subject: [Wikitech-l] Please turn off the anonymous proxy blocker

body:
I've gotten three separate complaints, automated, but which may cause
us some trouble.  Apparently our proxy blocker is doing something
which some sites perceive to be an attempt to probe for security
problems (which, of course, is true).

I think we should be doing this, but until I confirm with our colo
that we won't be getting grief for this, I think we should stop.

This is not an emergency, but is something that should be done soon.

Possibly there is a way we can limit the use of the anon proxy probe
to cases that are highly suspicious or something?

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Spam_Reports@city-guide.com: Abuse Reports ( Bomis
	Inc. / Wikimedia )]

body:
I'm having a hard time understanding this one.

----- Forwarded message from Spam_Reports at city-guide.com -----

From: Spam_Reports at city-guide.com
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
To: <JWALES at BOMIS.COM>
Subject: Abuse Reports ( Bomis Inc. / Wikimedia )

[ SpamCop V1.3.4 ]
This message is brief for your comfort.  Please use links below for details.

Email from 207.142.131.254 / Tue, 6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?i=z866901771ze124cf063a5bad6f2959275917228b90z

[ Additional comments from recipient ]
>
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Subject: LIFE INSURANCE...Protect Your Family & Save up to 70%
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 21:54:40 01900
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 Chan=
ge your email
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----- End forwarded message -----


body:
Is this being caused by our anonymous proxy test?

----- Forwarded message from Spam_Reports at city-guide.com -----

From: Spam_Reports at city-guide.com
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 10:42:05 -0400
To: <JWALES at BOMIS.COM>
Subject: Abuse Reports ( Bomis Inc. / Wikimedia )

Dear Aleron Customer:

We have received a report regarding alleged violations of Aleron's Acceptable
Use Policy and Network Routing Policy. Both policies can be found at
http://aleron.com/info/aup.html and http://operations.aleron.net/routingpolicy.html
respectively.

Aleron works closely with its customers to resolve situations as quickly
as possible. We request you take whatever measures you deem appropriate
which will ensure no further violations occur.

Aleron values its relationships with its customers and will work with
you in any way necessary to preserve that relationship. However, Aleron
is legally bound to enforce its AUP. If it is confirmed that abuses are
taking place, and we cannot elicit your cooperation in discontinuing the
abuse, Aleron may be forced to take drastic actions, which could
include filtering in/out traffic to the host, prefix-list modification whereby
removing the prefix - subnet rounded off to the smallest possible aggregate
and or termination of services.

Once this issue has been resolved please reply to this message, making
sure the reply goes to abuse at aleron.net and keeping the subject the same.

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

Host: 207.142.131.231

Abuse: port scans, TCP - possibly probing for security exploits

Logging: (brief example logging on 4/6/2004 10:25 EDT is as follows)

Extended IP access list 133
    permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq www (229 matches)
    permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 81 (153 matches)
    permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 1080 (147 matches)
    permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 3128 (146 matches)
    permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 8080 (165 matches)
    permit ip any any (99322044 matches)

Notes: Please investigate on your end.  1 complaint with logging is attached.

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

Best regards,

Abuse Policy Notification
Aleron Broadband Services, LLC.
abuse at aleron.net

From: <abuse at deprotect.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 10:08:26 -0400
To: "Abuse" <abuse at aleron.com>
Subject: ABUSE 207.142.131.232 Abuse id: 80283

Hello,

We have detected a portscan from your IP subnet range against one of our clients DI (Dagens Industri), please look at the attached information. This got triggered as the remote system either scanned multiple hosts or a significant amount of ports on a single host. We kindly ask you to investigate this and report back to us at your earliest convenience.

Operator: Jonas H
Timezone:
GMT +01:00
SWEDEN

Log transcript:

2004-04-06 14:04:35 Apr  6 13:06:13 root: [ID 702911 local0.info]  6Apr2004 13:06:13 drop   213.134.99.34 >hme0 useralert product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; src: 207.142.131.232; s_port: 48767; dst: 213.134.99.34; service: 1080; proto: tcp; rule: 4;

2004-04-06 14:04:35 Apr  6 13:06:13 root: [ID 702911 local0.info]  6Apr2004 13:06:13 drop   213.134.99.34 >hme0 useralert product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; src: 207.142.131.232; s_port: 48768; dst: 213.134.99.34; service: 81; proto: tcp; rule: 4;

2004-04-06 14:04:35 Apr  6 13:06:13 root: [ID 702911 local0.info]  6Apr2004 13:06:13 drop   213.134.99.34 >hme0 useralert product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; src: 207.142.131.232; s_port: 48770; dst: 213.134.99.34; service: 80; proto: tcp; rule: 4;

2004-04-06 14:04:35 Apr  6 13:06:13 root: [ID 702911 local0.info]  6Apr2004 13:06:13 drop   213.134.99.34 >hme0 useralert product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; src: 207.142.131.232; s_port: 48771; dst: 213.134.99.34; service: 8000; proto: tcp; rule: 4;

2004-04-06 14:04:37 Apr  6 13:06:15 root: [ID 702911 local0.info]  6Apr2004 13:06:13 drop   213.134.99.34 >hme0 useralert product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; src: 207.142.131.232; s_port: 48779; dst: 213.134.99.34; service: 3128; proto: tcp; rule: 4;

Regards
Security Operator

Deprotect AB
Upperudsv 4, 464 72 Haverud, Sweden
Tel. +46-(0)530 444 64
Fax. +46-(0)530 444 69
Mailto: abuse at deprotect.com
http://www.deprotect.com

This transmission is intended for the person to whom or the entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipent, please be notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately. Thank you for your cooperation.

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Yahoo! XML feed

body:
Ray Kiddy wrote:
> But there are people at Yahoo who know MySQL. Jeremy Zawodny comes to
> mind. He works there and his O'Reilly book called 'High Performance
> MySQL' is coming out soon. The word "Replication" is in the title of
> the book, so they could probably even help set this up so as not to
> impact the wikipedia over-all.

O.k., I'll ask, but...

> It will probably not be too difficult to come up with a feed oriented
> to them, but what happens when another organization wants the same
> feed. But, oh yes, in a slightly different form. And another. And
> another.

My view is that if each individual feed is of benefit to us, then we
provide what each of them needs.  :-) To me, your question is like
"What if after this one person gives you an enormous free benefit,
someone else wants to give you even more?  And someone else?"  It's
delightful, that's what.  :-)

Having said that, of course we want to be efficient, but search
engines who want to send us traffic are not leeches, they are
beneficiaries to our cause.

> Again, the people you might be talking to might not be the database
> people, so maybe they think that the solution they need is not a
> database solution.

That's right.  The people I'm talking to are not the database people.
I can ask, but really, I don't think it really makes sense for *them*
to have to run different solutions for every different site that they
are dealing with.  For them, the easy thing is to have a standard XML
format and go from there.

> 1) growing the wiki community and the database that keeps the
> collective corpus together, and
>
> 2) feeding this to various corporate clients, again and again and
> again, with all their ever-changing requirements
>
> then one of these seems to be closer to the core mission than the other.

I agree completely, but I don't really see how these compete with each
other.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] pyWikipediabot news

body:
"Evan Prodromou" <evan at wikitravel.org> schrieb:
> >>>>> "AE" == Andre Engels <engelsAG at t-online.de> writes:
>
>     AE> (so please, if you want the bot to work _don't_ customize the
>     AE> name of the /wiki/ directory as well).
>
> Explain to me again why I want a bot that has this kind of stuff
> hard-coded and difficult to change running against our server.

Actually, it isn't that hard to change, I realize now... If ever you
decide to change this 'wiki' on some Wikitravel, all we have to do
is move the 'wiki' from one variable to another. Not more work than
the change from the en.wikipedia.org to the www.wikitravel.org/en
syntax would be if it had gone as I thought (and hoped) it would
go. So, forget about this warning.

As to why you would like to use it: Ask Pierre Abbat.

And as to why these things are hardcoded: The bot was developped
for Wikipedia, and in general in the simplest way possible. If you
can tell me now what we want from it in one year, we might choose
a different model now rather than having to reverse-engineer later.
If not, I'll just keep with our existing 'model'.

Andre Engels


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Reference desk

body:
On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Timwi wrote:

> Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> > I'd like to propose that we break Wikipedia's Reference Desk (and
> > wikibook's Study help desk) to they're own wiki, at the moment both are
> > fairly unstructured.
>
> They seem to me to be very specific things; I think a whole new Wiki
> would be overkill. Instead, you can implement your proposed structed as
> subpages. Whatever you can do on a separate Wiki, you can do in subpages
> under [[Wikipedia:Reference desk]].

Firstly "Wikipedia:" pages aren't supposed to be content pages and
secondly the decision was made a while back not to use subpages for
content pages (see [[Wikipedia:Subpages]]).

As for overkill, I think not, such a site could easily grow to
hundreds or thousands of questions today, for example see Google Answers,
BrainFuse, Ask-It-Here, etc. In the past such sites (most notably
WHQuestion and to a lesser extent KnowPost) have run out of funding and
their entire archives of tens of thousands of questions and answers have
disappeared overnight, so the Wikimedia copyleft approach would seem
perfect for such a site.

> But it will also mean that you will have *yet* another site with *yet*
> another DB, *yet* another sign-in, *yet* another set of preferences,
> *yet* another watchlist etc.etc.

Unless you have a serious case of [[Wikipediholic]]ism I think you'll find
it's not actually compulsory to join every Wikimedia project :-)

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
$9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
(if for a good reason!).

There have been several requests (from more than one person, or just
from one person) for 15k spindle drives.  Is that a universal
consensus?  I find it hard to imagine that faster drives is really
pertinent, because just about any problem that can be solved with
faster drives can be solved better with more ram?

But, that's a very simplistic view on my part, so I could easily be
convinced otherwise.

RAID 10?  That's what geoffrin had, and it was sweet.  But RAID 5
would give more disk space, right?

What are our disk requirements for the db server?  Let's be generous
with ourselves here.  But, also let's think about whether disk space
needs might in some cases be better handled by a big slow cheap SATA
storage server?

