from_name: Cerise Rose

body:
Wow.  Calm down?  Was my message in anyway hysterical, bitchy, yelling (all caps), swearing or in any other way hypered out?  No.  I suggest you try to be a little less rude when you deal with people.  However, since you seem to think that was not calm, how about we try my matching you for rudeness?

My initial email is from MAY 22.  Your response is JUNE 8.  The server being down YESTERDAY, JUNE 7 would mean exactly WHAT in my little world over here?  Has the space/time continuum melted or something?  Is there something I don't know about a server runnign time? (Okay maybe that one would fit, but honestly...)  Are you trying to give the villiage idiot a run for his money?

My IP is dynamic.  In simple terms (want to make sure everyone keeps up), it means it may be different each time I connect to the internet.  So all I can tell you is that the 'block' was there, but I have NO idea what my IP was way back then.  Oddly enough the block could have been part of my ISPs designated ones, however, it was out of a city I don't live in, and the block was listed as being from MARCH of this year, not MAY.  Here's another thing you probably didn't read in my first email:  I had been wandering your site that morning with no problems.  Wow, that would make the block seem like maybe some sort of problem that I might have alerted you to.  Wouldn't that make me a nice person for letting you know your server was dicking around with people who weren't logging in?

Wow.  I amaze myself.  I wasn't EVEN LOGGING IN.  So in essence, what I said in the first email is making more sense now.  Let's re-read that part shall we?

"I have never edited or attempted to edit a page.  I don't even have a login for the site.

If it's a mass ban, fine.  However, I am not signing up with a login simply to tell them I've been banned for no apparent reason, when all I'm doing is reading.

If you don't want people browsing through your site, then make the pages unaccessible unless logged in.  Or, don't make it possible to block ips for people who aren't editing or logging in."

See here is where I'm giving you some valuable advice for your public site.  IF YOU WANT PUBLIC INTERNET TRAFFIC, PAGE HITS AND PEOPLE TO USE YOU AS A RESOURCE, DON'T MAKE IT SO THEY HAVE TO JUMP THROUGH HOOPS TO GET THERE.  If I'm not logging in, why ban me?  I'm not going to mess with anything by reading.  Unless I've suddenly sprouted telekinetic powers and can make your website change with my mind.  Believe me, if I had that power, the LAST place I'd be is wikipedia..

Again, it's entirely possible it's all a server glitch, somethng coded wrong or a bzillion other things I could think of, if I cared to do so. I don't.  That's why you're involved in this crap and I'm not.

I would also like to say, thanks for your really keen eye to the problem I presented and that gungho attitude in wanting to help me.  Really.  If I hadn't had to go through major hoops just to find a way to send the message to you, if I could just be left alone to browse in peace as I wished without infraction to anyone, I'd probably be more grateful to you.

There.  I think I've now managed to make this an hysterical, bitchy, yelling (all caps), swearing or in any other way hypered out message.  No wait, I forgot the swearing.  Fuck off.  There we go.

Sincerely,
Don't bother to respond, just stick your attitude in your bottom and leave me be.

"KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk> wrote:

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }
Calm down,

You probably not even blocked, there has been some problems with the database server and the site was down for most of yesterday. But just in case what is your IP ?

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Cerise Rose [mailto:ceriserose69 at yahoo.com]
Sent: 22 May 2004 22:33
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can someone please explain to me...

I was browsing through some topics in the wikipedia this morning, without problem.  This afternoon, I find myself ip-blocked.

I have never edited or attempted to edit a page.  I don't even have a login for the site.

If it's a mass ban, fine.  However, I am not signing up with a login simply to tell them I've been banned for no apparent reason, when all I'm doing is reading.

If you don't want people browsing through your site, then make the pages unaccessible unless logged in.  Or, don't make it possible to block ips for people who aren't editing or logging in.

I was finding what I was reading interesting.  However, I guess now I'll just go elsewhere.  If you actually want page hits and readership you might want to think about your policies.  I already feel like the amount of time I've wasted even emailing you far outweighs anything of interest I found there.

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

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70/year

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
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list: wikien-l

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from_name: rkscience100 at yahoo.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Word file

body:
Here is the file.
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from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A first encounter with Categories

body:
On 06/08/04  at 03:22 AM, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> said:

> Proper meta tagging will allow our content to be neatly organised and
> easy to search. Proper meta tagging implies neat categories, which may
> be crossed by other neat categories. Internet is a huge mess of data,
> most of them are very poorly referenced. We'll become a serious
> reference if our content is cleanly tagged, hence searchable with
> complex queries.

Very well stated.

> [[list of museums in Australia with a chinese flag hanging above the
> entrance door]] is of no use.

> Search "[[museum]]" where "[[country]] is 'australia'" and "[[topic]] is
>  'China'" is useful.

> To be useful, meta-tags must be large rather than very specific. Query
> gives the specificity.

My intuition as well. Since we also have full-text searching, one can easily search for "museum" "Australia" "chinese flag" or any such narrow target.

V.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Timwi-
> I failed to make it clear enough that I expected the limitations imposed
> on tlh to also apply to tokipona. Now everyone things I wanted the
> Klingon Wikipedia, when in fact I only wanted equal rights.

I strongly support eliminating interlanguage links to Toki Pona, which is
a vanity language if there ever was one.

> And the only reason why we still don't have equal rights is because
> people like you insisted on opposing tlh, because you said conceited and
> respectless things like "If anyone puts it back up, I'll go in there and
> suspend it myself!"

That is not an actual quote. What I said is:

"Tim Starling disabled the wiki on my request because it was
not created in consensus. However, should the wiki be reinstated without
due process, I will if necessary take it down myself."

Note the important words "without due process" and "if necessary"
(interestingly, you also added an exclamation mark where there was none).
You seem to be happy only if a developer does what you want, regardless of
whether there is community consensus to do so. I'd say developer actions
should reflect community consensus. Developers should not enforce any
single point of view, unless it is Jimbo's (and that, too, may soon come
to an end).

In effect this means - believe it or not - that I would, if necessary,
*reinstate* the Klingon Wikipedia if it was taken down in violation of our
compromise. Of course, my support for this compromise wanes the more you
use phrases like "conceited and respectless", continue to campaign for
restoring the interlanguage links, and misquote what I said. A certain
degree of sincerity is required for a compromise to work.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Marcos Cramer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] SQL/Compression problem with wikipedia-files (old,
	read 10GB-files)

body:
Kay Hamacher wrote:
> What I can't access is the actual (uncompressed, human
> readable) content of the old_text-column itself. It's compressed, ok. I got that
> from the php-source of mediawiki. But what's wrong with the following code?
[snip]
>   ($d, $status) = deflateInit(); #-Level => Z_BEST_COMPRESSION);
>   $status == Z_OK
>     or die "INIT failed\n" ;
>   ($out, $status) = $d->deflate($_[0]) ;
[snip]

Two things: first, deflate() does the compression, so you want to use
inflate() to decompress. (The 'de' is confusing, I slip up on that all
the time too! Poor naming of the functions...)

Second, you have to match the settings that PHP's gzdeflate() function
used to compress them, namely setting the window bits size to
-MAX_WSIZE. This disables the checksum bytes, I think, which confuses
the decompression unless you give it the same setting.

See this thread for some sample code:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-January/007989.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Theresa Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Toronto Star quote with (sic)

body:
The Toronto Star has an article which very briefly mentions Wikipedia:
http://paul.ca/u/2b57

'According to wikipedia.org, "A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a
human guide who (sic) you get to know."'

It's good that Wikipedia is prominent enough that it can be quoted briefly
without a description.

On the other hand, what's with the (sic)?  Is the author picking on the
'who' vs 'whom' distinction?  And the quote is from a quote, and it was
attributed to Wikipedia, and not Dave Winer, who is quoted.

moink


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: Summary style (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken)

body:
At 09:43 AM 6/8/2004 +0000, Abe Sokolov wrote:

>bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
>"So it's not surprising that I would use a lot of "character flaw"-type
>language and that my posting wouldn't be particularly constructive as far
>as the debate over the article itself is concerned, since the subject I
>was focusing on was (my opinion of) character."
>
>I did not get a good first impression of your editing style based on my
>experiences in that specific encounter either. You were utterly unengaged
>with the narrative and the historical aspects of the article. You only
>seemed concerned about shuffling around text, titles, series boxes, pages,
>and the like.

Well, yeah, because I hadn't even read the whole thing yet at that point. I
didn't show up there to change the contents, I don't know much about the
American Civil War so I doubt I would have anything to add on that
particular subject. I was there specifically because I was concerned about
the organization.

>But did you stop to figure other whether you knew what you were doing?

Yes. That was the whole point of what I was doing in Talk in the first
place; I was trying to figure out the best way to go about changing the
organization of the article by seeking input from people who knew more
about the subject it was on than I did. I wanted to develop my ideas in
public and solicit input on them before I started actually fiddling with
the article, especially considering the fragility of the way it is
currently organized.

I _know_ that I don't know much about the American Civil War. I also know
that, if I'm careful and pay attention to the people who do, I am capable
of working on the layout of an article about it without doing any great
harm. I happen to be quite an experienced Wikipedia editor,  I've worked on
plenty of articles about whose subjects I knew little. I like doing that
because I learn a lot that way.

>Perhaps I should've spent more time briefing you on all the complications
>that would arise from your proposals instead of hoping that you'd figure
>this out on your own after reviewing the talk page discussions and reading
>the article. Still, do you expect everything to be spoon fed?

See, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm complaining about. You're
assuming here that you know exactly what is best for the article, and if
only I'd pay attention to what you're saying I'd obviously agree. Well, no.
I don't consider it at all unreasonable to disagree with what you think is
best for that article, and I don't believe you have any special right to
overrule my opinion on that matter. You have to _convince_ me if you want
me to agree with you, not try to threaten or belittle me.

>bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
>"But my main concern is still whether you plan to continue using the
>threat of edit wars in that discussion. Apologies don't matter much if the
>basic problem remains unresolved."
>
>I'm not at all sorry about that comment. You're just taking it the wrong
>way. Right now, I oppose your proposals just as much as you support them;
>the threat of an edit war is always implicit whenever this is the case
>between two editors. My only crime there might be speaking an esoteric
>truth. Anyway, all I meant was be patient (thus, adding a note about why
>you might want to be patient) and continue negotiating. This doesn't mean
>that I'm not listening.

I had only _begun_ to develop my proposals yet at that point, and I had no
intention of touching the article(s) itself until after I'd explored them
and settled on one that everyone liked. Your crime there, IMO, was assuming
right from the outset that you were Right and I was Wrong and then
immediately launching a preemptive attack as if I could be dissuaded in no
other way. Maybe it's because you've had bad experiences with other
editors, but what difference does that make in how things look from my
perspective in this encounter? All I see is someone being irrationally
aggressive and possessive of an article I wanted to do some work on.

I'm afraid I haven't changed my opinion about you one whit based on these
postings, if anything it's just cementing it in my mind. You might well be
a very knowledgeable historian and a great writer of articles, but you're
not very good at _collaborating._ I think that in the Wikipedia environment
that's a pretty big handicap.


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Snapshot wikipedia installations in schools

body:
From: "Andy Rabagliati" <andyr at wizzy.com>
> Folks,
>  [...]
>  Due to the time taken to download new snapshots, I only
>   do these between semesters - it can take a week or so to
>   download, using UUCP at cheap rates in evenings and weekends.
>   1. Graphics (you knew that was coming !)

Hi Andy,
I work with three different
school districts in SW New
Hampshire, USA. We have
the students using Wikipedia
as a resource with different
access. One school has an
AOL dial up account at
33.6k another a frame
relay connection and one
more on local cable broad
band. We've tried it all!

One outlying school cannot
afford a live fulltime connection
and we download whole websites
and mirror them on the server when
requested by teachers, so the process
is during nighttime. For this school
I've brought a lot of information on
CD-R's, shared it out of the drive
and have the kids access the info.
These are all just ways to make do,
untill they get faster access in the
area, (which is very rural).

I was thinking that if you could use
a backup sent to you on CD-R or a
DVD of whatever images or tarballs
will be needed it would save you
incredible amounts of download time,
wouldn't it?

>   2. A daily SQL update for the main page.

Even a weekend update would be quite
recent and something to look forward
to for the students and teachers.

>   Thanks again for an invaluable resource that almost replaces
>   the web at one fell swoop in places that cannot afford the web.
> Cheers,    Andy!

I wholeheartedly agree, Andy.
I feel that Wikipedia is an excellent
resource for schools!

With regards,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

references:
<pan.2004.06.08.12.30.14.532128@arvin.dk>	<ca4qvk$jsu$1@sea.gmane.org>	<shu0xlhq8p.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>	<ca5fid$87n$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40C651EC.2080308@hackish.org>

body:
Delirium wrote:
> No, "Select All" is Alt+A, not Ctrl+A, and the website currently
> overrides it, which is quite irritating.  This is using Firefox 0.8
> under Linux.  Perhaps it is Ctrl+A under other operating systems, which
> is the source of the confusion?

Hmm... checking my copy. Ctrl+A does do select all on a web page, but
not in a text edit field. There it goes to the beginning of the current
line (like it does in Safari, until MediaWiki goes and overrides it with
'link to article page'). Alt+A does indeed select all in a text edit
field in Firefox 0.8/linux.

Key bindings suck; there just aren't enough keys. :P

To recap: on Windows/Linux most browsers use 'alt' for page-defined
access keys. Page-defined access keys may conflict with and override
menubar shortcuts (alt+F for 'File') or sometimes other shortcuts (alt+A
for Select All)

On Mac most browsers use 'control' for access keys. Page-defined access
keys may conflict with and override emacs-style keybindings for text
edit fields (control+A for 'go to beginning of line'). Several people
have complained about this conflict as well, and it's been biting me
lately though I hadn't noticed during testing.

Keys that are probably problematic and should be avoided include:

A (F&avorites / beginning of line / select all)
B (&Bookmarks / back)
D (delete)
E (&Edit / end of line)
F (&File / forward)
G (&Go)
H (&Help / backspace)
K (delete to end of line)
N (next line)
O (newline?)
T (&Tools)
V (&View / end of file)
Y (paste)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Camel gets his nose in the tent!

body:
Camel gets his nose in the tent! I think here on Wikipedia this sort of
treatment should not be routine, but used only in instances where there are
two distinct viewpoints that have proven difficult to resolve. This dispute
has gone on for a year or more.

Fred

> From: Robert Graham Merkel <robert.merkel at benambra.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:18:26 +1000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 31
>
> On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org
> wrote:
>> I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one
>> called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German
>> heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical
>> emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't
>> we try it out here in this one case?
>
> Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to
> end up with multiple versions?


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

body:
Troels Arvin wrote:

> In the new default skin, the Alt-B key combination seems to bound to the
> "what links here" function. Alt-B is normally the shortcut to the
> bookmarks,

Press Alt, release it, and then press B.

> I suggest that the Alt-B key mapping be dropped or changed to something
> else.

I'm sure you realise that if we did this, then other people would
complain about other shortcuts, and very quickly we would have no
letters left.

Timwi


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: bug: HTML tags in some messages stay verbatim (eg:
	MediaWiki:Addedwatchtext)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Volkan HATEM wrote:
>
>> I don't know if this is a known problem but after the sw was
>> updated html tags in some messages are not interpreted:
>
> It was a bug that they were let through before; please remove the comments.

What comments are you talking about?

The problem he described is reproducible. Go to the Turkish Wikipedia
and try to add something to your watchlist.

On en, you get:
	The page "Latin alphabet" has been added to your _Watchlist_.

On tr, you get:
	The page "16 Haziran" has been added to your watchlist.

This needs fixing.

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hmmm... Wiki Digital Courier

body:
From: "Andy Rabagliati" <andyr at wizzy.com>
>   In conjunction with the Wizzy Digital Courier internet
>   access project http://wizzy.org.za/ I am considering
>   installing wikipedia.

Hmm, maybe they'll even
consider a "Wiki Digital
Courier", delivering the
latest update, weekly or
daily etc., but on CD-R
or on DVD if it's some
of the large wikis. As I
mentioned in a previous
response.

For very rural communities
such as the one's that would
use Wizzy, this would be
a plus. Perhaps a semester
DVD and then CD-R updates
to keep it in sync.

What do you think?

With regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> What I said is:
>
> "Tim Starling disabled the wiki on my request because it was
> not created in consensus. However, should the wiki be reinstated without
> due process, I will if necessary take it down myself."
>
> Note the important words "without due process" and "if necessary"
> (interestingly, you also added an exclamation mark where there was none).
> You seem to be happy only if a developer does what you want, regardless of
> whether there is community consensus to do so.

I would love to see your evidence for there being "community consensus"
to take down the Klingon Wikipedia.

> Of course, my support for this compromise wanes the more you
> use phrases like "conceited and respectless", [...]

I'm really really sorry about that one. I regretted having written that
after I sent it. I got totally out of control there. I know this isn't a
good excuse, but I want to apologise nevertheless.

I just can't describe how angry I was and still am about the favouritism
Toki Pona is receiving. It is totally infuriating, seriously.

I don't think I have (or at least I never meant to) campaigned for
removing Toki Pona inter-wiki links; I would prefer to allow Klingon
ones. But if disallowing Klingon inter-wiki links is the only way to
allow a dedicated community of people to contribute to a well-meant
project in the Klingon language, then Toki Pona shouldn't have them either.

Timwi


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

references:
<ca2g1a$ij8$1@sea.gmane.org> <9AUxRsUxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<ca4su5$pq0$1@sea.gmane.org> <40C60A20.5080805@pobox.com>

body:
On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 11:49:04 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
> > I just can't describe how angry I was and still am about the favouritism
> > Toki Pona is receiving. It is totally infuriating, seriously.
> It's not receiving any favoritism, it's just being utterly ignored.

and I utterly ignore all this talk of Klingon. Does that count for anything? :)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

references:
<pan.2004.06.08.12.30.14.532128@arvin.dk>	<ca4qvk$jsu$1@sea.gmane.org>	<shu0xlhq8p.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<ca5fid$87n$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> "Select All" is Ctrl+A, not Alt+A, and is not overridable with website
> shortcuts, nor is any other direct keyboard shortcut (at least in
> Firefox), because they all involve Ctrl.

No, "Select All" is Alt+A, not Ctrl+A, and the website currently
overrides it, which is quite irritating.  This is using Firefox 0.8
under Linux.  Perhaps it is Ctrl+A under other operating systems, which
is the source of the confusion?

(FWIW, other direct keyboard shortcuts in Firefox's default bindings
under Linux involving Alt include Alt-leftarrow [back], Alt-rightarrow
[forward], and Alt-home [go to homepage], and probably some others I'm
missing in my quick scan of the menus).

