articles
> which use "BCE" as well.
>
> Which indicates only that if one were to use a quantitative search for
> these sorts of things (differentiating between one usage and another),
> one has to make sure we understand how the engines in particular
> function, as well as thinking about the queries in question (I've had
> people give #s for Google Scholar searches which simply wouldn't give
> the information they were trying to get, just because they weren't
> thought out that well). There's also the bigger question about whether
> quantity matters more than quality, but that's even harder to parse
> out.
>
> (In any event, I don't care either way. I don't think there needs to
> be a universal policy on this; I think it should fall under the
> English/American spellings clause. But alas..)
>
> FF
>
> On 6/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than
>> BCE?
>>
>> --
>> geni
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
> But don't take that as meaning that you shouldn't bother forewarning us.
>   If Domas had given a prominent warning, then the person who
> precipitated the squid crash (*cough* :) would have crashed things later.

Sure. I'm just giving an advise to relax and not to worry.
Things will go as they have to go :) People look live ok
only when relaxed :) And we sure, will try not crashing :)

Domas


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 02:24:15AM +0100, James D. Forrester wrote:
> On Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:32 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> | Under the existing style guide, either style is acceptable. Changing an
> | article with both forms to use just one is, also, acceptable, a useful
> | bit of copyediting. However, changing an article from style to the other,
> | in whichever direction, is not, and should be reverted.
>
> The lack of everything after the first full stop is what is worrying in your
> answers; I hope that it was missed off purely for brevity.

The way it sounds to me, acceptable conduct is to not make a big deal
out of the issue.  Anyone who makes a big deal about it is in violation
of policy.  :)

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050620 11:52]:

> I omitted the word '''some''' because the implication was being made
> that BCE/CE itself is POV, which is clearly untrue.

It's nothing of the sort. As was mentioned in the original discussion page,
it advocates the BC/AD dating system but puts it under a different name in
a claim that this reduces the POV, when it blatantly doesn't. It's also
been pushed a lot like a POV.

- d.


subject: Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Requests page

body:
>
>Simple German failed? I saw an awful lot of support, and it was
>definitely still a hot topic.

Yes, but it was disgraced by you, among others. And I did not remove it, I
commentified it, because the discussion was going off-topic.
>Parseltongue, pretty much dead, yes. Pig Latin, a pretty silly request
>in the first place, but you must admit it got two supporters, and the
>issue was never really resolved head-on as it should've been.
I did not remove Pig Latin until it was refused even at Wikicities.

>Sindarin, part of an ongoing debate about artificial language
>Wikipedias, can now be found at [[Requests for new languages/Tolkien
>languages]], along with Quenya.
Yes, but with only moral support, and again with a discussion going in the
wrong direction.

>Silbo Gomero did not fail, nor was it rediculous.

Also only commentified. Show me how to write it down, please.

For the rest, I agree with you.
>Such requests as Parseltongue, or maybe even Pig Latin, do not disturb
>me that much that you removed them, and I certainly would not have
>added them back (well actually, I didn't add Parseltongue back, only
>Pig Latin), had you not also gotten rid of scores of more questionable
>cases.
>
>As Angela noted, in the past requests have just been deleted. But they
>were seldom legit requests for real languages, and when they were they
>were often left up for a long time because the page never got very big
>(*cough*scottgall*cough*). I don't think it was until very recently
>that actual legitimate requests began being deleted, especially after
>a time of less than a few months.
>
>What should be pursued is NOT a policy of widespread deletion of
>requests after time-limits, but rather of calming down the surge of
>activity by somehow getting Scott Gall to request every tomian,
>dickler, and harryish language he reads about on Wikipedia. He
>requested an Ainu Wikipedia, and didn't even know that the Japanese
>and Chinese Ainu are not related.
>
>I left him a note on his talkpage asking him to withdraw some of his
>requests, and to refrain from making so many. It seems that
>NaziismIsntCool has begun to follow Scott's example and is now
>requesting new WPs frequently, this should be quickly curbed with a
>note on her talkpage explaining that the page is meant for serious
>requests only.
>
>Mark
>
>
>On 20/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >Yes, since a few of the Wikipedias you removed weren't because they
> > >were old or because they failed, but because you decided they were
> > >"rediculous".
> > >
> > And few did not agree with me.
> >
> > Judge yourself: Pig Latin, Parseltongue, Silbo Gomero, Simple German,
> > Sindarin (which /nota bene/ both had my support but FAILED!), and a hell
>of
> > a lot of mainly African languages being placed months ago, supported by
> > NO-ONE, posted anonymously and even without any discussion!
> >
> > W.
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> > http://messenger.msn.nl/
> >
> >
>
>--
>SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
>QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
>POSSIT MATERIARI
>ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>
>
>--
>SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
>QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
>POSSIT MATERIARI
>ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
OK, cool down a bit, both of you... Mark, Waerth is right that you meddle
very much with cases concerning languages. You are quite dominant in that.
On the other hand, if you really triggered the creation of the Ossetic and
Friulian Wikipedias, it's pretty good work, and I for one appreciate that.

Wouter
>Do you realise that chances are, if you don't respond again, I won't
>either? If you don't like getting messages from me, do you think it
>helps to send such retorts?
>
>In newsgroups this is called "flamebait".
>
>Mark
>
>On 20/06/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > >Could you explain what you mean here?
> > >
> > >Mark
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > That when it comes to languages you always need to have the last word.
> > And keep on going and going and going.
> >
> > Waerth/Walter
> >
>
>
>--
>SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
>QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
>POSSIT MATERIARI
>ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


list: foundation-l

from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
On Monday, June 20, 2005, at 12:03, Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
> been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
> wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Costituzione_dell%27Associa
> zione_Wikimedia_Italia>).
>
> The day after we had our first assembly, which confirmed our first board:
> * [[w:it:Frieda|Frieda]], president
> * [[w:it:Snowdog|Snowdog]], vicepresident
> * [[w:it:Gac|Gac]], councilor
> * [[w:it:M7|M/]], councilor
> * [[w:it:Sbisolo|Sbisolo]], councilor
>
> In this moment we already have 35 members!

Congratulations. Welcome to Wikimedia Italia, and well done on managing to
get it actually done. Hopefully Wikimedia UK will not be long-off.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
>
>Silsor has blocked me from editing.  I will not accede
>to this.  I am leaving the project and will not be
>back.

I hope this is not true.

Jay.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Enotif helpdesk hotpage has moved

body:
To whom it may concern:

I moved the Enotif helpdesk page from FiverAlpha Wiki to its new location
http://www.wikipage.de/en/index.php/Enotif

E-mail notification 3.x is working at its best on this wiki.
This means, you can play with **all** features as mentioned on my
documentation page http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif

Tim -not Tim Starling- :
thank you for setting up the software, solving the php mail() envelope
problem, and hosting the wikis.

Tom


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Doesn't this just get at the first and most primary difficulty in
content arbitration: Whose authority to go by?

If it was me, I'd ask the people who run Chicago Manual of Style. But
I know what they'd answer: In academia, this actually isn't that
contentious a battle, you go with what you feel most, and those who
use BCE/CE consider it less offensive, those who don't, don't. Which
doesn't give policy.

Would they call up some professor and ask them what they thought we
should do? Would anybody abide by that?

Would it be a quantitative thing? Would we add up all the citations on
one online search engine versus another? (Would we be careful enough
to realize that a search for "BC" is likely to also pick up any usages
of "BCE" on most of them?) Do these search engines necessarily reveal
academic consensus? (Academia is a culture in which quality matters a
lot more than quantity, in my opinion; a few major players insisting
on something often matters a lot more than a lot of minor players
doing things their own way).

