from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
I've added the ability to specify a preference (or no preference) for
era names in dates (BC vs. BCE).  I've also fixed a couple bugs in the
regular expressions that match for dates, that were preventing the
parser from recognizing (and converting) dates that ended in BCE or
which were written in ISO format and fell between -999-01-01 and
999-12-31 (i.e. had a one-, two-, or three-digit year).

I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.

I've tested this and it works on my local version (checked out of svn
a few hours ago) but I imagine it should be tested more.

-Bill Clark

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Charlie Root <root at dell0.ltbx.net>
Date: Sep 4, 2006 9:12 PM
Subject:
To: wclarkxoom at gmail.com

Only in phase3.new/: LocalSettings.php
Only in phase3.new/config: LocalSettings.php
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/includes/DateFormatter.php
phase3.new/includes/DateFormatter.php
--- phase3/includes/DateFormatter.php   Mon Sep  4 21:07:04 2006
+++ phase3.new/includes/DateFormatter.php       Mon Sep  4 21:03:26 2006
@@ -49,9 +49,9 @@
                # Partial regular expressions
                $this->prxDM = '\[\[(\d{1,2})[ _](' . $this->monthNames . ')]]';
                $this->prxMD = '\[\[(' . $this->monthNames . ')[ _](\d{1,2})]]';
-               $this->prxY = '\[\[(\d{1,4}([ _]BC|))]]';
-               $this->prxISO1 = '\[\[(-?\d{4})]]-\[\[(\d{2})-(\d{2})]]';
-               $this->prxISO2 = '\[\[(-?\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})]]';
+               $this->prxY = '\[\[(\d{1,4}([ _]BCE?|))]]';
+               $this->prxISO1 = '\[\[(-?\d{1,4})]]-\[\[(\d{2})-(\d{2})]]';
+               $this->prxISO2 = '\[\[(-?\d{1,4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})]]';

                # Real regular expressions
                $this->regexes[self::DMY] = "/{$this->prxDM} *,?
*{$this->prxY}{$this->regexTrail}";
@@ -121,12 +121,13 @@
         * @param string $preference User preference
         * @param string $text Text to reformat
         */
-       function reformat( $preference, $text ) {
+       function reformat( $preference, $eraPreference, $text ) {
                if ( isset( $this->preferences[$preference] ) ) {
                        $preference = $this->preferences[$preference];
                } else {
                        $preference = self::NONE;
                }
+               $this->eraPreference = $eraPreference;
                for ( $i=1; $i<=self::LAST; $i++ ) {
                        $this->mSource = $i;
                        if ( @$this->rules[$preference][$i] ) {
@@ -219,7 +220,13 @@
                                        if ( !isset( $bits['Y'] ) ) {
                                                $text .=
$this->makeNormalYear( $bits['y'] );
                                        } else {
-                                               $text .= $bits['Y'];
+                                               if (
$this->eraPreference == 'BCE' ) {
+                                                       $text .=
preg_replace( '/BC$/', 'BCE', $bits['Y']);
+                                               } elseif (
$this->eraPreference == 'BC' ) {
+                                                       $text .=
preg_replace( '/BCE$/', 'BC', $bits['Y']);
+                                               } else {
+                                                       $text .= $bits['Y'];
+                                               }
                                        }
                                        break;
                                default:
@@ -264,7 +271,11 @@
         */
        function makeIsoYear( $year ) {
                # Assumes the year is in a nice format, as enforced by the regex
-               if ( substr( $year, -2 ) == 'BC' ) {
+               if ( substr( $year, -3 ) == 'BCE' ) {
+                       $num = intval(substr( $year, 0, -4 )) - 1;
+                       # PHP bug note: sprintf( "%04d", -1 ) fails poorly
+                       $text = sprintf( '-%04d', $num );
+               } elseif ( substr( $year, -2 ) == 'BC' ) {
                        $num = intval(substr( $year, 0, -3 )) - 1;
                        # PHP bug note: sprintf( "%04d", -1 ) fails poorly
                        $text = sprintf( '-%04d', $num );
@@ -280,7 +291,11 @@
         */
        function makeNormalYear( $iso ) {
                if ( $iso{0} == '-' ) {
-                       $text = (intval( substr( $iso, 1 ) ) + 1) . ' BC';
+                       if ( $this->eraPreference == 'BCE' ) {
+                               $text = (intval( substr( $iso, 1 ) ) +
1) . ' BCE';
+                       } else {
+                               $text = (intval( substr( $iso, 1 ) ) +
1) . ' BC';
+                       }
                } else {
                        $text = intval( $iso );
                }
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/includes/Parser.php
phase3.new/includes/Parser.php
--- phase3/includes/Parser.php  Mon Sep  4 21:07:04 2006
+++ phase3.new/includes/Parser.php      Mon Sep  4 20:28:24 2006
@@ -961,7 +961,7 @@
                $text = $this->doHeadings( $text );
                if($this->mOptions->getUseDynamicDates()) {
                        $df =& DateFormatter::getInstance();
-                       $text = $df->reformat(
$this->mOptions->getDateFormat(), $text );
+                       $text = $df->reformat(
$this->mOptions->getDateFormat(), $this->mOptions->getEraFormat(),
$text );
                }
                $text = $this->doAllQuotes( $text );
                $text = $this->replaceInternalLinks( $text );
@@ -4613,6 +4613,13 @@
                        $this->mDateFormat = $this->mUser->getDatePreference();
                }
                return $this->mDateFormat;
+       }
+
+       function getEraFormat() {
+               if ( !isset( $this->mEraFormat ) ) {
+                       $this->mEraFormat = $this->mUser->getEraPreference();
+               }
+               return $this->mEraFormat;
        }

        function setUseTeX( $x )                    { return wfSetVar(
$this->mUseTeX, $x ); }
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/includes/SpecialPreferences.php
phase3.new/includes/SpecialPreferences.php
--- phase3/includes/SpecialPreferences.php      Mon Sep  4 21:07:05 2006
+++ phase3.new/includes/SpecialPreferences.php  Mon Sep  4 20:14:50 2006
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
  */
 class PreferencesForm {
        var $mQuickbar, $mOldpass, $mNewpass, $mRetypePass, $mStubs;
-       var $mRows, $mCols, $mSkin, $mMath, $mDate, $mUserEmail,
$mEmailFlag, $mNick;
+       var $mRows, $mCols, $mSkin, $mMath, $mDate, $mEra,
$mUserEmail, $mEmailFlag, $mNick;
        var $mUserLanguage, $mUserVariant;
        var $mSearch, $mRecent, $mHourDiff, $mSearchLines,
$mSearchChars, $mAction;
        var $mReset, $mPosted, $mToggles, $mSearchNs, $mRealName, $mImageSize;
@@ -46,6 +46,7 @@
                $this->mSkin = $request->getVal( 'wpSkin' );
                $this->mMath = $request->getVal( 'wpMath' );
                $this->mDate = $request->getVal( 'wpDate' );
+               $this->mEra = $request->getVal( 'wpEra' );
                $this->mUserEmail = $request->getVal( 'wpUserEmail' );
                $this->mRealName = $wgAllowRealName ?
$request->getVal( 'wpRealName' ) : '';
                $this->mEmailFlag = $request->getCheck( 'wpEmailFlag' ) ? 0 : 1;
@@ -169,6 +170,21 @@
        }