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

references:
<40C60A20.5080805@pobox.com> <ca2g1a$ij8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<9AUxRsUxpVB@erik_moeller> <ca4su5$pq0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40C60A20.5080805@pobox.com>

body:
At 06:52 PM 6/8/2004 -0400, Fennec Foxen wrote:
>On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 11:49:04 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > It's not receiving any favoritism, it's just being utterly ignored.
>
>and I utterly ignore all this talk of Klingon. Does that count for
>anything? :)

I'm generally ignoring it too, but I also secretly look forward to seeing
what an edit or flame war looks like in Klingon. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Error on quadratic formula page

body:
On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 00:01:07 +0100, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> So here is my suggestion for a change. Of course, it's a little bit
> longer-winded than Fennec's original:

Timwi: {{subst:sofixit}}

:)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 31

body:
On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:18:26 +1000, Robert Graham Merkel
<robert.merkel at benambra.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> > I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one
> > called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German
> > heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical
> > emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't
> > we try it out here in this one case?
>
> Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to
> end up with multiple versions?
>
As I said, I don't think that would be the case here. We'd just have
one article on the city now, and one on it historically. The Wikinfo
philosiphy, on the other hand, would allow two articles on the city
(in general).
This would be roughly equivalent to having an article on [[Istanbul]]
and one on [[Constantinople]].


from_name: bada nedwa

subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Ed Poor's abuse of admin powers

body:
reply to 172:

>>
What would be the reaction if I unprotected the Pinochet article and changed
the content to my preferred version?
>>
172 did so to the east germany page.  but without unprotecting.

>>
My changes would be reverted and actions would be taken against me swiftly.
>>
no such reaction occured in the above case.

>>
What Ed Poor did was no different. He was a party in the dispute and he used
admin powers to ram his way through.
>>
correct.

these matters should be moved to the relavent talk pages.

bad

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Snapshot wikipedia installations in schools

body:
Hello Andy

Andy Rabagliati wrote:
>   1.	Graphics	(you knew that was coming !)
>
> To determine feasibility of this, can you give me
> an idea of the size of a potential graphics archive ?
> An incremental snapshot would almost be mandatory for
> this, I think.

We currently can't distribute the image archive cause of copyright
issues. Somes images are made available under "fair use" or don't have
any license information (so they might be (c)).
The .plan is to add a license field for images that will allow us to
make 100% free image snapshot.

> 2. A daily SQL update for the main page.
>
> This will give it a newsy feel, instead of talking
> about Mandarin Chinese for two months :-) I know
> that some of the articles it refers to will not be
> available, but ... tough.

You can export the main page of en: by using the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export (might need to be logged
in). In the field just request "Main Page". It will output a xml feed
that can then be imported in your local wiki.
For import you can either use Special:Import page (available to sysops
only, might not be available in 1.2.X versions) or build a little parser
that will read the xml and put it in the database.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> On 06/08/04 23:18, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
>
>> For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the
>> city, for
>> the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should
>> be called Danzig.  There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises
>> that User:Halibutt has proposed.  Why can't people choose one of
>> those, note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the
>> purposes
>> purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been
>> adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and
>> should
>> not be taken for anything else?
>
>
>
> At present we have a Polish partisan who considers "formerly Danzig" in
> the intro to be DEEPLY OFFENSIVE because it was officially called Gdansk
> at some time even further before that. Read the talk, he's serious.

Well, this has been discussed to death, and really he's just going to
have to live with it.  For centuries "Danzig" was the common English
name for the city, and it still remains fairly common in history books,
well-known amongst many English-speaking people (I'd wager there's a
significant number of people who are familiar with "Danzig" but only
vaguely recall having heard of "Gdansk"), and is especially used when
dealing with the city's Prussian era.  Offensive or not, it's a
historical fact.  Certainly we can argue over when to use the various
names, but omitting the former common English name entirely is simply
not a reasonable option.

The talk page archives have about 10 pages of this issue.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Paris on July 4th

body:
Hi all,

The organisation of the meeting in Paris on July 4th is going well.
There are already 10 people who said they will come, including Jimmy Wales.

The meeting will take place at

Maison des M?tallos
94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
75011 Paris
T?l./fax : 01 47 00 68 45
M?tros: Parmentier, Couronnes, Saint-Maur
Map: http://metallosmedialab.fse-paris.org/wiki/view,main,Plan.html

Any Wikipedian is welcome.

Best wishes,
Yann

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


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

in_reply_to:
<ca4qvk$jsu$1@sea.gmane.org> (timwi@gmx.net's message of "Tue, 08
	Jun 2004 17:54:10 +0100")

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

> I'm sure you realise that if we did this, then other people would
> complain about other shortcuts, and very quickly we would have no
> letters left.

that's it.  it is plain wrong to steal users' shortcuts.  By default,
please disable this bug... feature.  I don't know what Alt-A now does
but it surely does not "Select All" any longer :-(

What can I do to get rid of them?

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon

body:
On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 01:19:46 +0100 (BST), Imran Ghory
<imran at bits.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
> I think there's one simple way to end this arguement,
> Paramount owns the copyright to the Klingon language, the words, the
> grammar, everything.

Some dispute that. (I'm not among those some.)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> maveric149 at yahoo.com wrote:
> Right now, the origins article is a part of the U.S. history series. An
> executive summary currentley exists and is found in [[History of the United
> States]]. Furthermore, the origins article starts off with a detailed
> overview and is supplemented by a timeline linked below the overview's
> heading.

I think that overview should be expanded to be an article in its own right. As
it is, it is not much longer than the summary at [[History of the United
States]]. That is hardly enough text to introduce the various parts of the
series.

> maveric149 at yahoo.com wrote:
>
> "If those parts [of the article] depend on context that has already been
> established by previous parts, then those will have to have more context and
> links added so that they can be both stand-alone articles and part of a
> series."
>
> The use of passive voice avoids addressing on key obstacle here: who's going
> to do this?

I'll start work on that this weekend.

>This would take far more time than it had taken me to write the
> entire article in the first place.

The ability to write good summaries is a rarer trait than the ability to write
at length on a subject. Let those who can summarize help improve the article
series by making it useful to people who don't want to read for an hour.

It should take me a couple hours to write a draft survey article that would
take a reader 15 minutes to read and link to full articles on 4 or 5 different
aspects of the topic explained in more detail (each section would be almost as
long as the current overview and have a 'Main article' link below its heading).
That gives the reader a real choice as to how much detail they are willing to
read through. The draft could be worked on a /temp page until it is ready to be
moved to [[Origins of the American Civil War]]. I would have started this a
while ago, but you have kept indicating you would revert any effort like that.

> ...
> The three of us should redirect our attention to making the existing
> overview, summary, and timeline for accessible to readers interested in a
> quick glace at the subject.

That will require an entire survey article and eventually a separate time lime.
Yes - let's get to work on that this weekend.

> Also, perhaps we can look into making it easier
> to follow the main outline as the reader turns from one page to the next.

'Page turning' is a print concept that does not work within the context of a
hyperlinked encyclopedia.

Let's continue this discussion on that talk page.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: every disputed article to end up with multiple
	versions....

body:
--- "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 8, 2004, at 7:45 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
> >> Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed
> >> article to
> >> end up with multiple versions?
>
> Well, what would be so terrible about that?

It is a violation of our NPOV policy and also forks the content. Articles
should be split when they get large enough to divide a topic into subtopics or
spin off a subtopic when it starts to take up too much space (leaving a summary
in its place). Duplication of content should be minimized outside of summaries
and should *never* be done just to give different partisan editors a chance to
have their "own" article written from "their" POV.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Yes, it is a lynch mob

body:
May I asked why no one is considering mediation ?
I think it was meant to help these types of cases ?
Actually, I even think at least "discussing" mediation possibility was a
mandatory step in dispute resolution ?

Abe Sokolov wrote:
> Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com wrote:
>
> "I don't want blood. I want peace."
>
> Heh, assuming that you're being honest here, you're not doing a good job.
>
> Saying such frivolous niceties may allow you to get away with a lot, but
> this is all about imposing your POV and nothing else.
>
> Either I was going to keep restoring this reference to U.S. backing of
> the '73 coup in Chile or VeryVerily, and to a lesser extent you, were
> going to keep censoring factual content (despite the fact that an
> overwhelming majority of uses who've chimed in on the talk page--
> roughly 90%-- favor keeping it).
>
> Not only did you unprotect the Pinochet article and remove the reference
> to U.S. backing immediately after I'd stopped making contributions, you
> neglected to mention that the edit war continued even with me gone.
>
> After my exit, your unprotection of the article, and your revision of
> the article, User:John Kenney restored the refernece to U.S. backing; VV
> then reverted him without comment right away. Later, a different user
> restored it-- this time Ruhrjung-- reinserted it; and, once agian, VV
> again reverted him unceremoniously, making no comment other than "stop"
> in the edit summary.
>
> I'm getting loudly and roundly condemned for "edit warring." But the
> only difference between Ruhrjung/John and me was that whereas they'd
> given up after one attempt, I was equally persistent as you and VV.
> That's why you want me banned-- for being just as committed to fighting
> censorship as you and VV were committed to censorship. Perhaps Ruhrjung,
> John, and many others were wise to give up. After all, had they stood up
> to you and your cohorts, they too would've been run out of town.
>
> Oh, you and VV are sure going to have fun rewriting history with me gone.
>
> -172
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://youroffers.msn.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:

>I think there's one simple way to end this arguement,
>
>Paramount owns the copyright to the Klingon language, the words, the
>grammar, everything.
>
>Let me repeat, (it is claimed) Paramount owns the copyright to individual
>klingon words.
>
>i.e. we can't legally have a klingon wikipedia.
>
>If someone can get Paramount to produce a waiver documents stating that it
>is perfectly legal for third parties to produce klingon language
>documents and redistrbute them under any licence, then we can reconsider.
>However until that time we should not risk copyright violation and wasting the time of contributors (to the
>Klingon wikipedia).
>
The situation may not be as simple as that.  It opens up the question of
whether a language can be copyrighted at all.  I suspect that it may be
patentable in the same way that certain accounting and business
processes have been patented.  But that's a whole new kettle of fish.