Do we even think "Academia" is the gold standard? Aren't the editors
of the Catholic Encyclopedia just as erudite and scholarly?

I go both ways on content arbitration. Part of me says, "Yes, call up
a well-respected academic, they'll tell you what the 'mainstream'
consensus is; most of us know that pretty well, our full time jobs
involve doing nothing but reading things other academics have
written!" The other part of me realizes that this is a not entirely
defensible position, and that wars of experts won't work unless
somebody "from above" (i.e. Jimbo) gives a hard and fast rule
determining how these things will work, and doesn't worry about
whether it is logically or ethically defensible.

The other problem I have is that I know that other institutions that
rely on "expert advice" from outside often take care to pick the
experts that reflect their version of "consensus." This happens again
and again in politics, in the courts, in journalism, in academia
itself. I don't see any reason that this wouldn't happen on Wikipedia.
There is, by the way, a large literature on the use of "experts" out
there, in sociology, science studies, legal studies, etc., so we don't
necessarily have to re-invent the wheel as we hash this over.

FF

On 6/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?
> > I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really
> > quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research
> > I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what
> > does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all
> > fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school...
> > Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
> >
> > Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
> >
> > In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should
> > use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided
> > that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
>
>
> So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

body:
> Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?
> I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really
> quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research
> I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what
> does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all
> fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school...
> Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
>
> Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
>
> In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should
> use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided
> that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.

So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?

--
geni


body:
By the way, on this question in specific: I can't search the full Web
of Knowledge, apparently (I'm only getting the Web of Science), but it
seems in the results I am getting (and logically speaking) that "BC"
can stand for a lot of things besides a date usage, whereas BCE seems
to be primarily only used in designating eras. Additionally I'm having
a hard time telling if searches for "BC" don't also bring up articles
which use "BCE" as well.

Which indicates only that if one were to use a quantitative search for
these sorts of things (differentiating between one usage and another),
one has to make sure we understand how the engines in particular
function, as well as thinking about the queries in question (I've had
people give #s for Google Scholar searches which simply wouldn't give
the information they were trying to get, just because they weren't
thought out that well). There's also the bigger question about whether
quantity matters more than quality, but that's even harder to parse
out.

(In any event, I don't care either way. I don't think there needs to
be a universal policy on this; I think it should fall under the
English/American spellings clause. But alas..)

FF

On 6/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
>
> --
> geni


body:
> Rick, SouthernComfort edited a narrow set of subject topics (Iran-related),
> over a period of a few weeks, as part of his general interest in Iran;
> included in that was his conversion of pages from BC/AD to BCE/CE.  He did
> not edit dozens of articles over a period of many months for the sole
> purpose of (and to which he contributed nothing else but) date notation
> conversions.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

SouthernComfort had no previous contibutions to [[Zoroastrianism]].

--
geni


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Costituzione_dell%27Associazione_Wikimedia_Italia>).

The day after we had our first assembly, which confirmed our first board:
* [[w:it:Frieda|Frieda]], president
* [[w:it:Snowdog|Snowdog]], vicepresident
* [[w:it:Gac|Gac]], councilor
* [[w:it:M7|M/]], councilor
* [[w:it:Sbisolo|Sbisolo]], councilor

In this moment we already have 35 members!

Frieda


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Italia


subject: [Wikitech-l] parsertest keyword in MediaZilla

body:
I added a parsertest keyword to MediaZilla to encourage the writing of
parser tests, if you feel that there's a parsing bug that should have
a parser test please add the keyword so that people who want to write
those tests know about it.


from_name: Richard Rabinowitz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 23, Issue 68

body:
Ever notice how many folks use [[Wikipedia]] wiki conventions such as
[[double brackets]], ~~~~ for names, etc, in their e-mail messages to this
board? :)


from_name: Alphax

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

David Gerard wrote:
<snip>
> FoF 6:
>
>   6) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among scholars and
>   those who seek to avoid offense in inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out
>   in its full original form is Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year
>   of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus potentially offensive, see research by
>   El_C.
>
> FoF 6.01:
>
>   6.01) "CE" or Common Era has recently come to be preferred among certain
>   portions of US academia and those who claim to seek to avoid offense in
>   inter-cultural dialog. "AD" spelled out in its full original form is Anno
>   Domini Nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ) and thus
>   regarded by them as potentially offensive, see research by El_C. This does
>   not necessarily hold elsewhere, e.g. in UK academia.
>

Not sure about "recently", but 6.01 explains who is pushing this
particular POV a whole lot better.

> This sort of thing is why I am profoundly sceptical that content
> arbitration will not be an utter, utter disaster and just another hammer to
> use in pushing a POV.
>

Which is exactly what content arbitration should avoid. Civility and
NPOV are the goals, aren't they?

> - d.
>

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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body:
>From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
>
> > Rick, SouthernComfort edited a narrow set of subject topics
>(Iran-related),
> > over a period of a few weeks, as part of his general interest in Iran;
> > included in that was his conversion of pages from BC/AD to BCE/CE.  He
>did
> > not edit dozens of articles over a period of many months for the sole
> > purpose of (and to which he contributed nothing else but) date notation
> > conversions.
>
>SouthernComfort had no previous contibutions to [[Zoroastrianism]].

[[Zoroastrianism]] is obviously Iran-related, regardless of whether or not
SouthernComfort had edited there before; the religion originated in the
region, was once the official religion of the Persian empire, and the
country still contains the largest population of Zoroastrians in the world.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
>From: jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk
>
>Every conflict on Wikipedia follows the same pattern. It begins with one
>user doing something another doesn't like (with or without actual policy
>violations) but there is a breach of civility and resultant offense in
>almost every instance.
>
>It must be pretty bad if long-term contributors (say >5000 edits) or
>administrators are blocked over anything, and I find it hard to believe
>that a valuable contributor like RickK should be blocked without a polite
>warning or an offer for help. Without insisting on double standards for
>administrators, I think long-term contributors, who have spent months
>working on improving the project and know the ropes, should be protected
>against people who come crashing into Wikipedia with an agenda to push and
>an axe to grind.
>
>Rick, I admire your style and commitment to Wikipedia, and hope you will
>regret your departure. Scrupulous RC patrollers and vandal fighters deserve
>suport.
>

Amen.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] I am very concerned by the arbcomm decision against
	jguk

body:
On 6/20/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Your statement is not based on the facts, SouthernComfort generally
> was a regular  editor of the articles he changed the notation in. He
> can be presumed to have decided Common Era notation was better for
> that article and to have had at least the forbearance of the other
> editors. With respect to American versus British English it has
> always been acceptable to change to American spelling for an American
> subject and vice-versa.
>
> Fred

You presume falsely.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
>From: Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>
>
>And how many users are given just a warning on their first offence at
>WP:AN3?

In my experience, just about every one.

Jay.


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Geoff Burling stated for the record:

> I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6;
> what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears
> that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.

Why are you disturbed?  Only Fred is in favor, four of us oppose it and
three are abstaining.  Most of us on the Committee agree with you.

--
  Sean Barrett     | The best thing about the Internet is that it absorbs
  sean at epoptic.com | the attention of tens of thousands of people
                   | whom everyone would like to keep off the streets
                   | and away from our children. --Garrison Keillor


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

body:
> Or is there some other problem?

