from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> > (Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>):

> > Yes, that's a real problem; when linking to something, you can
> > never be sure  whether the target is a disambiguation page or not.
>
> That's not a bug, it's a feature.  Seriously, accidental discovery of
> vaguely related things is one of the fun parts of Wiki surfing, and
> part of the value of the medium.  Let's not go overboard and "fix"
> things that are useful just because they seem unplanned.

Well, if a link to a disambiguation page is planned, then that's fine I
suppose, but often the author is unaware of it and the link may then
become imprecise and unhelpful. For example, in the eighteenth century
there were three mathematicians named "Johann Bernoulli". Also, lots of
technical terms have various definitions depending on context, and
while experts can usually tell which one is meant, those people are not
our main audience.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://platinum.yahoo.com


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

body:
>>>Danny wrote: "Trolling is a form of vandalism. This could justly be
interpretted as trolling. (I am reminded of the constant edit wars with
Helga, which cost Wikipedia quite a lot in terms of time and people who were
disgusted and
left)

Danny is absolutely right.. at least to the degree that a vague
term can, somehow (in some vague way) be somewhat related to another vague
term... thats all. The idea sounds very very Orwellian, and I would suggest
it comes as a natural result of babysitter's fatigue, from dealing with
people like Helga and Susan.. Michael... etc... However, its not all on
anyone shoulders. A degree of trust in our fellow man seems to be necessary
to break away from our concerns, and allow others to fill roles we had
previously found for ourselves... Myself, have to admit that the desire to
increasingly escalate the efficiency of reprimanding measures can be
inviting... but theres a slippery-slope quality to this kind of thinking.

Incidentally, I had a reasonably civil conversation with Michael... I said I
like beans, and he said "me too"... which kinda puts a hole in the notion
that he's not capable of civility. -SV


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] YASU (Yet Another Sendmail Upgrade)

body:
> (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
> I've installed the latest security fix packages for sendmail, yet again.
> Any thoughts on switching to postfix or such?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I installed qmail on Piclab, I like it, and I'm willing to do that
on the Wikipedia server--but there are some catches:

- I'm not really much of a sysadmin; I'm a programmer. I can install
  software, and bumble through routine maintenance, but most maintenance
  will still fall on Jason, so his comfort level with the software is
  important.

- The mailing lists all use mailman, and I've never installed
  mailman over qmail (Piclab uses ezmlm).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 01:39:35PM -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
> > I've installed the latest security fix packages for sendmail, yet again.
> > Any thoughts on switching to postfix or such?
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> I installed qmail on Piclab, I like it, and I'm willing to do that
> on the Wikipedia server--but there are some catches:
>
> - I'm not really much of a sysadmin; I'm a programmer. I can install
>   software, and bumble through routine maintenance, but most maintenance
>   will still fall on Jason, so his comfort level with the software is
>   important.
>
> - The mailing lists all use mailman, and I've never installed
>   mailman over qmail (Piclab uses ezmlm).

I'm using postfix for my mail services, it seems to work peachy keen.
Two thumbs up from me.  :)

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Where to turn for a trivial page deletion?

body:
Stephen C. Carlson wrote:

>I'd like to delete [[Epistle to the Hebrews]] because the
>move command won't let me move the ungrammatically named
>[[Epistle to Hebrews]] to [[Epistle to the Hebrews]], due
>to a non-empty page history that has a bunch of automatic
>script conversions.

Done.
But Fred is right, you should probably be an admin.
Such a deletion doesn't need to go on the votes page,
since there was no history being deleted besides redirects --
yet technically it still required an admin to do it.

Perhaps there is a technical solution;
if a page has no history except redirects,
then should people be able to move to it
just like any other move?

>In the past, I simply copied the text from one page to the
>other and set up the appropriate redirect, but a sysop got
>on my case for it as a non-optimal operation.  So now, I
>put a request on Votes for Deletion, but no sysop has acted
>on the request yet.

Well, you should ask the sysop that got on your case. ^_^

>So, am I asking for the trivial page deletion in the right
>place?  Or, should I just ignore a sysop jumping on my case,
>because waiting days for an edit to happen is counter to the
>wiki editing philosophy?

Possibly you should ignore it after a while,
since histories can be combined later anyway.
Or you can ask just me, since I'm nice in this way,
but then you may still wait a while if I'm busy.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Matthew Barney

body:
Jason Richey wrote:

>The redirect for wikitech-l at nupedia.com is gone now(as is the wikinl-l
>redirect).  I thought I had already done this, but apparently not...

I just got my monthly plaintext email of passwords for @nupedia.com.
In addition to wikitech-l (now fixed), there's also wikipedia-l.
Should that be removed from @nupedia.com also?
(And then there's sifter-l, but I guess that that belongs @nupedia.com).

-- Toby


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] It is time to ban Michael

body:
At 07:55 01/04/2003 +0100, sannse wrote:
>Zoe wrote:
>
> >>He came in last night under an IP address and immediately began deleting
>Talk pages which had to be rolled back.  He then created a NEW User Id as
>Weezer, and tried doing the same thing.  I've begun to automatically
>rollback anything he inputs, because 9 times out 10 it's either Talk page
>vandalism or it's wrong.
>
>Personally, I think Weezer is a copycat rather than andother incarnation
>Michael.  But either way he seems out to cause trouble - perhaps more so
>than Michael who, most of the time, just seems to be careless and
>uncommunicative.

I'm almost certain they're the same person - the first time Weezer signed
his name on a talk page it was using an IP number that Michael had used to
sign his name about three minutes earlier. (By the way, Michael has blanked
talk pages as well - it's not just carelessness, there's a good degree of
wanton vandalism as well.)

I still don't think a ban (in the sense of blocking his username and IP
numbers) will work - he uses too many IP numbers for it to be practical,
and if we block them all for a day or two, as Erik suggested, I'm pretty
sure he'll just return at the end of that time (and in the meantime we'll
have kept out a whole ISP-worth of legit contributors). If we block his
username, his contributions will be harder to follow because they'll be
spread over a variety of different IP numbers (he sometimes edits from IP
numbers now, but not all the time by any means).

If we want to be practical about this and make Michael either go away or
improve his work, then the best approach at this stage, I think, is to
revert all his edits on sight.

lp (Camembert)
WikiKarma: [[French Defence]]


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Software Assisted Context Resolution

body:
OK, can we say that both people have said rude things,
but neither will now and we'll start over?

This is what we have so far:

Gary Curtis wrote:

>Zoe wrote:

>>You are making this process MUCH too cumbersome
>>for the majority of users.

>I think that with the right
>mods, we could make the whole process very transparent to the
>user. The whole point is to get the user to resolve ambiguities
>at the time of adding a link, and not leaving it for others
>to do later.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Software Assisted Context Resolution

body:
> (Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>):
>
> --- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
> > > (Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>):
>
> > > Yes, that's a real problem; when linking to something, you can
> > > never be sure  whether the target is a disambiguation page or not.
> >
> > That's not a bug, it's a feature.  Seriously, accidental discovery of
> > vaguely related things is one of the fun parts of Wiki surfing, and
> > part of the value of the medium.  Let's not go overboard and "fix"
> > things that are useful just because they seem unplanned.
>
> Well, if a link to a disambiguation page is planned, then that's fine I
> suppose, but often the author is unaware of it and the link may then
> become imprecise and unhelpful. For example, in the eighteenth century
> there were three mathematicians named "Johann Bernoulli". Also, lots of
> technical terms have various definitions depending on context, and
> while experts can usually tell which one is meant, those people are not
> our main audience.

I have to repeat that "unplanned" or "unintentional" aren't bad.
"Wrong" is of course bad, but that's a minority case.  There was a
time when a link on the "Jesus" page that was supposed to go to the
apostle Bartholomew actually went to Bart Simpson--that was bad.
Funny, but bad.  But the majority of cases, people will just put a
link around something like "Mercury" without knowing that it will go
to a page that shows links to 4 or 5 different subjects, one of which
will be intended and the rest accidental--but that's a /good/ thing.
If someone is researching the god or the element and just happens to
run across articles on the space program, that's part of the Wiki
experience, so long as he can /also/ find what he's actually looking
for without much trouble.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208

body:
He hasn't done anything POV or *that bad*. I'm sure it
was a one time thing.  If he does much else other than
those two, then I think it would be justified to
consider banning him.

--- John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net> wrote:
> User 208.63.114.185 just extensively vandalized the
> "white
> oak" page and I just reverted it.  He not only
> vandalized it
> once, but four successive times.  This user is
> obviously a
> malicious jerk, and I strongly suggest banning him.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: John Knouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #249 - 12 msgs

body:
User 208.63.114.185 just extensively vandalized the "white
oak" page and I just reverted it.  He not only vandalized it
once, but four successive times.  This user is obviously a
malicious jerk, and I strongly suggest banning him.

--
John Knouse
jaknouse at frognet.net
www.jaknouse.athens.oh.us
+1.740.589.4575
PO Box 1196, Athens, OH 45701-1196

Author - F. P. Jones

English - Experience is that marvelous thing that enables
you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
French - L'exp?rience est cette chose merveilleuse qui te
permet de reconna?tre une erreur quand tu es en train de
la commettre .