Have there been any court decisions anywhere about whether copyrights in
a langiuage can exist.

Ec


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

body:
On Jun 8, 2004, at 7:45 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

>> Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed
>> article to
>> end up with multiple versions?

Well, what would be so terrible about that?

"What, do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contract myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes." --Whitman

Wikipedia is not infinite but it is large, and it can contain
multitudes.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

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from_name: Kay Hamacher

body:
Hi,

I couldn't find a forum to ask for help other than this one (although I am aware
that it might be somewhat off-topic, sorry, I am desperated after 2 days of
unsuccessful trials right now).

I downloaded the english version of the whole wikipedia-history (some 10GB) and
installed it in a MySQL-database. The data is present. I can access it by e.g.
"mysql -> SELECT old_title FROM old;" or with a perl-script that opens the
database via DBI, executes any SQL-script and get the results on my screen. On
this side no problem. What I can't access is the actual (uncompressed, human
readable) content of the old_text-column itself. It's compressed, ok. I got that
from the php-source of mediawiki. But what's wrong with the following code?

 my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT old_title, old_text FROM old");
 $sth->execute;
 while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array ) {
  if(defined $row[0]) {
    print $row[0] . " ";
  }
  if(defined $row[1]) {
    my $a = uncompress($row[1]); # dummy variable
    print $a . "\n";
  }
 }

$a is not defined after this call. If I implement another possibility of
Compress::Zlib like:

 sub decompressText {
  my $d;
  my $status;
  my $out;
  my $out2;
  ($d, $status) = deflateInit(); #-Level => Z_BEST_COMPRESSION);
  $status == Z_OK
    or die "INIT failed\n" ;
  ($out, $status) = $d->deflate($_[0]) ;
  print "STATUS " . $status ."\n";
  $status == Z_OK
    or die "DEFLATE failed\n" ;
  ($out2, $status) = $d->flush() ;
  $status == Z_OK
    or die "FLUSH failed\n" ;
  if(defined $out) { print "DEFINED.\n";}
  if(defined $out2) { print "DEFINED2.\n";}
  my $z = $out . $out2;
  return $z;
 }

I just get decompressText(old_text) to be the binary-stuff I got with the simple
SELECT-statement without any (de)compression at all. According to the perldoc
both failures indicate that the uncompression wasn't successful.

So my question is: how do I uncompress "old_text" in the table "old"????

Please, please help. I tried it for 2 days and I am pretty sure the error is
obvious.

THANK YOU!

KaHa242


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Klingon, on the other hand, has been immortalized by The Simpsons and
>other mainstream comedies, not to mention Star Trek itself.
>
>By the way, Klingon now has 5 articles, and guess what they're about?
>Fictional worlds and concepts from Star Trek. The word "Star Trek" appears
>in none of them, so I suspect they don't even establish that they are
>fictional.
>
I don't know how to say "Star Trek" in Klingon.  I suppose that those
who write articles in Klingon already know that it's fictional.  Those
of us who don't read Klingon won't seek such information from that
source.  Those who understand Klingon, and believe that it is real, have
got more problems than we do. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] content validation

body:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_validation

build little by little with irc discussion :-)

Please offer feedback : add your comments and suggestions.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Meeting in Paris on July 4th

body:
For more information about who is coming, what will happen and so on,
please check
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ARencontre_Paris_juillet_2004

Most information about our future local chapter is also available from
these pages.

I would love it that wikipedians other than french or french-speaking
come as well :-)

ant

Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The organisation of the meeting in Paris on July 4th is going well.
> There are already 10 people who said they will come, including Jimmy Wales.
>
> The meeting will take place at
>
> Maison des M?tallos
> 94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
> 75011 Paris
> T?l./fax : 01 47 00 68 45
> M?tros: Parmentier, Couronnes, Saint-Maur
> Map: http://metallosmedialab.fse-paris.org/wiki/view,main,Plan.html
>
> Any Wikipedian is welcome.
>
> Best wishes,
> Yann
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: a humble request about the category display bug

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> The categories shouldn't be inside the article itself; they should be
>> moved further up a bit:
>
>
> I'd prefer they were moved to approximately where the "other languages"
> links currently are.
>
> -Mark

Switch to cologne blue :-)


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mediation for 172 and VeryVerily (was Re: Yes,
	it is a lynch mob)

body:
In the spirit of toning down the debate, I've changed the subject
heading again.

Anthere wrote:

> May I asked why no one is considering mediation ?

Because it was suggested and considered several times, and the idea
consistently met with skepticism and rejection or was simply ignored.

When I started the third quickpoll for 172 and VeryVerily, my proposed
remedy was a request for mediation. I would have requested arbitration
instead, but concluded the case wasn't ready for arbitration at that
point because other possibilities like mediation hadn't been tried yet.
This quickpoll even had the 80% support required for implementing a
quickpoll remedy, until members of the mediation committee showed up and
objected to the idea of forcing people into mediation. (I'm not saying
the mediators don't have a valid point there, just pointing out that the
community already recognized the need for mediation in this case long ago.)

When VeryVerily and 172 continued their dispute, I asked them directly
to consider mediation. They responded with skepticism, so I tried to
address their concerns about the mediation process, but I was never able
to get either of them to say directly that they'd be willing to try
mediation. Instead, they either put off considering mediation, ignored
the idea, or dismissed it altogether. Meanwhile, the dispute went on
unabated.

So mediation has been considered here, but to no avail, because mostly
it's been considered by people who don't matter. You and I can consider
mediation all we want, but it won't do any good - VeryVerily and 172 are
the ones who control whether mediation can be successful here. Since
they couldn't manage to resolve their differences by themselves, I think
the only option we have left is arbitration.

> I think it was meant to help these types of cases ?

It certainly could have helped, if anybody could have convinced
VeryVerily and 172 to try it. They are still welcome to go into
mediation, as the votes by the arbitrators on accepting this case have
indicated.

> Actually, I even think at least "discussing" mediation possibility was
> a mandatory step in dispute resolution ?

If you haven't checked [[Wikipedia:Dispute resolution]] lately, you
might not realize that the process is no longer described as a sequence
of steps to be followed in a prescribed order. Mediation is not
mandatory, and it is not a prerequisite to arbitration. However, because
arbitration is a last resort, other means of dispute resolution should
be tried first. Also, the arbitration policy specifically provides for
referrals to and from the mediation committee. In this case, efforts
were made to get 172 and VeryVerily to participate in mediation; these
efforts simply never reached the point of actually making a request for
involvement by the mediation committee.

--Michael Snow


body:
At 01:37 AM 6/9/2004 +0000, Abe Sokolov wrote:

>bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
>
>"I was trying to figure out the best way to go about changing the
>organization of the article by seeking input from people who knew more
>about the subject it was on than I did."
>
>You have shown no evidence that you are willing to do this. I am still
>waiting for you to respond to a number of postings detailing the problems
>posed by your proposals (both on the talk pages and on the mailing list).
>Since you have failed to respond so far, I'm still concerned about these
>very same things.

The relevant talk page and section is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War/Archive_2#The_titles_of_the_four_pages_this_article_got_split_over
and I can't see any posting of yours that I didn't give some sort of a
response to, aside from the last one which I left dangling because I'd
given my sigh of resignation at that point. As for the postings _here_, I
already said several messages back that I didn't think this mailing list
wasn't the right place to be discussing the contents of the article itself.
I've deliberately skipped responding to those bits to keep focused on the
original subject.

>bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
>
>"All I see is someone being irrationally aggressive and possessive of an
>article I wanted to do some work on."
>
>This is wrong. You made proposals advocating sweeping changes to an
>article. Then, I responded explaining why I was skeptical, which was the
>proper route for me to take. You never responded to my points. Instead,
>you assumed right off the bat that I'm not "very good at collaborating"
>because I had concerns about your approach to reorganizing an article that
>you yourself admit to never having read. This is where the break in the
>rational-give-and-take first appeared.

I admitted to not having read the whole thing _yet._ I'd skimmed it and was
planning to read it more in-depth later, but you hauled out the threat of
an edit war before I got to that point so I wandered off to do other stuff
instead. Perhaps you could point out what my approach to reorganizing the
article that you object to so strenuously actually _was_, since I don't
believe I actually settled on one before quitting? Or, for that matter, why
you think I assumed "right off the bat" that you were a poor collaborator?
I gave you the benefit of the doubt even when you moved our discussion into
an archive subpage and protected it partway through, it was only after the
second edit war threat that I decided you were being unreasonable and that
it wasn't worth my time fighting you.