You have to view localization problems. Example in Russian ndash is
absent, there are only mdash and hyphen. ?urly-quotes (and embedded
?urly-quotes) are also complex thing in various languages and
typographical styles.

In Russian Wikipedia we use javascript tool for "typography" text
befor submit, i. e. it's user-side tool (user can make certain
transformations to whole text or only highlighted text, or nothing).
The script is "open", so can be modified by our sysops, since it sits
in the source of ru:MediaWiki:Summary
(http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Summary)

See also
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
First of all congratulations :-)

And then: where can one apply for membership? Which are the conditions?

Ciao, Sabine

Frieda Brioschi wrote:

>Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
>been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
>wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on
><http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Costituzione_dell%27Associazione_Wikimedia_Italia>).
>
>The day after we had our first assembly, which confirmed our first board:
>* [[w:it:Frieda|Frieda]], president
>* [[w:it:Snowdog|Snowdog]], vicepresident
>* [[w:it:Gac|Gac]], councilor
>* [[w:it:M7|M/]], councilor
>* [[w:it:Sbisolo|Sbisolo]], councilor
>
>In this moment we already have 35 members!
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: David Iberri

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
On 6/20/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Not being a programmer, I did do a beg for programmers on this one at least
> :-)

I'm more of a Perl guy, but I'd be happy to help out where I can on
this. I tried to find Magnus on IRC today, but learned that he doesn't
visit #mediawiki regularly, if at all (thanks JeLuF). What's the best
way for an interested developer to get involved? File bug reports and
attach patches? Coordinate development off-list? IRC?

-- David


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

body:
So you got a 24 hour block for 3RR. Get over it and move on. For
someone who so freely gives out 24 hour blocks for rule violations,
you don't seem to like the rules being enforced against yourself.
Hopefully when you come back (in 24 hours) you will be less willing to
engage in block/unblock wars, which I'm sure everyone agrees are not a
good thing.

~Mark Ryan

On 6/20/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Silsor has blocked me from editing.  I will not accede
> to this.  I am leaving the project and will not be
> back.
>
> Enjoy your lives.
>
> RickK
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Discover Yahoo!
> Use Yahoo! to plan a weekend, have fun online and more. Check it out!
> http://discover.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatically checking for copyright violations

body:
...and it would also flag every single page in Wikipedia, because they
can also be found in absoluteastronomy, etc.

If you're talking about new pages only, it might be OK but it depends
how long search strings are -- is it looking for 7 words in a row that
are identical, 10 words, or 50?

Mark

On 20/06/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The message below was sent to the Board today. Would implementing some
> sort of automatic copyvio checker be feasible?
>
> The second part of the email suggests it is too difficult to contact
> us about copyright violations. With the addition of the "contact us"
> link in the sidebar, I thought this would stop being a problem. Is
> there any other way of making it easier?
>
> Angela.
>
> ---- Forwarded message ----
>
> > In regards to the continuing copyright issues because some members do
> > not
> > respect copyrights, I might recommend implementing something like what
> > http://copyscape.com uses.  From what I can tell, they use a Google API
> > to do a
> > search of text found in one page to see what other pages have the same
> > text.
> > Using a similar methodology, you could flag new pages that are
> > substantially
> > like pages that exist on the Internet for further review.   While this
> > wouldn't
> > tackle all of the copyright violations, it would go a long way towards
> > making
> > it easier to weed out blatant violations like the one I reported.
> >
> > The issue of some individuals having absolutely no respect for
> > copyrights and
> > plagiarism is a serious problem that Wikipedia needs to address.  Some
> > people
> > seem to think that Wikipedia is their personal means of bringing down
> > copyright
> > laws and "freeing" content.  This is a shame because these individuals
> > threaten
> > the long term possibilities for Wikipedia.
> >
> > On a related note, it should be easier to report copyright violations on
> > the
> > Wikipedia website.  The current set up is tremendously burdensome to
> > figure how
> > to report copyright violations.   There needs to be a simple link from
> > all
> > pages to a simple contact form that allows one to report a violation
> > without
> > having any knowledge of how Wikipedia works.  Doing this would put
> > members on
> > notice that Wikipedia isn't a rogue operation where anything goes and
> > that it
> > takes copyright issues seriously.
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Rebecca

body:
On 6/20/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Not the *entire* rest, thanks ...
>
> This is the sort of AC case that should never have been accepted, and I'm
> now sorry I voted 'accept' (though it already had four by the time I got
> there).

I'm beginning to regret this myself. This is the sort of case I'm
really growing increasingly against us hearing in the first place, and
it's rapidly degenerating into a stuffup.

-- ambi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Licensing concern.

body:
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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a
> form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that
> because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many
> authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k
> edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole
> which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole
> under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant
> the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the
> GFDL.   Although he has been careful to pad his words with the
> expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the
> licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to
> disregard our licensing.

<snip>

> So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited
> company to revise his user page.  I don't think his claim has any more
> merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his
> talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it
> purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him
> rather than just his own.
>

While your insistence on the GFDL is admirable, I (and IANAL) feel
that the user page of UninvitedCompany does not present the same
problems as that of User:Pioneer-12, because UnivitedCompany is *not*
saying that they are refusing to license under the GFDL.

As I see it (and again, IANAL), the statement on
[[User:UninvitedCompany]] (as of 04:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)), says:

1. I have contributed to Wikipedia
2. Wikipedia is NOT a collection, but a single work (which, IMHO, is
contrary to consensus)
3. Wikipedia is a single work with joint authorship (again, contrary to
consensus)
4. Since Wikipedia is a single work, any author can license it however
they want, the rest of Wikipedia be damned (which is against the GFDL)
5. I hereby multi-license my contributions under CC-BY-SA 1.0 and 2.0
6. IANAL so anything in 1-4 must be taken with a very large grain of
salt, and people should check before the distribute material
7. This is a statement of intent, not a contract.

The problems I see are in the status of Wikipedia as being a single work
rather than a collection of works; and the right of a single user
(namely UnivitedCompany) to change the license of the entire Wikipedia
by simply saying that they want their contributions to be under the
Creative Commons licenses.

Now if I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi-licensing
correctly (and again, IANAL), All Wikipedia articles are licensed under
the GFDL, and only the portions written by authors who have
multi-licensed under CC/BSD/whatever are licensed under those
alternative licenses. So (and again, IANAL): your contributions cannot
be licensed under anything except the GFDL unless you choose to do so,
and even then, *they are still under the GFDL*.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
Every conflict on Wikipedia follows the same pattern. It begins with one user doing something another doesn't like (with or without actual policy violations) but there is a breach of civility and resultant offense in almost every instance.

It must be pretty bad if long-term contributors (say >5000 edits) or administrators are blocked over anything, and I find it hard to believe that a valuable contributor like RickK should be blocked without a polite warning or an offer for help. Without insisting on double standards for administrators, I think long-term contributors, who have spent months working on improving the project and know the ropes, should be protected against people who come crashing into Wikipedia with an agenda to push and an axe to grind.

Rick, I admire your style and commitment to Wikipedia, and hope you will regret your departure. Scrupulous RC patrollers and vandal fighters deserve suport.

JFW


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> We can do that already. However, I foresee only disasters with content
> arbitration, and it not decreasing POV pushing at all - but giving POV
> pushers more system to game. I point to the present case as an example.

Thus the need for subject-area advisory panels. The 'disaster' you talk about
seems to focus on a bad FoF. A subject area advisory panel would have helped
the ArbCom avoid such a mistake.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anno Wikipædiæ

body:
I'm not sure if this has already been proposed. But can't we just
wikify BC/AD and BCE/CE and have their use depend on user preferences,
just like with the dates?