If we're in need of other new hardware, now is a good time to order
that as well.

We have a crucial responsibility to be good stewards of our donor's
money.  That means two things -- first, we don't buy hardware just
because it sounds cool, but to meet specific needs.  But second, the
money wasn't given to us to sit in the bank forever, it's to give the
donors what they want -- a fast fast wikipedia.  So we should not be
cheapskates, either.

--Jimbo

p.s. Quotes or recommendations for other vendors are welcome, but I'd
like to take action quickly, so it would be good to talk about
configurations from a single site (siliconmechanics) and then also look
around for better pricing or service or ??? elsewhere.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.org updated - categories still broken

body:
On Apr 6, 2004, at 22:16, Erik Moeller wrote:
> 1) The Monobook skin is available, but doesn't seem to work. I just
> added
> PHPTAL-NP-0.7.0/libs to the include path and set $wgUsePHPTal=true - is
> there anything else that needs to be done?

Looks fine to me.
'
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Reference desk

body:
On Apr 6, 2004, at 4:50 PM, Imran Ghory wrote:

> On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Timwi wrote:
>
>> Imran Ghory wrote:
>>
>>> I'd like to propose that we break Wikipedia's Reference Desk (and
>>> wikibook's Study help desk) to they're own wiki, at the moment both
>>> are
>>> fairly unstructured.
>>
>> They seem to me to be very specific things; I think a whole new Wiki
>> would be overkill. Instead, you can implement your proposed structed
>> as
>> subpages. Whatever you can do on a separate Wiki, you can do in
>> subpages
>> under [[Wikipedia:Reference desk]].
>
> Firstly "Wikipedia:" pages aren't supposed to be content pages and
> secondly the decision was made a while back not to use subpages for
> content pages (see [[Wikipedia:Subpages]]).

That's the point: the pages you're referring to *aren't* content pages.
  At
least not on Wikipedia.  What you seem to be proposing in a new wiki
where such
pages *are* considered the content.  It's worth noting that this is a
paradigm
shift from the current system.  You seem to be proposing we enlarge the
"reference desk" section into something worthy of its own wiki which
would
reference the Wikipedia.

I like this idea.  There's already a proposal at [[meta:Wiki How do I]]
which is
similar; take a quick look there, though there's not much to see.

If I've gotten your idea wrong, my mistake.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Extension syntax vote begins

in_reply_to:
<c4tujb$a8e$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from timwi@gmx.net on Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:51:12AM +0100

body:
On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:51:12AM +0100, Timwi wrote:

> The vote therefore has a systemic bias towards the programmers, but they
> are not the intended audience. Also, most of the programmers
> (apparently) vote on what they prefer (as opposed to what they think
> unsavvy people might prefer).
>
> There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
> <math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
I think its just the opposite. Only perl programmers would prefer so
many special characters rather than words to delimit things.

Most people are familiar with html these days, so "unsavvy" people
won't be frightened by <math></math>

Arvind
> Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are better than
> <math>.

--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Time to get some new servers

body:
> What do you think of that ?

I don't know what hardware we'd choose, but I wholeheartdly agree on the need
for some better hardware than what we have now.
During afternoon (french time), it becomes slow as hell, painful to see
Wikipedia crawl like that... -.-

> Shaihulud

Ryo


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>
>> What do you think of that ?
>
>
> I don't know what hardware we'd choose, but I wholeheartdly agree on the
> need for some better hardware than what we have now.
> During afternoon (french time), it becomes slow as hell, painful to see
> Wikipedia crawl like that... -.-
>
>> Shaihulud
>
>
> Ryo

Now, at 21:34:35 UTC, it's also very slow (1-2 minutes for viewing a page).

-- Looxix


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiReader Internet

body:
Hi everybody,
Six weeks ago I've started working on a German WikiReader on the topic
Internet. Today I've finished it with a impressing result of 164 pages
on DIN A5 (about 17cm x 13cm), a total of 486 registered users worked on
the 116 articles which can be found in the Reader.

Despite not everybody on wikipedia-l may understand German you should
consider this annoncement as a challenge for an English, Japanese, French
or Esperanto WikiReader to be annonced next time.

Contents of the WikiReader:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader/Internet
PDF: http://download.wikipedia.de/wikireader/WikiReader_Internet.pdf
OO.o: http://download.wikipedia.de/wikireader/WikiReader%20Internet.tar.bz2

My plan for the next WikiReader is one on Open Source which has to be
released until the WOS3 in Berlin June 2004. A tight timetable, but
possible after most of the conent is already written.

The WikiReader after will be a WikiReader on the city of Athens.
That one must be done until June, the Olympic Games start in July.
I'd be happy if someone from Greece would join me and deliver content.
The final result should be at least in Greek, English and German.
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader_Athens

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEKBCHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>
	<c4tujb$a8e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20040406225232.A26660@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>

body:
On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:52:32PM +0530, Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:51:12AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> > The vote therefore has a systemic bias towards the programmers, but they
> > are not the intended audience. Also, most of the programmers
> > (apparently) vote on what they prefer (as opposed to what they think
> > unsavvy people might prefer).
> >
> > There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
> > <math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
> I think its just the opposite. Only perl programmers would prefer so
> many special characters rather than words to delimit things.

I'm a Perl programmer and I prefer <math>.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I have updated test.wikipedia.org to CVS unstable.

As per our development policy, please do NOT install completely
experimental stuff on test.wikipedia.org. Just keep it in sync with CVS
unstable so we can test the development branch.  Experimental stuff should
be installed in a subdirectory of test.wikipedia.org.

Two things:
1) The Monobook skin is available, but doesn't seem to work. I just added
PHPTAL-NP-0.7.0/libs to the include path and set $wgUsePHPTal=true - is
there anything else that needs to be done?
2) The category feature is *still* broken. Category links are shown, but
for some reason the first paragraph is displayed next to them. Magnus,
please fix categories as I would like to get them shipped with 1.3.

Once Monobook works I will send another announcement to foundation-l to
ask for help in testing all the new stuff.

Wikihiero and Smarty are no longer available. Smarty was removed and
Wikihiero was never checked in.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject:
[WikiEN-l] scholarly paper on traditional copyright v. open access
	references wikipedia

body:
Just in case you're not aware of this already.

http://www.ibiblio.org/griffey/wp/index.php?p=204

best,

KQ

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway
http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/


body:
Erik-
> Two things:
> 1) The Monobook skin is available, but doesn't seem to work. I just added
> PHPTAL-NP-0.7.0/libs to the include path and set $wgUsePHPTal=true - is
> there anything else that needs to be done?

Silly me. Forgot to copy the stylesheets. Works now.

> 2) The category feature is *still* broken. Category links are shown, but
> for some reason the first paragraph is displayed next to them. Magnus,
> please fix categories as I would like to get them shipped with 1.3.

This was just a missing paragraph tag, apparently. I fixed it. However, in
local testing the list of articles in a category shown when editing a
category page was messed up. Well, that's what public testing is about, so
I'll send the announcement now.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiHiero down :o(

body:
Guillaume-
> Today I wanted to start writing a WikiHiero's syntax guide, but when I tried
> to test it on the test server (to be able to see hieroglyphs) I realized
> that it don't work anymore :o/ (anyway the page edit don't work too).
> Someone can reactivate the feature? I don't want to bother developers each
> time they reset the test server, so if there are no objections I'd like we
> active the hieroglyph extension at least on meta server. Now it's using
> <hiero></hiero> syntax, but if an other extension syntax will be decided (it
> don't seem to be the case) I commit myself to change all <hiero> syntax.

As explained in my other mail, please don't patch non-CVS stuff into
test.wikipedia.org. That should be installed separately, e.g.
test.wikipedia.org/wikihiero. And certainly not on meta, which is a
production wiki.

Better yet, set up your own copy of MediaWiki, test locally, and check in
the code once it's reasonably mature.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: (vilain mot,censuré pour nos prudes yeux) the wikipedia

body:
Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] a ?crit:

> Please delete all references to me or my name. Doing
> so is the best way of ensuring I don't come back.

I was just trying to help you in reverting you Lir.
You changed your mind since yesterday ? :-)

Ah, women ! tssss


from_name: llane ra

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Languages: crossing a border?

body:
o sea que si  no es a traves de una resolucion ISO  uds no aprueban la creacion de espacios  para nuevas lenguas?

que pesar,   existen  cientos de lenguas no reconcidas, que  bien ameritarian un espacio propio.

Get your Free E-mail at http://llanera.zzn.com
____________________________________________________________
Para obtener su propio servicio de correo electr?nico basado en la Multimalla, dir?jase a http://www.zzn.com


from_name: Götz Hoffart

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
Hi,

> There have been several requests (from more than one person, or just
> from one person) for 15k spindle drives.  Is that a universal
> consensus?  I find it hard to imagine that faster drives is really
> pertinent, because just about any problem that can be solved with
> faster drives can be solved better with more ram?

In theory: yes. But if more RAM or faster UPM are better should be
tested, this belongs to the kind of application.

Don't you/we have a dealer who allows to test this on a new server?
This could help us to proof our suggestions instead of speculating.

> RAID 10?  That's what geoffrin had, and it was sweet.  But RAID 5
> would give more disk space, right?

Yes. RAID 10 gives you 50% of the hard disc capacity while RAID 5 gives
you 66%. That sounds not too much difference but it is :-) 8 drives of
150 GB -> 1200 GB gross capacity. RAID 10: 600 GB net capacity. RAID 5:
about 792 GB net capacity. That's more than one extra hard drive for
"free".

RAID 10 is a bit faster than RAID 5.

I would recommend two or three spare hard drives, not only one. If
one's dying in the RAID and the only hotspare drives begins to rebuild
the data (which could take quite a long time) and before someone is
able to replace the broken one a second hard drive gets corrupted then
the RAID is lost. This is of no importance if someone is 24/7 near the
server room.

> What are our disk requirements for the db server?  Let's be generous
> with ourselves here.  But, also let's think about whether disk space
> needs might in some cases be better handled by a big slow cheap SATA
> storage server?