Anyway, if you want to continue the discussion on the organization of the
article itself, I've got the talk: page watchlisted so just go ahead. I
think I've said all I wanted to say about my opinion of your attitude and I
don't think it's likely to change at this rate.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

references:
<ca2g1a$ij8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<9AUxRsUxpVB@erik_moeller>	<ca4su5$pq0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40C60A20.5080805@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I just can't describe how angry I was and still am about the
>> favouritism Toki Pona is receiving. It is totally infuriating, seriously.
>
> It's not receiving any favoritism, it's just being utterly ignored.

But that is exactly the favouritism I mean. :/

Timwi

P.S.: I knew Toki Pona was a conlang before its Wikipedia was created,
but then again, I'm a geek.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Placement of categories

body:
Timwi wrote:

> I notice that the categories have now been moved to the bottom.
> Why was this done in preference to my suggestion, which as far as I can
> see didn't receive opposition?

Please can whoever made this change reply to this question?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Alt-B

references:
<pan.2004.06.08.12.30.14.532128@arvin.dk>	<ca4qvk$jsu$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<shu0xlhq8p.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>
>>I'm sure you realise that if we did this, then other people would
>>complain about other shortcuts, and very quickly we would have no
>>letters left.
>
> that's it.  it is plain wrong to steal users' shortcuts.  By default,
> please disable this bug... feature.  I don't know what Alt-A now does
> but it surely does not "Select All" any longer :-(

"Select All" is Ctrl+A, not Alt+A, and is not overridable with website
shortcuts, nor is any other direct keyboard shortcut (at least in
Firefox), because they all involve Ctrl.

The only things that are interfered with are the menus. I figure that
this is a minor issue. Keyboard freaks tend to use direct keyboard
shortcuts instead of going through the menus (e.g. "Ctrl+D" instead of
"Alt+B, A"), while non-keyboard freaks tend to use the mouse anyway.
Those that really really insist on using the menus through the keyboard
can still use the workaround I described (press Alt and release it, then
press B). It's not even any more key presses; it's only a matter of
getting used to it.

> What can I do to get rid of them?

I think it is possible with JavaScript (using
[[User:Yourusername/monobook.js]]), but I'm not an expert at this.
Someone who is should probably reply and explain it.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proliferation of "unfairly blocked" mails

body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:

> And in general, what is up with the proliferation of "unfairly
> blocked" messages on the mailing list?

The people who understand that they have been *fairly* blocked, don't
tend to post to the mailing list about it. :)


body:
Fennec Foxen wrote:

> On Sun, 30 May 2004 23:20:10 -0400 (EDT), kartik at townisp.com
> <kartik at townisp.com> wrote:
>
>>One day when I looked at the quadratic formula page, it mentioned another
>>quadratic formula I had never seen before:
>
> <snip>
> On Wikipedia, I have a message I use for cases such as this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sofixit

Nice one ... but I think its use of links is a little dodgy and probably
confusing to newbies:

> So, feel free to _be bold_ and make this correction yourself!

Here, "be bold" is a link. Where is a newbie supposed to think it leads
to? It seems to suggest that one should click it in order to be bold. I
don't think that makes a lot of sense to people.

> If you are unsure about _how to edit a page_, try out the _Sandbox_ to test your editing skills.

This sentence contains *one* suggestion, but *two* links. While the
latter link seems to be what the suggestion is about, it leaves the
visitor wondering in confusion about the former link.

I am posting this here not just because I want to discuss this
particular thing, but because I think that quite in general, people tend
to put these spurious links into text that is meant for newbies,
thinking "the more links to introductory newbie explainy pages, the
better!", but it's really confusing if the newbie has no idea where the
links actually go.

So here is my suggestion for a change. Of course, it's a little bit
longer-winded than Fennec's original:

Hello, [[Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers|welcome to Wikipedia]]! We welcome
your contributions. Wikipedia is a [[wiki]], and anyone - including you!
- can edit nearly any article, at any time, by clicking the '''Edit'''
tab at the top of the page, next to the tabs for Discussion and History.
You don't even need to [[Special:Userlogin|log in]], although there are
several [[Wikipedia:Why create an account?|reasons why you might want
to]]. Here at Wikipedia, [[Wikipedia:be bold|we ask people to be bold]]
and not be afraid of making mistakes. So, feel free to make this
correction yourself! If you are unsure about how editing works, have a
look at [[Wikipedia:how to edit a page|''How to edit a page'']], or try
out the [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|Sandbox]] to test your editing skills.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help for use of template

body:
Hi all,

I want to make a template page where, if I use it
without arguments, the parameter {{{1}}} has the value
{{PAGENAME}}, but if I do use an argument, the
parameter
{{{1}}} has the value with which I'm calling.

Is that possible?

Sorry if this is not the proper list.
Also sorry for even asking the question, but after
close to an hour looking through the documentation in
meta and en, I still don't know if this is possible.

AstroNomer

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from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon

body:
I think there's one simple way to end this arguement,

Paramount owns the copyright to the Klingon language, the words, the
grammar, everything.

Let me repeat, (it is claimed) Paramount owns the copyright to individual
klingon words.

i.e. we can't legally have a klingon wikipedia.

If someone can get Paramount to produce a waiver documents stating that it
is perfectly legal for third parties to produce klingon language
documents and redistrbute them under any licence, then we can reconsider.
However until that time we should not risk copyright violation and wasting the time of contributors (to the
Klingon wikipedia).

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 06/08/04 23:18, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

> For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the city, for
> the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should
> be called Danzig.  There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises
> that User:Halibutt has proposed.  Why can't people choose one of those,
> note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the purposes
> purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been
> adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and should
> not be taken for anything else?

At present we have a Polish partisan who considers "formerly Danzig" in
the intro to be DEEPLY OFFENSIVE because it was officially called Gdansk
at some time even further before that. Read the talk, he's serious.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
On 06/08/04 09:18, Marco Krohn wrote:

> what about _limited_ ads? With limited I mean that individual wikipedias (en,
> de, fr,...) can decide on their own if they want to increase Wikipedias
> revenue stream or not, e.g. if "es" doesn't want ads no ads on their pages
> will be shown. An additional option would be showing ads to anonymous viewers
> only or vice versa to logged in users only, as far as they agree with that.
> Me for example wouldn't mind if I see some ads if I know that this increases
> Wikipedias revenue stream a bit.
> I know I am opening Pandora's box, but if we need some constant revenue stream
> then this is something we should at least think about. As long as there is an
> easy way to remove ads, e.g. logged in users can switch ads off (or on) by
> changing their preference entries, I would found it an acceptable solution.

After the last time ads were even *suggested* led to a fork from es and a pile
of contributors up and leaving for the fork, I suggest this idea is unlikely
to fly.

- d.


from_name: Abe Sokolov

body:
bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:

"I was trying to figure out the best way to go about changing the
organization of the article by seeking input from people who knew more about
the subject it was on than I did."

You have shown no evidence that you are willing to do this. I am still
waiting for you to respond to a number of postings detailing the problems
posed by your proposals (both on the talk pages and on the mailing list).
Since you have failed to respond so far, I'm still concerned about these
very same things.

bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:

"All I see is someone being irrationally aggressive and possessive of an
article I wanted to do some work on."

This is wrong. You made proposals advocating sweeping changes to an article.
Then, I responded explaining why I was skeptical, which was the proper route
for me to take. You never responded to my points. Instead, you assumed right
off the bat that I'm not "very good at collaborating" because I had concerns
about your approach to reorganizing an article that you yourself admit to
never having read. This is where the break in the rational-give-and-take
first appeared.

-172

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Ray-

> Of course!  Without actually calling the klingophiles trolls, the
> "Ignore the trolls" principle still applies.  The Klingon language would
> be less successful if it were given full privileges so the everyone
> could then actively ignore it. :-)

It's difficult to ignore Klingon when it is plastered over 50 Main Pages
and added as interlanguage links to thousands of serious articles about
human history, politics and religion. That was always my main concern and
the compromise addresses this problem.

I agree with Timwi that Toki Pona should be treated the same, as should
all other minor conlangs, but this has less priority for me because nobody
knows those, and Toki Pona sounds like it's the name of some native tribe
in Papua New Guinea. The potential effect on our reputation is diminished.
Klingon, on the other hand, has been immortalized by The Simpsons and
other mainstream comedies, not to mention Star Trek itself.

By the way, Klingon now has 5 articles, and guess what they're about?
Fictional worlds and concepts from Star Trek. The word "Star Trek" appears
in none of them, so I suspect they don't even establish that they are
fictional. This is the kind of Pandora's Box we are opening here.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: André Müller

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
To Erik Moeller & Brion Vibber...

  Does Google look like an unserious project to you, just because it's
available in Klingon? Do you *really* think users would go to the
Wikipedia site, find all those useful information, get amazed by the
amount of its wisdom and diversity... then find the Klingon link and
leave the site immediately?
  I'm sure most people who aren't interested in Klingon, Star Trek or
conlangs would see the link, think something like "Klingon? Oh, uhm,
nice..." and forget about this part of the Wikipedia. I absolutely don't
believe that a Klingon Wikipedia would scare off users or potential
contributors, as you and some others seem to think. It's not that hard
to draw a line between 'popular' conlangs and private ones, as we
finally seemed to have agreed on (concerning the ISO/SIL standards).

  Maybe my Google example wasn't representative, since Google's also
available in numerous nonsense fun-langs. There won't be a Ikipedia-way
or a w1k1p3d14 of course.
I can't imagine that a Klingon one would have a negative influence.
Maybe a slightly positive one as it will attract Trekkies, linguists and
conlang fans.