        /**
+        * @access private
+        */
+       function validateEra( $val ) {
+               global $wgLang, $wgContLang;
+               if ( $val !== false && (
+                       in_array( $val, (array)$wgLang->getEraPreferences() ) ||
+                       in_array( $val,
(array)$wgContLang->getEraPreferences() ) ) )
+               {
+                       return $val;
+               } else {
+                       return $wgLang->getDefaultEraFormat();
+               }
+       }
+
+       /**
         * Used to validate the user inputed timezone before saving it as
         * 'timeciorrection', will return '00:00' if fed bogus data.
         * Note: It's not a 100% correct implementation timezone-wise, it will
@@ -263,6 +279,7 @@
                        $wgUser->setOption( 'math', $this->mMath );
                }
                $wgUser->setOption( 'date', $this->validateDate(
$this->mDate ) );
+               $wgUser->setOption( 'era', $this->validateEra( $this->mEra ) );
                $wgUser->setOption( 'searchlimit',
$this->validateIntOrNull( $this->mSearch ) );
                $wgUser->setOption( 'contextlines',
$this->validateIntOrNull( $this->mSearchLines ) );
                $wgUser->setOption( 'contextchars',
$this->validateIntOrNull( $this->mSearchChars ) );
@@ -362,6 +379,7 @@
                $this->mSkin = Skin::normalizeKey( $wgUser->getOption(
'skin' ) );
                $this->mMath = $wgUser->getOption( 'math' );
                $this->mDate = $wgUser->getDatePreference();
+               $this->mEra = $wgUser->getEraPreference();
                $this->mRows = $wgUser->getOption( 'rows' );
                $this->mCols = $wgUser->getOption( 'cols' );
                $this->mStubs = $wgUser->getOption( 'stubthreshold' );
@@ -476,6 +494,7 @@
                $skinNames = $wgLang->getSkinNames();
                $mathopts = $wgLang->getMathNames();
                $dateopts = $wgLang->getDatePreferences();
+               $eraopts = $wgLang->getEraPreferences();
                $togs = User::getToggles();

                $titleObj = Title::makeTitle( NS_SPECIAL, 'Preferences' );
@@ -805,6 +824,19 @@
                        $wgOut->addHTML( "</fieldset>\n" );
                }

+               if ($eraopts) {
+                       $wgOut->addHTML( "<fieldset>\n<legend>" .
wfMsg( 'eraformat' ) . "</legend>\n" );
+                       $idCnt = 0;
+                       foreach( $eraopts as $key ) {
+                               $formatted = wfMsgHtml( 'era'.$key );
+                               ($key == $this->mEra) ? $checked = '
checked="checked"' : $checked = '';
+                               $wgOut->addHTML( "
<input
type='radio' name=\"wpEra\" id=\"wpEra$idCnt\" ".
+                                       "value=\"$key\"$checked />
$formatted
\n" );
+                               $idCnt++;
+                       }
+                       $wgOut->addHTML( "</fieldset>\n" );
+               }
+
                $nowlocal = $wgLang->time( $now = wfTimestampNow(), true );
                $nowserver = $wgLang->time( $now, false );

@@ -820,6 +852,7 @@

</fieldset>

?" .  wfMsg(
'timezonetext' ) . "

                </fieldset>\n\n" );
+

                # Editing
                #
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/includes/User.php phase3.new/includes/User.php
--- phase3/includes/User.php    Mon Sep  4 21:07:04 2006
+++ phase3.new/includes/User.php        Mon Sep  4 20:13:47 2006
@@ -1174,6 +1174,18 @@
        }

        /**
+        * Get the user's era names preference.
+        */
+       function getEraPreference() {
+               if ( is_null( $this->mEraPreference ) ) {
+                       global $wgLang;
+                       $value = $this->getOption( 'era' );
+                       $this->mEraPreference = $value;
+               }
+               return $this->mEraPreference;
+       }
+
+       /**
         * @param string $oname The option to check
         * @return bool False if the option is not selected, true if it is
         */
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/languages/Language.php
phase3.new/languages/Language.php
--- phase3/languages/Language.php       Mon Sep  4 21:07:24 2006
+++ phase3.new/languages/Language.php   Mon Sep  4 20:01:35 2006
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@
                'separatorTransformTable', 'fallback8bitEncoding',
'linkPrefixExtension',
                'defaultUserOptionOverrides', 'linkTrail', 'namespaceAliases',
                'dateFormats', 'datePreferences', 'datePreferenceMigrationMap',
-               'defaultDateFormat', 'extraUserToggles' );
+               'defaultDateFormat', 'eraPreferences', 'extraUserToggles' );

        static public $mMergeableMapKeys = array( 'messages',
'namespaceNames', 'mathNames',
                'dateFormats', 'defaultUserOptionOverrides', 'magicWords' );
@@ -269,6 +269,11 @@
        function getDatePreferences() {
                $this->load();
                return $this->datePreferences;
+       }
+
+       function getEraPreferences() {
+               $this->load();
+               return $this->eraPreferences;
        }

        function getDateFormats() {
diff -ru --exclude=.svn phase3/languages/MessagesEn.php
phase3.new/languages/MessagesEn.php
--- phase3/languages/MessagesEn.php     Mon Sep  4 21:07:24 2006
+++ phase3.new/languages/MessagesEn.php Mon Sep  4 21:05:23 2006
@@ -179,6 +179,17 @@
        'ISO 8601 both' => 'xnY-xnm-xnd"T"xnH:xni:xns',
 );

+/**
+ * A list of era naming preference keys which can be selected in user
+ * preferences.
+ *
+ */
+$eraPreferences = array(
+       'default',
+       'BC',
+       'BCE',
+);
+
 $bookstoreList = array(
        'AddALL' => 'http://www.addall.com/New/Partner.cgi?query=$1&type=ISBN',
        'PriceSCAN' => 'http://www.pricescan.com/books/bookDetail.asp?isbn=$1',
@@ -1007,6 +1018,10 @@
 'dateformat'           => 'Date format',
 'datedefault'          => 'No preference',
 'datetime'             => 'Date and time',
+'eraformat'            => 'Era Names',
+'eradefault'           => 'No Preference',
+'eraBC'                        => 'AD/BC',
+'eraBCE'               => 'CE/BCE',
 'math_failure'         => 'Failed to parse',
 'math_unknown_error'   => 'unknown error',
 'math_unknown_function'        => 'unknown function',


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
90% of australians edit on the enwiki only :( I'm sure there are many
more than 10% of AUS wiki users who are fluent in a second language of
which there is a wiki (frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a
language spoken by Australians that didn't have a wiki). How regularly
are the stats updated?

On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > http://meta.wkimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin.
>
>
> or perhaps http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin
> ;-)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Time to Seek Professional
	Lawyers Advice?

body:
On 9/4/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> IOW, if you're Russian, this may be of interest in terms of what you
> can do inside Russia.  For the rest of us, IMO, standard
> Berne-convention copyright law applies.  This applies to any other
> version of the argument; Poland, Iran, or wherever.  In the Iran case,
> people argue since Iran is not a Berne signatory, we can treat any
> Iranian works as PD.  I don't think this is a sound policy morally
> even if a lawyer could win with the argument.
>

You think it's immoral to use an image, that someone else created,
without permission, to teach someone about a subject, using the
internet?

That seems like a way over the top stance.  Of course my viewpoint is
exactly the opposite.  I think it's perfectly moral for Wikipedia to
use *any* image which helps educate the readers.  Well, maybe not
images which violate people's privacy, but except for that, I don't
see the harm.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
That would be native languages... add another several dozen for the
immigrants and second language learners, which is who I think Akash
was referring to.

Brianna

On 04/09/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> There are some 231 living languages spoken in Australia. I think English is
> the only one that has it's Wikipedia.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:AU
>
> On 9/4/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 90% of australians edit on the enwiki only :( I'm sure there are many
> > more than 10% of AUS wiki users who are fluent in a second language of
> > which there is a wiki (frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a
> > language spoken by Australians that didn't have a wiki). How regularly
> > are the stats updated?
> >
> > On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 04/09/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > http://meta.wkimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin.
> > >
> > >
> > > or perhaps
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin
> > > ;-)
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Native aboriginal languages? I meant languages like english, german,
greek, spanish, french etc. Is there a greek wikipedia?