Quote supplied courtesy of Verba Volant at:
http://www.logos.it/owa-l/press.rol_ml.verbavolant1?lang=en


subject: [WikiEN-l] 208.63.114.185

body:
208.63.114.185 also vandalized "swamp white oak", starting
the new page with the phrase "You are gay."

--
John Knouse
jaknouse at frognet.net
www.jaknouse.athens.oh.us
+1.740.589.4575
PO Box 1196, Athens, OH 45701-1196

Author - F. P. Jones

English - Experience is that marvelous thing that enables
you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
French - L'exp?rience est cette chose merveilleuse qui te
permet de reconna?tre une erreur quand tu es en train de
la commettre .

Quote supplied courtesy of Verba Volant at:
http://www.logos.it/owa-l/press.rol_ml.verbavolant1?lang=en


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

body:
Stop grumbling and request sysop rights! They're yours for the asking, you know :-)

Ed Poor


body:
Are you sure it wasn't just a newbie experiment? It looked like he was trying to figure out the syntax for creating a table -- something I myself have yet to master.

Ed Poor


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Minimal skin (comments desired)

body:
tarquin wrote:

>
> Let's have a fixed topbar then :-)
> can we fool IE into displaying *something* reasonable for that too?
> it would be great if this works on all browsers -- we can have this as
> the new default skin. :-D
>
what's happening with the new skin?

New design at http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/

I've been inspired by this recent discussion.  (which is the artistic
way to I've copied some of Nick's ideas ;-)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

body:
> Danny did nothing wrong. I intend to follow his example.

> If I see people fighting over an article, I'm going to protect it and tell
> them to chill out.

> AND I reserve the right to choose which "old version" to revert to.

Obviously, you have to do this.

> AND FURTHERMORE, if I can figure out a neutral way to fix the article, I see
> no ethical reason not to:
> * make ONE edit

No, this violates the sysop/editor distinction. Please don't do that. By
making an edit and subsequently protecting it, you are giving it a raised
status. This is entirely unacceptable.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stephen C. Carlson

body:
At 01:52 PM 4/1/03 -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
>Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>>I'd like to delete [[Epistle to the Hebrews]] because the
>>move command won't let me move the ungrammatically named
>>[[Epistle to Hebrews]] to [[Epistle to the Hebrews]], due
>>to a non-empty page history that has a bunch of automatic
>>script conversions.
>
>Done.

Thank you very much.

>But Fred is right, you should probably be an admin.
>Such a deletion doesn't need to go on the votes page,
>since there was no history being deleted besides redirects --
>yet technically it still required an admin to do it.

If I run into more situations like this, maybe I will
ask for it, but now I'm concerned that it would make
me less inclined to edit.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

body:
> Message: 10
> Date: 01 Apr 2003 18:50:00 +0200
> From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> > Danny did nothing wrong. I intend to follow his example.
>
> > If I see people fighting over an article, I'm going to protect it and
tell
> > them to chill out.
>
> > AND I reserve the right to choose which "old version" to revert to.
>
> Obviously, you have to do this.
>
> > AND FURTHERMORE, if I can figure out a neutral way to fix the article, I
see
> > no ethical reason not to:
> > * make ONE edit
>
> No, this violates the sysop/editor distinction. Please don't do that. By
> making an edit and subsequently protecting it, you are giving it a raised
> status. This is entirely unacceptable.

This was the point I was trying to make when I commented at the village pump
about this situation- I didn't want to phrase as strongly that I thought
Danny was abusing sysop powers, but as a non-sysop, it did seem this way to
me. I only happened to pick up on the fact that the page was protected when
I wanted to make an edit myself when I spotted a minor typo not related to
the edit war that was going on. I realised that the page was protected, and
was quite surprised to see two further edits made by sysops before the page
became unprotected again (granted one was a revert to pre-edit war state).

I take on board what Danny & others are saying about vandalism, POV, etc,
but they have to in turn take on board how things look to 'the great
unwashed' of us non-sysops. There are enough people out there who are
already grumbling about there being two tiers of editorial priviledge, I
think sysops therefore need to be 'above reproach' as it were with regard to
this sort of matter.

Just my fourpennorth, I'll go back to sleep now,

Graham (Quercus Robur)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: It is time to ban Michael (Lee Pilich)

body:
>
> I'm almost certain they're the same person - the first time Weezer signed
> his name on a talk page it was using an IP number that Michael had used to
> sign his name about three minutes earlier. (By the way, Michael has
blanked
> talk pages as well - it's not just carelessness, there's a good degree of
> wanton vandalism as well.)
>

It was the 'Crass formed in 1976' edit that clinched it for me as this is
one of Michael's pet bugbears, and I'm sure nobody else on the planet could
give a flying fig roll what year crass formed (It only bothers me because I
KNOW it's wrong). And also when 'michael' denied he was weezer on the crass
talk page he mis-spelled his own name, as if he'd rapidly altered what comes
up when ~~~ is typed... I guess it's academic now anyway.

Cheers Graham (Quercus robur)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server-side backlink redirects

body:
On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 19:21, Tim Starling wrote:
> After a discussion on wikitech-l titled "bot approval request", we decided
> that perhaps it would be better if my bot were implemented on the server
> side, so that everyone could use it, and so that it would be relatively
> efficient. I offered to do the coding, on the condition that someone will
> block me if I try to make any ordinary edits -- I don't want Wikipedia
> totally taking over my life :)
>
> Anyway, here's my proposal. I originally posted it on wikitech-l, but it
> drew no responses. What I'm suggesting is a significant extension to
> Special:Movepage capabilities.
>
Another good question is how to change the links...

say you are moving page "A" to "B".

Is the wikitext on a page that has

   See also [[A]]

changed to

  See also [[B]]

or is it changed to

  See also [[B|A]]

?


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] watchlist across languages

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 19:04, Chuck Smith wrote:
>
>>Is there a way to see your watchlist across languages?
>> I mean, I'd like to see my English and Esperanto
>>watchlist combined onto one page.  Is this possible
>>now or do I have to wait for the next version of
>>Wikipedia?
>
> Not possible yet, no.

There is a RSS feed of last changed pages in each wikipedia:
see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDF_spool] try
     http://eo.wikipedia.org/w/FeedRDF.php

If there was a blog of your watchlist you could combine
the different languages on your own (Since you had to
transfer your username/pw each time this function should
only be available via https). I suppose it's easier for
somebody to write an RSS-to-tool than getting into the
Wikipedia sourcecode.

Jakob


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
Brion wrote:
>On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 10:26, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> >Please see [[Talk:Crass]].  In Michael's new
>>> >incarnation as Weezer, he wrote: "You call me Michael
>> >one more time. I'll pound on your neck, and smash you
>> >into pieces and kill you Zoe."
>> >
>> >Zoe
>>=20
>> Could one of the developers get this creep's IP so
>> that Zoe can call the cops? This is well above being a
>> simple bannable offense. Death threats can never be
>> justified.
>
>That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia,

Oh? I thought the current consensus was to allow Admins the ability to view
the IP number of logged-in users and the only reason this hasn't been done
yet is because it is a low priority right now for developers (nothing wrong
with that - so long as developers don't mind fetching IPs every once in a
while).  And since when do users have the right stay truely anonymous (sic no
access to IP address data) after threatening anther user anyway? But maybe I
missed something (it wouldn't be the first time - I'm so dense sometimes), so
please enlighten me Brion.

>and quite probably
>contravenes their ISP (AOL)'s terms of service as well.

I fail to see how finding out the IP number that this user was using at the
time of making the death threat would contravene AOL's terms of service. That
is unless those terms protect the right of their users to make such threats.
I seriously doubt this.

>If Zoe would
>like to complain to AOL on this matter, by all means do so.

That narrows it down to about 30 million people. Better than nothing I guess.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 24]]


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Brion wrote:
> >On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 10:26, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >> >Please see [[Talk:Crass]].  In Michael's new
> >>> >incarnation as Weezer, he wrote: "You call me
> Michael
> >> >one more time. I'll pound on your neck, and
> smash you
> >> >into pieces and kill you Zoe."
> >> >
> >> >Zoe
> >>=20
> >> Could one of the developers get this creep's IP
> so
> >> that Zoe can call the cops? This is well above
> being a
> >> simple bannable offense. Death threats can never
> be
> >> justified.
> >
> >That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia,
>
>
> Oh? I thought the current consensus was to allow
> Admins the ability to view
> the IP number of logged-in users and the only reason
> this hasn't been done
> yet is because it is a low priority right now for
> developers (nothing wrong
> with that - so long as developers don't mind
> fetching IPs every once in a
> while).  And since when do users have the right stay
> truely anonymous (sic no
> access to IP address data) after threatening anther
> user anyway? But maybe I
> missed something (it wouldn't be the first time -
> I'm so dense sometimes), so
> please enlighten me Brion.

Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus  that
sysops would be allowed to see other people ip please
? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of
having ever since a consensus about that.

Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a
talk page on the en wiki ?  It sounds as if it was a
consensus essentially reached by you.

As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very*
dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.

Through IPs, it is possible to find people real names,
and I strongly object to this made possible. I see not
why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to
know who I am. Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not
to have power on people. There is an important notion
in freedom, it is that everyone share the same rights.
And giving denonciation abilities over the physical
bodies of people while others lower their heads more
and more in fear of having the cops called on them for
any reason that a sysop would consider good enough to
launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call a
collaborative encyclopedia.

I ask for rights to anyone here to keep privacy -
whether they are sysops or not sysops.

I know developpers can see these information, but 1.
it can't be helped and 2. I consider databases admin
to be bound to an ethic, that should prevent them to
reveal these kind of information (unless, of course,
there is a severe breach in legality). If there is a
legal issue (?), Brion or another of the developper
can make it possible for the abuser to be stopped or
whatever.

But I see no reason why a sysop - who common user are
not really given the right to accept or refuse, in
particular after sysophood is given - should be given
this power over a perfectly acceptable editor. That is
not normal to give sysop powers over a group of people
just on fear that one makes something wrong.

The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against
unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a
sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not the
role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] 208.63.114.185

in_reply_to: <3E8A1F3F.26BC591@frognet.net>; from jaknouse@frognet.net on Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 03:22:40PM -0800

body:
John Knouse wrote:
> 208.63.114.185 also vandalized "swamp white oak", starting
> the new page with the phrase "You are gay."

John, are you a sysop?  You could be...

When an ip number writes stupid stuff like "you are gay" on a page,
that's what we call "simple vandalism" and the ip number can be
blocked (if necessary) by any sysop without any discussion.  If we had
to discuss every little instance like this, we'd never do anything but
discuss them.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Articles from [[1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]]

body:
I vote to add the disclaimer at the beginning of our wikipedia article:

    ''This entry is based on an article from the [[1911 Encyclopedia
    Britannica]].''

I'd like to ask a native speaker to change the manual accordingly.

--
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home):              |
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |      ,__o
Free Translation Project:                                |    _-\_<,
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/             |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
I'm with Mav on this one. The Wikipedia has no obligation to guarantee the anonymity of people who make violent threats.

I daresay it's more obliged to protect the threatened party than the threatener. If not, then consider this my final resignation notice. I'm getting *really* sick of the nonsense.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:31:36PM +0200, Michel Mouly wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??
>
> I did not, but trying to emulate it, I found no way to handle correctly the
> character + in a command line
> argument. This is quite annoying for math formulae!
>
> My emulation is via a php script. The problem could be because of DOS or of
> php. I tried to get some help on the windows-php forum, and the answers I
> got are not conclusive: it could then be a DOS issue, in which case the
> present approach for the interface between outputpage.php and texvc will be
> difficult to port on Windows...
>
> In addition, the php function escapeshellarg does not seem to be adapted to
> Windows, either.
>
> My original approach, using a file as interface, has not such problem.
>
> Michel Mouly

Your best bet is probably to use Cygwin and their shell.  They have an
rxvt-nox that works great.  I have the base X11 font that I ported to
Windows on my website: http://www.twoevils.org with instructions on how
to use it with Cygwin (www.cygwin.com/setup.exe)

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Why should all non-sysop lose their anonymity just
> because *one* person is theatening ?

Revealing ip numbers to sysops doesn't really compromise anyone's
anonymity.  You can't generally get a person's name or address or
anything similar from an ip number.  At best, you can trace the ip to
a particular internet provider, but that's about it.

Right?

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Mav-
>
> >> That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia,
>
> > Oh?
> ...
>
> You misunderstood Brion. He was referring to Michael's threats, not to
> determining the IP address (which he posted).

Quite right. I'm not sure how mav made that interpretation, particularly
as I followed the statement WITH THE IP ADDRESS!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I'm with Mav on this one. The Wikipedia has no
> obligation to guarantee the anonymity of people who
> make violent threats.

Are you saying that all non-sysop users are making
violent threats there ?
Why should all non-sysop lose their anonymity just
because *one* person is theatening ?
By the way, should that concern only non-sysop ?
Because obviously a sysop could also make threats no ?

If there is a threat, just ask Brion to give his ip
adress. If he doesnot want to give it, appeal to
Jimbo.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
After a discussion on wikitech-l titled "bot approval request", we decided
that perhaps it would be better if my bot were implemented on the server
side, so that everyone could use it, and so that it would be relatively
efficient. I offered to do the coding, on the condition that someone will
block me if I try to make any ordinary edits -- I don't want Wikipedia
totally taking over my life :)

Anyway, here's my proposal. I originally posted it on wikitech-l, but it
drew no responses. What I'm suggesting is a significant extension to
Special:Movepage capabilities.

------------------------------------------------

What we want to be able to do is:

1) Change a set of links pointing to a redirect, so that they're pointing to
the real article
2) Change a set of links pointing to an incorrectly named image, to a new,
correctly named image.

The second one was suggested by Tarquin on [[User talk:Timbot]]. Now the
problem with this feature is that it has the potential to create excessive
server load, especially if an edit war breaks out utilising it. My scheme
below is intended to do the following things:

* Make it appear weighty and time-consuming, so that users won't do it
frivolously.
* Make the smallest impact on the server possible while not wasting people's
time.
* Make edit wars utilising the feature take up a minimum of server load, and
to favour a conservative (changeless) outcome.

As a tentative short name, I suggest the "backlink redirect". It's a
mouthful, it doesn't make much sense, but it's better than anything else
I've come up with.

Here's my current vision for how it will operate:

On Special:Movepage, you now get an OPTION group looking like this:

(*) Move page only
( ) Make the page a redirect, and update all links so that they point to the
new article
( ) Move page and update links

Any logged in user has access to these options. If the user selects the
second or third option, a new thread is created on the server, set to low
priority -- low enough that it might take an hour or more during peak times
to fix a large set of articles. This new thread does the following:

* Updates Wikipedia:BacklinkRedirects (or related DB table) to indicate that
a backlink redirect has started. This appears on RC.
* Starts updating the links, one at a time. Changes do not appear on RC.
* After it finishes updating each article, it checks to see if someone has
clicked on the "cancel" link in Wikipedia:BacklinkRedirects. If so, it
reverts its changes and stops, indicating this on RC and
Wikipedia:BacklinkRedirects.
* Once it has finished, it updates the table related to
Wikipedia:BacklinkRedirects to indicate that the job is now over. This does
not appear on RC.

The job stays there on the lower half of the page for all time, with some
method of accessing multiple pages of them. Anyone can revert such completed
jobs. Reversions of complete jobs are handled at the usual thread priority
(arguable, I could be wrong). Articles which have changed since the initial
update are, of course, not reverted.

As you can see, with this scheme, even an edit war over a huge set of links
will create little server load in peak times, as long as both sides of the
fray watch Wikipedia:BacklinkRedirects vigilantly.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones.?Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp


subject: [Wikitech-l] php warnings in Windows port

body:
On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Michel Mouly wrote:
> Windows me, Xitami, PHP 4.3.1, wikipedia scripts: source forge dump 29.03
>
> Trying to find out why the submit does not return correctly, I stumbled on
> the cgi error log file of Xitami.
>
> I have no idea if there is a relation with the issue, but there are quite a
> number of disturbing warnings (they appear in case of opening a page and
> modifying it).
>
> This can be because of Xitami, or a wrong php version, or Windows, or
> because it is running locally, or of installation errors...
>
> However, if this can explain my submit pb, let me know.
>
> Michel Mouly
>
>
> PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET in OutputPage.php on
> line 388

Change the error reporting level in your php configuration to not include
'notices'. These are just telling us that the web server didn't report
certain values from the http headers, so the magic array doesn't contain
anything at those indices. We already know that because it will have
returned NULL instead of a useful string. So, not very helpful. :)

> PHP Warning:  date() [<a
> href='http://www.php.net/function.date'>function.date</a>]: Unexpected
> error in DatabaseFunctions.php on line 117

Now that's the kind of error message I hate: "unexpected error"! Almost as
good as "unknown error"...

That's in wfUnix2Timestamp(). I think the only thing that uses this is the
last-modified check in OutputPage::checkLastModified(). You might try
putting some debug checks into that function to check on the input to the
function (make sure strtotime() is working and that the server variable
comes through right).

Also, note that a lot of the time calls may break (returning the wrong
time) if your timezone setting is not at GMT/UTC. I haven't tested that
case.

> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 315
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 316
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 322
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 324
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 325

These are all because it already spit out some error messages, and don't
indicate any real problems.

> PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR in OutputPage.php on
> line 460
> PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_CLIENT_IP in OutputPage.php on line 462
> PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_FROM in OutputPage.php on line 464
> PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  REQUEST_URI in OutputPage.php on line 470

Again, change the error reporting level (see above) to make these go away.

> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 318
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 319
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 320
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 322
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 324
> PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
> OutputPage.php on line 325

See above.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Why should all non-sysop lose their anonymity just
> > because *one* person is theatening ?
>
> Revealing ip numbers to sysops doesn't really compromise anyone's
> anonymity.  You can't generally get a person's name or address or
> anything similar from an ip number.  At best, you can trace the ip to
> a particular internet provider, but that's about it.

And the provider (employer, university) can often trace the IP and time of
connection to a particular customer (employee, student).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
> (Michel Mouly <mmouly at wanadoo.fr>):
> At 14:02 02/04/2003 +0200, you wrote:
> >On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:31:36PM +0200, Michel Mouly wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??
> >
> >I (=author of texvc) certainly didn't.
> >Windows on servers is not really relevant.
>
> I agree. When I started (to install a wiki on Windows) I thought it would
> not work. Astonishingly, it does, at 95%. I pursue, and share my
> experience, so that you and the others know some of the answers if somebody
> else asks about such an irrelevant scenario! If ever I want to install
> something widely open, I'll do differently (what I do is on a small closed
> network).

Perhaps I should add some language into the README to that effect:
this code was developed and tested on and for Linux.  No attempt has
been made to make it portable to other OSs, though it just might
hapen to work on some. If you attempt this, you do so at your own
risk and without support.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
"Don't misquote me again, or I'll bite your head off."

Whew! What a relief that Uncle Ed never invokes violent imagery like that. Cuz if I did, people like Sheldon Rampton might wish aloud for a switch that sends high-voltage current through my chair...

Ed Poor


from_name: Michel Mouly

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
Hi!

Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??

I did not, but trying to emulate it, I found no way to handle correctly the
character + in a command line
argument. This is quite annoying for math formulae!

My emulation is via a php script. The problem could be because of DOS or of
php. I tried to get some help on the windows-php forum, and the answers I
got are not conclusive: it could then be a DOS issue, in which case the
present approach for the interface between outputpage.php and texvc will be
difficult to port on Windows...

In addition, the php function escapeshellarg does not seem to be adapted to
Windows, either.

My original approach, using a file as interface, has not such problem.

Michel Mouly


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:31:36PM +0200, Michel Mouly wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??

I (=author of texvc) certainly didn't.
Windows on servers is not really relevant.

> I did not, but trying to emulate it, I found no way to handle correctly the
> character + in a command line
> argument. This is quite annoying for math formulae!
>
> My emulation is via a php script. The problem could be because of DOS or of
> php. I tried to get some help on the windows-php forum, and the answers I
> got are not conclusive: it could then be a DOS issue, in which case the
> present approach for the interface between outputpage.php and texvc will be
> difficult to port on Windows...
>
> In addition, the php function escapeshellarg does not seem to be adapted to
> Windows, either.
>
> My original approach, using a file as interface, has not such problem.

I originally planned to use popen2-based interface, but for some reason
it's off by default in PHP.

In such case texvc.ml's lines:

    Texutil.set_encoding (try Sys.argv.(4) with _ -> "UTF-8");
    try render Sys.argv.(1) Sys.argv.(2) (Parser.tex_expr lexer_token_safe (Lexing.from_string Sys.argv.(3)))

need to be replaced by

    Texutil.set_encoding (try Sys.argv.(3) with _ -> "UTF-8");
    try render Sys.argv.(1) Sys.argv.(2) (Parser.tex_expr lexer_token_safe (Lexing.from_channel stdin))

If your php is compiled with popen2 (does it work on windows at all ?)
you could just put formula onto it's stdin, close it, and then read answer from
its stdout.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
Mav-

>> That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia,

> Oh?
...

You misunderstood Brion. He was referring to Michael's threats, not to
determining the IP address (which he posted).

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jason Richey

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> ...
> - I'm not really much of a sysadmin; I'm a programmer. I can install
>   software, and bumble through routine maintenance, but most maintenance
>   will still fall on Jason, so his comfort level with the software is
>   important.

Maintenance?  What's that? :) Honestly, I am against any mail software
that is going to require routine maintenance, unless you mean security
updates.  Has Sendmail really been that bothersome?

>
> - The mailing lists all use mailman, and I've never installed
>   mailman over qmail (Piclab uses ezmlm).
>...

I don't know how mailman handles it's outgoing mail (blast my
ignorance), but it receives incoming mail by alieasing the address as
"| mailman-wrapper listname".  I assume that most mail delivery agents
are capable of such a thing.  Really, I guess mailman could continue
to use sendmail for outgoing mail (assuming it uses it now).

---
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


body:
Hi!

Windows me, Xitami, PHP 4.3.1, wikipedia scripts: source forge dump 29.03

Trying to find out why the submit does not return correctly, I stumbled on
the cgi error log file of Xitami.

I have no idea if there is a relation with the issue, but there are quite a
number of disturbing warnings (they appear in case of opening a page and
modifying it).

This can be because of Xitami, or a wrong php version, or Windows, or
because it is running locally, or of installation errors...

However, if this can explain my submit pb, let me know.

Michel Mouly

PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET in OutputPage.php on
line 388
PHP Warning:  date() [function.date]: Unexpected
error in DatabaseFunctions.php on line 117
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 315
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 316
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 322
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 324
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 325
PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR in OutputPage.php on
line 460
PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_CLIENT_IP in OutputPage.php on line 462
PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  HTTP_FROM in OutputPage.php on line 464
PHP Notice:  Undefined index:  REQUEST_URI in OutputPage.php on line 470
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 318
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 319
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 320
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 322
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 324
PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in
OutputPage.php on line 325


body:
>On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 19:21, Tim Starling wrote:
> > After a discussion on wikitech-l titled "bot approval request", we
>decided
> > that perhaps it would be better if my bot were implemented on the server
> > side, so that everyone could use it, and so that it would be relatively
> > efficient. I offered to do the coding, on the condition that someone
>will
> > block me if I try to make any ordinary edits -- I don't want Wikipedia
> > totally taking over my life :)
> >
> > Anyway, here's my proposal. I originally posted it on wikitech-l, but it
> > drew no responses. What I'm suggesting is a significant extension to
> > Special:Movepage capabilities.
> >
>Another good question is how to change the links...
>
>say you are moving page "A" to "B".
>
>Is the wikitext on a page that has
>
>    See also [[A]]
>
>changed to
>
>   See also [[B]]
>
>or is it changed to
>
>   See also [[B|A]]
>
>?

It is indeed a good question, and the best answer is almost certainly
[[B|A]]. In the application I'm interested in, almost all the links were
already "see also [[A|B]]" and I want them changed to "see also [[B]]". In
both cases, the visible text is unchanged. In Tarquin's application, the
links would have to be changed from [[Image:A]] to [[Image:B]].

Specifically, I want to change [[Brisbane, Queensland|Brisbane]] to
[[Brisbane]]. But someone might disagree with me, so later they use the same
feature to change my [[Brisbane]] to [[Brisbane, Australia|Brisbane]].
Another link might have gone [[Brisbane, Queensland]] ->
[[Brisbane|Brisbane, Queensland]] -> [[Brisbane, Australia|Brisbane,
Queensland]].

Note that if there was already a link saying "for other uses of 'Brisbane'
see [[Brisbane]]", such links would have to be first changed to [[Brisbane
(disambiguation)|Brisbane]], again using the new feature. If a someone
forgot to do this, an annoyed old hand could easily revert the naive
changes.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones.?Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp


from_name: urbanus at luto.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia slow again

body:
Hi there,

this is Urbanus, one of the new sysops of the German Wikipedia. At
the moment the Wikipedia is extremely slow again. Can anyone of the
server people have a look if the load is high or if there is Google
indexing the Pedia?

Thanks & smiles

Thomas aka Urbanus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 13:12, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Why should all non-sysop lose their anonymity just
> > because *one* person is theatening ?
>
> Revealing ip numbers to sysops doesn't really compromise anyone's
> anonymity.  You can't generally get a person's name or address or
> anything similar from an ip number.  At best, you can trace the ip to
> a particular internet provider, but that's about it.
>
At best, you can trace the ip to a particular computer. In 99.9% of the
cases, the IP provider can trace the IP to a particular account, that
is, to a particular person.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for a whole bunch more sysops

body:
"Let a thousand flowers bloom."

We have to get rid of this mental distinction between
"wooden puppets" and "real people". There is no Blue
Fairy to wave her magic wand and reward Pinocchio for
all his good deeds.

Anyone who's been around long enough to leave a track
record as a halfway savvy contributor with a genuine
desire to write serious articles -- SHOULD, AS A MATTER
OF COURSE, be able to use the advanced features like
article deletion and IP blocking.

Ed Poor


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Tim Starling wrote in part:

>(*) Move page only
>( ) Make the page a redirect, and update all links so that they point to
>    the new article
>( ) Move page and update links

Q1: What's the difference between the last two options?

Q2: I don't really trust this idea yet and would hesitate to use it --
    although I have no objection to other editors' having it available.
    But what I'd really like is an option that changes only redirects,
    to automatically avoid double redirects.  Can we add that?
    Perhaps it should even be the default?