  No one would reject a site just because there is an ignorable option.
Besides, the language link would read "tlhIngan Hol", which is rather
hard to track back to the word "Klingon". Toki Pona links also read
"Toki Pona" and not "that conlang with the 120 words, ya know".

(sorry for this long post, I can never keep myself shortwinded)

- Andr?


subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:
> Paramount owns the copyright to the Klingon language, the words, the
grammar, everything [...]

I thought this was already cleared up - either with Paramount or in
general that it's allowed to have a Klingon Wikipedia, theoretically.
Hm, this issue should be primary.

- Andr?


subject: Summary style (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken)

body:
maveric149 at yahoo.com wrote:

"No - I want more text by adding a survey article that summarizes the whole
topic and provides links to the detailed parts that have already been
written."

Right now, the origins article is a part of the U.S. history series. An
executive summary currentley exists and is found in [[History of the United
States]]. Furthermore, the origins article starts off with a detailed
overview and is supplemented by a timeline linked below the overview's
heading.

maveric149 at yahoo.com wrote:

"If those parts [of the article] depend on context that has already been
established by previous parts, then those will have to have more context and
links added so that they can be both stand-alone articles and part of a
series."

The use of passive voice avoids addressing on key obstacle here: who's going
to do this? This would take far more time than it had taken me to write the
entire article in the first place. Instead, we should focus our time and
energy on areas where Wikipedia is far more underdeveloped. After all, the
feedback about the Civil War origins article has been overwhelmingly
positive. The Poynter Institute even cited it as an example of one of WP's
reference-quality articles. A high school teacher recommended it to his/her
class and said that the article was helpful to his/her students. The bulk of
the positive feedback was sent to my e-mail account through the WP e-mail
feature. The only criticism has come from you and Bryan, who admits that he
hasn't even bothered to read the article.

The three of us should redirect our attention to making the existing
overview, summary, and timeline for accessible to readers interested in a
quick glace at the subject. Also, perhaps we can look into making it easier
to follow the main outline as the reader turns from one page to the next.

-172

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed Poor's abuse of admin powers

body:
I think that a number of users have been misunderstanding my posting. I was
not calling Ed Poor's activities on the mailing list an abuse of admin
powers. This was just an attempt by Ed Poor to poison the well against me so
that he could get his way on the Pinochet article, where he did abuse admin
powers.

His unprotection of the Pinochet article and minutes later his restoration
of the version favored by VeryVerily (but opposed by roughly 90% of the
users who've participated in the discussion on the talk page) were the
abuses to which I was referring.

-172

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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Alt-B

body:
On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 14:30 +0200, Troels Arvin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In the new default skin, the Alt-B key combination seems to bound to the
> "what links here" function. Alt-B is normally the shortcut to the
> bookmarks, at least in my browser (Mozilla Firefox). I find the binding to
> "what links here" rather annoying, because it blocks me from a keyboard
> shortcut. I doubt that I'm the only one annoyed by this.
>
> I suggest that the Alt-B key mapping be dropped or changed to something
> else.

You can try the new accesskey system i wrote in the last days at
http://wikidev.net. Changing them is a matter of changing the array that
defines them in your user js:

ta['ca-nstab-main'] = new Array('a','View the content page');
ta['ca-nstab-user'] = new Array('a','View the user page');
ta['ca-nstab-media'] = new Array('a','View the media page');
ta['ca-nstab-special'] = new Array('','This is a special page, you
can\'t edit the page itself.');
ta['ca-nstab-wp'] = new Array('a','View the project page');
ta['ca-nstab-image'] = new Array('a','View the image page');
ta['ca-nstab-mediawiki'] = new Array('a','View the system message');
ta['ca-nstab-template'] = new Array('a','View the template');
ta['ca-nstab-help'] = new Array('a','View the help page');
ta['ca-nstab-category'] = new Array('a','View the category page');

Swap the 'a' for something else and you're set.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Load tests, tweaking apache

body:
Jeronim and I spent about three hours doing some load testing on yongle
after taking it out of rotation. The idea was to see whether Apache
tweaking could effect any kind of a performance increase. Short summary:
it couldn't.

100 requests randomly sent to a sample of URLs collected from 'en' main
page produced the following numbers:

Elapsed time:                   7.50 secs
Data transferred:            3137074 bytes
Response time:                  0.64 secs
Transaction rate:              13.33 trans/sec
Throughput:                418276.53 bytes/sec
Concurrency:                    8.51

Slow. Next step was to remove all of the Special:* and Category:* pages
from the list, since they're database-intensive. The load test now
completed in 6.21 seconds, with 16.1 trans/s. Marginal increase, but
nothing significant.

Two particular pages were then picked: [[Vietnam War]] (large) and
[[Pyrite]] (small). Running with 50 concurrent clients, 50 repetitions,
Pyrite rendered with about 21.6 trans/sec and Vietnam War with about
18.9 trans/sec. A static image file (from upload) was then tried,
yielding 1785 trans/s.

Two different sets of Apache settings for Max/Min SpareServers,
StartServers, MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild were tried, but the
resulting performance numbers didn't seem different in any way that
would hold up to statistical significance. Bottom line: Apache doesn't
even get close to being a bottleneck.

A survey of the apache machines showed about 5-19 requests/sec being
processed on them. The boxes had little free ram lying around, but
generally weren't swapping. However, if these numbers are any good
indication, here's some inference, which should be taken as educated
guessing only:

- PHP/Mediawiki are slow. A good start for anyone willing to tackle this
will be to look at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling/Live_aggregate_20040606

- The current Wikipedia setup won't scale too much, but things will
improve once the servers we've been having problems with become
operational. From there on, we'll likely be able to deal with growth by
just acquiring new apaches and putting them into the farm.

- Static files are by no means a bottleneck, and should not be a
priority for distribution in the near future.

Cheers,
Ivan.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikitech-l] small template & furigana

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 03:41:29PM +0900, Makoto & Guillaume wrote:
>
>
>>Other thing, I tried to make a template to be able to write Japanese
>>furigana (small letters over kanjis to give the pronunciation) into
>>articles. I tried this
>>
>>
>
>Shouldn't UTF-8 provide the needed diacritic characters needed to compose
>these, without needing HTML tables?
>
>
I don't think it does.  The standard way of writing many Japanese words
is to use kanji (or at least to partially use kanji), which are
ideographs, similar to the Chinese alphabet (indeed, kanji is
essentially an adapted Chinese alphabet).  Since ideographic alphabets
aren't phonetically-based, it's not generally possible for people who
don't know a particular character to pronounce it, in the way one can
"sound out" unknown words in phonetically-based alphabets.  To overcome
that, sometimes Japanese kanji characters are "spelled out" phonetically
using the phonetic hiragana alphabet, using small characters placed
either above the corresponding kanji (in horizontal text) or next to the
kanji (in vertical text).

So it's really something more on the publication-layout level than on
the character level, which is why it'll probably never be in Unicode,
even as a combinator sort of thing.

-Mark


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] That city in northern Europe

body:
There is a city in northern Europe called Danzig by Germans and Gdansk
by Poles. Both words have "Dan" as a common element.

The last time I waded into this dispute, it was about what the
"rightful" name of the city is -- or was, in various points in history.

The solution I proposed, and which attracted enough consensus for the
article to be unlocked, was for Wikipedia to:

1. Refuse to take sides on the issue of what the city OUGHT to be
called; and

2. Describe the dispute in the text of the article.

We also noted that the placement of the article at
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danzig or at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdansk should
NOT be taken as "official recognition" of one name or the other -- but
be based purely on however English-speaking people primarily refer to
the city.

I daresay the geographical standard, in the West anyway, is to pick the
most common form. Except if there's a dispute we use the slash, as in
"East Sea/Sea of Japan" which I saw in a recent article about Korea.

Ed Poor


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: some profiling results

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have made some profiling loading my mediawiki main page (
> http://www.twenkill.net/wiki/ ) wich use phptal monobook skin and is set
> to use the french language. For profilling I used "Advanced php profiler".
>
<snip>

> CPU:
> 1/ looks like languagefr->ucfirst use about 20% of the total script time
> for the sole purpose of uppercasing the first char of a given string by
> calling strtr(). Maybe the strings could be declared as utf-8 and a php
> function like uppercase() called instead ? I think Tim Starling looked a
> bit at this.
>
> 2/ wfprofileout use 5% although it's an empty function. Using single
> quote instead of double seems to have improved it a bit :)
>
> 3/ do_html_entity_decode use close to 4% maybe it could be replaced by
> the php function html_entity_decode() that looks to make the same task
> (php >= 4.3.0)

I profiled a bit with language set to en and the page:
	http://www.twenkill.net/wiki/index.php/Parser_Benchmark
With profiling disable the wfprofileout and wfprofilein functions still
use about 7% of cpu time.
Although they don't use a lot of cpu time, both are called about 800 times.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


body:
maveric149 at yahoo.com:

"It should take me a couple hours to write a draft survey article that would
take a reader 15 minutes to read and link to full articles on 4 or 5
different aspects of the topic explained in more detail (each section would
be almost as long as the current overview and have a 'Main article' link
below its heading)."

If you start a temp page, more power to you. I can think of dozens of
priorities that are far more urgent, but it's not my time.

maveric149 at yahoo.com:

"[Y]ou have kept indicating you would revert any effort like that."

