body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well, I want to just delete the whole thing and
> replace it with a short paragraph or two about
> epistemology. But then people would complain, and I
> don't like to do things if they are going to be
> disliked by everyone. If it's OK for me to completely
> rewrite the article, then I will.  I would also like
> to do the same with [[Information warfare]], but the
> shortening of articles seems to be discouraged.

Sometimes articles get so long and convoluted, filled with page-long
quotes etc., that radical rewriting is necessary. And that has always
been encouraged. See [[Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages]].

Axel

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry's text on the "Knowledge" article

body:
Your text is fine, I wouldn't delete it. But the first two paragraphs of your text seem to be from a specific point of view. Is your text from an epistemological point of view? Even though your text was concise, it used too much of a definitive tone.

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:Please edit the article if you are moved to, but don't trash it. I wrote
most of the first portion and certainly will expect you to incorporate the
material in that part in any rewrite you do. A rewrite that simply trashes
the whole preceeding article is just an invitation to trouble. I agree that
it would be very difficult to incorporate Larry's text, but there is a body
of knowledge behind what he wrote which with research could be set forth.

Fred

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit screen: save space

body:
This is a feature request.  Please offer more config options to make it
possible for users like me to save space.  Here is my workbench (full
screen):

    Mozilla-edit-wp-de.png . . 60151 Byte
    http://de.wikipedia.org/upload/9/9d/Mozilla-edit-wp-de.png

As you can see I cannot reach the bottom of the edit box and "Save"
resp. "Preview" button.  I know it's possible to configure the length
of the edit box, but that's not what I want.

The logo at the left upper corner and label stuff on top of the edit box
("Bearbeiten von Andr? Breton...") are wasting precious vertical space.
Please implement switches to turn off these decorations.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Well, see what you can do. I mostly make stuff up as I go along, so it's
hardly part of the "canon"

Fred

From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 10:13:52 -0700 (PDT)
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Larry's text on the "Knowledge" article

Your text is fine, I wouldn't delete it. But the first two paragraphs of
your text seem to be from a specific point of view. Is your text from an
epistemological point of view? Even though your text was concise, it used
too much of a definitive tone.

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
Please edit the article if you are moved to, but don't trash it. I wrote
most of the first portion and certainly will expect you to incorporate the
material in that part in any rewrite you do. A rewrite that simply trashes
the whole preceeding article is just an invitation to trouble. I agree that
it would be very difficult to incorporate Larry's text, but there is a body
of knowledge behind what he wrote which with research could be set forth.

Fred

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum
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l>  - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop
<http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.htm
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from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL with invariant sections may be ruled non-free by Debian

body:
The Debian (Linux distribution) project is currently discussing a
motion
to label GFDL materials that use cover texts or invariant sections as
"non-free". This won't affect us, but it could affect people who
use our material and then add cover texts or invariant sections, as
they are allowed to do per the license.

The discussion is linked from this Slashdot article:
  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/20/1357236

Axel

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it possible to delete an item from the article history?

body:
> User 213.136.111.101 wrote a treatise on stealing credit card numbers in
> [[Leet]] which was reverted, but the information is still there in the
> history.  Can we get it out of there? Zoe

Doesn't sound very plausible, if it is, it is almost certainly outdated.
In any case, if we engage in such attempts of permanent information
removal, we only challenge others to get the info back into the history,
which is very obviously simple to do. Just ignore it.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia not educational

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Also with math, there should be links on
>>the  tops of math pages to some glossary of math
>>notation, because you can't just put a link in every
>>(actually, any) mathematical symbol. Although it's
>>probably impossible to have a *complete* set of math
>>notation, I think having the basics down would help.
>>
>
>See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_symbols
>
That such a question should come up at all suggests that we have a long
way to go on idiot-proofing Wikipedia.  And I would not consider
LittleDan to be an idiot.

There is no reason why you can't link to the table from the symbols.
 This would be useful the first time the symbol appears in an article.
 You can use the format [[Table of mathematical symbols|&#8751]].

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bug -- half-deleted image

body:
Navigating from [[:Image:Rach3.jpg]] to
http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/e/e9/Rach3.jpg produces a 404 error: "The
requested URL /upload/e/e9/Rach3.jpg was not found on this server". I'm not
sure how it got that way, but obviously the image table of the database
needs to be updated to reflect reality. Don't bother trying to find or
recover the missing file.

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit screen: save space

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>The logo at the left upper corner and label stuff on top of the edit box
>("Bearbeiten von Andr? Breton...") are wasting precious vertical space.
>Please implement switches to turn off these decorations.
>

Time to implement the "minimal skin" seen here, maybe:
http://www.twoevils.org/files/wiki/Rabbit-minimal.html

>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Edit screen: save space


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Edit screen: save space

in_reply_to:
<3EA2A308.90209@planetunreal.com> (tarquin@planetunreal.com's
 message of "Sun, 20 Apr 2003 14:39:20 +0100")

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> Time to implement the "minimal skin" seen here, maybe:
> http://www.twoevils.org/files/wiki/Rabbit-minimal.html

Yes, looks good -- that's all I need :)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Edit this section"

body:
Just an idea, don't know if I'll find time to implement it:

Long articles can get painful to edit, because you have to scroll to the
section you want to work on, and always load the entire page. Some
browsers also have problems with long texts. Realistically, some articles
will always be in the 20-30K range. So an easy way to edit smaller
portions of a large article might make sense.

We already have section markers in the text:

== foo ==

=== bar ===

It would not be very difficult to add a little [edit] link behind each
section headline (should be made as non-ugly as possible), which would
lead to an URL like

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/
wiki.phtml?title=Robert_Atkins&action=edit&section=References

The resulting edit window would only contain the text from this section
and subsection. Preview would also only show this text. When saved, it
would be merged with the remaining text.