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208.63.114.185

body:
John Knouse wrote:

>User 208.63.114.185 just extensively vandalized the "white
>oak" page and I just reverted it.  He not only vandalized it
>once, but four successive times.  This user is obviously a
>malicious jerk, and I strongly suggest banning him.

I was checking this out, and it occured to me that a neat feature would be:

A user contribs page, at least when being viewed by an admin (maybe anybody),
could indicate "This [username|IP address] has been blocked.",
so that I don't have to load the IP blocklist to see if it has been.

BTW, I didn't block this IP since it seems to have been
inactive for several hours.  But *persistence* in this behaviour
would make it a clear candidate for blocking as a vandal if it returns.

Ah yes, the other thing that we need on user contribs pages
is diff links next to each cited change.

-- Toby


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208.63.114.185

body:
On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:

> Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 17:51:05 -0800
> From: Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208.63.114.185
>
> John Knouse wrote:
>
> >User 208.63.114.185 just extensively vandalized the "white
> >oak" page and I just reverted it.  He not only vandalized it
> >once, but four successive times.  This user is obviously a
> >malicious jerk, and I strongly suggest banning him.
>
> I was checking this out, and it occured to me that a neat feature would be:
>
> A user contribs page, at least when being viewed by an admin (maybe anybody),
> could indicate "This [username|IP address] has been blocked.",
> so that I don't have to load the IP blocklist to see if it has been.
>
> BTW, I didn't block this IP since it seems to have been
> inactive for several hours.  But *persistence* in this behaviour
> would make it a clear candidate for blocking as a vandal if it returns.
>
> Ah yes, the other thing that we need on user contribs pages
> is diff links next to each cited change.

The other other thing we need, IMNSHO, is a pair of pages like
Special:Recentchanges and Special:Newpages, but that only show the ones
done by anon IP people. I'd find that mighty handy for keeping the patent
nonsense under control.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
It's easy to find something worth dying for.  Do you have anything worth
living for?
				--Lorien


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 208.63.114.185

body:
Was thinking that the IP that has made questionable changes would not
be banned but a checkmark of sort placed next to their entries on the
recently changed laist, so as to draw the attention on the
Wikimilitia.

Just a thought.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
At 14:02 02/04/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:31:36PM +0200, Michel Mouly wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??
>
>I (=author of texvc) certainly didn't.
>Windows on servers is not really relevant.

I agree. When I started (to install a wiki on Windows) I thought it would
not work. Astonishingly, it does, at 95%. I pursue, and share my
experience, so that you and the others know some of the answers if somebody
else asks about such an irrelevant scenario! If ever I want to install
something widely open, I'll do differently (what I do is on a small closed
network).


subject: [WikiEN-l] New sysop, cprompt (was: Request for a whole bunch more sysops)

body:
At his request, I have made cprompt a sysop.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Weezer and Michael banned (was: Michael's threats)

body:
Okay, it took me a day and a half to get around to it, but I
locked both of Weezer's user accounts.

Ed Poor

P.S. I hate doing this. I guess no one else likes doing it,
either, which is why I generally wind up being the one who runs
the "update queries" to enforce the bans.

P.P.S. Does a hangman walk home whistling, afterward? (Right now, I have a headache...)


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: 172--what happened

body:
> Message: 8
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] 172--what happened
> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 15:48:15 -0500
> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> Stop grumbling and request sysop rights! They're yours for the asking, you
know :-)
>

i'm flattered by your suggestion but wasn't really 'grumbling', just making
the point that it's important that sysops are always SEEN to be above
reproach in matters such as these,

Cheers Graham (quercus robur)


subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:05:21PM -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Perhaps I should add some language into the README to that effect:
> this code was developed and tested on and for Linux.  No attempt has
> been made to make it portable to other OSs, though it just might
> hapen to work on some. If you attempt this, you do so at your own
> risk and without support.

I think it should work on other Unices too.
It's just Windows that's too different.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Michael's threats

body:
On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
> Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus  that
> sysops would be allowed to see other people ip please
> ? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of
> having ever since a consensus about that.

With the old version of the software that was in operation when I started
yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/ with mouse over text.
The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost ability arose for two
reasons; 1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing en.wiki for 6 hours by
creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was a suicide note placed on
en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing. Luckily Jimbo just happened to
find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find out the guys IPs and block
them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly never checks his
Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very luckily the suicide note was
submitted by an anon user so regular users were able to find out which
college and computer lab the the submitter was writing from and this
information was passed onto the police (the person was hospitalized and
placed on suicide watch). But what if that person had created a login and
there was?nt?t any developer around to find out the IP address?

> Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a
> talk page on the en wiki ?  It sounds as if it was a
> consensus essentially reached by you.

Is there is reason why you are being so insulting? Have I personally offended
you in some way? If I have then I?m sorry.

This has been discussed before. Most recent discussion;
On Wikipedia-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html
On WikiEN-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html
And on WikiTech-l
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html

There was even more discussion on this in the Wikipedia-l archives even
further in the past but I don?t feel like looking for it.

> As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very*
> dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.

Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?

> Through IPs, it is possible to find people real names,
> and I strongly object to this made possible.

No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs you can tell which ISP
the person is using and guess which city a person is writing from. Any
information beyond that has can only be obtained from the ISP (who are not at
all likely to give out that information). Information on public computers and
school computer lab computers is much easier to obtain though.

>I see not
> why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to
> know who I am.

Again - why are you taking this so personally and taking it out on me? Am I
some type of criminal? If I have done something so terribly wrong then please
tell me about it so that I don?t do it again.

>Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not
> to have power on people. There is an important notion
> in freedom, it is that everyone share the same rights.
> And giving denonciation abilities over the physical
> bodies of people while others lower their heads more
> and more in fear of having the cops called on them for
> any reason that a sysop would consider good enough to
> launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call a
> collaborative encyclopedia.

What? So you think it is OK for people to make death threats and not have the
cops called on them? That type of morality seems very odd to me. Just because
people would have tools doesn?t necessarily mean they will use them in bad
ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for example, but they can be
deadly if they are placed in the hands of a psychopath. Do you think that
some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse otherwise useful tools? Do you
really have such a low opinion of me and other people who are also sysops? If
we can?t trust our sysops then we might as well forget the project
alltogether.

>....

> The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against
> unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a
> sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not the
> role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.

Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for 4 hours trying to protect
Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this person?s IP then I could have
banned it very early on (several people got mad at me for not banning the IP
- but I was as helpless as they were). And we are also talking about a death
threat - don?t you think that it is important to report this to the police?
Isn?t protecting the lives of our contributers also important?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 25]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology to Brion (was Re: Michael's threats)

body:
On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> > You misunderstood Brion. He was referring to Michael's threats, not to
> > determining the IP address (which he posted).
>
> Quite right. I'm not sure how mav made that interpretation, particularly
> as I followed the statement WITH THE IP ADDRESS!
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Whops! I?m very sorry about that Brion (like I said I?m pretty darn dense
sometimes, er, often). I get posts in plain text format or I read the
archives (which are also plain text) so at the end of many people?s emails
there is a whole bunch of unreadable HTML insanity. So to cope I mentally
block this out this. So when I saw:

|The post:
|http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&diff=3D793666&oldi=
|d=3D793523
|
|IP address from logs:
|64.12.96.205 - - [01/Apr/2003:01:05:27 +0000]
|"POST /w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&action=3Dsubmit HTTP/1.1" 302 5
|"http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=3DTalk:Crass&action=3Dedit"
|"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; AOL 7.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
|
|(Timestamps in logs are in UTC.)
|
|The e-mail address set in the account is Weezer76 at aol.com (though it
|should be pointed out we make no attempt to verify e-mail addresses, and
|cannot guarantee that this is the actual address of the person or even
|if it is a valid address; AOL should be able to look into it, I imagine
|their web proxies keep logs which can be traced to particular users.)
|
|-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
|
|--=-jKqeSzfRNXI6rxo1ZJ9/
|Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc
|Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part
|
|-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
|Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)
|
|iD8DBQA+ie2QxVlOmwh1xjgRAvEEAJ4ibJCF0vRUw+hYXaySZ4m0f906rwCgi7ho
|xzxdJ/5xBdEGJLfbmG7zDLc=
|=WmTb
|-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|--=-jKqeSzfRNXI6rxo1ZJ9/--

as a block of text I blocked that out thinking it was part of the normal HTML
mess that follows most emails.

I also took this sentence:

|That's certainly highly inappropriate on Wikipedia

as an /answer/ to my question ??Could one of the developers get this creep's
IP so that Zoe can call the cops???

Which I interpreted as; You did not think it was appropriate to give out that
information.

Please forgive my idiocy and rudeness for not reading your post carefully
before responding (I did this while at work and with a deadline hanging over
my head so that combinded with the nature of the post prompted me to send a
quick reply - that still isn?t an excuse though).

Again, I?m sorry. :-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 26]]


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: [LIG] SITEWATCH: What exactly is gnowledge?

body:
That's interesting.
Yann

----------  Message transmis  ----------
Subject: [LIG] SITEWATCH: What exactly is gnowledge?
Date: Mercredi 2 Avril 2003 20:34
From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <fred at bytesforall.org>
To: fsf-friends at gnu.org.in
Cc: linux-india-general at lists.sourceforge.net

URL             :  http://www.gnowledge.org

Welcome to Gnowledge!