-Mgm

On 6/18/05, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> >
> >To avoid any bias whatsoever, let each wikipedia count the date by
> >number of edits! 100 edits are a wiki-minute...
> >
> >Magnus
> >
> >
> >
> But that would mean that we could only measure time until the
> WikiSingularity occurs...
>
> -- Neil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
You can find info here:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Italia
http://www.wikimedia.it/

Frieda

On 6/20/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> First of all congratulations :-)
>
> And then: where can one apply for membership? Which are the conditions?
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
> Frieda Brioschi wrote:
>
> >Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
> >been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
> >wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on
> ><http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Costituzione_dell%27Associazione_Wikimedia_Italia>).
> >
> >The day after we had our first assembly, which confirmed our first board:
> >* [[w:it:Frieda|Frieda]], president
> >* [[w:it:Snowdog|Snowdog]], vicepresident
> >* [[w:it:Gac|Gac]], councilor
> >* [[w:it:M7|M/]], councilor
> >* [[w:it:Sbisolo|Sbisolo]], councilor
> >
> >In this moment we already have 35 members!
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
> http://mail.yahoo.it
>
>


from_name: blankfaze

body:
On 6/20/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> Really? Good riddance. You've caused far more trouble than you've been
> worth.
>
> Even the way you're leaving is an example. You could have appealed to
> soft-hearted old Uncle Ed. But, no, you've got to run off in a snit.
>
> But if you change your mind, let me know. "For there is more rejoicing",
> etc. for the lost sheep.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

That's a horrible thing to say, Ed. I don't agree with you for a second.

blankfaze


from_name: Skyring

body:
On 6/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of your rather "snippy" response.  The United
> States has not, in fact, been continuously at war with Germany for that
> perios, nor with the UK.  However, jguk did indeed make edit articles solely
> for the purpose of deleting BCE/CE for 8 months, almost the entire time he
> has been editing here, including deletions of BCE/CE references in every one
> of those eight months.  In all it was over 1000 edits.  We've had other
> editors (almost always anonymous) come in here and remove BCE/CE references
> from several dozen, or even several hundred, articles over a period of a day
> or two, but I've never seen one as persistent as jguk.  And by the way,
> contrary to geni's contention, I've never seen an anonymous editor come in
> and edit dozens or hundreds of articles solely for the purpose of converting
> BC/AD to BCE/CE - the phenomenon seems to be one-way only.

Perhaps it's the Almighty, bending Wikipedia to His POV?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
On 20/06/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Too true. While double standards are not a good thing, sometimes
> discretion is really useful. Blocking a really good and long-term
> contributor over a one-off 3RR violation is madness. If it happens a
> few times, then that may be justified, but else it just serves to
> infuriate and potentially encourage them to quit the project.
>
> -- ambi

Yes, double standards are indeed not a good thing.

Rules must apply to everyone, equally.

Dan


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
And how many users are given just a warning on their first offence at
WP:AN3?
 Rules must apply to everyone, equally.
 Sam

 On 6/20/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/06/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Too true. While double standards are not a good thing, sometimes
> > discretion is really useful. Blocking a really good and long-term
> > contributor over a one-off 3RR violation is madness. If it happens a
> > few times, then that may be justified, but else it just serves to
> > infuriate and potentially encourage them to quit the project.
> >
> > -- ambi
>
> Yes, double standards are indeed not a good thing.
>
> Rules must apply to everyone, equally.
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Whither getNsIndex()?

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Log Message:
> * Removed getNsIndex(), no longer needed

I just took a quick look so maybe I missed it, but what did you replace
it with to provide namespace aliasing? Several of the language files
define aliases for old names of namespaces and/or alternate
spelling/accenting.

For example:
> Index: LanguageFr.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/languages/LanguageFr.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.116
> retrieving revision 1.117
> diff -C2 -d -r1.116 -r1.117
> *** LanguageFr.php	18 Jun 2005 04:11:29 -0000	1.116
> --- LanguageFr.php	20 Jun 2005 12:34:18 -0000	1.117
> ***************
> *** 1296,1313 ****
>   	}
>
> -
> - 	function getNsIndex( $text ) {
> - 		global $wgNamespaceNamesFr, $wgSitename;
> -
> - 		foreach ( $wgNamespaceNamesFr as $i => $n ) {
> - 			if ( 0 == strcasecmp( $n, $text ) ) { return $i; }
> - 		}
> - 		if( $wgSitename == "Wikip?dia" ) {
> - 			if( 0 == strcasecmp( "Wikipedia", $text ) ) return 4;
> - 			if( 0 == strcasecmp( "Discussion_Wikipedia", $text ) ) return 5;
> - 		}
> - 		return false;
> - 	}
> -
>   	function getQuickbarSettings() {
>   		global $wgQuickbarSettingsFr;
> --- 1296,1299 ----

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Article on LISA

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
>
>>> Also, if you do it for Wiktionary, it would only be logical to merge
>>> all
>>> wikipedias into the Ultimate Wikipedia, Ultimate Wikiquote, Ultimate
>>> Wikibooks, etc.  But that's simply for consistency's sake.
>>>
>>> James
>>
>>
>> Logical, but ever so practical? A dictionary is per se about
>> differences between two different languages (OK, except for
>> describing unilingual dictionaries, but we're talking about
>> translation dictionaries now, aren't we?). An encyclopedia is not. A
>> Wikitionary consulter usually looks for a translation, and in
>> Wiktionary several languages are merged already. Wikipedia always
>> keeps one language.
>
>
> The difference between two languages is only a secondary purpose for
> each Wiktionary.  The Wiktionary for a particular language primarily
> describes the different ways in which the word in question is used
> within the language.  You may very well usually look to Wiktionary for
> translations, but others can look for different things.
>
> Ec

Hoi,
What someone looks for in a Wiktionary is up to that someone. For
someone interested in translations, etymology is of little intrest. For
someone interested in spelling, a definition is of little interest. The
reduction of the components of a Wiktionary is absurd. It is equally
absurd to state that one function is more important than the next.

Relevant is the realisation that the current Wiktionaries are as closed
as any proprietary content. This means that the only medium in which
Wiktionary is relevant is within an Internet-browser. To improve this
will make us closer to realising the objectives of the Wikimedia
Foundation. This is why we should publish in XML specific to dictionary
content or why we should publish in .dict format or RFC 2229. This will
not happen with content in the current format and as such it is a dead end.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Could you explain what you mean here?
>
>Mark
>
>
>
That when it comes to languages you always need to have the last word.
And keep on going and going and going.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] media

body:
I finally got round to chasing down the edition of Time with the wikipedia article in it.  I thought it was quite a good article.  Best of all, I got to see a picture of our founder.  Jimbo looks like a pretty normal bloke - in fact, weren't you standing next to me at the footy the other day?

You might recall that around the time this article appeared there was some talk about the press not being interested in the smaller wiki projects, etc.  Anyway, as chance would have it, a couple of days ago I get an e-mail from a lady saying she is a journalist with some Italian newspaper and wants to write about my web site (presumably that meant scn.wiki, but I wasn't sure).  Being a competent, modern male, I did what comes naturally and absolutely panicked - flick passing the message to some of my fellow wikipedians who might be better positioned geographically (is that a tautology?).   The thought of trying to speak Italian over a bad line from Tuggeranong, and trying to pronounce my unaccented O's and E's correctly was more than I could stand.