No, I did not indicate that I'd revert any effort like that. At one point, I
said that in response to a specific proposal by Bryan, which did not entail
rewriting any content or carrying out this process on a temp page. This
sounds like a good plan (if you're willing to put the time into it). I'll
take a look at it when you're done.

-172

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body:
maveric149 at yahoo.com:

"The ability to write good summaries is a rarer trait than the ability to
write at length on a subject. Let those who can summarize help improve the
article series by making it useful to people who don't want to read for an
hour."

Are you saying that I can't. FYI, I've written dozens of brief articles on
broad subjects too. I just don't list them on my user page because I don't
want to give stalkers a guidebook.

-172

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from_name: Cerise Rose

subject: [WikiEN-l] ...

body:
Interesting that after telling you to leave me ALONE after this I now receive a few more replies.

IF the site was set up to leave a message for an ADMINISTRATOR or ADMINISTRATOR QUEUE without having to log in, I would not have HAD to go this route.  First off, every email I send to wikien-l at Wikipedia.org gets a reply that says it would have to be reviewed by the administrators BEFORE it was released to the board.  I realized it wasn't the 'right' place to send the message but there was no other obvious place on the pages I could access.  Silly me thought one would actually BE looking at it and deal with what could be a potential problem on YOUR board. If I was posting to the wrong place,  or if there was a better place to contact the admins, maybe it should be a bit more obvious.  With the ban message I received I couldn't get into all areas of the site, right?  You'd think that people who are banned erroneously or not, might need a way to contact the administration if they think it's in error.

I don't know who you, or anyone else is, when they email me back, right?  I'M NOT and DO NOT WISH to be a member.  When someone asks me for an IP and sounds like they're going to investigate when I provide them the info, am I so far off to think they MIGHT be an ADMINISTRATOR?  Even Theresa's response today asks me to give information on the error messages I received (which, again weeks later, I don't remember them).

Timwi, I'm am not getting into the semantics of my post.  Telling someone to calm down *IS* rude.  I didn't say Theresa was hyper or upset, did I?  So your point about her reply not being so either is completely irrelevant.

If I don't understand things about the board maybe it's because I'm NOT A MEMBER.  I can't stress this enough.  I'm someone who found some interesting things on a website and for no apparent reason hit a wall and thought a simple email to the admins voicing my displeasure at the screwed up site might get me somewhere. In hindsight, I wish I'd just hit another google site and been done with this crap.

I was reading.  I clicked on a link to go to another page of what I was reading. From that moment on I could not access a single thing on the site, except for a page that has a link to a message board that apparently spits my concern to all and sundry without prejudice.  End
of story.  Something somewhere FUCKED UP. Usually administrators and site webmasters LIKE to know when things go wrong. Usually they listen to feedback.  Apparently this site is NOT set up that way.

As for swearing at casual participants, for that I apologize Theresa.  Without identifying yourself as not being admin, I did think you were representing the site. I am normally not so reactive, but the sheer and utter stupidity of the way this site runs (or doesn't run) has frustrated me beyond belief.

I will not reply to any more messages.  I'm completely done with this.  Thank you for taking your time and attempting to assist me, again, Theresa I'm sorry for not understanding your position and taking out what should be for the administration on you.

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from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: semi-permanent protection of (very) contentious

body:
On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:37:56 +0200 (CEST), Magnus Link <ruhrjung at yahoo.de> wrote:
>  --- dpbsmith at verizon.net schrieb:
> > For example, if you get to a soft-protected page
> > by any usual route and click "edit this page,"
> > it might take you to a screen that explains that
> > the subject is contentious. The only option to
> > proceed takes you, not to the article's Edit box,
> > but to the article's Talk page.
>
> Does it help against determined editors of the type of
> our Polish friends or their extremist pro-German
> counterparts, or, to hang on to the Pinochet example,
> of the type of Wik, 172 and VV?

No, I don't think anything like this would- but I don't see that as
the target audience for this sort of feature. I am thinking more along
the lines of, say, [[Jew]] or some other article of that nature which
is prone to vandalism and things saying Jews are evil heretical tools
of the Devil (or something to that effect); various pages on other
controversial topics might include some related to Israel, Palestine,
and other topics in the middle east. (This-list-not-exhaustive
disclaimer here.)


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

body:
On Tue, 08 Jun 2004, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> Hello Andy
>
> Andy Rabagliati wrote:
> >  1.	Graphics	(you knew that was coming !)
>
> We currently can't distribute the image archive cause of copyright
> issues. Somes images are made available under "fair use" or don't have
> any license information (so they might be (c)).
> The .plan is to add a license field for images that will allow us to
> make 100% free image snapshot.

I have seen some of the discussion. I am just passing on the number
one request !

> >2. A daily SQL update for the main page.
> >
> You can export the main page of en: by using the
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export (might need to be logged
> in). In the field just request "Main Page". It will output a xml feed
> that can then be imported in your local wiki.
> For import you can either use Special:Import page (available to sysops
> only, might not be available in 1.2.X versions) or build a little parser
> that will read the xml and put it in the database.

For this to work for me, it has to be fully automateable, over UUCP.

Is there a script that will take the XML export and incorporate it
into the MySQL database so the Mediawiki front end will see it ?

Then a cronjob my end pulls the XML, and sends it to the school
via UUCP, which stuffs it on stdin to a script, and the wiki is
magically updated every day.

Thanks for your solid suggestions.

Cheers,     Andy!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 10:41:33 +0200, Ralesk Ne'vennoyx
<ralesk at livejournal.com> wrote:
> > By the way, Klingon now has 5 articles, and guess what they're about?
> > Fictional worlds and concepts from Star Trek. The word "Star Trek" appears
> > in none of them, so I suspect they don't even establish that they are
> > fictional. This is the kind of Pandora's Box we are opening here.
> >
> I'm afraid you are being very paranoid there.

On the contrary- while I don't see it as Pandora's Box, it raises the
question of whether the Klingon wikipedia would really fit the ideals
of the Wikimedia foundation... If it's not a general-purpose
encyclopedia, does it really belong as a Wikipedia? Wikipedia is not
[[Memory Alpha]].


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] small template & furigana

body:
On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 03:41:29PM +0900, Makoto & Guillaume wrote:
> // this mail use UTF-8 format //
>
> Hi all.
> Can you please remove the "5 same template per page" limit for small
> templates?
> Tim Starling spoke about other method to limit risk of DOS attack (based on
> template size), but waiting to those implementations can you deactivate the
> limit (or set it to 100) for tiny template (ex: less than 1kb, 256 bytes, or
> 100 bytes).
>
> For example, on French WP, we use a lot of {{e}} to emulate
> e (it's same as the English "th" for centuries,
> etc.).
>
> Other thing, I tried to make a template to be able to write Japanese
> furigana (small letters over kanjis to give the pronunciation) into
> articles. I tried this

Shouldn't UTF-8 provide the needed diacritic characters needed to compose
these, without needing HTML tables?

JeLuF


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

body:
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one
> called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German
> heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical
> emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't
> we try it out here in this one case?

Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to
end up with multiple versions?

While I can see the benefits of the Wikinfo philosophy to article
writers, I think it does readers a disservice.

For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the city, for
the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should
be called Danzig.  There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises
that User:Halibutt has proposed.  Why can't people choose one of those,
note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the purposes
purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been
adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and should
not be taken for anything else?

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

Lyle Lanley: Well there's nothing on Earth like a genuine bonified,
             electrified six-car monorail
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle: What's it called
Patty & Selma: Monorail!
Lyle: That's right, monorail
All(chant): Monorail, monorail, monorail..
Ms Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud
Lyle: It glides as softly as a cloud
Apu: Any chance the track could bend?
Lyle: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about all us braindead slobs?
Lyle: You'll be given cushy jobs
Granpa: Were you sent here by the Devil?
Lyle: No good sir, I'm on the level.
Chief Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can
Lyle: Take my penknife, my good man.
I swear it's Sprinfield's only choice
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail!
What's it called?
Monorail!
Once again
Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken
All: Monorail..Monorail..Monorail!  Monorail!
Homer:Mono..'doh!
  --The Simpsons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: small template & furigana

body:
Makoto & Guillaume wrote:
> // this mail use UTF-8 format //
>
> Hi all.
> Can you please remove the "5 same template per page" limit for small
> templates?
> Tim Starling spoke about other method to limit risk of DOS attack (based on
> template size), but waiting to those implementations can you deactivate the
> limit (or set it to 100) for tiny template (ex: less than 1kb, 256 bytes, or
> 100 bytes).
>
> For example, on French WP, we use a lot of {{e}} to emulate
> e (it's same as the English "th" for centuries,
> etc.).

Hello,

Also have a look at this bug report:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=411192&aid=967833&group_id=34373

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Magnus Link

body:
 --- dpbsmith at verizon.net schrieb:

> If we start getting a lot of pages that
> are protected for this reason, I am
> afraid we will see creative bad behavior
> that is intended to bypass this protection.
> In order not to stimulate such behavior
> I will not give examples of some
> possibilities that occur to me.

Yes, I agree. This is probable, but I am not sure that
this would be worse than the current situation.
Maybe a later counterstep would have to be some
screening and/or delayed appearance of new articles,
or maybe such a solution would turn out to be
unnecessary. It's hard to know in advance.

> I suggest we ask the developers for a way to
> "soft-protect" pages.