SATA-RAIDs are as fast as SCSI-RAIDs concerning the sustained read
benchmarks but not when accessing random data - this is what I measured
for our firm here.

BTW: I don't know siliconmechanics (and can't reach their website now)
but I was very content with Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy servers. We're
running a lot of them. No, I don't have stock options or something like
that from them and we don't sell them (we don't sell something computer
related at all).

YMMV.

Sorry for my bad English, I'm not a native speaker.

Regards
G?tz


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:52:32PM +0530, Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:51:12AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
> > The vote therefore has a systemic bias towards the programmers, but they
> > are not the intended audience. Also, most of the programmers
> > (apparently) vote on what they prefer (as opposed to what they think
> > unsavvy people might prefer).
> >
> > There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
> > <math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
> I think its just the opposite. Only perl programmers would prefer so
> many special characters rather than words to delimit things.
>
> Most people are familiar with html these days, so "unsavvy" people
> won't be frightened by <math></math>

I am a perl programmer and I disprefer [# .. #]. I could probably memorize
them, but I don't really want to, and I don't believe laypersons could. If it
reads "math" then it is obvious that what it is, you don't have to memorize.

Test: <movie>...</movie>  Try to guess what kind of media is handled by this
imaginary tag. ;-)

That's why.
grin


from_name: Joachim Schiele

subject: [Wikitech-l] help needed

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

On Saturday 03 April 2004 20:38, Florian Caspari wrote:
> Hi,
as here: mediawiki-l at wikimedia.org
explain exactly what is your problem, no meta questions!
version of mediawiki
version of mysql
version of apache
...
and your problem in detail
- -which installer was used the webinterface or the console one?

>
> since a few days I am trying to install the wikipedia software on my server
> and finally capitulated. Next I looked for a forum where I could ask for
> help - and found nothing.
>
> I do not know if this mailinglist ist the right place for my question: "Is
> there anybody who is willing to set up the wikipedia-software on my
> server?" or who could give me a hint about persons I could ask?
>
> Best regards
>
> -------------------
> Florian Caspari
> info at fcaspari.de
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

- --
gruss,
joachim schiele
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from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 22:31:02 -0700
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
> replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
> http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
>
> and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
> $9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
> (if for a good reason!).
>
> There have been several requests (from more than one person, or just
> from one person) for 15k spindle drives.  Is that a universal
> consensus?  I find it hard to imagine that faster drives is really
> pertinent, because just about any problem that can be solved with
> faster drives can be solved better with more ram?

I hope I'm not the only one person would wish 15000 rpm disks :) I understand that they are more expensive, but our main problem in database is access time, and I dont think we can cache all the db in memory. On Suda, mysql use only 1,5G of memory (cause 32bits adressing pb IIRC), and it depends heavily on access time of disks. Cause of its slow disks, developper had to stop SQL query, search query and others stuffs. We're back in time before Geoffrin :( Having 15000 rpm disks, could let us some quiet time before thinking about a new upgrade. And it's not a cpu pb, cpu is idle most of time on Suda.

> But, that's a very simplistic view on my part, so I could easily be
> convinced otherwise.
>
> RAID 10?  That's what geoffrin had, and it was sweet.  But RAID 5
> would give more disk space, right?

Raid10 is faster. I calculate, that the db is growing at around 1GBytes per week, So it could be an idea to have raid5 but with more than 3 disks (4 or 5 ?). Raid 10 with 15000 rpms is a pb cause we wont be able to get more space than 140 G with 4 disks (which should be enough for a year). So we could choose to have a similar setup than Geoffrin, with 4 10 000 rpm disks, 146GB for each disks. We would have 280GB of space, enough for some years.And we could use Suda as replicated server to search function or sql query (need to add more disks on Suda in all of case).

> What are our disk requirements for the db server?  Let's be generous
> with ourselves here.  But, also let's think about whether disk space
> needs might in some cases be better handled by a big slow cheap SATA
> storage server?

We could think about SATA, but I think at it as a SAN or a NAS like the promise Vtrak 15100 :

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=115&familyId=6

And Western Digital produce SATA disks at 10000 RPM.
It would be a nice idea, we could use an inexpensive raid 50, which must be fast and safety.

Shaihulud


subject: [Wikitech-l] help needed

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

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 10:44, Joachim Schiele wrote:
> On Saturday 03 April 2004 20:38, Florian Caspari wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> as here: mediawiki-l at wikimedia.org
> explain exactly what is your problem, no meta questions!
> version of mediawiki
> version of mysql
> version of apache

but before asking try this one:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:Installation

> ...
> and your problem in detail
> -which installer was used the webinterface or the console one?
>
> > since a few days I am trying to install the wikipedia software on my
> > server and finally capitulated. Next I looked for a forum where I could
> > ask for help - and found nothing.
> >
> > I do not know if this mailinglist ist the right place for my question:
> > "Is there anybody who is willing to set up the wikipedia-software on my
> > server?" or who could give me a hint about persons I could ask?
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> > -------------------
> > Florian Caspari
> > info at fcaspari.de
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

- --
gruss,
joachim schiele
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from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
>replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
>http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
>
>and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
>$9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
>(if for a good reason!).

Here's a quick configuration:

SM-1280S 1U server with dual Opterons

- dual Opteron 246 2.2 Ghz
- 8 GB ECC ram
- 3x Seagate Cheetah 15000 rpm 73GB
- LSI 20320 1 channel SCSI controller
- CD-RW/DVD combo
- floppy
- Suse linux enterprise for AMD64
- 1U 2 piece rail kit
- 3 years warranty, 24x7 helpdesk, next business dayon site

Total $10142.00

Disks would be about 140 GB in RAID5. I have no idea of the actual
space requirements for the db server. If this is too low, one can go down
to 10.000 rpm disks (which should still give good performance) and get
146GB disks that will double the capacity (280GB in RAID5) for an
additional $400.

If that's too much, have just two disks and 73GB of space in RAID1 (15.000
rpm) or 140GB (10.000 rpm) saving around $700.

RAM can be expanded to 16GB in the future buying 2GB DIMMs (that are not
available right now). Dual gigabit ethernet is integrated.

Anything I missed?

Alfio


from_name: Marco Zühlke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes
	SpecialNewpages.php, 1.12, 1.13

body:
On Wednesday 07 April 2004 06:31, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Modified Files:
> 	Skin.php SpecialIpblocklist.php SpecialNewpages.php
> Log Message:
> 3) use Skin::formatComment in Special:Newpages
>
> Index: SpecialNewpages.php
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/SpecialNewpages.php,v
> retrieving revision 1.12
> retrieving revision 1.13
> diff -C2 -d -r1.12 -r1.13
> *** SpecialNewpages.php	19 Mar 2004 05:31:18 -0000	1.12
> --- SpecialNewpages.php	7 Apr 2004 04:31:19 -0000	1.13
> ***************
> *** 21,31 ****
>
>   	function formatResult( $skin, $result ) {
> ! 		global $wgLang;
> !
>   		$u = $result->cur_user;
>   		$ut = $result->cur_user_text;
>
>   		$length = wfmsg( "nbytes", $wgLang->formatNum( $result->cur_length ) );
> ! 		$c = wfEscapeHTML( $result->cur_comment );
>
>   		if ( 0 == $u ) { # not by a logged-in user
> --- 21,31 ----
>
>   	function formatResult( $skin, $result ) {
> ! 		global $wgLang,$wgUser;
> ! 		$sk=$wgUser->getSkin();
>   		$u = $result->cur_user;
>   		$ut = $result->cur_user_text;
>
>   		$length = wfmsg( "nbytes", $wgLang->formatNum( $result->cur_length ) );
> ! 		$c = $sk->formatComment($result->cur_comment );
>
>   		if ( 0 == $u ) { # not by a logged-in user
>

Hi,

a little idea: the skin is already available in this function ($skin) and I
think it is the same skin you get with your call. Will make your code even
simpler.

Hope that helps

cu Marco


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New db server

body:
On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 22:31:02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
> replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
> http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
>
> and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
> $9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
> (if for a good reason!).
>
> There have been several requests (from more than one person, or just
> from one person) for 15k spindle drives.  Is that a universal
> consensus?  I find it hard to imagine that faster drives is really
> pertinent, because just about any problem that can be solved with
> faster drives can be solved better with more ram?

I would clearly favour ram, maxing out the disk i/o isn't fast, even with
the best hd available- plus it should wear the hd's down in time.
An idea (didn't really look into the scsi/disk requirements):

name and description  	price  	subtotal
		SM-2280S
CPU:  Dual AMD Opteron 240 - 1.4 GHz - 1MB L2 Cache
Memory:  8GB (8 x 1GB) PC2700 Registered ECC
HDD 1:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
HDD 2:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
HDD 3:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
HDD 4:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
HDD 5:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
HDD 6:  Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 146GB U320 10KRPM SCA SCSI
SCSI Controller:  LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2 - 2 Channel U320 RAID 64MB CACHE w/BBU
Low Profile CD-ROM:  Slimline 24X CD-ROM
Floppy:  1.44MB Floppy
Power Supply:  460W Standard
Rail Kit:  2U 3 Piece Sliding Rail Kit 24"-31"
WARRANTY: Standard 3 Year - Return to Depot 	 $10644.00 	 $10644.00

--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Apr 7, 2004, at 5:22 AM, Camille Constans wrote:

> Raid10 is faster. I calculate, that the db is growing at around
> 1GBytes per week, So it could be an idea to have raid5 but with more
> than 3 disks (4 or 5 ?). Raid 10 with 15000 rpms is a pb cause we wont
> be able to get more space than 140 G with 4 disks (which should be
> enough for a year).

if disk space becomes a problem you could allways split the wikipedias
onto different database servers. As the project grows this step is
inevitable, eventually (we hope) each wikipedia will have it's own
database server and slave. the disk-space will not be a problem and
performance shouldn't either since they will be completely independent
from each other.

Lightning


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikisex page

body:
There seems to be a sexual 'bulletin board' in progress: [[I am sexy/WikiSex]]. It is supposedly
in the Votes for Deletion page, but I cannot find any
trace of it there.