     By `gnowledge' we mean the knowledge accessible freely for the
     community in general, and to the users of the WWW in particular. We
     expect that the `g' in the term `gnowledge' is pronounced hard, and
     is not silent as `k' in `knowledge'. The possible Sanskrit and
     Greek roots of the term `knowledge' and the ideal of GNU to share
     knowledge in general and software knowledge in particular inspired
     us to use this term.

     At this site we will publish software to manage gnowledge. We
     desire to make this a community portal for those who believe in
     sharing.

     We are developing a gnowledge management application called
     GNOWSYS. Find out more about it by navigating through the menu on
     the left side.

   Powered by GNOWSYS, [15]ZOPE, [16]Python, [17]GNU/Linux
   ? Nagarjuna G.[18]Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education

--
http://www.forget-me.net
Alternatives sur le Net
http://keys.indymedia.org/showkey.py?key=0A34CBDA
gpg --keyserver keys.indymedia.org --recv-key 0A34CBDA


body:
On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 23:44, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Whops! I?m very sorry about that Brion (like I said I?m pretty darn dense
> sometimes, er, often). I get posts in plain text format or I read the
> archives (which are also plain text) so at the end of many people?s emails
> there is a whole bunch of unreadable HTML insanity. So to cope I mentally
> block this out this.

Ah, I see. :)  All is forgiven.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
You've got Descartes before Horace.  People have the right to remain
anonymous, and aren't required to show why they "need" to.  Rather the
burden is on you, to show a compelling reason why you should be allowed
to invade their privacy.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of Fred Bauder
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 07:11
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

There are a few people (for example sitting judges) who need anonymity.
For
some other people it may be desirable, if not necessary. However most of
our
anonymous users have no real reason for anonymity.

Fred

> From: John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:43:05 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy
>
> In the case of Wikipedia, it's an instrument for public
> display and use, and anyone posting to it is doing so in a
> VERY public forum.  I think it's entirely reasonable to
> request some shred of identity from them.  I don't think it
> would even be out of line to require people to register
> before being allowed to edit articles.
>
> --
> John Knouse (user:jaknouse)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
There are a few people (for example sitting judges) who need anonymity. For
some other people it may be desirable, if not necessary. However most of our
anonymous users have no real reason for anonymity.

Fred

> From: John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:43:05 -0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy
>
> In the case of Wikipedia, it's an instrument for public
> display and use, and anyone posting to it is doing so in a
> VERY public forum.  I think it's entirely reasonable to
> request some shred of identity from them.  I don't think it
> would even be out of line to require people to register
> before being allowed to edit articles.
>
> --
> John Knouse (user:jaknouse)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 12:43, John Knouse wrote:
>
>>In the case of Wikipedia, it's an instrument for public
>>display and use, and anyone posting to it is doing so in a
>>VERY public forum.  I think it's entirely reasonable to
>>request some shred of identity from them.  I don't think it
>>would even be out of line to require people to register
>>before being allowed to edit articles.
>>
>
>Why?
>
That's easy!  If they don't register we won't be able to pay them the
big royalties. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <1049365805.7611.3.camel@frank.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 02:30:07AM -0800

body:
Mav wrote:
>> I'm very sorry about that Brion

Brion wrote:
> Ah, I see. :)  All is forgiven.

Watch it, people.  Our pathological WikiNiceness may be contagious.

:-)

--Jimbo


from_name: John Knouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
In the case of Wikipedia, it's an instrument for public
display and use, and anyone posting to it is doing so in a
VERY public forum.  I think it's entirely reasonable to
request some shred of identity from them.  I don't think it
would even be out of line to require people to register
before being allowed to edit articles.

--
John Knouse (user:jaknouse)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

in_reply_to: <BAB19D26.155D%fredbaud@ctelco.net>; from fredbaud@ctelco.net on Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 08:11:18AM -0700

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> There are a few people (for example sitting judges) who need
> anonymity. For some other people it may be desirable, if not
> necessary. However most of our anonymous users have no real reason
> for anonymity.

Well, I side generally with those who say that we should respect
anonymity.  But I also still say that allowing sysops to access
signed-in-users ip numbers for the purpose of stopping
logged-in-vandal-attacks is not a significant compromise of anyone's
anonymity.

People seem to have a wrong idea of how much information an ip number
contains.  Usually, very little.  An ip number gets you as far as an
ISP, no further.  There may be rare exceptions, but in the main,
knowing an ip number doesn't tell you very much that's personally
identifiable about a person.

We should respect anonymity, but we should also recognize that there
are a lot of myths about anonymity.  Just think how many people refuse
to log in because they want to remain anonymous.  They don't really
get it, I think.

--------

I think a useful distinction can be made between anonymity and
privacy.  Privacy is impossible in the wikipedia context -- people can
see everything that we do.  But anonymity is pretty easy -- people can
see everything that we do, we can associate individual edits with
individual markers (accounts, ip numbers), but we have *no* real way
to get at who people really are, without going through some actual
process with an ISP.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Michael's threats

body:
First Mav, would you forgive me for not enveloping my
opinion in honey enough. I seem to remember that
nearly a year ago you explained to me, your
personality type made you go to the point without
unnecessarily circonvolutions. I remember you told me
I should not feel hurt if you sounded a little bit
short sometimes, as it meant no agressivity from you
toward others, but rather the deep need to go to the
point quickly and efficiently. I tought it would be
best maybe for us to understand each other if I were
doing just the same when talking to you, rather than
losing myself in complicated explanations as I
unfortunately quite often do.

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 April 2003 08:39 pm, anthere wrote:
> > Oh ! And since when *exactly* was it a consensus
> that
> > sysops would be allowed to see other people ip
> please
> > ? Enlighten me on that, 'cause I have no memory of
> > having ever since a consensus about that.
>
> With the old version of the software that was in
> operation when I started
> yarns ago /everybody/ could view the IP of /anybody/
> with mouse over text.

You might remember that until november 2002, so not a
very long time ago, the french wikipedia was still
using the old software phase I, as most of the
international wikipedias, when english wikipedia was
already benefitting of the wonderful new features of
phase III.
So sure enough, I remember quite well this time when
IPs were displayed. Though I also remember it is not
ips that were displayed on my browser for recent
changes, but some mi-textual mi-numbered complicated
address which in fact allowed very well to distinguish
who was posting from where (city).

Which is why the "old" collegues on the french
wikipedia know very well from where I am from, and
which type of line I have. At that time, in my city,
when I took the adsl, we were precisely 58 users. For
the adsl just arrived then (and there is only one
provider).

I also remember quite well that I was one of the 3
first sysops on the french wiki, and that at that
time, a deletion made by a sysop was final. I also
remember we could ourselves ban ips (so...user ips as
well), action which was not possible by any others
than Jimbo and Larry (if I understood well) on the
english wiki in phase I.

And I found that it could possibly lead to abuse :-)
However, every user could see everyone ips. Not only
sysop.

> The idea of allowing Admins have this long-lost
> ability arose for two
> reasons;

So, that's not a long lost ability
1. the ability of seing ips adress was global, not
sysop restricted
2. no sysop in phase I

1) the so-called MIT-vandal was trashing
> en.wiki for 6 hours by
> creating dozens of different usernames 2) there was
> a suicide note placed on
> en.wiki that turned out to be the real thing.
> Luckily Jimbo just happened to
> find out about the MIT vandal and was able to find
> out the guys IPs and block
> them (it was on a Saturday morning and Jimbo hardly
> never checks his
> Wikipedia email or RC on Saturday morning). Very
> luckily the suicide note was
> submitted by an anon user so regular users were able
> to find out which
> college and computer lab the the submitter was
> writing from and this
> information was passed onto the police (the person
> was hospitalized and
> placed on suicide watch). But what if that person
> had created a login and
> there was?nt?t any developer around to find out the
> IP address?

yes, yes, yes
But again, 2 unique cases are not a reason for
generalization of such a controversial process.

Clearly the problem is not that sysop can or cannot
see an ip, the problem is there are not enough
"developers" with the ability to look in the database
and answer a very urgent request such as heavy
vandalism and suicid issues.

> > Was it discussed in one of this remote places on a
> > talk page on the en wiki ?  It sounds as if it was
> a
> > consensus essentially reached by you.
>
> Is there is reason why you are being so insulting?
> Have I personally offended
> you in some way? If I have then I?m sorry.

I was not insulting.
I was going to the point.
I saw nowhere there was a consensus about this.

> This has been discussed before. Most recent
> discussion;
> On Wikipedia-l
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-February/008954.html

One message on the main wiki. A comment, and a
question. Thats all.

> On WikiEN-l
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001242.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001034.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001043.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001050.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001099.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001100.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001030.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001037.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001164.html

English list
And only about extrem cases

> And on WikiTech-l
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002625.html
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-February/002655.html

If seeing user ips is a consensus, I am *sure* tech
will find a technical way to make that possible
But deciding whether sysop could see user ips or not,
is not a tech issue, it is a global issue. So, the
tech list is not the place to discuss it.