On 9/4/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> There are some 231 living languages spoken in Australia. I think English is
> the only one that has it's Wikipedia.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:AU
>
> On 9/4/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 90% of australians edit on the enwiki only :( I'm sure there are many
> > more than 10% of AUS wiki users who are fluent in a second language of
> > which there is a wiki (frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a
> > language spoken by Australians that didn't have a wiki). How regularly
> > are the stats updated?
> >
> > On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 04/09/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > http://meta.wkimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin.
> > >
> > >
> > > or perhaps
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin
> > > ;-)
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Custom made in-house, terrible recode of Mambo or outsourced most
likely. A friend of mine made a CMS for his school and stored all the
data in mysql, assigning each file a unique identifier that appeared
in the url. The value of this unique identifier? md5 of the filename
and md5 of the file put together.

On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310116.NSF/85255e31005a1918852556c2005508d8/c47ad86d67c1466bca256ce0007e8d6b/$FILE/ATTH23CO/Exstatic%202%202005,%20Australia.xl
> (Excel spreadsheet ... I shudder to think what they're using for a CMS
> to get URLs like that)


body:
I suppose thats the sad truth. Native languages are becoming extinct,
slowly but steadily, and the few major international ones brought in
by immigrants (like me!) are the few that prosper - besides English of
course.

On 9/4/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Maybe, but isn't it sad that the Australian languages are doing so poorly ?
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> On 9/4/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > That would be native languages... add another several dozen for the
> > immigrants and second language learners, which is who I think Akash
> > was referring to.
> >
> > Brianna
> >
> > On 04/09/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > There are some 231 living languages spoken in Australia. I think English
> > is
> > > the only one that has it's Wikipedia.
> > > Thanks,
> > >     GerardM
> > >
> > > http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:AU
> > >
> > > On 9/4/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > 90% of australians edit on the enwiki only :( I'm sure there are many
> > > > more than 10% of AUS wiki users who are fluent in a second language of
> > > > which there is a wiki (frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a
> > > > language spoken by Australians that didn't have a wiki). How regularly
> > > > are the stats updated?
> > > >
> > > > On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On 04/09/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > >
> > http://meta.wkimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > or perhaps
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edits_by_project_and_country_of_origin
> > > > > ;-)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > - d.
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
That would make sense at the least. English has always been seen as
overcomplicated, as opposed to simple languages like German (maybe
thats why de wiki has so many contributors?).

On 9/4/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > HoI,
> > Thanks for the positive apreciation of the Dutch and Belgian effort. There
> > is no positive meaning to the word slut.. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slut
> >
> > Thanks,
> >  GerardM
>
> I think it was meant to be humorous, since normally *English* is the
> slut of languages, as has been pointed out because of its
> indiscriminate importation of words. At least, that's how I read it.
>
> ~maru
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of Wikimedia-Logo's in articles

body:
On 9/4/06, Tuvic <tuvic.tuvic at gmail.com> wrote:
> NL policy does not allow fair use. But, it the logo's are removed from the
> articles, shouldn't they also be removed from the template like {{Commons}}
> and so? Wouldn't that mean that the logo's (our 'own' logo's) are totally
> useless to us?
>

In certian respects yes time to reactivate:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_mascot
--
geni


body:
Is this database Jesus built around a proprietary MSSQL specification
by any chance?

On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Custom made in-house, terrible recode of Mambo or outsourced most
> > likely. A friend of mine made a CMS for his school and stored all the
> > data in mysql, assigning each file a unique identifier that appeared
> > in the url. The value of this unique identifier? md5 of the filename
> > and md5 of the file put together.
>
>
> **SPORK** That makes the Database Jesus cry.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact
	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>

So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.

Incerdentaly is there a reason why [[Etch-A-Sketch]] is coated in (r)s?

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 04/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> > and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.

> So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.

Oh, absolutely. Process is important. But too much is stifling and dangerous.

> Incerdentaly is there a reason why [[Etch-A-Sketch]] is coated in (r)s?

Stupidity, I presume. (Rather than malice. See the assumption of good faith!)

- d.


body:
A few people? Ideally a wikipedia would have 20-30 contributors to
start with and grow from there, to ensure that there is some sort of
editing activity. A few of the inactive wikipedias appear to have five
- six edits a day.

On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > There are some 231 living languages spoken in Australia. I think English is
> > the only one that has it's Wikipedia.
>
>
> If you mean the native languages, the problem is that a lot of them
> weren't written until recently, not many are used for any academic
> purpose (though some notably are) and orthographies vary widely. See:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_languages
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_of_Australian_Aboriginal_languages
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_sign_languages
>
> So what we need for a Wikipedia is a few people who speak the
> languages and want to do a Wikipedia of a language.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of
	origin

body:
Is there any particular trend of us contributors becoming the minority
on en:wp? That would be very interesting.

On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> > What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages,
> > which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99
> > percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It
> > would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in
> > the sample.
>
>
> It'll be amusing when US contributors are a minority on en:, they'll
> find out how UK contributors sometimes feel ;-p
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 04/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> In certian respects yes time to reactivate:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_mascot

I would have to shoot you for that except that I never realised we had
a Wikipedia OS-tan. What a great idea!

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_sockpuppet_show.png
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_head.png

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:

>On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>maru dubshinki wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>It depends on what you mean by a simple language. English is second
>>>>only to Chinese in its simplicity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Oh, c'mon. That old prejudice? Is English really more complex than
>>>Japanese, or Sumerian and Akkadian and Sanskrit? I greatly doubt it.
>>>
>>>
>>Huh? I think you misread what I said.
>>
>>
>Apparently. Chinese is far from simple, so the only logical way I
>could read it was as sarcasm and understatement. What did you mean?
>
By virtue of their historic development and grammar English and Chinese
are linguistically among the simplest languages.  Why would you say that
Chinese is not simple?

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] CategoryTree extension

references:
<edb34e$3c9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fbad4e140609020051r4496dd07l82bff42bd0c213b3@mail.gmail.com>
	<edd4rt$78h$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 9/3/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > That's fantastic! Is 'expand all' a reasonable future feature? Perhaps
> > with a limit, in case someone cleverly clicks "expand all" on
> > [[:en:Category:Fundamental]].
> >
>
> Unfortunately, this will have problems with cyclic categories.  If you
> have
> CatA > CatB > CatA then you will end up with infinite recursion.  This Is
> A
> Bad Thing (tm).

Could it at least do a one-level broad expansion? As in, expand every
category to a depth of N+1?

Steve (hi from Berlin!)


from_name: Robert Treat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sybase port

body:
On Wednesday 30 August 2006 00:26, Mark K wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am wondering how difficult it would be to use wiki with Sybase ASE. Has
> anyone attempted this with any amount of success? I'm willing to work on
> this with others who may be interested. I've downloaded mediawiki 1.6.8
> (due to PHP4) and just starting to look around.
>

If your serious about this, your best bet (IMHO) is to get a copy of the code
from SVN and take at look at the changes made for PostgreSQL support and then
go about making similar patches for sybase.  Dont expect to just dump the
whole patch back to the devs though, you should probably aim toward
delivering incremental patches back, and on top of that make sure to test
your changes on mysql (and postgresql to be nice) to make sure you haven't
broken anything.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL


subject: [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>When a person from India looking at Australian edits in other languages
>>than English presumes that we are talking about other European languages
>>this suggests that the influence of the Raj is still alive and well, and
>>that the educated people of India have bought into the idea that their
>>own native languages are somehow inferior.
>>
>>
>I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
>the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
>anything to do with them?
>
This is one plausible explanation.  So too is the idea that it is
important to have excellent English to get ahead in the world.  But
where will fluent Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati or even Hindi get you?