Could someone please get rid of it? I firmly believe
that it does NOT belong in an encyclopedia.

This "I am sexy" writer has alraedy been in trouble for
trolling - this sems to be her latest line of attack.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Please turn off the anonymous proxy blocker

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I've gotten three separate complaints, automated, but which may cause
> us some trouble.  Apparently our proxy blocker is doing something
> which some sites perceive to be an attempt to probe for security
> problems (which, of course, is true).

Sure, that's exactly what it's doing. Scanning for security problems.

> I think we should be doing this, but until I confirm with our colo
> that we won't be getting grief for this, I think we should stop.
>
> This is not an emergency, but is something that should be done soon.
>
> Possibly there is a way we can limit the use of the anon proxy probe
> to cases that are highly suspicious or something?

I've switched it off. A possible alternative would be to obtain a proxy
list from another source, such as BOPM. I'll look into it.

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Spam_Reports@city-guide.com: Abuse Reports (
 Bomis Inc. / Wikimedia )]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Is this being caused by our anonymous proxy test?

Yes.

-- Tim Starling

> Extended IP access list 133
>     permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq www (229 matches)
>     permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 81 (153 matches)
>     permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 1080 (147 matches)
>     permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 3128 (146 matches)
>     permit tcp host 207.142.131.231 any eq 8080 (165 matches)
>     permit ip any any (99322044 matches)


subject: [WikiEN-l] wikisex forum

body:
The vfD page that discusses this is : MediaWiki:VfD-I am sexy WikiSex.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] remove gisellelazze@onvol.net

body:
I would thank you to quit sending your IncridiMail spam to the mailing
list.  It freezes up my eMail

gisellelazze wrote:

>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> <http://www.incredimail.com/redir.asp?ad_id=309&lang=9>   IncrediMail
> - Email has finally evolved - Click Here
> <http://www.incredimail.com/redir.asp?ad_id=309&lang=9>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/languages Language.php,
	1.157, 1.158 LanguageEo.php, 1.19, 1.20 LanguageFr.php, 1.43, 1.44

body:
On Apr 7, 2004, at 04:15, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> ! protected page
>   guidelines.",

This is incorrect; some configurations do not allow that style of URL
(PHP installed as CGI script).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiHiero down :o(

body:
Hi,

Today I wanted to start writing a WikiHiero's syntax guide, but when I tried
to test it on the test server (to be able to see hieroglyphs) I realized
that it don't work anymore :o/ (anyway the page edit don't work too).
Someone can reactivate the feature? I don't want to bother developers each
time they reset the test server, so if there are no objections I'd like we
active the hieroglyph extension at least on meta server. Now it's using
<hiero></hiero> syntax, but if an other extension syntax will be decided (it
don't seem to be the case) I commit myself to change all <hiero> syntax.

Aoineko


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Problems installing mediawiki 1.2.3 tarball: endless
	redirection

body:
Brion wrote:

> <?php
> header( "Content-type: text/plain" );
> print "SAPI: " . php_sapi_name();
> print "PATH_INFO: " . $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'];
> ?>

SAPI: apachePATH_INFO:

> Try also appending "/Title" after the '.php' in the filename, and see
> what the output is.

SAPI: apachePATH_INFO: /Title

>> <ourlocalnetworknotaccessiblefromtheinternet>/wiki/  -- I tried this
>> with a phpinfo.php file containing <?php phpinfo(); ?> ) I get an
>> endless redirection loop when accessing index.php with my web
>> browser. Firefox gives up telling me that there were too many
>> redirections.
>
> Did you install with the old command-line install.php or the new
> browser-based install?

Ehm, I chose the "old command-line" php4 install.php, which is
documented here
<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Linux>

> If the new install, can you list the output of the installer? If the
> old install, can you provide the LocalSettiings.php you constructed
> (minus passwords)?

Attached below.

> As a workaround, you can try setting it to use classic "ugly" URLs. In
> LocalSettings.php set:
> 	$wgUsePathInfo = false;
> 	$wgArticlePath = "$wgScript?title=$1";

Ah, that works fine, thanks!

Gr??e
G?tz

LocalSettings.php:

<?php
$IP = "/var/www/wiki-verkauf";

## Don't change this bit; install.php needs it.
#
if ( ! isset( $DP ) ) { $DP = $IP; }
include_once( "$DP/DefaultSettings.php" );

## Please customize!
#
$wgSitename         = "Sales Wiki";

# You can customize a lot of URLs and paths, but you will
# almost certainly want to customize the following.  The

# Normally the server will be auto-detected, but you can
# force the base URL. Don't forget http:// (or https://)!
#
$wgServer           = "http://picard.soft-culture.com:8082";

## The location of the main script, you need this to be correct!
#
$wgScriptPath	    = "/wiki";
$wgScript           = "{$wgScriptPath}/index.php";
$wgRedirectScript   = "{$wgScriptPath}/redirect.php";

# ArticlePath one is especially useful if you want to use
# mod_redirect to make page-viewing URLs look static.
#
$wgArticlePath      = "{$wgScript}/$1";
# $wgArticlePath     = "/wiki/$1"; # Prettier if you're setup for it

## Normally you don't need to change these once the above are set...
#
$wgStyleSheetPath   = "{$wgScriptPath}/style";
$wgStyleSheetDirectory = "{$IP}/style";

$wgUploadPath       = "{$wgScriptPath}/upload";
$wgUploadDirectory	= "{$IP}/upload";
$wgLogo				= "{$wgUploadPath}/wiki.png";

## Preferably these addresses should be able to receive mail asking for
help
#
$wgEmergencyContact = "wikiadmin@" . getenv( "SERVER_NAME" );
$wgPasswordSender	= "Wikipedia Mail <apache@" . getenv( "SERVER_NAME" )
. ">";

# MySQL settings
#
# The user you specify here DOES NOT NEED TO EXIST.
# It is created by the installation script, if
# you have root privileges on your database.
#
# IF on the other hand you have only limited privs
# on your DB and have to do a manual install, use
# your existing username and password. Be sure this
# file doesn't get left around on the web legible...
#
# $wgDBsqluser is used for queries through the
# web interface. It is also created by the script.
# Unlike the regular user, it has no write
# permissions and can not access passwords.
#
$wgDBserver         = "localhost";
$wgDBname           = "wikisalesdb";
$wgDBuser           = "wikisales";
$wgDBpassword       = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
$wgDBsqluser        = "wikiquery";
$wgDBsqlpassword	= "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";

## Advanced DB settings
#
$wgDBminWordLen		= 3;	 # Match this to your MySQL fulltext

## Set these to true to turn on some optimizations when using
## MySQL 4.x:
#
$wgDBmysql4			= true;
$wgEnablePersistentLC	= true;

## You can customize the interface messages through the wiki;
## see [[MediaWiki:All pages]]. (This requires a sysop account.)
## This causes a performance hit, though; if you don't need it,
## feel free to turn it off:
#
# $wgUseDatabaseMessages = false;

## Set $wgUseImageResize to true if you want to enable dynamic
## server side image resizing ("Thumbnails")
#
# $wgUseImageResize		= true;

## Resizing can be done using PHP's internal image libraries
## or using ImageMagick. The later supports more file formats
## than PHP, which only supports PNG, GIF, JPG, XBM and WBMP.
##
## Set $wgUseImageMagick to true to use Image Magick instead
## of the builtin functions
#
# $wgUseImageMagick		= true;
# $wgImageMagickConvertCommand    = "/usr/bin/convert";

## If you have the appropriate support software installed
## you can enable inline LaTeX equations:
# $wgUseTeX			= true;
# $wgMathPath         = "{$wgUploadPath}/math";
# $wgMathDirectory    = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/math";
# $wgTmpDirectory     = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/tmp";

$wgLocalInterwiki   = $wgSitename;

## If you want a non-English wiki, add a line like this
$wgLanguageCode = "de";

## Character encoding: normally auto-selected by the language.
## English, German, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Swedish
## will be in ISO-8859-1 by default, all other languages in
## UTF-8 encoding. UTF-8 is more flexible, but some older browsers
## have trouble with it. You can force an English-language wiki
## to UTF-8 by uncommenting the lines below. The other languages
## mentioned above might not work properly this way without
## additional tweaking.
#
$wgInputEncoding	= "UTF-8";
$wgOutputEncoding	= "UTF-8";

## Extremely high-traffic wikis may want to disable
## some database-intensive features here:
#
# $wgDisableTextSearch = true;
# $wgDisableCounters = true;
# $wgMiserMode		= true;

## The following three config variables are used to define
## the rights of users in your system.
#
# If wgWhitelistEdit is set to true, only logged in users
# are allowed to edit articles.
# If wgWhitelistRead is set to true, only logged in users
# are allowed to read articles.
#
# wgWhitelistAccount lists user types that can add user accounts:
# "key" => 1 defines permission if user has right "key".
#
# Typical setups are:
#
# Everything goes (this is the default behaviour):
# $wgWhitelistEdit = false;
# $wgWhitelistRead = false;
# $wgWhitelistAccount = array ( "user" => 1, "sysop" => 1, "developer"
=> 1 );
#
# Invitation-only closed shop type of system
# $wgWhitelistEdit = true;
# $wgWhitelistRead = true;
# $wgWhitelistAccount = array ( "user" => 0, "sysop" => 1, "developer"
=> 1 );
#
# Public website, closed editorial team
# $wgWhitelistEdit = true;
# $wgWhitelistRead = false;
# $wgWhitelistAccount = array ( "user" => 0, "sysop" => 1, "developer"
=> 1 );