> There was even more discussion on this in the
> Wikipedia-l archives even
> further in the past but I don?t feel like looking
> for it.

hum...
I have no memories about these discussions
Maybe someone could help us here ?

> > As far as I am concerned, I consider it a *very*
> > dangerous breach on people privacy and freedom.
>
> Since when has there been privacy on the Internet?

Since when has there been a wonderful comprehensive
cooperative encyclopedia built on consensus on the
Internet ?

> > Through IPs, it is possible to find people real
> names,
> > and I strongly object to this made possible.
>
> No - this is incorrect. With personally assigned IPs
> you can tell which ISP
> the person is using and guess which city a person is
> writing from. Any
> information beyond that has can only be obtained
> from the ISP (who are not at
> all likely to give out that information).
> Information on public computers and
> school computer lab computers is much easier to
> obtain though.

Hum...surprising then that you ever found out that
poor depressed student.

And your belief upon ISP ethics is maybe based on
american ISPs. Not on other countries ISPs.

> >I see not
> > why you - as a sysop - would be given the right to
> > know who I am.
>
> Again - why are you taking this so personally and
> taking it out on me? Am I
> some type of criminal? If I have done something so
> terribly wrong then please
> tell me about it so that I don?t do it again.

Apology. I rephrase then.
I don't see why any sysop, on any wikipedias, would be
given the right to know who any non-sysops are.

> >Sysop are there to help wikipedia, not
> > to have power on people. There is an important
> notion
> > in freedom, it is that everyone share the same
> rights.
> > And giving denonciation abilities over the
> physical
> > bodies of people while others lower their heads
> more
> > and more in fear of having the cops called on them
> for
> > any reason that a sysop would consider good enough
> to
> > launch an attack, is not exactly what I would call
> a
> > collaborative encyclopedia.
>
> What? So you think it is OK for people to make death
> threats and not have the
> cops called on them?

I think you understood what I meant there, as you
mentionned in your private post.

That type of morality seems
> very odd to me.

Hum...this is the second time that a wikipedian
appears to have doubts on my morality in 24 hours.
I *think* it would be nice between wikipedians to
avoid this type of statement and recognise we are
different, and might actually not share the same
morality. Moral rules are personal issues.

Just because
> people would have tools doesn?t necessarily mean
> they will use them in bad
> ways. Knives are very useful things to have, for
> example, but they can be
> deadly if they are placed in the hands of a
> psychopath. Do you think that
> some sysops are psychopaths that would abuse
> otherwise useful tools? Do you
> really have such a low opinion of me and other
> people who are also sysops? If
> we can?t trust our sysops then we might as well
> forget the project
> alltogether.

By default, I trust users and sysops and anoms just
the same. If we can't trust users and anom, then we
might as well prevent them from editing alltogether.

Besides, long term users or sysops on a minor
wikipedia are obviously not trusted on the big
wikipedia. So, allow me to take this "let's trust our
sysops" with precautions.

> > The sysop role is to protect wikipedia against
> > unacceptable aggression. This is not the role of a
> > sysop to run after the people. Denonciation is not
> the
> > role of a sysop. Read again what a sysop is.
>
> Well I am an Admin and I battled the MIT vandal for
> 4 hours trying to protect
> Wikipedia. If I had the ability to view this
> person?s IP then I could have
> banned it very early on (several people got mad at
> me for not banning the IP
> - but I was as helpless as they were). And we are
> also talking about a death
> threat - don?t you think that it is important to
> report this to the police?

> Isn?t protecting the lives of our contributers also
> important?

Yup !
So let's not display unnessarily information about
them to the whole world !

You know...there are really some crazy people on the
net !

Hum...to be constructive...would it be possible to ban
*anyone* - doing anything that could be thought wrong
- (I mean, sysops included :-))
After all, we could generalize the agreement system
for any banning (discussions for controversial
banning, immediate banning for obvious case of
vandalism)

And I am sure there could a tech way to ban a user
without displaying his ip to the sysop.

> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Have a very good evening Mav. I hope you will not
think I was insulting you here. I really don't mean
to. So we can both go on disagreeing.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc on Windows

body:
>Hi!
>
>Did anybody ever tried to port texvc on Windows??
>
>I did not, but trying to emulate it, I found no way to handle correctly the
>character + in a command line
>argument. This is quite annoying for math formulae!
>
>My emulation is via a php script. The problem could be because of DOS or of
>php. I tried to get some help on the windows-php forum, and the answers I
>got are not conclusive: it could then be a DOS issue, in which case the
>present approach for the interface between outputpage.php and texvc will be
>difficult to port on Windows...

I doubt it's a DOS problem -- some DOS commands require passing of + on the
command line (attrib and copy for example). Try typing "echo +" if you don't
believe me.

>In addition, the php function escapeshellarg does not seem to be adapted to
>Windows, either.
>
>My original approach, using a file as interface, has not such problem.

It might be a PHP bug. I couldn't find any mention of it in
http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php . You might have to
just think of a workaround. Maybe you can try using W32api to call
GetCommandLineA, if you're brave.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 12:43, John Knouse wrote:
> In the case of Wikipedia, it's an instrument for public
> display and use, and anyone posting to it is doing so in a
> VERY public forum.  I think it's entirely reasonable to
> request some shred of identity from them.  I don't think it
> would even be out of line to require people to register
> before being allowed to edit articles.

Why?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [OT] Re: SITEWATCH: What exactly is gnowledge?

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:

>>By `gnowledge' we mean the knowledge accessible freely for the
>>community in general, and to the users of the WWW in particular. We
>>expect that the `g' in the term `gnowledge' is pronounced hard, and
>>is not silent as `k' in `knowledge'. The possible Sanskrit and
>>Greek roots of the term `knowledge' and the ideal of GNU to share
>>knowledge in general and software knowledge in particular inspired
>>us to use this term.

"knowledge" looks like an obviously Anglo-Saxon word,
and the OED agrees that its roots are entirely Teutonic.
Nevertheless, it is related to Greek "gn?sis" (see below)
and a Sanskrit root, even these aren't the word's origins.

>>We are developing a gnowledge management application called
>>GNOWSYS. Find out more about it by navigating through the menu on
>>the left side.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
I wrote:
> > Revealing ip numbers to sysops doesn't really compromise anyone's
> > anonymity.  You can't generally get a person's name or address or
> > anything similar from an ip number.  At best, you can trace the ip to
> > a particular internet provider, but that's about it.

Brion Vibber wrote:
> And the provider (employer, university) can often trace the IP and
> time of connection to a particular customer (employee, student).

Sure.  In your opinion, does this mean that the risk of making it
possible for sysops to get ip numbers is too high?

My view is that lots of people seem to think that tracing an ip number
back to a name is easy.  It isn't.  To get the provider to do so is
normally quite difficult, oten involving a court order.

If we were providing a service for abused spouses, etc., then I would
argue that extraordinary privacy and anonymity measures would be
justified.  But in the current context, I don't see that this is much
of a risk.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning and privacy (was Re: Michael's threats)

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 09:51, Anthere wrote:
> And I am sure there could a tech way to ban a user
> without displaying his ip to the sysop.

Hmm, there's two ways to go on this:

* Banning user _names_. That could be done easily without showing IPs
anywhere, but (controversy on whether it's appropriate to do aside) it's
not a complete solution, as the person can simply create a second
account.

* Banning the _IP_ last used by a user. This could be done with some
slight changes to the database, storing a 'last visted from IP address'
in the user table. Access to the field could be restricted so sysops
couldn't see it.

However, we would have to show it in the ban list if it were actually
banned. This would make a quick ban/unban an easy way to find out
anyone's IP address.

Hiding the address even in the ban list would be theoretically possible,
but a very bad idea. Maybe not quite as immoral as some things that some
governments do, but I don't think it's very nice. :) Basically, this can
block off a whole group of people using dynamic IPs or a proxy server,
without any advance warning as to what area of the world might be
affected.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>I thought option 2 might be controversial, but I guess if no-one
>understands it that would explain why no-one has commented on it yet.
>Option 2 simply changes the first page to a redirect as if someone had
>edited it normally. It does not move the edit history to the new location.
>This would effectively allow someone to move a page to an occupied
>location, without deleting it first to make way. I'm not sure if that's a
>good idea or not.

Ah.  That falls well under the heading of ?things I would hesitate to use?.
I'll see if other people that wanted to use option 3 comment on option 2 now.

>>Q2: I don't really trust this idea yet and would hesitate to use it --
>>    although I have no objection to other editors' having it available.
>>    But what I'd really like is an option that changes only redirects,
>>    to automatically avoid double redirects.  Can we add that?
>>    Perhaps it should even be the default?