Anyway, my colleague, Peppi (who is actually based in Switzerland), did get through to her.  As it turns out, she is writing about a number of sicilian websites, but it looks like we are getting a definite mention.  In case you are anywhere near Palermo in the next few days, you might be able to catch the article in the Palermo edition of La Repubblica (I hope I spelled that correctly).

Tanti cosi beddi e salutamu.

pippu d'angelo, tuggeranong (yes, it's spelled correctly)

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


from_name: Habj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Discussion on English Wikipedia in languages other
	than English

body:
On 6/20/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> If you and I went to another language's
> wiki and started writing comments in only English,
> don't you think there would be objections?

IMO it would all depend on how and why you did it, and how you
responded to comments to your extensive writing in English. The topic
of this list is English Wikipedia: I write about sv:WP below because I
think a comparison adds to the understanding of the complexity of the
subject.

At Swedish WP there are people who do post quite a lot in English on
talk pages. The reason for non-Swedish-speakers to write comments in
English on Swedish Wikipedia could be many: the topic might be
international Wikipedia colloaborations etc, something about the
WikiMedia board elections etc (see Angelas comments previously) but
also sometimes comments regarding article content etc. We have an
editor from Japan who writes about international golf players at
Swedish Wikipedia: I guess  he mainly adds dates for tournaments,
victories and similar, since he doesn't speak Swedish - I haven't
checked, only seen some of the discussions. He discusses a lot on the
talk pages, to be able to use the right words etc. If anything, I
think people find his efforts kind of cute. The non-Swedish-speakers
or poor-Swedish-speakers who edit without discussing - mainly by
exchanging one word for another, or cutting parts of articles away -
are IMO much more of a problem.

We should probably realise, though, that if he and three or four other
guys discussed the golf articles at sv:WP  in Japanese instead of
English, that would be something else.  I guess Swedish is not as bad
as Japanese to the average English speaker, but almost (bork bork).
;-)

To add a small complication, there is a situation where I will
probably always add a comment in Swedish on an en:WP talk page, after
what other stuff I've written in English. This is if I am adressing a
person who I know is from Finland and whose Swedish is good; so good
that it might be his/her first language. Due to history and the
relationship between Finnish and Swedish nations and languages, not
acknowledging I am talking to a fellow Swedish speaker although from
Finland is a bit... if Ifail to do this I feel like a jerk. I don't
ask you to understand the mechanisms behind this, and quite possibly
it is more in me than in them. I just ask you to not let general
encouragement of posting in English at en:WP go so far as to frown on
this kind of small comments; it might make life at English Wikipedia a
bit more complicated for us than you understand.

I am still very much in favour of encouragements of taking the on
topic parts of discussions in English.

/Habj


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Article on
	LISA

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

Mark Williamson wrote:
<snip>
> And, for the transcript: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pap
> ... "gove" appear'd ("appeared") to be a noun though. Remember, please
> don't noun verbs. In case you're ("you are") wondering, "noun verbs"
> is a colloquial English phrase meaning "use what is usually a noun as
> if it were a verb". In fact, the word "noun" in the phrase "It's bad
> to noun verbs!" is a nouned verb.
>
> Mark
>

I would have said "don't verb your nouns" - where "verbing a noun" is
using a noun as a verb. "Noun verbs" would make more sense to mean "use
a verb as if it were a noun". But maybe I'm too used to a particular
noun/verb order :)

I'll go Wiktionary it! Or better yet, Google it!

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Yeah, quitting the project is like a city council member getting
a speeding ticket, and reacting by announcing that the local
government has broken down, resigning from the council, and
selling the car.

Stan

Dan Grey wrote:

>Why not? It's only for 24 hours. The alternative would have been
>leaving them to edit war on and on, to present certain users as being
>above the rules, and to generally devalue the 3RR - this is exactly
>what it's supposed to be used for.
>
>
>Dan
>
>On 20/06/05, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>Lame, yes.
>>
>>Worth blocking over?
>>
>>Erm. No.
>>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Guaka

body:
> Relevant is the realisation that the current Wiktionaries are as closed
> as any proprietary content. This means that the only medium in which
> Wiktionary is relevant is within an Internet-browser. To improve this
> will make us closer to realising the objectives of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. This is why we should publish in XML specific to dictionary
> content or why we should publish in .dict format or RFC 2229. This will
> not happen with content in the current format and as such it is a dead end.

No true, at least, what you say about DICT. With wik2dict you can
convert any Wiktionary (or Wikipedia) into DICT. However, it's very true
that it's hard to make a specific DICT. It would be cool to be able to
quickly create a bilingual translation DICT from the Wiktionary
information. Now, _that_ would be somewhat harder to do at present.

I've actually found someone who did a dictionary thingy for Java phones.
He's gonna release it under the GPL. I'm in touch with him - the thing
is still not running on my Sony Ericsson. I found him because I googled
for wik2dict :) I hope to get the thing running, and the source code
compiling, so that I can play with Wikipedia on my phone - without using
too many proprietary stuff (except for the phone firmware itself,
Symbian OS, Java...).


body:
> Relevant is the realisation that the current Wiktionaries are as closed
> as any proprietary content. This means that the only medium in which
> Wiktionary is relevant is within an Internet-browser. To improve this
> will make us closer to realising the objectives of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. This is why we should publish in XML specific to dictionary
> content or why we should publish in .dict format or RFC 2229. This will
> not happen with content in the current format and as such it is a dead end.

No true, at least, what you say about DICT. With wik2dict you can
convert any Wiktionary (or Wikipedia) into DICT. However, it's very true
that it's hard to make a specific DICT. It would be cool to be able to
quickly create a bilingual translation DICT from the Wiktionary
information. Now, _that_ would be somewhat harder to do at present.

I've actually found someone who did a dictionary thingy for Java phones.
He's gonna release it under the GPL. I'm in touch with him - the thing
is still not running on my Sony Ericsson. I found him because I googled
for wik2dict :) I hope to get the thing running, and the source code
compiling, so that I can play with Wikipedia on my phone - without using
too many proprietary stuff (except for the phone firmware itself,
Symbian OS, Java...).

You can find it DictionaryForMIDs at http://www.kugihan.de/


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Just a note; the 'validation' feature will most likely not be turned on
> on en.wikipedia.org when we upgrade, since it's not currently in a
> usable state.

To my defense:
* I asked for help on this quite a while ago, several times, bu to no avail
* I wnated to get it fixed up last week, but I had an important talk to
give, and my harddrive crashed, and I got a PowerBook, which together
turned out to be rather distracting ;-)

> Problems include, but are not limited to:
>
> * In various places it tries to load metadata for *every* revision of
> the page. This would be fatal on the actual Wikipedia, where there are
> pages with tens of thousands of revisions. There are likely other severe
> performance and scalability issues with it.

Yup. It's still in my famous "OK-it-kinda-works-now-we-wait" stage.

> * The 'management' interface for defining survey options is not locked
> off properly, and is very hard to use if you do get to it.

I wan't sure who should get access to it. It is a single line in the
code where to limit access.
For it being "hard to use", it basically is used *once* to set up
topics, and then not at all (ideally) or very sparsly (to add/delete
topics). I don't see that as a reason to keep it "in limbo".

> * Lack of HTML-safety on the UI interface: as a quick hack I added
> htmlspecialchars() guards, but things really should be changed to use
> wikitext where appropriate; several of the UI messages are currently
> displaying raw HTML tags.