# Squid-related settings
#
# Enable/disable Squid
# $wgUseSquid = true;
# If you run Squid3 with ESI support, enable this (default:false):
# $wgUseESI = true;
# Internal server name as known to Squid, if different
# $wgInternalServer = 'http://yourinternal.tld:8000';
# Cache timeout for the squid, will be sent as s-maxage (without ESI) or
# Surrogate-Control (with ESI). Without ESI, you should strip out
s-maxage in the Squid config.
# 18000 seconds = 5 hours, more cache hits with 2678400 = 31 days
# $wgSquidMaxage = 18000;
# A list of proxy servers (ips if possible) to purge on changes
# don't specify ports here (80 is default)
# $wgSquidServers = array('127.0.0.1');
?>


body:
On Apr 6, 2004, at 20:49, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> [ Offending message ]
> Received: from [207.142.131.234] (helo=mail.wikimedia.org)
> 	by mail.lunargravity.net with esmtp (Exim 4.22)
> 	id 1BB3Lt-00022T-FV
> 	for x; Tue, 06 Apr 2004 22:03:45 -0500
> Received: from mx2.prserv.net (unknown [207.142.131.254])
> 	by mail.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with SMTP
> 	id 007E5138BB9; Tue,  6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
> Message-ID: <0000______________________3d9d at mx2.prserv.net>

Well, I *do* see a matching message-id in the mail logs on zwinger:

Apr  6 18:55:25 zwinger postfix/smtpd[19881]: 007E5138BB9:
client=unknown[207.142.131.254]
Apr  6 18:55:25 zwinger postfix/cleanup[20961]: 007E5138BB9:
message-id=<000014d8471f$000021d8$00003d9d at mx2.prserv.net>
Apr  6 18:55:25 zwinger postfix/nqmgr[4069]: 007E5138BB9:
from=<insureme at reliaquote.prserv.net>, size=1659, nrcpt=83 (queue
active)
[lots of lines of the message being sent out snipped]

While we're rejecting relaying from the outside world, it does seem to
be allowed from the internal network. I've tightened that up while
Jason double-checks things on 207.142.131.254.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Prominence of language links

body:
On Apr 7, 2004, at 16:59, Timwi wrote:
>>> The inter-language links are fine. I have a number of other gripes
>>> with that skin, where do I post them?
>> On wiki.aulinx.de, please.
>
> That's a pretty big site. Where exactly?

Big link at the top of the page, "	Screenshots and Browser status, add
your comments here". If you've got problems, that's the place.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[WikiEN-l] stop fooling around...you son of a bitch!! go to
	timbactu !

body:
Gisellelazze is now removed from the list.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Spam_Reports@city-guide.com: Abuse Reports (
	Bomis	Inc. / Wikimedia )]

body:
I will probably be telling nonsense, since you know this kind of thing
better than I, but to me it seems that this spam managed to succesfully
cloak its real origin. The spam detection program then went down the
list of computers the mail was said to have passed, and identified the
first identifiable IP on that list as the origin, which was the
Wikipedia mail server.

Andre Egnels

"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> schrieb:
> I'm having a hard time understanding this one.
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Spam_Reports at city-guide.com -----
>
> From: Spam_Reports at city-guide.com
> Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
> To: <JWALES at BOMIS.COM>
> Subject: Abuse Reports ( Bomis Inc. / Wikimedia )
>
> [ SpamCop V1.3.4 ]
> This message is brief for your comfort.  Please use links below for details.
>
> Email from 207.142.131.254 / Tue, 6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
> http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?i=z866901771ze124cf063a5bad6f2959275917228b90z
>
> [ Additional comments from recipient ]
> >
> [ Offending message ]
> Received: from [207.142.131.234] (helo=mail.wikimedia.org)
> 	by mail.lunargravity.net with esmtp (Exim 4.22)
> 	id 1BB3Lt-00022T-FV
> 	for x; Tue, 06 Apr 2004 22:03:45 -0500
> Received: from mx2.prserv.net (unknown [207.142.131.254])
> 	by mail.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with SMTP
> 	id 007E5138BB9; Tue,  6 Apr 2004 18:55:25 -0800 (PST)
> Message-ID: <0000______________________3d9d at mx2.prserv.net>
> To: <x>
> From: "TermQuotes" <insureme at reliaquote.prserv.net>
> Subject: LIFE INSURANCE...Protect Your Family & Save up to 70%
> Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 21:54:40 01900
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/html;
> 	charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> Reply-To: insureme at reliaquote.prserv.net
> X-Priority: 1
> X-MSMail-Priority: Low
> X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.52f) Business
> Sensitivity: Confidential
> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600
>
>

>  04;ttp://pws.pr&#11=
> 5;erv.net/term&#1=
> 13;uotes/1.htm">
>  ;s.prserv.net&#47=
> ;termquotes/1.jpg" wi=
> dth=3D"427" height=3D"291">

>

>
>   #46;prserv.net/t&=
> #101;rmquotes/service.htm">Chan=
> ge your email
> preferences.

>
>
>
>
>
> 0
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Time to get some new servers

body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>> What do you think of that ?
>
> I don't know what hardware we'd choose, but I wholeheartdly agree on the
> need for some better hardware than what we have now.
> During afternoon (french time), it becomes slow as hell, painful to see
> Wikipedia crawl like that... -.-

Buying more and more hardware isn't always the best solution, especially
not when "it's slow" is all you know.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: wikisex page

body:
Arno M wrote:

> There seems to be a sexual 'bulletin board' in progress: [[I am sexy/WikiSex]]. It is supposedly
> in the Votes for Deletion page, but I cannot find any
> trace of it there.

I listed it there. Who has removed it?!

Timwi


references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEKBCHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>	<c4tujb$a8e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<c4urjl$nsg$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
David Friedland wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
>> <math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
>> Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are better than
>> <math>.
>
> The reason that non-savvy users might prefer <math>x^2</math> is that it
> requires understanding the concept of markup, a concept which most
> people learn in the context of HTML, and the very first thing you learn
> when you attempt to learn HTML is that things are enclosed in things
> that look like <something> </something>.

Which is also why we use <b>...</b> instead of ''', <a> instead of
[[...]], <li> instead of *, etc.?

Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Apr 6, 2004, at 02:56, Timwi wrote:
>
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> For those participating in the ongoing debate, you may or may not
>>> wish to be aware of the relative prominence of the interlanguage
>>> links in the new page layout.
>>
>> Where is that on-going debate? This is the first time I hear of it.
>> It's not even mentioned on [[Wikipedia:Goings-on]].
>
> You've posted several times in it; the thread is titled "Languages:
> crossing a border?"

Oh, *that* debate. Sorry, I thought you meant a debate about the new skin.

>> The inter-language links are fine. I have a number of other gripes
>> with that skin, where do I post them?
>
> On wiki.aulinx.de, please.

That's a pretty big site. Where exactly?

Timwi


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:31:02PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
> replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
> http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
>
> and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
> $9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
> (if for a good reason!).
>
> RAID 10?  That's what geoffrin had, and it was sweet.  But RAID 5
> would give more disk space, right?

We have two needs from what I see:
* Fast database disks and
* large disks to store log files, dumps, etc

As it is hard to cover these needs with only one type of disks, we should
use two types of disks for these needs.

> What are our disk requirements for the db server?  Let's be generous
> with ourselves here.  But, also let's think about whether disk space
> needs might in some cases be better handled by a big slow cheap SATA
> storage server?

Small faster SATAs for the DB, big slower disks for the dumps.

> We have a crucial responsibility to be good stewards of our donor's
> money.  That means two things -- first, we don't buy hardware just
> because it sounds cool, but to meet specific needs.  But second, the
> money wasn't given to us to sit in the bank forever, it's to give the
> donors what they want -- a fast fast wikipedia.  So we should not be
> cheapskates, either.

Proposed config:

SM 2880SATA
2* Opteron 240		# CPU is idle, I/O is the bottle neck
			# Would one CPU be sufficient to cover
			# current needs?
8 GB RAM		# You can't replace RAM by anything but RAM
3Ware 8 Port SATA RAID
4* WD 10Krpm 74 Gig	# the faster ones for the data base.
			# no 15Krpm ones. But we have RAM to handle
			# this. RAID 10. 148 Gig net capacity
2* WD 7.2Krpm 250 Gig	# The big ones for the dumps.
Hotswap Power Supply	# I'm a paranoid coward. And having a RAID
			# for the disks but only one PS seems
			# pointless.

Total price: 7,576 US$.

Maintenance upgrade to 5*8 next business day on site is at 415 US$.
Perhaps service is better when they have to come to us instead of
us having to send them the server.

Overall CapEx: 7,991 US$

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] coronelli offline

body:
        <JeLuF> brion: Coronelli is currently offline.
02:02    brion: goody
        <JeLuF> brion: Jimbo replaced the 512MB chip with a 1GB one since he assumed the memory
-               might not be the right one for that board and might be the cause of the
-               occassional trouble we've got
        <JeLuF> starting squid, the machine died within approximately 6 seconds.
        <JeLuF> currently, the box is running memtest
        <JeLuF> the memtest floppy has been removed from the disk drive, so if you power cycle
-               coronelli using the APC, it will start linux.
 02:05   brion: JeLuF: ok. could you fwd that to wikitech?
        <JeLuF> In case of emergency, Jimbo has allowed wikipedia to make use of curly.bomis.com.
-               Remote root login is enabled and the password is "the standard wikipedia one".


subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 12:01:09PM +0900, Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> From: "Jens Frank"
> > We have two needs from what I see:
> > * Fast database disks and
> > * large disks to store log files, dumps, etc
>
> What about put "cur", "user", etc on fasts disk and "old" on large disks ?

Data and index directories can only be specified for MyISAM tables, not
for InnoDB ones.

JeLuF


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blank the wikipedia

body:
--- Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've grown up a lot in the last year or two. I used to
> want to volunteer and help people learn stuff - I no
> longer care, you people are scum.
>
> Some of you are ok -- Users like CPrompt seem like
> really good people. But what a bunch of self-righteous
> lying fools there are here! Its a real shame that
> Jimbo failed to provide better leadership.
>
> I wash my hands of the lot of you. I once thought that
> it would be possible to have a website where anyone
> could edit, it just doesn't work. Trolls and vandals
> are the problem -- its the control freaks who are the
> real problem.
>
> Im better than you. Im better than this. This site is
> better than Everything2, but its not that good. The
> wiki is a great idea, but the wikipedia has failed to
> evolve. I wash my hands of this nonsense.
>
> Please delete all references to me or my name. Doing
> so is the best way of ensuring I don't come back.