>Okay, that can be done. Let me get this straight, is this what you want:

>* Double redirect exists from [[redir1]] to [[redir2]] to [[content]]
>* User navigates to [[redir2]] and clicks "move/redirect page" (probably a
>better name for Special:Movepage with new functionality)
>* User selects the option "No move, update redirects only"
>* Software chages "#REDIRECT [[redir2]]" in [[redir1]] to "#REDIRECT
>[[content]]"

This isn't what I was thinking of, but it's not a bad idea.
However, it seems completely separate from moving pages,
so it might fit better under a completely different special page.

>Is that about right? Here's another scenario:

>* [[redir1]] redirects to [[old content]]. User wants to change the title
>of [[old content]] to [[new content]].
>* User navigates to [[old content]], clicks "move/redirect page", and
>selects "Move, update redirects only".
>* Software moves the page, and changes [[redir1] to "#REDIRECT [[new
>content]]"

This is what I was thinking of.  In fact, if this is regualarly used,
then the previous scenario would rarely be necessary in the future.

>For a UI, something like:
>(*) Move
>( ) Change to redirect
>[*] Update redirects to here
>[ ] Update links from article namespace
>[ ] Update links from other namespaces

OK.  The second radio button is for your original option 2
(which may yet generate controversy and be removed from the idea).
I myself would probably only use the first radio button and first checkbox,
at least until I learn to trust the other options more.
(Note that we already have one checkbox on this page,
for moving the talk page.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 10:11, Fred Bauder wrote:
> There are a few people (for example sitting judges) who need anonymity. For
> some other people it may be desirable, if not necessary. However most of our
> anonymous users have no real reason for anonymity.
>
How do you know? After all, they're anonymous.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Michael's threats

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Hum...this is the second time that a wikipedian
>appears to have doubts on my morality in 24 hours.
>I *think* it would be nice between wikipedians to
>avoid this type of statement and recognise we are
>different, and might actually not share the same
>morality. Moral rules are personal issues.

Agreed - This was based on the presumption that you
disagreed with the handing over of the death threat
person's IP and was made before I realized Brion had
already given-out this information. As I stated in my
private email to you I realized after making the post
that this wasn't your intention - you were concerned
with the general policy of allowing sysops the ability
to see logged-in user's IP numbers.

BTW, when I say "policy" while posting to WikiEN-l I
usually mean policy for en.wiki. There does seem to be
consensus for allowing sysops to see the IP numbers of
logged-in users on en.wiki but there obviously is no
consensus for this to be a global policy. This feature
could be turned-off by default and decided on a
language-by-language basis as far as I'm concerned. On
en.wiki at least, there are enough sysops and enough
people watching the sysops to ensure proper checks and
balances. Jimbo is also fluent in English so it is
easy for him to investigate alleged abuses.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[March 29]]

__________________________________________________
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http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
The scenario, which already happened once, is that a hostile person
decides to make dozens of vandal-edits while logged in.  In an
emergency like that, sysops can (physically) ban the login id, but the
bad person just keeps logging in with different ids.

That's what we want to be better able to defend against.

If there's a way we could do that, without giving sysops the ability
to see ip numbers, that'd be good.  I think in most cases, ip number
bans will take care of this, since it's a bit more effort for the
vandal to get a new ip number.  It will effectively slow them down, at
least.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 09:51, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Well, I side generally with those who say that we should respect
> anonymity.  But I also still say that allowing sysops to access
> signed-in-users ip numbers for the purpose of stopping
> logged-in-vandal-attacks is not a significant compromise of anyone's
> anonymity.

I have no firm objection to allowing sysops to see users' ips, but I see
limited benefit in it and it's not on my list of priorities. If someone
else wants to code it up, they're welcome to do so.

But do remember that that's one more magic sysop power for the cabal. I
don't like widening the gap like that, even if it is free to join.

> People seem to have a wrong idea of how much information an ip number
> contains.  Usually, very little.  An ip number gets you as far as an
> ISP, no further.  There may be rare exceptions, but in the main,
> knowing an ip number doesn't tell you very much that's personally
> identifiable about a person.

Well, it's rare that an IP will resolve to something as detailed as
Joe.Blow.At.34.Sycamore.Street.Idylville.city.CA.US. ;)  However IPs
that belong to a small school, company, or local ISP can give more
localizing information with just a reverse DNS lookup than many people
might be comfortable with handing out.

And of course, if _everybody_ shows IP addresses left and right, you're
opening up possibilities for cross-referencing and profile-building,
which is where the privacy advocates will really start freaking out.

If Joe Blow posts an article under a pseudonym on Wikipedia that's
critical of his employer / repressive government, then posts a boring
everyday message on some bulletin board under his real name, and the two
can be connected by a publicly visible IP address... Goodbye, Joe!

I'm not saying we should shred all records after 24 hours and encrypt
our hard drives. ;) But we should pay attention to how our behavior fits
into a larger context. If our policy is that sysophood is what everyone
should have, but you have to show good faith and ask for it, then
allowing sysops to view IP addresses of logged-in users is very nearly
equivalent to posting them in public view.

The reason we show IP addresses for "anonymous" edits is in my view not
to track and ban vandals. It's just to tack the only identifying
information we have available onto edits as an attribution. If that
helps to stop vandalism, well that's helpful too.

> We should respect anonymity, but we should also recognize that there
> are a lot of myths about anonymity.  Just think how many people refuse
> to log in because they want to remain anonymous.  They don't really
> get it, I think.

Yes, that's counterproductive. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Michel Mouly

body:
Thanks a lot for the help!

$_SERVER("HTTP_IS_MODIFIED_SINCE") is most of the time not set. When I got
a non null value it was:

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 11:24:44 GMT; length=8031

(no idea what the date/time refers to! Possibly in relation with the Upload
file special page...)

When given to strtotime, this returns -1, and date() is no happy.

Removing the part after the semi-column makes strtotime returning a 10
digit string.

I'll patch temporarily my outputpage, adding code to remove anything after
a semi-column...

Any idea about what is happening??

Michel Mouly

> > PHP Warning:  date() [<a
> > href='http://www.php.net/function.date'>function.date</a>]: Unexpected
> > error in DatabaseFunctions.php on line 117
>
>Now that's the kind of error message I hate: "unexpected error"! Almost as
>good as "unknown error"...
>
>That's in wfUnix2Timestamp(). I think the only thing that uses this is the
>last-modified check in OutputPage::checkLastModified(). You might try
>putting some debug checks into that function to check on the input to the
>function (make sure strtotime() is working and that the server variable
>comes through right).
>
>Also, note that a lot of the time calls may break (returning the wrong
>time) if your timezone setting is not at GMT/UTC. I haven't tested that
>case.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Code cleanup

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 11:37, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> - Is there any reason to retain the Phase II conversion scripts?
>   Do there exist any Phase II installations anymore that might need
>   to be converted, or can I safely arcive those off somewhere?

As far as I know, Enciclopedia Libre is the only remaining phase II
installation. They are planning a phase 3 upgrade, but haven't done it
yet.

That conversion script is also out of date, though, and would probably
need fixing up to use it.

> - I'd like to have a nice separation between the source tree and
>   the installation set, with scripts for installs and updates and
>   maintenance. Should the maintenance scripts be "installed"
>   somewhere as well, or should they be run from the source tree?
>   I'm inclined toward the latter, so that dangerous functions don't
>   get accidentally exposed as web pages, but perhaps they should be?

I prefer to keep a separate copy of the source tree which is not
web-exposed, and run maintenance scripts from there via the command
line. This may not be suitable for 3rd-party hosting.

> - Brion, are there any temporary measures you have taken on the
>   existing wikis in which some configuration option is not isolated
>   in LocalSettings.php?

English wiki has some tweaks to SearchEngine.php, Skin.php,
UpdateViewCount.php. Chinese and meta have some tweaks to the style
sheets. Other than that, I think they're all standard.

(Excepting Wiktionary, which needs various updates. The language files
still need to get generalized for names etc.)

>   I'd like to arrange it so that we'll be
>   able to grab the latest source from CVS, and just run an update
>   script on any of the wikis which will look in the target
>   directory's LocalSettings for everything it needs and update all
>   the rest of the code properly.  If there are other changes that
>   might complicate that, let me know and I'll put them into
>   LocalSettings.

Hmm. Remember that updates often involve tweaks to the database
(patch-*.sql).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Yann Forget wrote:
>
>>Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
>>
>>>By `gnowledge' we mean the knowledge accessible freely for the
>>>community in general, and to the users of the WWW in particular. We
>>>expect that the `g' in the term `gnowledge' is pronounced hard, and
>>>is not silent as `k' in `knowledge'. The possible Sanskrit and
>>>Greek roots of the term `knowledge' and the ideal of GNU to share
>>>knowledge in general and software knowledge in particular inspired
>>>us to use this term.
>>>
>
>"knowledge" looks like an obviously Anglo-Saxon word,
>and the OED agrees that its roots are entirely Teutonic.
>Nevertheless, it is related to Greek "gn?sis" (see below)
>and a Sanskrit root, even these aren't the word's origins.
>
>>>We are developing a gnowledge management application called
>>>GNOWSYS. Find out more about it by navigating through the menu on
>>>the left side.
>>>
Hmmm!  Only one step removed from the biting satire of gnawledge. :-)
Ec

>>>