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of
	origin

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12.7% of people in
>> the 2001 Census speak a language other than English at home. Full
>> stats:
>
<snip>
> (corrected URL-from-Hell)
>
>

Ever heard of tinyurl? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12.7% of people in
>> the 2001 Census speak a language other than English at home. Full
>> stats:
>
<snip>
> (corrected URL-from-Hell)
>
>

Ever heard of tinyurl? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12.7% of people in
>> the 2001 Census speak a language other than English at home. Full
>> stats:
>
<snip>
> (corrected URL-from-Hell)
>
>

Ever heard of tinyurl? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12.7% of people in
>> the 2001 Census speak a language other than English at home. Full
>> stats:
>
<snip>
> (corrected URL-from-Hell)
>
>

Ever heard of tinyurl? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12.7% of people in
>> the 2001 Census speak a language other than English at home. Full
>> stats:
>
<snip>
> (corrected URL-from-Hell)
>
>

Ever heard of tinyurl? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

I'd say that english is the easiest language I've ever met. Its grammar can
be written in 20-30 pages, and basically you need only the first 3-4 to
become an average speaker. BTW, this is also one of the reasons why it's so
wide-spread. Having a lightweight grammar allows speakers to save memory for
more words: if you look at an english dictionary it's going to be huge, if
confronted (say) to italian. But if you confront grammar/dictionary pairs
the overall weight gets more equilibrated.

if you want something more "strong" for grammar, you should try piedmontese
and/or russian. One may object to the way english is written (that is,
syllabically instead of alfabetically), but that's not going to stop people
from learning to write in it, it only makes it more complicated as a spoken
language. Besides, closely related languages like dutch (and even more
closely related frisian) all have this derivation, because of the high
number of vowels they use. So this is not even typically english.

If I have to say the plain truth, I guess english speakers love to rate
their language difficult as an excuse for their being usually unable to
learn just even a second language :) They mastered such a terrible language
as english, so they now have the right to take a nap :) Anyway, in the next
ten years native english speakers will really become a minority on the net,
so I guess we (the not natives) will eventually enforce radical reforms in
the language, by pure brute force. It already happened in small with en_us,
it's going to big really big with en_int.

B?rto

----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "maru dubshinki" <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
??????????: 4 ???????? 2006 ?. 21:20
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

> On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > It depends on what you mean by a simple language.  English is second
> > only to Chinese in its simplicity.
> >
> > Ec
>
> Oh, c'mon. That old prejudice?  Is English really more complex than
> Japanese, or Sumerian and Akkadian and Sanskrit? I greatly doubt it.
>
> ~maru
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


body:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would have to shoot you for that except that I never realised we had
> a Wikipedia OS-tan. What a great idea!
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_sockpuppet_show.png
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan_head.png

unfortunetly there is a dark side:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cvutan.png

--
geni


body:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> > > and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>
> > So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.
>
>
> Oh, absolutely. Process is important. But too much is stifling and dangerous.
>

depends how it is structured. I don't think new users are going to be
to worried about [[Wikipedia:Bots]] and the ones we wan't don't
normaly have a problem with no legal threats or [[Wikipedia:Undeletion
policy]] (since when did we have an undeletion policy I have enough
trouble trying to remeber our deletion policy).

> Stupidity, I presume. (Rather than malice. See the assumption of good faith!)
>

I was woundering if it was a slightly odd case of use common names.

--
geni


body:
On 9/4/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is AFC protecting new users? I'd say that and AFD are what burn the
> most new users.
>
> ~maru

Well I didn't support turning article creation off . AFD and other
parts of deletion policy prevents  their stuff from summarily deleted
without a reason.

--
geni


body:
On 04/09/06, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:

> Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is,
> no doubt, better than using edit counts.  But it is also may not be the best
> approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over
> quantity" mentality.  At the least, there should be careful choices about
> what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results
> like these.  My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a
> significantly larger portion of established editors as the main
> contributors, even by the word count metric.

That's because it's bloody impossible to get through them without
being fabulous at the politics, even for experienced editors. FAC in
particular is a great example of gratuitous requests for shrubberies
BY POLICY!!!

- d.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] My irrelevant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
On 9/2/06, Sean Black <hulksmashly at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now ask which is the clearer disambiguation system: the current one or
> > your proposed one.  I am quite willing to concede that the current
> > system can be downright peculiar and mock serious subjects, but I very
> > much doubt this is the solution.
>
> How does "you may have been looking for [[this]]" "mock" anything?

Perhaps "mock" is the wrong word.  I agree with Steve that seeing a
reference to some obscure band's second album or some equally obscure
video game character on almost every science or history article is
highly annoying and detracts from the seriousness of the subject.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Asteroids (first Wikipedia post)

body:
On 30/08/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that the key question you have to ask yourself, and indeed in
> many ways the fundamental criteria for inclusion of everything, is "is
> anyone going to want to actually read this article?".  If you believe,
> as I do, that no-one is for the 20,000 very short stubs, we shouldn't
> have them.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Immediatism

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Pop culture articles (was WP:LIVING and
	"sensitivity" again)

body:
On 30/08/06, Sean Black <hulksmashly at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com>

> > Have you ever READ a popular culture article?
> > Particularly one about a fictional character, where you've got better-
> > than-even chances of being right to add {{cleanup fiction-as-fact}}
> > to it before you even start to deal with its other problems, of which
> > there will be many.

> And have you ever considerd trying to fix that and improve the
> articles instead of complaining about it on some mailing list? It's
> amazing how often the people who have virtually no experience actually
> editing articles and creating content are the ones who complain the
> most.

Which last assumption applies to neither Phil nor myself, as you should know.

Articles on pop singers and so forth tend to hagiography because the
fans are the only ones interested and keep the criticism out. Pick and
read some.

Telling people who say "there's a problem here" to shut up and fix it
and not bother you seems like denial rather than something that
assumes systematic problems are worth considering at all, let alone
solvable.

- d.


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

body:
On 31/08/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> The trademark (tm) should
> have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.

Or as the HTML entity ™ .

- d.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Translation of "A Wikimedia project" and "Powered
	by MediaWiki" images

body:
On 9/4/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > * what people from the Foundation think about it.
>
> I'm not from the Foundation, but I think that translating the "powered
> by MediaWiki" logo will lead to inconsistencies with other uses of the
> software; that button brands all MediaWiki wikis, and should be kept
> as such.

One option would be to allow a localised caption or alt text for the
image, while still keeping the same image everywhere.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western
	Countries

body:
FYI - lots of good links for projects and initiatives to partner with.

Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western Countries
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://oc.openflows.org

Vienna, 04.9.2006. Openflows.org releases today a survey of open content
projects in five non-western regions: Arab countries, Sub-Saharan Africa,
India, Brazil and South East and Eastern Europe. The aim of the study is
to assess the potential of the open content production process for areas
and fields which are under served by the commercial players. While we
cannot claim completeness, we believe that the range of projects allows
insight into the complex ways in which these projects interact with their
particular contexts and the vast differences this creates.

Main Findings

Open content projects are extremely sensitive to local conditions. For
their constituencies (producers and users of the project) the practical
value of the material tends to be far more important than abstract layer of
licensing. Hence, very few projects view themselves as 'open content', in
contrast to 'open source' software projects, where the sense of community
across projects is much stronger.

Open content projects rely on at least a kernel of a civil society,
comprised of dedicated individuals, NGOs, educational institutions and
initiatives, and others who value open cooperation (i.e. where
contributions are encouraged from people who are not formerly known). If
that does not exist, be it that social tensions are too strong, or that
economic situation is too harsh, open content projects cannot flourish.