Well, they didn't show that raw HTML when I checked 'em in. I'm pretty
sure of that one. I'll see if I can fix that.

> If anybody would like to work on it further that would be spiffy;
> otherwise it will remain in limbo indefinitely.

I should have some time during this week, although I'll have to setup
mysql/apache/yadayada on my new HDD.

Anyway, we can turn this on with a few days (weeks?) delay, just in
case. No need to rush, at least not a technical one ;-)

Magnus
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from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Geoff Burling stated for the record:
>
> > I have no objections to the ArbCom's Findings until I reached section 6;
> > what I found written there yesterday disturbs me greatly, for it appears
> > that they are embracing one side in a POV dispute.
>
> Why are you disturbed?  Only Fred is in favor, four of us oppose it and
> three are abstaining.  Most of us on the Committee agree with you.
>
The very thought that the subject covered by section 6 should be considered
for a vote. And when I looked at the Findings Sunday, the voting was not
complete.

My sense is that Wikipedia is fairly evenly divided over this matter.
The ArbCom has shown a commendable amount of restraint so far with its
powers, which have only helped to make its authority that much more
powerful. I feel that if the ArbCom gets involved in this matter, it can
only result with one side -- or both -- losing respect for the ArbCom.

And I haven't spoken up more about this issue because I find it hard to
stately unemotionally -- & succinctly -- my opinions about this matter.

Geoff


from_name: Jim Trodel

references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC28040A6BCC@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<cbffa375050620123938c48cfa@mail.gmail.com>
	<49bdc743050620124311bb35a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<cfe1dfe10506201343710fded1@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Reverting copyrighted material should not count as 3RR violation. Now
I agree that RickK should have refrained from blocking other users in
the dispute and waited for a different admin. I for one am sad to see
contrarian editors/admins go. There seem to be several editors at the
[[GAP Project]] that have done things that were inappropriate -
improperly undeleting a page, etc. If you ask me what is good for the
goose is good for the gander. If RickK's deserves some type of 24 hour
block in the name of treating admin's equally, those that misused the
admin tools should also be blocked a minimum of 24 hours.

Jim

On 6/20/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also agree with Ed.
>
> Rick knows the rules - and no-one is above them. So I have no idea why
> he acted in a manner that would get himself blocked - only he knows.
> Then he gets upset over it after deliberately brining it on himself -
> huh?!
>
> And I've never been impressed by these desperately attention-seeking
> public exits. People join and leave Internet communities all the time.
> Most don't feel the need to be a prima donna though. Those that do
> tend to return quite quickly.
>
>
> Dan
>
> On 20/06/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ed is spot on, and couldn't be more right about such whinging. Admins
> > shouldn't be above the law, and precious few of us are here to
> > experience an online soap opera of hysterical emotionalism. Its just
> > an encyclopedia, get over it already...
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
> >
> > >
> > > On 6/20/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Really? Good riddance. You've caused far more trouble than you've been
> > > > worth.
> > > >
> > > > Even the way you're leaving is an example. You could have appealed to
> > > > soft-hearted old Uncle Ed. But, no, you've got to run off in a snit.
> > > >
> > > > But if you change your mind, let me know. "For there is more rejoicing",
> > > > etc. for the lost sheep.
> > > >
> > > > Ed Poor


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
Cheers for Wikimedia Italia!

this is my first contribution to the newborn chapter :)

see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimediaitalia-logo.png

I tried to expand the Italia across like it is done for Wikimedia
Deutschland and Wikimedia France, but it was really ugly.

Ciao,

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
On 6/20/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> And how many users are given just a warning on their first offence at
> WP:AN3?

New users (new being subjective I define it as less thatn 3 mounth or
1000 edits) are normaly warned. I've never seen an admin or arbcom
member warned since it is generaly assumed they know about the
rule.~~~~

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
On 6/20/05, jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Every conflict on Wikipedia follows the same pattern. It begins with one user doing something another doesn't like (with or without actual policy violations) but there is a breach of civility and resultant offense in almost every instance.
>

Not always. I remeber being involved in one disspute where both side
were civil. I belive it  was solved by the boredom method in the end.

> It must be pretty bad if long-term contributors (say >5000 edits) or administrators are blocked over anything, and I find it hard to believe that a valuable contributor like RickK should be blocked without a polite warning or an offer for help. Without insisting on double standards for administrators, I think long-term contributors, who have spent months working on improving the project and know the ropes, should be protected against people who come crashing into Wikipedia with an agenda to push and an axe to grind.

They are. However the 3RR as decided by the comunity makes no such
distinction. Do you really want to increase its subjectiveness?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rick

body:
Yes. I think that would be a wholly good thing.

Sam

On 6/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/20/05, jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Every conflict on Wikipedia follows the same pattern. It begins with one
> user doing something another doesn't like (with or without actual policy
> violations) but there is a breach of civility and resultant offense in
> almost every instance.
> >
>
> Not always. I remeber being involved in one disspute where both side
> were civil. I belive it was solved by the boredom method in the end.
>
>
> > It must be pretty bad if long-term contributors (say >5000 edits) or
> administrators are blocked over anything, and I find it hard to believe that
> a valuable contributor like RickK should be blocked without a polite warning
> or an offer for help. Without insisting on double standards for
> administrators, I think long-term contributors, who have spent months
> working on improving the project and know the ropes, should be protected
> against people who come crashing into Wikipedia with an agenda to push and
> an axe to grind.
>
> They are. However the 3RR as decided by the comunity makes no such
> distinction. Do you really want to increase its subjectiveness?
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
The rules do not have any innate value. That is to say, the mere fact
that something is in the rules does not make it right, any more than
its absence from the rules makes it wrong. Sysops are not expected to
be mechanical robots in enforcing the 3RR or any other rule. This
doesn't mean people are above the rules. It means that sysops are not
obliged to block in every case.

One of the things that should always play into a decision about
blocking is the good faith of the contributor, the necessity of the
block in getting the point across, and the nature of the dispute.
Frankly, Rick's block wasn't cut and dry - removing copyvio
absolutely should not count as a 3RR revert, and there's no reason to
think that Rick did not sincerely see a copyvio problem. And it's
important to err on the side of protecting Wikipedia from lawsuit
with copyvio - if there's a reasonable suspicion, remove first, then
spend the time sorting it out.

Which isn't to say that Rick handled this well. He didn't. it is,
however, to say that he did not handle it so badly as to deserve the
abject slap in the face that this block was. And he's right to be
pissed - I would be.

I hope Silsor intends to spend a LOT more time than he has browsing
recent changes and dealing with the abject stupidity that Rick was
our first line of defense against. Because otherwise, that block just
hurt the project a lot.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
>>on Tuesday, 2005-06-21, I will do a small presentation about Wikipedia on German
>>television. It will be *live*, so it would be very helpful to have the servers
>>online and responsive at that time :-)
>
>
> Don't worry, Kurt, during my last live appearance on media all our squid caches
> collapsed throwing really unfriendly errors. Shit happens. As you're going live,
> prepare for anything.

But don't take that as meaning that you shouldn't bother forewarning us.
  If Domas had given a prominent warning, then the person who
precipitated the squid crash (*cough* :) would have crashed things later.

----
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to avoid naming conflicts with commons?

body:
Hi,

a moment ago I found that the article

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera

contains a big OS X (tiger) image. First I thought that this is a joke, but
then I discovered that it seems just to be a mistake, but one I do not know
how to avoid efficiently.