Unfortunately, dear Adam, it is important for the W to retain a
trackrecord of your presence, so we can learn from the mistakes of
the past and hopefully improve, for, as you so cheerfully pointed
out, we have failed miserably at providing you with a carefree
nursery.

As far as you coming back or not, it's all up to you. It's called
self control.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway
http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/


from_name: Peter Gervai

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEKBCHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>
	<c4tujb$a8e$1@sea.gmane.org> <c4urjl$nsg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<c524hv$a8p$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 12:57:50AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> David Friedland wrote:
>
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
> >><math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
> >>Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are better than
> >><math>.
> >
> >The reason that non-savvy users might prefer <math>x^2</math> is that it
> >requires understanding the concept of markup, a concept which most
> >people learn in the context of HTML, and the very first thing you learn
> >when you attempt to learn HTML is that things are enclosed in things
> >that look like <something> </something>.
>
> Which is also why we use <b>...</b> instead of ''', <a> instead of
> [[...]], <li> instead of *, etc.?

If we would use math as often as ''this'' then I would definitely vote
against long tags. But we use them rarely, and it's good that they're more
descriptive that way. Often used contructs shall be short because we use
them every day.

(Offtopic: as far as I remember '' isn't equal to <i> but <em>.)

grin


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>
>>> What do you think of that ?
>>
>>
>> I don't know what hardware we'd choose, but I wholeheartdly agree on
>> the need for some better hardware than what we have now.
>> During afternoon (french time), it becomes slow as hell, painful to
>> see Wikipedia crawl like that... -.-
>
>
> Buying more and more hardware isn't always the best solution,
> especially not when "it's slow" is all you know.
>
> Timwi
>
>
>
It would be useful to have MRTG or similar graphs available for _all_
the servers in the cluster, showing for each system:
* disk I/O seeks/second
* disk I/O bytes/second
* network interfaces bytes/second
* CPU load
* memory usage
* swap load

This, in conjunction with the existing real-time performance graphs,
would enable "many eyes" to inspect the system, and form hypotheses
about where the bottlenecks are.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
I'm a near-layperson when it comes to the technical side of the
issue, so I won't get involved there, but if we're going to buy
a new server or new servers, could at some time a server be set
aside to serve the 'intensive' actions, such as searching and
sysop SQL queries? That way these could (finally!) be switched
on again while restricting the amount by which they slow down
normal writing and editing.

Andre Engels


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Repost: "I am" trolling

body:
(Had to censor this to get it past my corporate firewall)

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W.
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 2:17 PM
To: 'wikien-l at Wikipedia.org'
Subject: Sex forum

There seems to be a sexual 'bulletin board' in progress: [[I am
s***/WikiS**]]. It is supposedly in the Votes for Deletion page, but I
cannot find any trace of it there.

Could someone please get rid of it? I firmly believe
that it does NOT belong in an encyclopedia.

----

I deleted the user page and subpage.

Martin, was I wrong? Fred, may I block the user?

Ed Poor, prudish bureaucrat


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 02:00:25 +0200
Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:31:02PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Going under the assumption that we will be buying a new db server to
> > replace geoffrin, please everyone take a look at:
> > http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
> >
> > and help me decide on a suitable configuration.  Assume a budget of
> > $9,000-$10,000, but don't hesitate to go under (of course!) or over
> > (if for a good reason!).
> >
> > RAID 10?  That's what geoffrin had, and it was sweet.  But RAID 5
> > would give more disk space, right?
>
> We have two needs from what I see:
> * Fast database disks and
> * large disks to store log files, dumps, etc

Large disks to store dump are needed on nfs server, zwinger. Not on db server. Dump are put on another server (maybe cause safety?)


subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
From: "Jens Frank"
> We have two needs from what I see:
> * Fast database disks and
> * large disks to store log files, dumps, etc

What about put "cur", "user", etc on fasts disk and "old" on large disks ?

Aoineko


from_name: llane ra

body:
desire to know if a language that does not have ISO podria to have
wiki?     and if the answer will be no,  then desearia to know if you podrian to help to transact new ISO.

Get your Free E-mail at http://llanera.zzn.com
____________________________________________________________
Para obtener su propio servicio de correo electr?nico basado en la Multimalla, dir?jase a http://www.zzn.com


from_name: Ivo Köthnig

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEKBCHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>
	<c524hv$a8p$1@sea.gmane.org> <20040408062652.GM539@narya.grin.hu>

body:
Am Donnerstag, 8. April 2004 08:26 schrieb Peter Gervai:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 12:57:50AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > David Friedland wrote:
> > >Timwi wrote:
> > >>There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
> > >><math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever.
> > >>Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are better than
> > >><math>.
> > >
> > >The reason that non-savvy users might prefer <math>x^2</math> is that it
> > >requires understanding the concept of markup, a concept which most
> > >people learn in the context of HTML, and the very first thing you learn
> > >when you attempt to learn HTML is that things are enclosed in things
> > >that look like <something> </something>.
> >
> > Which is also why we use <b>...</b> instead of ''', <a> instead of
> > [[...]], <li> instead of *, etc.?
>
> If we would use math as often as ''this'' then I would definitely vote
> against long tags. But we use them rarely, and it's good that they're more
> descriptive that way. Often used contructs shall be short because we use
> them every day.

If we use them rarely or not depends on the article. Good math-article needs
often references to math-objects by using variable-names. The clean way would
be to set these variable always in math-markup and in this case we would need
a short syntax for such articles.

But I guess this is the main-problem. We are writing an encyclopdia about
anything and so we need markup vor anything. But markup vor anything can not
be short.

--Ivo K?thnig


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: coronelli offline

body:
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 02:06:39 +0200, Jens Frank wrote:

.236 (en) is served by Curly for now.

--
Gabriel Wicke


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/maintenance interwiki.sql,
	1.4, 1.5 wikipedia-interwiki.sql, 1.7, 1.8

body:
On Apr 8, 2004, at 13:50, Andre Engels wrote:
> --- 1,111 ----
> ! ???-- Based more or less on the public interwiki map from
> MeatballWiki

Please don't check in files with a byte-order mark (created by some
Windows utilities such as Notepad). These can confuse programs that
expect actual data in their data.

Also, please don't add a blank space to the end of every line. It makes
the diffs illegible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] New db server

body:
On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, [ISO-8859-1] G?tz Hoffart wrote:
>> pertinent, because just about any problem that can be solved with
>> faster drives can be solved better with more ram?
>
>In theory: yes. But if more RAM or faster UPM are better should be
>tested, this belongs to the kind of application.

Actually, NO.  This is a DATABASE SERVER.  Databases flush data to disk to
ensure data integrity.  No ammount of RAM can speed up the process of an
fsync() as the data must physically be moved from system memory to the
physical drives.

>Yes. RAID 10 gives you 50% of the hard disc capacity while RAID 5 gives
>you 66%. That sounds not too much difference but it is :-) 8 drives of
>150 GB -> 1200 GB gross capacity. RAID 10: 600 GB net capacity. RAID 5:
>about 792 GB net capacity. That's more than one extra hard drive for
>"free".

Your math is off... RAID 10 == 50% always.  RAID 5 == N-1 (minus any spares)
So, for 8 drives, at best, that's 8-1 == 7 usable drives which is just over
1TB.  With a spare, that drops to 900GB.

>RAID 10 is a bit faster than RAID 5.

For pure reads, mirroring is better.  But in write performance, mirroring
sucks big time.  RAID 5 is somewhere in between... it takes less drive
space in trade for a marginal cost in speed. (reads are at single drive
speeds, writes require a block read and two block writes for every block
written -- read the parity block, calculate, and the store the data and
parity blocks)

>I would recommend two or three spare hard drives, not only one.
...

This is merely a waste of drives.  If a second drive fails before the
recovery is complete, the array will fail.  A RAID 5 array can only
function with a SINGLE drive failure ("degraded".)  Until recovery is
complete, the array is in a degraded state.

Multiple drive failure recovery is part of RAID 6 (n-m + spares) which
is still experimental in linux -- and I don't think anyone has tried
it with more than 2 parity strips.

>SATA-RAIDs are as fast as SCSI-RAIDs concerning the sustained read
>benchmarks but not when accessing random data - this is what I measured
>for our firm here.

No they aren't.  At least not the one's generally available (read: the
cheap crap found at retail outlets.)  People often forget about Fibre
Channel.  I have 5 year old FC (FC-1 1G) drives that hands down beat
the fastest, modern IDE and SATA drives. (Cost-wise (new), they aren't
worth it.)  Plus, FC can expand to include >100 drives without any further
hardware (aside from the drives and shelves, of course.)

Again, I'll add my strong recommendation for 3Ware raid contoller cards
(esp. if you're using IDE or SATA drives.)

--Ricky

PS: I still have the bonnie++ results from my testing of raid5 + various
    filesystems on my "junk" -- a qla2100, a eurologic FC7 FC shelf, and
    7 10k RPM drives (seagate ST118202FC)  If anyone is interested, I
    can post the numbers.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Repost: "I am" trolling

body:
Ed-
> (Had to censor this to get it past my corporate firewall)

See, censorship is bad! We keep telling you that :)

> I deleted the user page and subpage.

That was an overreaction, but justifiable. I still think we should get rid
of chess games on user pages as well to be consistent.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Title.php, 1.38,
	1.39

body:
On Apr 8, 2004, at 14:08, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> removed an apparently complicated way to trim whitespace off, also
> threw php notices
...
> ! 		$t = preg_replace( "/[\\s_]+/", "_", trim($this->mDbkeyform) );

This now fails given something like "_blah_".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Makoto & Guillaume

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vandal bot attack on zh

body:
Chinese Wikipedia (zh) suffered several vandal bot attack since yesterday
(see http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist).
The bot vandalize articles (seem random, but essentially dates) by adding
same text on several articles (I counted 31 edits in 1 minute!). Each time
the bot is blocked it comeback with a new IP (anonymous or as logged user).
To help Chinese people block and revert the bot, some administrators from
other WP (as I know: Shaihulud, Suisui and me) was temporary promote as
administrator on Chinese WP. The SQL access was also temporary enabled.
Please let's status and SQL access to the next few days.