For the majority to larger projects, some form of institutional support
for basic intrastructure is necessary, because of the long-term nature of
the projects. In Brazil, for example, this is provided by public
institutions (educational and governmental), in collaboration with NGOs and
other independent actors. Thus a number large, structured open content
projects are developing strongly, particularly in the field of music and
education. Where such institutional support is missing, for example in
India, such projects have a hard time reaching critical mass.

The situation is different for smaller open content projects, such a
blogging. These can run on globally available commercial infrastructures
(Web2.0 companies) and are hence in all areas growing strongly. Their
social and political impact, though, depends highly on local conditions.
Political blogs in Egypt, for example, are subject to entirely different
dynamics than those in India.

Outlook

Apart from well-known project based in highly-developed countries
(Wikipedia, MIT's Open Course Ware, Web2.0 companies) the field of open
content is still nascent. Without support, the uphill battle to reach
critical mass (when the project becomes self-sustainable) will be very
steep for most larger open content projects.

The growth of a globally available infrastructure for collaboration,
provided by Web2.0 companies, on the other hand, might help to unlock some
of the creative potential currently held-back by the lack of stable,
scalable platforms.

As of mid 2006, the snapshot provided by this survey, it's too
early to say where and in which form this will happen. And without a
general strengthening of civil society in these regions, it might well
remain stunted for a longer time than necessary.

Principal researcher and contact:
Felix Stalder

Essential research partners:
Branka Curcic, Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro; Alaa Abd El Fattah,
Cairo, Egypt; Tori Holmes and Tati Wells, Rio de Janerio, Brasil; Kerryn
McKay and Heather Ford, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Lawrence Liang,
Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India

Support:
The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Open Society
Institute's Information Program (Very Franz)
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information
login or register to post comments

--
Peace & Love,
Erik


body:
Hi!

> Speaking *excellent* English is a lot more work, but I don't see that
> it would be any more than any other language. (Note that I speak no
> other languages.)
Yes... but then, you'll end up as in the joke, where "classical theater is
when the actors are so english that you cannot understand what they say":)
It actually already happens. More and more cases are reported, when
non-native en-speakers undertand each other perfectly in english> but need
an interpreter to relate to native speakers. AS per myself I love UK english
much better (have many more friends living under the rule of H.M. :)

> Nah, that's just not bothering because they don't have to.
True, most of my friends do barging in France and\or Holland, and as soon as
they started to live abroad they also started to learn that there is much
more than english, out there :)

> Will they notice? The American Empire will need to fall first.
> (Starting with the US dollar bubble bursting.)
It's already happening. Not sure that we will not miss the American Empire
once it will be gone (there always room for the worse) but I'm pretty sure
that I will not die under its rule. Economy talks, and migratory movements
are simply impossible to manage. In a couple of generations or so the most
read wiki in the US will be ES:wiki. And that's the end of America, at
least, in the way we are used to perceive it. Not that Europe faces a
different destiny...

In a thousand years or so, there will be people speking of neo-anglians
languages... and it will be the start of another fashinating story :) But
that's something you and I will not see :)

B?rto


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Britannica on Wikipedia

body:
On 04/09/06, Joakim Larsson <to.joakim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/9/3, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl>:
> >
> > Britannica has an article on Wikipedia
> > <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9433599> (maybe they've had it for
> > a while, I can't remember finding anything when I looked a few months
> > ago).
> >
> > -Ruud
>
>
> And how much longer has Wikipedia got an article on Britannica :)

I can't see how long it is, because it isn't free.

Gerrit.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer

body:
On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 10:40:57 +0800, "Mark Ryan" <ultrablue at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be
>having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the
>mailing list.

-8<--------

I would suggest he upload a lower resolution version, OK for computer
use but not good enough for anything else, which he releases under
GFDL.

Otherwise, you've just found out why we have to crack down on image
licensing - first time the content is forked, the photographer is on
the phone to his IP lawyer.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus is dying...

body:
On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:15:47 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#59.25_.3D_consensus.3F

Am I the only one to find it ironic that SPUI is complaining about
consensus?  When was the last time you accepted anybody's opinion but
your own?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Mark K

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sybase port

body:
"Robert Treat" <xzilla at users.sourceforge.net>
wrote in message news:200609042159.08811.xzilla at users.sourceforge.net...
> If your serious about this, your best bet (IMHO) is to get a copy of the
> code
> from SVN and take at look at the changes made for PostgreSQL support and
> then
> go about making similar patches for sybase.  Dont expect to just dump the
> whole patch back to the devs though, you should probably aim toward
> delivering incremental patches back, and on top of that make sure to test
> your changes on mysql (and postgresql to be nice) to make sure you haven't
> broken anything.

Hi Robert,

Thank you for your comments. I don't know mysql, postgresql, or oracle, but
I do know Sybase ASE. Since you mention using the postgres code, I'll assume
it is closest in syntax to Sybase T-SQL. Sybase has a free edition which
runs on Linux and can be used in production environments.
http://www.sybase.com/linuxpromo
There are limits, but it works for the Wiki I'd like to create.

I would appreciate your further comments on how challenging you think this
might be since I don't know the other DBMS products. You mention testing my
changes on them, but wouldn't my changes only be for the Sybase code?
Testing / Learning other DBMS's might be more than I can take on.

Regards,
Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

body:
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:24:07 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>Yeah, he said it doesn't seem to be working, and it's not open.  So
>when is this policy change going to be reverted?

Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


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

body:
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:40:27 -0400, "Gregory Maxwell"
<gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

>On the first part... I don't think the existence of articles is a
>problem. A more interesting subject is the escape of pop-culture
>content, often too trivial for the pop-culture articles into other
>pages.

Very true.  I recently had a fairly bitter fight with Nintendo fans
who insist outright that the Nintendo character King Bowser Koppa is
far and away the most common use of the word bowser, so should live at
the [[bowser]] page, based on a "consensus" of Nintendo fans in a
discussion on the Nintendo article's Talk page.  Since bowser is the
Australian and NZ term for gas pump, and most dictionaries list it as
a tanker vehicle, and both are based on the genericisation of the S. F
Bowser Company's trademark, I strongly dispute their assertion, but
that did not result in them citing any actual evidence.  Anything not
flattering to pop culture is "elitist" and probably biggoted (always
spelt with two gs).  Look at the discussion on [[British shorthair]]
for example. Keeping the cruft confined to its own articles is a
never-ending task, and one which I sometimes think is doomed to fail.
At which point, in my view, the entire project will have failed; the
world has no need of another place to collect things which can be
found with the most elementary Google search.  It's the ''other''
stuff which we need Wikipedia for: bringing to the public domain
knowledge which is otherwise impenetrably buried in inaccessible
treeware.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:17:17 +0200, "Erik Moeller"
<eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

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

Call it wikicruft :-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Bill Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/4/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> > the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> > scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.
>
> The procedure is to file a feature request (bug) at
> http://bugs.wikimedia.org/, then attach this as a patch.  That
> provides a centralized place to discuss, note updates, get people to
> vote for it, etc.

Thanks!  I've submitted the bug and attached the patch.

-Bill


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
Kelly:
> Some observations
> * NL and BE are language sluts.

Thanks for the compliment.
We can't help being better educated than most in this respect ;)
It is forced upon us. Blame the system.

In all honesty, did you remove bot edits?
The interwikibot (a Dutch invention) might be a partial explanation.

Cheers, Erik Zachte


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-05

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

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

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/5/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
> switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.