The Panthera article contains a link to Image:Tiger.jpg which is loaded from
commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tiger.jpg). Yesterday user
WikiED uploaded an image Tiger.jpg with the Mac OS X to _en.wikipedia.org_.
Loading the article now means that Image:Tiger.jpg now refers to the en:
version of that image and by that the article now shows a different image (of
course without showing anything on my watchlist).

As user WikiED probably does not know about commons he probably did not know
that his upload caused problems in several articles. Is there anything one
can do about avoiding such problems, e.g. is it possible to force a load from
commons? Something like commons:Image:Tiger.jpg unfortunately does not seem
to work. Also in the upload form it would be helpful to get a warning about a
potential naming conflict.

best regards,
  Marco


body:
Lame, yes.

Worth blocking over?

Erm. No.

-Snowspinner
On Jun 20, 2005, at 5:41 PM, Dan Grey wrote:

> Granted Rick's actions were attempting to keep a possible copyvio out
> of WP, but revert warring with other respected users was a pretty lame
> way to go about it. It was not going to resolve the GAP project
> copyvio problem.
>
>
> Dan
>
> On 20/06/05, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> The rules do not have any innate value. That is to say, the mere fact
>> that something is in the rules does not make it right, any more than
>> its absence from the rules makes it wrong. Sysops are not expected to
>> be mechanical robots in enforcing the 3RR or any other rule. This
>> doesn't mean people are above the rules. It means that sysops are not
>> obliged to block in every case.
>>
>> One of the things that should always play into a decision about
>> blocking is the good faith of the contributor, the necessity of the
>> block in getting the point across, and the nature of the dispute.
>> Frankly, Rick's block wasn't cut and dry - removing copyvio
>> absolutely should not count as a 3RR revert, and there's no reason to
>> think that Rick did not sincerely see a copyvio problem. And it's
>> important to err on the side of protecting Wikipedia from lawsuit
>> with copyvio - if there's a reasonable suspicion, remove first, then
>> spend the time sorting it out.
>>
>> Which isn't to say that Rick handled this well. He didn't. it is,
>> however, to say that he did not handle it so badly as to deserve the
>> abject slap in the face that this block was. And he's right to be
>> pissed - I would be.
>>
>> I hope Silsor intends to spend a LOT more time than he has browsing
>> recent changes and dealing with the abject stupidity that Rick was
>> our first line of defense against. Because otherwise, that block just
>> hurt the project a lot.
>>
>> -Snowspinner
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Research Team logo [was: Getting
	started]

body:
On 6/20/05, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> Honestly I can't figure an organisation which department or internal
> team has their own logos and don't use the organisation logo itself.
> ...

I absolutely love the logo. It gives the people who discuss research
topics or some sense of community, while keeping it very closely bound
to Wikimedia. Indeed, if you read Peopleware by Tom DeMarco (a seminal
book on people and team management), he describes an incredibly
successful team at a major company (IBM?) that formed its own identity
-- dressed alike, had a jargon, etc -- and was tolerated because they
did awesome stuff.

With thousands of wikimedians, having a subset of them create a sense
of group (or purpose) identity is well worth the trouble.
Additionally, any designer will tell you that a consistent graphical
language is important in building and maintaining a brand.

-ilya


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] University Challenge

body:
Speaking of which.... There's going to be a trivia challenge at
Wikimania in August.  Anyone who wants to help with question writing
and such is welcome to join the group!
( the questions themselves will *not* be available on the wiki ahead
of time, sorry :)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Social#Trivia_challenge

SJ

On 6/20/05, Erik Zachte <epzachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Jeremy Paxman, 5 minutes ago on BBC's University Challenge: "Which
> encyclopedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, ..." Unfortunately noone
> knew. Jeremy: "I recommend it if you do not use it". It is not much for a
> sales pitch, but from Jeremy it counts.
>
> We might set ourselves a goal for a year from now: Wikipedia will be the
> answer on a starter warming up 100 pound giveaway question in 'Who Wants to
> Be a Millionaire' :)
>
> Erik Zachte
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
> * I wnated to get it fixed up last week, but I had an important talk to give, and my harddrive crashed, and I got a PowerBook, which together turned out to be rather distracting ;-)

> Problems include, but are not limited to:
>
> * In various places it tries to load metadata for *every* revision of
> the page. This would be fatal on the actual Wikipedia, where there are
> pages with tens of thousands of revisions. There are likely other
> severe performance and scalability issues with it.

Yup. It's still in my famous "OK-it-kinda-works-now-we-wait" stage.

> * The 'management' interface for defining survey options is not locked
> off properly, and is very hard to use if you do get to it.

I wan't sure who should get access to it. It is a single line in the code where to limit access. For it being "hard to use", it basically is used *once* to set up topics, and then not at all (ideally) or very sparsly (to add/delete topics). I don't see that as a reason to keep it "in limbo".

> * Lack of HTML-safety on the UI interface: as a quick hack I added
> htmlspecialchars() guards, but things really should be changed to use
> wikitext where appropriate; several of the UI messages are currently
> displaying raw HTML tags.

Well, they didn't show that raw HTML when I checked 'em in. I'm pretty sure of that one. I'll see if I can fix that.

> If anybody would like to work on it further that would be spiffy;
> otherwise it will remain in limbo indefinitely.

I should have some time during this week, although I'll have to setup mysql/apache/yadayada on my new HDD.

Anyway, we can turn this on with a few days (weeks?) delay, just in case. No need to rush, at least not a technical one ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Validation status

body:
Sorry, pressed shift-enter accidently :)
> * I wnated to get it fixed up last week, but I had an important talk to give, and my harddrive crashed, and I got a PowerBook, which together turned out to be rather

I just wanted to congratulate you on joining our corporate policy with Apple :) Your Sony looked so dead in Berlin already ;-)

Domas


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Marco Krohn:

> As user WikiED probably does not know about commons he probably did not know
> that his upload caused problems in several articles. Is there anything one
> can do about avoiding such problems, e.g. is it possible to force a load from
> commons? Something like commons:Image:Tiger.jpg unfortunately does not seem
> to work. Also in the upload form it would be helpful to get a warning about a
> potential naming conflict.

This is bug 889:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=889

One way to deal with such cases at the moment is to upload the file to
Commons under a more unique filename and replace the links.

Erik


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
What worries me here is copyright paranoia.

Isn't it likely that people will see the flag, and think "copyright!
AHHHHHHH!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!! KILL KILL KILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Mark

On 20/06/05, Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:
> On Monday 20 June 2005 23:03, Marco Krohn wrote:
>
> > I have done something similar for the German Wikipedia:
> >
> > http://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/~krohn/wscan.html.utf8
>
> There was just an example which shows the script in action:
>
>   http://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/~krohn/copyvio.png
>
> shows that four parts of sentences have been checked ("Gepr?fte Satzteile").
> The last line ("Fundstellen") tells us that (3) and (4) have been found on
> the website
>
> http://www.classical-composers.org/cgi-bin/ccd.cgi?comp=pierne_paul
>
> If you compare this webpage with the new de.wikipedia article
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Piern?
>
> you will see that both pages are indeed very similar:
>
> WP:
> "Er war Organist an St-Paul-St-Louis in Paris"
>
> c-c.org:
> "Er war Organist an St-Paul-St-Louis in Paris."
>
> WP:
> "komponierte er zwei Sinfonien, eine sinfonische Dichtung, ein Konzert f?r
> Oboe, Cello und Orchester, kammermusikalische Werke, Klavier- und Orgelst?cke
> sowie ein Messe, ein Oratorium und Chorwerke."
>
> c-c.org:
> "schrieb 2 Sinfonien, ein sinfonisches Gedicht, ein Konzert f?r Oboe, Cello
> und Orchester, eine Messe, ein Oratorium, Chorwerke, Kammermusik, Klavier-
> und Orgelst?cke, mehrere Ballette und 2 Opern."
>
> "our" editor modified some words and changed the order of some, but
> nevertheless the similarity is high enough to find this with a script. I do
> not want to discuss whether this is a copyvio, but it is clear that the wp
> user was probably "inspired" by the c-c.org web page ;-)
>
> best regards,
>   Marco
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Guaka wrote:

>>Relevant is the realisation that the current Wiktionaries are as closed
>>as any proprietary content. This means that the only medium in which
>>Wiktionary is relevant is within an Internet-browser. To improve this
>>will make us closer to realising the objectives of the Wikimedia
>>Foundation. This is why we should publish in XML specific to dictionary
>>content or why we should publish in .dict format or RFC 2229. This will
>>not happen with content in the current format and as such it is a dead end.
>>
>>
>
>No true, at least, what you say about DICT. With wik2dict you can
>convert any Wiktionary (or Wikipedia) into DICT. However, it's very true
>that it's hard to make a specific DICT. It would be cool to be able to
>quickly create a bilingual translation DICT from the Wiktionary
>information. Now, _that_ would be somewhat harder to do at present.
>
>
>
Hoi,
When you want to use Wiktionary as an online dictionary, you may be able
to convert it to the .dict format. This does not make it acceptable
.dict data. When you query a .dict dictionary you expect the resulting
data to be in a particular language. This cannot be assumed for
Wiktionary content as they contain words in many languages. The
nl.wiktionary for instance boasts to have words in some 265 languages.
Even an article may contain worddefinitions in many languages .. With
the Ultimate Wiktionary it will be possible to create the correct
respons because it  will allow you to specify the language that you want
to query for.

Thanks,
    GerardM

>I've actually found someone who did a dictionary thingy for Java phones.
>He's gonna release it under the GPL. I'm in touch with him - the thing
>is still not running on my Sony Ericsson. I found him because I googled
>for wik2dict :) I hope to get the thing running, and the source code
>compiling, so that I can play with Wikipedia on my phone - without using
>too many proprietary stuff (except for the phone firmware itself,
>Symbian OS, Java...).
>


body:
A stupid question, probably, but...

Am I right that UW is to supplement rather than replace existing Wiktionary?

Una pregonta: Est s'iscopu de sa BU (Bichitzion?riu Universale)
substituire sas carenas agatas de sos Bichitzion?rios??

Mark

On 20/06/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> >Hmmm... :) as a sidenote: wik2dict can now create Debian packages. It
> >would be cool if someone could offer server space and bandwidth to put
> >these up.
> >
> >
> >
> How much do you need? I have my own server and up to now I do not use
> bandwidth and space completely - so it depends on how much it is.
>
> It could be easily integrated in the translator's portal for download
> (www.wesolveitnet.com) - there's already a download part or we cold use
> a subdomain.
>
> >>Another step is then the data exchangeability with CAT-Tools like
> >>OmegaT, but that's a story of its own ... if we start to talk about this
> >>here now ... I am just imagining what would happen ;-)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I had never heard of CAT (Computer Aided Translation) or OmegaT (GPL'd
> >Java software). But I do now. :) Well, just inform the folks from
> >OmegaT. I guess they should be interested in getting this done.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Oh yes, they should be interested - I am in there as well (even if for
> localisation issues)
> ;-)
>
> One step after the other :-)
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
> http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
On 6/20/05, Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:
> On Monday 20 June 2005 21:57, Angela wrote:
> > The message below was sent to the Board today. Would implementing some
> > sort of automatic copyvio checker be feasible?
>
> I have done something similar for the German Wikipedia:
>
> http://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/~krohn/wscan.html.utf8
>
> it reads all newpages from German Wikipedia, shows the beginning of the text
> and some statistics (and guesses which links to other articles might be
> interesting). Also it takes parts of some sentences and checks whether they
> appear somewhere in the internet (btw 5 to 6 consecutive words are almost
> unique).
>
> Finally the output is sorted by the number of hits ("Fundstellen"). I have
> several ideas how to improve the script further (e.g. whitelists), but right
> now I do not have the time to do this.
>
> Nevertheless if someone is interested I am glad to send him the GPLed source
> code (python) or surely can give some advise.
>
> best regards,
>   Marco
>
> P.S. google was so kind to extend my google key to 7000 requests per day (the
> standard google key only allows 1000 requests per day which is not
> sufficient)

I've written something similiar, very rough, I'm not a programmer.

It can usually find about 20 the 30 significant copyright violations
in a day's previous newpages on :en. It also gets a lot of false
positives, I haven't finish parsing out all the templates.

CDVF could use a plugin along these lines, it would make a neat
programming contest.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiIT-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
On 20/06/05, Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
> been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
> wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on

Congratulazioni!

Well done to everyone who has worked on getting our third chapter
started. Good luck to Frieda, Snowdog, Gac, M7 and Sbisolo in their
new roles. I hope it becomes a very successful chapter.

Angela.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Grants -- a proposal

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I do not know for Angela, but as for myself, a problem I meet is extreme
> difficulty to estimate whether a spending would be approved or not
> generally (I refer to unusual spending). I feel I lack
> information/feedback from the community. I would welcome any suggestion
> of how to get this feedback (while avoiding a plain global vote... which
> is frankly not something I find a great solution).

I think Lee's idea is best of all ; better transparency combined with better
ways of getting input from donors. Adding a questionnaire to the thank you page
that donors are sent to after they donate would be a way to help. As would
giving them links to our latest financial reports.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Grants -- a proposal


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia

body:
Le Monday 20 June 2005 13:03, Frieda Brioschi a ?crit :
> Wikimedia Italia, the italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has
> been formed on Friday 17th 2005 in [[w:it:Canino|Canino]] by 18
> wikimedians (some photos are avalaible on
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Costituzione_dell%27Associazione_Wikimed
>ia_Italia>).
>
> The day after we had our first assembly, which confirmed our first board:
> * [[w:it:Frieda|Frieda]], president
> * [[w:it:Snowdog|Snowdog]], vicepresident
> * [[w:it:Gac|Gac]], councilor
> * [[w:it:M7|M/]], councilor
> * [[w:it:Sbisolo|Sbisolo]], councilor
>
> In this moment we already have 35 members!
>
> Frieda

Congratulations to all!
I hope that we will have a fruitful collaboration.

Best regards,
Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia


body:
The important thing to understand is that Gerard, Sabine et al. are
already doing the best they can do using the *present* wiki system. You
can sort of hack yourself internationalizable field names by using
templates like {{-noun-}} (you still have to redundantly copy them
around), you can try to keep the data in a certain structure so it can
be parsed by a script etc.

But these are *hacks*. They will break, they will be inflexible, they
will be redundant, and they will not be properly supported by the
software itself (try doing a search for a translation in a particular
language, for example). UW tries to remedy this by adding structure
where none previously existed and unifying the content in a single DB to
reduce redundancies (without eliminating needed flexibility).

Best,

Erik


body:
On 6/20/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> Ever notice how many folks use [[Wikipedia]] wiki conventions such as
> [[double brackets]], ~~~~ for names, etc, in their e-mail messages to this
> board? :)
>

yes double brackets are handy since they show clearly you are refuring
to an article.~~~~ is just habit.

--
geni