It's reassuring to see another constructive proposal
to discuss. It seems, to me, to be an efficient
approach; much more efficient than discussing
solutions for singular problematic pages one after
another, as the proposed making two parallell articles
of the Gdansk article, which isn't really what I hope
for.

This proposal does also seem to be relatively easy to
implement, although of course not as easy as using the
now working procedures for protection of pages.

> A "soft-protected" page could be edited by anyone,
> but would require some annoying, time-consuming
> and (wishful thinking) thought-provoking steps to
> be performed first.
>
> For example, if you get to a soft-protected page
> by any usual route and click "edit this page,"
> it might take you to a screen that explains that
> the subject is contentious. The only option to
> proceed takes you, not to the article's Edit box,
> but to the article's Talk page.

Does it help against determined editors of the type of
our Polish friends or their extremist pro-German
counterparts, or, to hang on to the Pinochet example,
of the type of Wik, 172 and VV?

Please understand that I'm not intending to point out
these individuals. I dislike some typical habits of
theirs, not really them personally. Many other
valuable contributors show more or less of the same
un-cooperative and un-civilized behavior, and it would
be good if we could curb this kind of behavior in
order to avoid situations where the misbehaving
individuals ultimately produced angry mobs pushing
them out of Wikipedia.

Mit sch?nen Gr??en von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Technical problems on nl:wiktionary

body:
LS,
On the nl:wiktionary, we use the message {{m}} a lot. It is used to indicate the gender of a word. With words like Engels (English) we have many translations that require a gender indication.

This used to work fine, now however, from the fifth onwards it does not produce the text that is in the message ''m'', but it gives us a [[Sjabloon:M]] which is plain wrong.

Any suggestions why and what can be done ??

Thanks,
  GerardM


from_name: T_Karcher at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed image / media file hosting

body:
Hi all,

sorry if this has been brought up before (I'm not reading wikitech-l on a
regular basis), but I just got an idea for reducing the server load at
Wikipedia without messing around with distributed databases and the like:
Why not distribute static images and media files for starters?

http://de.wikipedia.org/upload/9/9a/WikiReader_Internet.pdf alone will be
responsible for more than 5 GB of transfer volume this month (a guess based
on my experience with http://tkarcher.gmxhome.de/WikiReader_Schweden.pdf ).
With more and more images and large media files on the rise, we could
noticeably reduce the server load by distributing these files.

How? Well, first we'd need some (5 to 10?) mirrors willing to sync their
data on a daily basis. Once these servers are up and running, we could
implement a simple, PHP-driven load balancing by changing the image (and
media file) source locations dynamically. (Script driven as opposed to
server driven, because we'd have to check whether the file was added within
the last 24 hours. You wouldn't want to wait for your newly added image to
appear in your article a whole day, would you?)

What do you think about it?

Thomas


body:
Andy Rabagliati wrote:
<snip xml export>
> For this to work for me, it has to be fully automateable, over UUCP.
>
> Is there a script that will take the XML export and incorporate it
> into the MySQL database so the Mediawiki front end will see it ?
>
> Then a cronjob my end pulls the XML, and sends it to the school
> via UUCP, which stuffs it on stdin to a script, and the wiki is
> magically updated every day.

Hello,

I just discovered the special:export page accepted a page as parameter
in the url.
XML for en:Main_Page can be retriew at:
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Main_Page
That code doesn't change that much anyway, it would be better to get the
sub sections instead like {{Did you know}} & {{In_the_news}}:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Template:Did_you_know
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Template:In_the_news

The Special:Import page isn't ready yet, although you can get its code
through:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/includes/SpecialImport.php
and maybe help developpers to get it working correctly :o)
In your case, I think you should make a simple xml parsing script that
update the database.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Andy Rabagliati wrote:

>>You can export the main page of en: by using the
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export (might need to be logged
>>in). In the field just request "Main Page". It will output a xml feed
>>that can then be imported in your local wiki.
>>For import you can either use Special:Import page (available to sysops
>>only, might not be available in 1.2.X versions) or build a little parser
>>that will read the xml and put it in the database.
>>
>>
>
>For this to work for me, it has to be fully automateable, over UUCP.
>
>Is there a script that will take the XML export and incorporate it
>into the MySQL database so the Mediawiki front end will see it ?
>
>Then a cronjob my end pulls the XML, and sends it to the school
>via UUCP, which stuffs it on stdin to a script, and the wiki is
>magically updated every day.
>
>
>
I am currently working on a Window$ syncing software. It will be able to
read the XML created by [[Special:Export]]. All I need on the wikipedia
end is a function that returns a plain text list of all articles that
have been edited since a given date. A single, simple SQL query on the
wikipedia server will do.

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pear wiki text !

body:
Hello,

When I started looking at mediawiki code, I tried to find a
yacc/lex/bison php tool to generate a php parser given a syntax.

I have looked again at the pear site and found a wiki text parser
that started at the beginning of dec. 2003 (see below for link).

The class is still alpha stuff but it might possibly be used for our
usage ?  Instead of trying to develop our own parser, maybe we can start
trow ideas in text_wiki class and maybe have one day an unified wiki
syntax that will be common to all wikis !!

Pear page of the package : http://pear.php.net/package/Text_Wiki
Package website : http://wiki.ciaweb.net/yawiki/index.php?area=Text_Wiki

The text_wiki supports tables, headers, definition lists, interwikis.
Maybe we can work with them ?

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Ralesk Ne'vennoyx

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> It's difficult to ignore Klingon when it is plastered over 50 Main Pages
> and added as interlanguage links to thousands of serious articles about
> human history, politics and religion. That was always my main concern and
> the compromise addresses this problem.
>
And how can KlingonWP not produce the same in the long run?

> By the way, Klingon now has 5 articles, and guess what they're about?
> Fictional worlds and concepts from Star Trek. The word "Star Trek" appears
> in none of them, so I suspect they don't even establish that they are
> fictional. This is the kind of Pandora's Box we are opening here.
>
I'm afraid you are being very paranoid there.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: Wikitech-l post from
 responsable.ekipage@online.fr requires approval]

body:
I initially discarded this as spam (HTML mail, request for
"partnership", first paragraph links to a web site) but on second look
it looks legit. Sorry!

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

Subject: Urgent : Demande de Partenariat / Urgent: Ask Partnership
From: "responsable.ekipage" <responsable.ekipage at online.fr>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:22:39 +0200
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>

Monsieur,

Ne sachant trop ? qui m'adresser, je me permets de vous ?crire, esp?rant
qu'il vous sera possible de transmettre mon courrier ? la personne
concern?e par ma requ?te.
Je d?veloppe un site ludo-?ducatif pour enfants : www.ekipage.net  non
commercial et totalement gratuit.
Ce site comporte ?galement un espace d?di? aux enseignants (repr?sentant
90% des inscrits) et aux parents.
Je souhaiterais solliciter l'autorisation d'utiliser votre encyclop?die
selon plusieurs modalit?s ?ventuelles (et que vous d?finirez), dans la
perspective de permettre aux enseignants (notamment) d'acc?der ? votre
encyclop?die libre pour une utilisation scolaire par exemple.

     * Soit en int?grant un moteur de recherche dans Ekipage, lequel
moteur utilisant le Contenu de Wikip?dia (s'il vous est possible de me
fournir le code htlm)
     * Soit en me permettant de faire ouvrir votre site dans une frame
de mon propre site,
     * Soit en t?l?chargeant le contenu de Wikip?dia :
http://download.wikipedia.org/ (lequel serait directement  utilisable
sur mon site).

Il va de soit, que je ferais tous les liens et mentions que vous
souhaiterez (en r?f?rence ? Wikip?dia) et peut bien ?videmment ins?rer
votre logo.

Le projet : Wiktionary (http://fr.wiktionary.org) : un dictionnaire et
th?saurus, m'int?resse ?galement dans le m?me cadre. En outre, il
appara?t que les enseignants venant sur mon site, pourraient ?tre
int?ress?s pour apporter leur contribution ? ce projet.

Un grand merci par avance de votre r?ponse,
Anne REQUIER (France)
Dear Sir,

Too not knowing with which to address to me, I allow myself to write to
you, hoping that it will be possible for you to transmit my mail to the
person concerned with my request.  I develop an ludo-educational site
for children:  www.ekipage.net noncommercial and completely free.
This site also comprises a space dedicated to the teachers (accounting
for 90% of the registered voters) and to the parents.  I would wish to
request the authorization to use your encyclopaedia according to several
possible methods (and that you will define), with a view to to allow the
teachers (in particular) to reach your free encyclopaedia  for a school
use for example.

     * Either by integrating an engine of research in Ekipage, which
driving using the Contents of Wikip?dia (if it is possible for you to
provide me the code htlm)
     * Or while allowing me to make open your site in a frame of my own
site,
     * Or by downloading the contents of Wikip?dia:
http://download.wikipedia.org/ (which would be directly usable on my site).

  It goes from is, that I would establish all the links and mentions
which you will wish (in reference to Wikip?dia) and can obviously insert
your logo.

The project:  Wiktionary (http://fr.wiktionary.org):  a dictionary and
thesaurus, also interest me within the same framework.  Moreover, it
appears that the teachers coming on my site, could be interested to
contribute their share to this project.

Large a mercy by advance of your answer, Anne REQUIER (France)

N'oubliez pas de visiter notre site ludo-?ducatif pour
enfants du primaire et du coll?ge ? l'adresse suivante www.ekipage.net !

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