I didn't think anybody actually used AD or CE in articles, but I see
now on the Manual of Style page that it reads:

>> Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Anno
Domini/Common Era,
>> but when events span the start of the Anno Domini/Common Era, use
AD or CE for
>> the date at the end of the range (note that AD precedes the date
and CE follows it).
>> For example, [[1 BC]]?[[1|AD 1]] or [[1 BCE]]?[[1|1 CE]].

There doesn't seem to be any code to handle this currently for AD,
which is why it didn't occur to me right off the bat.  You're right
though, and it should be included.  I'm busy over the next few days
but I can add this into the patch sometime this week (along with
whatever other changes people suggest).

-Bill


from_name: Ian Woollard

body:
But if you had a single list, or one split over a few pages for size
reasons, it would be dead easy to split it off on to another page if
suddenly a lot of information was available on a particular asteroid
wouldn't it?

On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think that the key question you have to ask yourself, and indeed in
> > many ways the fundamental criteria for inclusion of everything, is "is
> > anyone going to want to actually read this article?".  If you believe,
> > as I do, that no-one is for the 20,000 very short stubs, we shouldn't
> > have them.
>
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Immediatism
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Ian Woollard

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


body:
On 04/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> unfortunetly there is a dark side:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cvutan.png

Oh, that's MUCH better than using a Wikimedia logo. Just the thing!

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/5/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.

The procedure is to file a feature request (bug) at
http://bugs.wikimedia.org/, then attach this as a patch.  That
provides a centralized place to discuss, note updates, get people to
vote for it, etc.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 05/09/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> That's what happens when you're no longer allowed to use the logos for
> unauthorized Wikiprojects -- you have to break out the anime.

It's when the vandals start queueing up to be hit over the head I'll
start worrying.

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with this too, but there is a very easy fix for this: a
> disambiguation page. They work brilliantly, and the "hatnote" for them
> doesn't detract from it's subject at all, no matter how serious it is.
> No need to reform the disambiguation policy all willy-nilly to
> something that is less clear. It's a fine policy, it's worked great
> for a long time, and there are no real flaws with it. So what is the
> problem?

That Steve doesn't like it so is going around messing it up. No, I'm
not convinced either.

- d.


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Leaving the project

body:
Good luck.
-NSLE/Chacor

On 9/5/06, John Lyden <rasputinaxp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/4/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As long as you leave your talk page history in tact as a historical
> record
> > so links and discussions aren't broken, I don't have a problem with
> > blanking.
> >
> > If you're burned out, I suggest an extensive wikibreak. Once you've
> sniffed
> > in the outside air and spend some time de-stressing, you might look
> > different at returning.
>
> Yeah, I wasn't planning on deleting it at all.
>
> I've been on wikibreak for a few months now (as opposed to the 'weeks'
> that I put on my talk and user pages) and that was the sniffing the
> outside air.
>
> Head cleared, and all that. I'm definitely done with the project for a
> long time.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion, though.
>
> -John
> --
> John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
> "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
> live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
> time..." -Kerouac
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/5/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> But if you had a single list, or one split over a few pages for size
> reasons, it would be dead easy to split it off on to another page if
> suddenly a lot of information was available on a particular asteroid
> wouldn't it?

or we could just put it all on wikisource to use when we need it.

--
geni


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 9/5/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Sean Black <hulksmashly at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Now ask which is the clearer disambiguation system: the current one or
> > > your proposed one.  I am quite willing to concede that the current
> > > system can be downright peculiar and mock serious subjects, but I very
> > > much doubt this is the solution.
> >
> > How does "you may have been looking for [[this]]" "mock" anything?
>
> Perhaps "mock" is the wrong word.  I agree with Steve that seeing a
> reference to some obscure band's second album or some equally obscure
> video game character on almost every science or history article is
> highly annoying and detracts from the seriousness of the subject.
>

I agree with this too, but there is a very easy fix for this: a
disambiguation page. They work brilliantly, and the "hatnote" for them
doesn't detract from it's subject at all, no matter how serious it is.
No need to reform the disambiguation policy all willy-nilly to
something that is less clear. It's a fine policy, it's worked great
for a long time, and there are no real flaws with it. So what is the
problem?

--Oskar


body:
On 9/5/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not like there's a copyright violation; as far as I'm concerned, Dutch
> Wikipedia is allowed to use Wikimedia trademarks.

You've just described what we call "with permission images" that are
removed on sight these days.

> However, the concern would
> be if there's any forking involved, in which case it could turn into a fair
> use issue.

Or any reuse in fact.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
> On 05/09/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There doesn't seem to be any code to handle this currently for AD,
> > which is why it didn't occur to me right off the bat.  You're right
> > though, and it should be included.  I'm busy over the next few days
> > but I can add this into the patch sometime this week (along with
> > whatever other changes people suggest).

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's been a vexed question on en:. I mentioned it on wikien-l, you may
> want to ask there for any missing features (though I can't think of
> any past automatic conversion).

Thanks for the pointer; I've subscribed to that list.

I went ahead and started looking into adding AD/CE rewriting
functionality, and noticed something that might put a damper on those
plans.. AD or CE only ever appear in the right (display) portion of a
wikilinked date, as in:

... lasted from [[August 13]], [[10 BC]]–[[January 23]], [[15|AD 15]] ...

Both the current code and my patch would leave the date on the right
entirely alone, since it contains explicit display text.  This makes
sense, since the editor actually went to the trouble of specifying how
to display the date, and we wouldn't want to thoughtlessly override
that.

So it seems we're left with three options:

1) Ignore wikilinked dates that contain explicit display text, leaving
them untouched.
2) Change all wikilinked dates and associated display text according
to user preferences.
3) Encourage a mass renaming of year articles from (e.g.) [[1984]] to
[[AD 1984]].

Even though option 3 is completely unrealistic, I mention it because
it actually makes the most sense (how did we get started having bare
numbers assumed to be a date by default, anyway?).  That said, I think
option 2 is the best bet, so long as it's considered more important to
have consistent date formatting than to honor the display text put in
place by editors.

Note that this is already a problem on the current WP, since the
following won't display according to a user's preferences anyway:

[[March 21]], [[1974|1974]]

The current solution is to follow option 1, and that's what's already
in place in the patch I just submitted.  I've posted some of this
discussion there as well (bug 7239) in case people would rather follow
up there.

I'm really really going to bed now and not going to work on this
anymore for a few days, I swear, so I'll get back to this later.

-Bill Clark


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support for MediaWiki
	1.7.1

body:
I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using
MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together
a bzip2 package with MediaWiki 1.7.1 with all the extensions and PHP
fixes necessary to use the Wikipedia  enwiki dumps which also includes
all the support extensions for Native Cherokee and other Machine
translation projects.  The updated bzip2 package may be useful to others
since the released MediaWiki 1.7.1 does not run with the XML dumps
currently published by the Wikimedia Foundation without all these fixes
and extensions included and configured.

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/mediawiki-1.7.1.WG-20060904.tar.gz.bz2

Jeff


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia vs. Ebay on Alexa

body:
Ebay is at 11th place and Wikipedia is at 16th place, but, Wikipedia
has better daily reach per million from March/June 2006:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?compare_sites=ebay.com&range=max&size=large&y=r&url=wikipedia.org

Interesting thing is that Wikipedia is backed to exponential growth on Alexa.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> Although it's quite possible, and even likely, that some are
> misreported the claim that users from NL and BE are highly
> multilingual is supported by data across more than a dozen
> wikis.

Absolutely, all the honor to the Dutch and Belgians!  But this
cannot be taken to the level that they make up 26.7% of
contributions to the Danish Wikipedia.  The Danish Wikipedia was
the most striking example, so I suggest you take a look at which
IP address ranges (group by size /20 network)  that contributed to
the Danish Wikipedia were reported as coming from the Netherlands.
It should be fairly easy to identify one or two big ISPs there.
Then ask on the Danish village pump how this can be explained.
Some local users are sure to know how their own IP addresses work.
No need for separate tools, even though that could be nice too.