Don't you think edit 31 pages per minute is a kind of easy things we can
automatically point at vandalism? What about automatically block this kind
of editions? As it's just to stop the bot ardor, I think that block it for 1
hour is enough.

One last thing: The dev abilities of Shaihulud help us a lot to face this
emergency problem. If you want to transfer those abilities to stewards
(inter-admin), one very important thing to take into account is that at any
time of the day, we need active stewards. If all stewards are in America and
Europe, there will have time where no stewards are active.

Aoineko


body:
"llane ra" <webmaster at Llanera.zzn.com> schrieb:
> desire to know if a language that does not have ISO podria to have
> wiki?     and if the answer will be no,  then desearia to know if you podrian to help to transact new ISO.

It is certainly possible. But it is doubtful whether we would accept
every language. Is there any specific language you would like to have
Wikipedia for?

Andre Engels


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikitech-l] gopher-support for Apache2 ...

body:
It was mentioned on
http://apache.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/26/1428225 that gopher
might expericence its second spring.

Is there any group which might find a gopher-wikipedia useful, such as
people without these great DSL modems and flat rate access? Any PC which
runs a gopher client will be able to run links or lynx, I guess.

The only 'real' use would be publicity. Chances are almost 1 to get a /.
mention for this...

Yours,
Mathais
--
nach uns der synflood.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New db server

body:
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:40:34 -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:

> Actually, NO.  This is a DATABASE SERVER.  Databases flush data to disk to
> ensure data integrity.  No ammount of RAM can speed up the process of an
> fsync() as the data must physically be moved from system memory to the
> physical drives.

Most disk access on suda is repeated reading. A bi of >6000 is
common. Bo is much lower. Cpus are mostly idle, the thing is completely
i/o bound currently.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Extension syntax vote begins

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEKBCHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>	<c4tujb$a8e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<c4urjl$nsg$1@sea.gmane.org> <c524hv$a8p$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Apr 7, 2004, at 7:57 PM, Timwi wrote:

> David Friedland wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>> There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer
>>> <math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or
>>> whatever. Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are
>>> better than <math>.
>> The reason that non-savvy users might prefer <math>x^2</math> is that
>> it requires understanding the concept of markup, a concept which most
>> people learn in the context of HTML, and the very first thing you
>> learn when you attempt to learn HTML is that things are enclosed in
>> things that look like <something> </something>.
>
> Which is also why we use ... instead of ''',  instead of
> [[...]],
 instead of *, etc.?

Think about it: '' and ''' make a lot of sense visually.  Same goes for
[[...]],
at least more sense than .  Why !? (*I* know why, but
many people
don't.)  And it's *really* obvious that * and # are easy to interpret.

These symbols make the syntax *more* human-readable.  For extensions it
starts
to get muckier and, after all, less common.

Myself, I'd like to have the XML-like tags for inline content and
something more
{{msg:xyz}}-like for transclusion.  That, to me, is the most readable
solution.

Peter

                                  -- ---<>--- --
                        A house without walls cannot fall.
           Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                                  -- ---<>--- --


from_name: William T. Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
Hi,

I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, but I've recently become interested in
helping to fix spelling errors in the English wiki. Using a database dump,
I put up a list of articles with commonly misspelled words in my user
space at [[User:Wmahan/Articles with commonly misspelled words]].

In an effort to go through this monstrous list more quickly, I made a
script that loads the edit page of an article from the list and fixes any
commonly misspelled words. It also displays a list of all words not found
in a spelling dictionary, and I can substitute from of a list of suggested
replacements with the click of a button. I review all changes before they
are submitted.

I asked for approval of this plan on [[Wikipedia_talk:Bots]], and it was
suggested that I mail this list. I think that this human-controlled script
will be:
1. harmless, because I review and discard any incorrect fixes
2. useful, because I can easily correct not only misspellings on the list,
but any clear misspellings I notice
3. not a server hog, because it is limited by how fast I can approve
changes. It should use less overall bandwidth than fixing every article by
hand because I only request the edit page for the article, rather than
loading the article and then following the "edit" link.

Do others agree? I'm open to any suggestions about whether this idea is
worthwhile, possible improvements, etc. The script uses a web interface,
so I can make it available for people to examine if there is interest.

-- Wil


from_name: RolyPhotography at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
please remove me from the list
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
William T. Mahan wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, but I've recently become interested in
>helping to fix spelling errors in the English wiki. Using a database dump,
>I put up a list of articles with commonly misspelled words in my user
>space at [[User:Wmahan/Articles with commonly misspelled words]].
>
>In an effort to go through this monstrous list more quickly, I made a
>script that loads the edit page of an article from the list and fixes any
>commonly misspelled words. It also displays a list of all words not found
>in a spelling dictionary, and I can substitute from of a list of suggested
>replacements with the click of a button. I review all changes before they
>are submitted.
>
>I asked for approval of this plan on [[Wikipedia_talk:Bots]], and it was
>suggested that I mail this list. ...
>
>Do others agree? I'm open to any suggestions about whether this idea is
>worthwhile, possible improvements, etc. The script uses a web interface,
>so I can make it available for people to examine if there is interest.
>
This issue comes up periodically, and always with good intention.  It
always stirs apprehension over such things as British vs. American
spellings, or the ability to recognize when we really do want something
misspelled, or the handling of foreign words.  Also I believe that there
are still aids to spell-checking in the maintenance pages.
 Unfortunately, these features and our own search function have too long
been unaccesible.

Ec


from_name: Theresa Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
> Do others agree? I'm open to any suggestions about whether this idea is
> worthwhile, possible improvements, etc. The script uses a web interface,
> so I can make it available for people to examine if there is interest.

Will this bot's spelling dictionary contain both British and American (and
any other relevant) spelling variants?  Some people would be very upset if
you went around changing all American spelling to British and vice-versa.

moink


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Repost: "I am" trolling

body:
On Thursday 08 April 2004 17:18, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I deleted the user page and subpage.
>
> That was an overreaction, but justifiable. I still think we should get rid
> of chess games on user pages as well to be consistent.

I think that use of user space should depend on users' contribution. If
someone contributed significantly to Wikipedia, they could use their user
space for whatever they like.

If you delete someone's WikiChess or WikiSex or whatever subpage, and they
simply continue in Talk, what then? What if someone opens an account for sole
purpose of creating his personal webpage? What if some people open accounts
with sole purpose of chatting on their talk pages? What if Wikipedia becomes
known as free web hosting place, where everyone can create webpage or chat
board? Delete all such pages? And all other user pages, just to be
consistent?

So, I think, if an user contributes significantly, there is nothing wrong in
allowing them to have WikiChess, or WikiSex, or WikiChat, or to host their
personal webpage in their user space. If an user doesn't contribute, and uses
user space for personal purposes, that should be deleted.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Preferences

body:
Just a warning; Special:Preferences in cvs head is currently a bit
messy. I'm partway through reorganizing it into more sensible groupings
of options, but this ain't totally done yet.

It may also be worth dumping a few of the toggles that do useless or
undesireable things.

I'll also mention before I forget it again that the sidebar position
option doesn't work on MonoBook. In addition to the prominent user
preference for it, right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi,
Urdu, etc) use a right-hand sidebar by default, so we need to at least
have that ability to maintain user interface handedness.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [fatherjerome@fiwd.org: Wikipedia]

body:
Fan mail that leads me to think that a few pages should be checked for
accuracy.  I normally anonymize these things, but in this case, the
fan in question has had edits reverted in the past, and seems eager to
get his message out to the world.  Additionally, your understanding
what I'm saying without me having to come right out and say it will
be enhanced if you read this.  :-)

----- Forwarded message from Father Jerome FIWD <fatherjerome at fiwd.org> -----

From: "Father Jerome FIWD" <fatherjerome at fiwd.org>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 19:38:44 -0700
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Wikipedia

J Wales

Hi!  Noticed your contact info on the Wikipedia Contact Page.  I appreciate
the participatory democracy aspect of Wikipedia, but I am just not used to
possibly posting something on a BB (as I once did on a Wikipedia page!),
only to have it immediately removed by someone who did not understand it!

Anyway, I guess I'd just like to pass along some compliments, primarily on
your 'Systems Theory' page.  I have website links to both your 'Systems
Theory' main page and the Discussion page, where I did successfully (several
months back!) post a quite lengthy 'discussion' regarding Systems Theory,
the new Science of Quantum Systemics and QUFD.  And I think someone must
have at least read some of the gigantic database which is the QUFD website
(listed in the Top 1% worldwide!), because it seems that the main 'Systems
Theory' page on Wikipedia has been recently up-dated by someone to
explicitly include the definitions of QUFD and Quantum Systemics in the
overall definition, to wit: "Systems theory focuses on complexity and
interdependance. It has a strong philosophical dimension, because applied to
the human mind and society, it results in unusual perspectives."  Ouch, and
Wow!  Or rather, Congratulations!  Because that is about as close to
defining QUFD as one can get in so few words!

As I said, I am no expert nor connoisseur at 'fighting the battle' for
postings, but I do appreciate the quite accurate definition that Wikipedia
gives of QUFD and Quantum Systemics via your 'Systems Theory' page.
Incidentally, I've recently added a new 'definition page' to the over 1610
webpages (according to Google!) of the QUFD 'Textbook' , entitled, "QUFD: An
Introspective!"  Perhaps you might find it interesting reading.  Note: I've
already been notified that it is being considered for a feature article in a
quite famous national/international magazine, as well as being looked at for
consideration of a movie by LucasArts!  It can be found at:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Qufdspec.html

I do hope this communication reaches you, as it seems that malicious
viruses-emails and 'spam' are abundant nowadays and if you are having to do
as I am, and deleting almost all 'unknown-sender' emails, perhaps your
auto-delete will delete this message too!  But I hope not!