What was the name of the geolocation database you used?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Francis Tyers wrote:

> In fact, this brings up an interesting point, having <book> and
> <article> for specifics (they tend to be long), and then having
> <ref> for miscellaneous stuff.

When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
just an excuse for doing nothing.

Suppose you define a way to identify a pre-defined reference, e.g.
the Wikipedia Standard Reference Numbering (WSRN), you could set
up a server of your own where the reference database is kept and
just link to that from a template.  It would be no different from
Egil Kvaleberg's map link server and the {{coor}} template.

  WSRN = 1   --> "The Wiki Way", ISBN 0-201-71499-X
  WSRN = 2   --> "The Hive", article in "The Atlantic Monthly",
                 http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia
  WSRN = 3   --> ...

and a template {{wsrn|3}} to make a reference.

If you implement the database and fill it with contents, I can
write the template.

Here are two ideas for how to populate the database:

1. Copy the entire catalog of the Library of Congress and hope
they don't mind your doing so.  You can use the LCCN as the key,
but this won't give you any reference to The Hive article, unless
the LoC starts to catalog The Atlantic Monthly on an article
level.

2. Download the latest dump and extract all the <ref>...</ref>
tags currently used in the English Wikipedia.  Begin with the
works that are most frequently referenced.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Richard Holton

body:
On 9/5/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I do think that many times such notes can be wildly out of place. A
> perfect example somebody mentioned eariler is this thread is
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beirut&diff=21961432&oldid=21810147
>
> Clearly an inappropriate "hatnote"
>
> But, again. make a disambig-page and you're fine. No need for anything
> else.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________

That example didn't require a disambiguation note. Who would mistakenly go
to Beirut when looking for "Beer Pong"? Assuming good faith, whoever placed
this "hatnote" has a serious misunderstanding of the concept.

-Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering!
> I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another
> name
> when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have
> a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it.
>
> Mgm

Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but I'm sure there will be "bickering" over
the default setting of any UI option we come up with. After all, the default
will determine what those who are not logged-in or who have not modified
their preferences will see.

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


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Time to Seek Professional
	Lawyers Advice?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having
>>>a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as
>>>legally sound ...
>
>
>>IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus.
>
>
>
> It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another
> wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy
> on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is,
> a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal
> opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
>
> (And that would suggest writing to juriwiki-l, but that unfortunately
> seems to be a write-only list in practice.)
>
>
> - d.

Errrr. Afaik, anyone can write to juriwiki-l. This avoids legal issues
getting lost in the noise of this list. Well, in any cases, to be
certain an issue is noticed, you may put brad patrick in copy of any
mails of this type. Note that Brad is on holidays for the full week.

ant


from_name: theProject

body:
On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> >On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>maru dubshinki wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>It depends on what you mean by a simple language. English is second
> >>>>only to Chinese in its simplicity.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Oh, c'mon. That old prejudice? Is English really more complex than
> >>>Japanese, or Sumerian and Akkadian and Sanskrit? I greatly doubt it.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Huh? I think you misread what I said.
> >>
> >>
> >Apparently. Chinese is far from simple, so the only logical way I
> >could read it was as sarcasm and understatement. What did you mean?
> >
> By virtue of their historic development and grammar English and Chinese
> are linguistically among the simplest languages.  Why would you say that
> Chinese is not simple?
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard
http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

I know, because I have Chinese class in about two and a half hours and I've
been trying to comprehend the textbook (it's all in Chinese) for the last
week and I'm still only about four and a half paragraphs in. :-)

--
theProject


from_name: Guettarda

body:
Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
NPOV policy asks.

On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings) shouldn't
> go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
>
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> >
> >
> > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
> religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
> users supported BC, while the other half did not.

While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines - many
people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with accepting
a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating
systems.  Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias.
However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars
(for example) don't match precisely with solar ones.  So if we allowed a
user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old Russian
calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.

However, you have a
> point, NPOV means BCE.

BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of Nazareth.
So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting that
Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the word).  Similarly,
if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to Jesus,
then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has come
to mean God)

Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
> Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
> calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
> if he existed when he supposedly did).

As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two.  On the other
hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the requirement
of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating
system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting that
he is the Messiah or God.

On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> violates
> > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
> the
> > NPOV policy asks.
> >
> > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> > > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings) shouldn't
> > > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> > > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> > >
> > > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > - d.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> violates
> > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
> the
> > NPOV policy asks.
>
>
> That's not an "issue", it's an "assertion". Plus the common assertion
> that BCE is standard in academia, when that doesn't apply outside the
> US.

The "assertion" was the major "issue" in the debate.  So yes, it's the
issue.  Leaving aside the people who claimed religious persecution, the
major ISSUES in the debate were, on one side, that BC/AD violated NPOV and
on the other a mixture of "well so does BCE/CE" or "common usage trumps
NPOV".  And, as a result, an exception was voted to NPOV.

As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up
the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics
using BC/AD?  I don't recall any evidence provided (ok, I don't recall
anyone providing evidence to back up their position except Steve, who
provided pages and pages of it)

Ian


from_name: Przykuta

subject: [Foundation-l]Edits by project and country of origin

body:
> >
>
> I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
> the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
> anything to do with them?
>

Caste system is a closed system, Wikipedia is not. We can use bots to write articles in native languages. However number of articles is not a big problem. The big problem is number of users who know that languages.

Przykuta


body:
On 9/5/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps "mock" is the wrong word.  I agree with Steve that seeing a
> > reference to some obscure band's second album or some equally obscure
> > video game character on almost every science or history article is
> > highly annoying and detracts from the seriousness of the subject.
>
> I don't get this 'detracts from the seriousness of the subject'.  Do
> science or history articles get all embarassed to be in the same
> encyclopedia as more "trivial" subjects?  Do the writers of such
> articles, or the readers?
>
> And should we care?
>
> One of the strengths of Wikipedia is its trivia.  Seriously.  It's the
> breadth of our coverage that makes us appealing, and allows us to be a
> one-stop source of information for the curious.
>
> To be honest, a good proportion of the history and science is as
> trivial as the music and videogames.  This does not mock the science,
> nor the history.
>
> -Matt

I do think that many times such notes can be wildly out of place. A
perfect example somebody mentioned eariler is this thread is
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beirut&diff=21961432&oldid=21810147

Clearly an inappropriate "hatnote"

But, again. make a disambig-page and you're fine. No need for anything else.

--Oskar


body:
On 05/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Errrr. Afaik, anyone can write to juriwiki-l.

And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.

- d.


from_name: Michael Dale

subject: [Foundation-l] [Spcommittee-l] Multimedia: planning a meeting

body:
hey guys sorry I missed the meeting on Saturday...here is an update from
the bleeding_edge ;) (cross posted to openmedia)

I think we are getting in position to make a big open media push within
the next few months. I have been chatting with the vlc folks in
particular the plugin developer (|Quovodis|) about getting some of those
more advanced features in place.(
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Ogg_Support) We focused on the
progressive download status, and what?s called a window-less plug-in so
that it could support html css/z-index layering features found in flash.
I whipped together a javascript based css styleable playhead for the vlc
plugin. A demo is available here (requires vlc-plugin):
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/bleeding_edge/test3.html .. (only the first clip
the non-annodex ogg functions with the playhead) Controlled buffering
would obviously be helpful for low bandwidth / high latency connections.

The good thing about going with VLC (in addition to or as an alternative
to our proposed integrating the libtheora into firefox is that we can
support IE and all existing audio/video media types at the same time
that our particular services are ogg-theora centric. VLC user base while
not quite on par with wikipedia is very large so it?s already dealing
with the many issues that arise in putting out audio video software
across many platforms.

We may even want to have a vlc-wikipedia-annodex/cross brand ogg theroa
only plugin that we can host on wikipedia for a few click browser
install as an alternative to the java cortado player which has not been
perfect in performance/compatibility/reliability/active development. If
a flavor of the vlc plugin was hosted on wikipedia, it could be a
limited version which only included non-patent-encumbered open source
code. (ie only decode/encode(*) the free codecs (ogg theora, speex, flac
etc) It will make the download smaller ;)

* another reason why VLC would be interesting is it already has
interfaces for hooking up to live DV sources or arbitrary live or
captured audio/video streams/files?it could be used to stream/transcode
video from client computers to the server) for example the opt to have
VLC stream to a cortado applet:
:sout=#transcode{vcodec=theo,vb=1024,scale=1,acodec=vorb,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ogg,dst="/home/myuser/stream.ogg"},dst=std{access=http,mux=ogg,dst=localhost:1234}}
:sout-all
Having this javascript accessible with a clean interface could enable
arbitrary people to freely archive live streams to wiki-servers?
(wiki-conference sub-project, anyone? ;)

In the next few weeks I will continue development on the wiki/metavid
bridges and finish up on the basic version of embed media for mediaWiki.
I plan to add a metavid extension to media wiki something like
[[external_embed:]], to support video and metadata transclution into
wikispace. An (very) early version
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/wiki_dev/phase3/index.php/Metavid_embed
(msg me if you want to know how it will actually work/look)

Also I want to contact people at archive.org see what it would take to
get them on board with mod-annodex. (so that arbitrary sub-selections of
archive.org PD content could be transcluded into wikipedia or other
projects)

I am open to dialog with others about what they feel are important
short-term and long term goals. Also I would be interested in chatting
with people about how they foresee multimedia integrating into the wiki
systems. I am in #metavid in irc.freenode.net as we well as #mediaWiki
ofcourse ;) In terms of meeting times weeknight would be better for me,
as I will not be available for the next few weekends.

--michael (irc:bigmammoth)

Samuel Klein wrote:
> And again : a newer thread, prior to the discussion at the recent spc
> meetings, with gmaxwell's input:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-August/000108.html
>
> Rich media is increasingly part of how people communicate and create
> new knowledge.  If we find a time to meet, perhaps we can give the OMC
> and related groups a reason to perk up...
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia#Meetings
>
> SJ
>
> On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There's also the recently created Open Media Coalition:
>> http://openmediacoalition.org/index.php/Main_Page
>> (open/media)
>>
>> But it seems to be inactive at this time. I've tried to give them a
>> kick in the butt on their mailing list .. ;-)
>> --
>> Peace & Love,
>> Erik
>> _______________________________________________
>> Spcommittee-l mailing list
>> Spcommittee-l at mail.wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/spcommittee-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/4/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:24:07 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> wrote:
>
> >Yeah, he said it doesn't seem to be working, and it's not open.  So
> >when is this policy change going to be reverted?
>
> Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
> flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?
>
How many more admins do you *really* think it would take.  Certainly
not 1000.  Surely the 3 or 4 more clicks it takes to create a crap
article now aren't stopping that many anons.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Bill Clark wrote:
> I've added the ability to specify a preference (or no preference) for
> era names in dates (BC vs. BCE).  I've also fixed a couple bugs in the
> regular expressions that match for dates, that were preventing the
> parser from recognizing (and converting) dates that ended in BCE or
> which were written in ISO format and fell between -999-01-01 and
> 999-12-31 (i.e. had a one-, two-, or three-digit year).
>
> I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.
>
> I've tested this and it works on my local version (checked out of svn
> a few hours ago) but I imagine it should be tested more.
>
> -Bill Clark
>
>
That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.

-- Neil


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Content reuse howto

body:
On 05/09/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 03. September 2006 05:07 schrieb Alphax (Wikipedia email):

> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

> Please also see the existing:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps/Reuse

- which isn't actually very helpful and, notably, doesn't answer the
sort of questions that come in email

> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Liceinsing

- which is explicitly a guide to *putting* content on Commons, not for
third-party reusers.

> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope

That doesn't appear to have anything to do with answering the
questions that page is there to answer.

Did you read the page? There are notes on the talk page as well.

> This text
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
> text should be strictly centered around media files (will be long enough in
> the end). The generic infos for all projects fit much better into Meta.

You might think that, but my email pile doesn't.

Can a project vote that the Foundation must henceforth be unhelpful?

- d.


subject: [Commons-l] Content reuse howto

body:
On 05/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:

> > This text
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
> > text should be strictly centered around media files (will be long enough in
> > the end). The generic infos for all projects fit much better into Meta.

> You might think that, but my email pile doesn't.

That is: outside emailers aren't going to ask in terms of an internal
project distinction.

The aim of the page is to get people to stop asking more and more
specific questions on reusability and know how to look through Commons
for reusable stuff themselves, without emailing further. I put the
page on Commons because everything on it is explicitly meant to be
reusable.

- d.

- d.


body:
The vexed question may be solved by technical means!

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk>
Date: 05-Sep-2006 08:41
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>

Bill Clark wrote:
> I've added the ability to specify a preference (or no preference) for
> era names in dates (BC vs. BCE).  I've also fixed a couple bugs in the
> regular expressions that match for dates, that were preventing the
> parser from recognizing (and converting) dates that ended in BCE or
> which were written in ISO format and fell between -999-01-01 and
> 999-12-31 (i.e. had a one-, two-, or three-digit year).
>
> I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.
>
> I've tested this and it works on my local version (checked out of svn
> a few hours ago) but I imagine it should be tested more.
>
> -Bill Clark
>
>
That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.

-- Neil

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Carl Peterson

body:
I'm one of the Christians who feels that BCE is more appropriate (though I
still use BC/AD in common conversation). My reason, however, is that if one
looks at the historical context of Jesus' life (things like the reign of
Herod), you'd find that he was actually born approx. 4-6 BCE, which if we
use BC/AD convention means that Jesus was born a few years "Before Christ."
So, I support BCE more from a standpoint of language precision. By using
(B)CE for the date convention, it removes tying the dating system to a
specific event, such that any evidence which might effect the actual timing
of events does not invalidate the system.

Carl

On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
> > religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
> > users supported BC, while the other half did not.
>
>
> While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines -
> many
> people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
> half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with
> accepting
> a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating
> systems.  Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias.
> However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars
> (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones.  So if we allowed a
> user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old Russian
> calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.
>
> However, you have a
> > point, NPOV means BCE.
>
>
> BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of
> Nazareth.
> So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting that
> Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the
> word).  Similarly,
> if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to
> Jesus,
> then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has
> come
> to mean God)
>
>
> Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
> > calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
> > if he existed when he supposedly did).
>
>
> As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two.  On the
> other
> hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the requirement
> of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating
> system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting that
> he is the Messiah or God.
>
>
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> > violates
> > > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is
> the
> > > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
> what
> > the
> > > NPOV policy asks.
> > >
> > > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> > > > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > > > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings)
> shouldn't
> > > > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> > > > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > > > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> > > >
> > > > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > - d.
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 05/09/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom at gmail.com> wrote:

> There doesn't seem to be any code to handle this currently for AD,
> which is why it didn't occur to me right off the bat.  You're right
> though, and it should be included.  I'm busy over the next few days
> but I can add this into the patch sometime this week (along with
> whatever other changes people suggest).

It's been a vexed question on en:. I mentioned it on wikien-l, you may
want to ask there for any missing features (though I can't think of
any past automatic conversion).

- d.