Sincerely,
Aum, Peace, Amen
Namaste
Jerome

Father Jerome, OA/OWB
D.Th.(In Esse-the Theology of Reality),
D.Sc.(Quantum Physics)
Father Jerome USA,
Author of the world-renown 'textbook-on-the-Web'
(listed in the TOP 1% of worldwide websites),
the QUFD (Quantum Unitary Field Dynamics) website, at:
http://go.to/QUFD
An Affiliate of the
Freedom, Independence & World Democracy (FIWD) Institute,
London (OA/OWB)

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
This sounds delightful to me.  The crucial element that causes me to
tend to support it is that it's just a tool for you, as a human, to
use.  This eliminates the most common objections/fears that a robot is
going to do something really annoying.

Also, your attitude is very very barnstar.  I love it when people are
thoughtful, non-confrontational, cautious, and yet bold and
entrepreneurial.  You show an interest in helping to improve things,
and respect for how others perceive your work.

Rock on.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] question  to Andre Engels

body:
friend Andre Engels certainly interesaria me one wikipedia for which
we have given to call the language I crush, that it is a language that is used in Colombia by the common one of
people, although generally the educative apparatus usually tries to confuse it
with the Spanish, but I crush has linguisticas forms that differentiate day after day of
the Spanish,  that is I in front of crush the Spanish passes the same fenomeno to
him that happens to him in front of to Gallego the Spanish.

they are similar but nonidenticos.

Get your Free E-mail at http://llanera.zzn.com
____________________________________________________________
Para obtener su propio servicio de correo electr?nico basado en la Multimalla, dir?jase a http://www.zzn.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> This issue comes up periodically, and always with good intention.  It
> always stirs apprehension over such things as British vs. American
> spellings, or the ability to recognize when we really do want something
> misspelled, or the handling of foreign words.  Also I believe that there
> are still aids to spell-checking in the maintenance pages.

My program uses the GNU aspell library (through PHP's pspell interface),
which includes American, British, and Canadian spellings. So far it has
been effective in ignoring any words that might be correct in some variant
of English. I was aware of such issues because I've checked a fair number
of pages by hand.

I understand the concern about foreign or intentionally misspelled words,
and I agree that there is no replacement for a good human editor.
Although I have confidence in my own ability to notice and revert any
potentially controversial changes, I see how allowing any spelling bots
could set a precedent allowing more careless edits.

What if there was a guideline to the effect that I should be conservative
in making corrections? I could even limit my fixes to words on the list of
common misspellings, which seems to have been vetted for risky
corrections. I would prefer not to so limit my changes though; see below.

>  Unfortunately, these features and our own search function have too long
> been unaccesible.

I haven't seen the maintenance page because it is no longer available,
but it sounds like my idea is similar in principle.  I would argue that
any solution that uses a fixed list of misspellings is limited, because in
my experience people will always find ways to misspell a word that don't
appear on a list. There are so many words, and therefore even more
possible misspellings, that it just isn't practical to list them all.

-- Wil


from_name: Adam

from_email: Adam

subject: [WikiEN-l] remove my name from this mailing list

body:
You removed Helga's name -- now remove mine.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway
http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/


body:
Done.

Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> You removed Helga's name -- now remove mine.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Formal assent to arbitration policy vote

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy_ratification_vote

"Le Roy le veult" as they say in England.

That is to say, I assent to the results of this vote, and give the new
arbitration policy my full backing.

--Jimbo


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] wpSection=new flood attack on zh

body:
Ordinarily, the POST request for an edit must contain the correct wpEditTime
parameter, otherwise an edit conflict will be triggered. This has the
side-effect of forcing bots (malicious or otherwise) to request an edit page
before they POST their text. However, if wpSection=new, that is, the "post a
comment" feature is being used, the edit time is not checked.

At around 2003-04-08 14:30 UTC, an attack was performed on the Chinese
Wikipedia, using this fact. The attacker sent a flood of POST requests with
wpSection=new, apparently not waiting for the response from the server
before sending the next one. This allowed him/her to vandalise about 2 pages
per second. The content of the message was not corporate spam as previous
bot attacks have been, rather it was a puerile anti-China message to do with
eating dogs and cats.

My suggestions for dealing with this kind of attack are:

* Limiting the rate at which any given IP address can send POST requests,
i.e. throttling
* A facility for fast filter configuration, perhaps even at the sysop level.
Frantically editing EditPage.php at 1:30am is not my idea of fun.
* Securing edit submission such that a bot must request an edit page first

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human-assisted spelling bot?

body:
On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 07:56:39AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> This sounds delightful to me.  The crucial element that causes me to
> tend to support it is that it's just a tool for you, as a human, to
> use.  This eliminates the most common objections/fears that a robot is
> going to do something really annoying.

Wow, I'm really flattered by your comments.  I only hope to follow
the example of the great work you and many others have done with
Wikipedia.  :-)

-- Wil


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New db server

body:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Gabriel Wicke wrote:

>On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:40:34 -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:
>
>> Actually, NO.  This is a DATABASE SERVER.  Databases flush data to disk to
>> ensure data integrity.  No ammount of RAM can speed up the process of an
>> fsync() as the data must physically be moved from system memory to the
>> physical drives.
>
>Most disk access on suda is repeated reading. A bi of >6000 is
>common. Bo is much lower. Cpus are mostly idle, the thing is completely
>i/o bound currently.

[[meta:Wikimedia_servers]] says that suda is a dual opteron with 72 GB
SCSI raid (level 1 I suppose). Is this information correct? It doesn't
seem a slow disk configuration

Alfio


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New db server

body:
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 12:12:14 +0200 (CEST)
Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:40:34 -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:
> >
> >> Actually, NO.  This is a DATABASE SERVER.  Databases flush data to disk to
> >> ensure data integrity.  No ammount of RAM can speed up the process of an
> >> fsync() as the data must physically be moved from system memory to the
> >> physical drives.
> >
> >Most disk access on suda is repeated reading. A bi of >6000 is
> >common. Bo is much lower. Cpus are mostly idle, the thing is completely
> >i/o bound currently.
>
> [[meta:Wikimedia_servers]] says that suda is a dual opteron with 72 GB
> SCSI raid (level 1 I suppose). Is this information correct? It doesn't
> seem a slow disk configuration

it's raid 5, 3 x 36GB drive. A small and slow disk configuration

Shaihulud


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Done.
>
> Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>
> > You removed Helga's name -- now remove mine.
> >
By doing this, has Adam/Lir's name been editted from the mail archive, or
was she/he merely unsubscribed? (My guess from the allusion to Helga is
that Lir wanted all trace of her/his connection to Wikipedia also removed.
However, a quick check at Google shows the name "Lirath Q. Pynnor" only
appears on Wikipedia & those sites which use Wikipedia content; if Adam
does not use this username elsewhere, then there is no need to connect
her/him to what happened on Wikipedia.)

And considering that Lir has clearly stated that she/he has left Wikipedia,
I find it odd that someone with that username is still making contributions.
Could it be that someone is impersonating Lir?

And yes, I know this horse is dead; I'll stop beating it.

Geoff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New db server

body:
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Camille Constans wrote:

>On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 12:12:14 +0200 (CEST)
>Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>>
>> >On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:40:34 -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:
>> >
>> >> Actually, NO.  This is a DATABASE SERVER.  Databases flush data to disk to
>> >> ensure data integrity.  No ammount of RAM can speed up the process of an
>> >> fsync() as the data must physically be moved from system memory to the
>> >> physical drives.
>> >
>> >Most disk access on suda is repeated reading. A bi of >6000 is
>> >common. Bo is much lower. Cpus are mostly idle, the thing is completely
>> >i/o bound currently.
>>
>> [[meta:Wikimedia_servers]] says that suda is a dual opteron with 72 GB
>> SCSI raid (level 1 I suppose). Is this information correct? It doesn't
>> seem a slow disk configuration
>
>it's raid 5, 3 x 36GB drive. A small and slow disk configuration

Ouch. If the current controller is capable, i would invest the money in
multiple 73GB 15k rpm disks, say 5 of them in raid5 to have around 280 GB
of fast storage. Or, 4 of them in raid 1 to have 140 GB of safer storage.

Alfio


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Help betatest MediaWiki 1.3

body:
Hi!

Please help us in testing the latest version of MediaWiki, the software
which runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and all other Wikimedia
projects.

The development version can be tested at:
http://test.wikipedia.org/

You can report bugs directly on the test-wiki.

Important user-visible changes are:
- new MonoBook skin, which will probably become the new default skin (can
also be tested on http://wiki.aulinx.de)
- edit conflict merging
- category system: add [[Category:Xyz]] to an article to categorize it
- links and formatting in image captions
- MediaWiki namespace separated into MediaWiki: (for software messages)
and Template: (for custom blocks), new simplified syntax, arbitrary
transclusion
- links in edit summaries, auto-summaries shown in gray color instead of
=like this=
- support for hieroglyphs (WikiHiero)
- reorg'd user prefs (not completed yet)
- (almost) valid xhtml
- lots of other stuff

Please pass this announcement on to people on your wiki.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: gopher-support for Apache2 ...

body:
Mathias Schindler <neubau at ...> writes:

> Is there any group which might find a gopher-wikipedia useful, such as
> people without these great DSL modems and flat rate access? Any PC which

I would like it if there would be a gopher-Wikipedia. It would be the biggest
gopher site ever I think. Can you access gopher whit a handheld pc or a
gprs/umts-phone?

Walter


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language: Sardinian - sc

body:
http://sc.wikipedia.org/

User interface language is Italian until localization gets done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: wpSection=new flood attack on zh

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> * Limiting the rate at which any given IP address can send POST requests,
> i.e. throttling

I often send quite a number of POST requests in short sequence when
there are a large number of articles to change in a very uniform way,
for example.  I thought one of the principles of Wiki was that the
freedom to do legitimate things should never be sacrificed, and instead
sysops should be given the power to undo damage easily.

In the light of that paradigm, it seems that the "correct" way to do
this is not to throttle IPs, but to create a button sysops can press
that will undo all contributions from a particular IP in a particular
timeframe.

> * Securing edit submission such that a bot must request an edit page first

That would probably make sense, because it doesn't hinder legitimate use.