Edit conflicts could be handled at first like they are now: If an edit
conflict occurs, the entire text - not just the section - has to be edited
again. However, smarter edit conflict handling would be neat -- if someone
edits text in an entirely different section, the two edits could be auto-
merged.

The name of the section that is being edited could also be automatically
added to the recent changes comment line, so when I edit ==External
links==, the text (section: "External links") is appended to the RC
comment.

One problem case would be articles with duplicate section titles. To
properly reference section titles, there might therefore have to be an
additional iteration parameter. Or we assume that this doesn't happen and
always edit the first section of that name.

What do you think?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Edit this section"

body:
Sounds good, so how would page history look?

Fred

> From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
> Reply-To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: 21 Apr 2003 01:36:00 +0200
> To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] "Edit this section"
>
> Just an idea, don't know if I'll find time to implement it:
>
> Long articles can get painful to edit, because you have to scroll to the
> section you want to work on, and always load the entire page. Some
> browsers also have problems with long texts. Realistically, some articles
> will always be in the 20-30K range. So an easy way to edit smaller
> portions of a large article might make sense.
>
> We already have section markers in the text:
>
> == foo ==
>
> === bar ===
>
> It would not be very difficult to add a little [edit] link behind each
> section headline (should be made as non-ugly as possible), which would
> lead to an URL like
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/
> wiki.phtml?title=Robert_Atkins&action=edit&section=References
>
> The resulting edit window would only contain the text from this section
> and subsection. Preview would also only show this text. When saved, it
> would be merged with the remaining text.
>
> Edit conflicts could be handled at first like they are now: If an edit
> conflict occurs, the entire text - not just the section - has to be edited
> again. However, smarter edit conflict handling would be neat -- if someone
> edits text in an entirely different section, the two edits could be auto-
> merged.
>
> The name of the section that is being edited could also be automatically
> added to the recent changes comment line, so when I edit ==External
> links==, the text (section: "External links") is appended to the RC
> comment.
>
> One problem case would be articles with duplicate section titles. To
> properly reference section titles, there might therefore have to be an
> additional iteration parameter. Or we assume that this doesn't happen and
> always edit the first section of that name.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Avoid tables -- keep it simple!

in_reply_to: <sh65p7oo72.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>; from ke@gnu.franken.de on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 05:38:41PM +0200

body:
I tend to agree.  But then, I like my web pages ugly and functional.

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> The English Wikipedia often is overdesigned; example:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait (and probably many a lot other
> countries).
>
> 1. It's hard to edit tables
>
> 2. Cut-and-paste does not work that good
>
> 3. It isn't browser friendly; in lynx it comes out this way:
>
>                                         CAPTION: Dawlat al Kuwayt
>
>                              Kuwait flag medium.png KUW-coat.gif
>                                    (In Detail)
>
>                                              National motto: None
>                                          Official language Arabic
>                                                    Capital Kuwait
>                                                        Emir Jabir
>                                               Prime minister Saad
>                                                              Area
>                                                           - Total
>                                            - % water Ranked 153rd
>                                                        17,820 km?
>                                                        Negligible
>                                                        Population
>                                                    - Total (2001)
>                                            - Density Ranked 141st
>                                                         2,041,961
>                                                           115/km?
>                                        Independence June 19, 1961
>                                                    Currency Dinar
>                                                  Time zone UTC +3
>                              National anthem Al-Nasheed Al-Watani
>                                                  Internet TLD .KW
>                                                  Calling Code 965
>
> Yes, it's right aligned :-(  I'm not sure whether you will rate it as a
> lynx bug, though...
>
> --
>                                                          |      ,__o
> http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
> ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikipedia-l] minor improvements to the system. aggravated.

body:
Hi .I tried to begin a relationship with one of the developers, but it mainly ended in me waiting
for months and then finally repetitively using AIM (instant chat) to drill information out of him.
1 of my bugs was dealt with, 2 were ignored, and then Brion became extremely confrontational with
me after a spat over some image copyright issues. Anyway See:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3ABrion_VIBBER_(archive) (search for "hfastedge" multiple
times on the page)

I have 3 main improvements that I would like to implement:

1: make chatting better OR (the fact that ~~~ and ~~~~ points to user: instead of user_talk: is
stupid, as ONLY changes to user_talk shows you a global notification)
"""(from an unresponded-to convo with BrionV)
 As per the This bug (
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=674724&group_id=34373&atid=411195) Could
you please address it. The most conservative solution would be for changes on the user: page to
activate the "you have new messages" feature as well. Remember, my original plan was for ~~~ and
~~~~ to refer to the talk page, but u argued against this. If u argue still, how about a ~~ or a
~~~~~ that points to the talk page.
"""

2: A feature to change collections of links. Namely suppose you move an article, and want the
areas of text that link to this article to instantly reflect the new name. So, I would like to
code this in such a way that it will bring up an interface that lets you edit all in one page each
reference to this article. Namely, today I was browsing wikipedia and i came accross this:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizeau-Foucault_Apparatus  well, i felt the article was pretty poor,
so I did some googling, and it turns out that Fizeau and Focault worked independantly on the
projects. Because of this, I felt there was a need to move the article. But looking at "what links
here" immediately frustated me because what I propose would make this task of verifying the
textual integrity of the articles after you change the name of an article much MUCH easier. And im
not really sure right now if its a good idae  to go a step further and have an
instantaneously-change-all-textual-links-to-new-name-without-this-human-verification-process-that-I
-just-laid-out.

3: slight improvements to the history sections. Namely: besides a "page history" link, each
article should also have, on the top level, a link to the diff between the cur and last revision.
Next: is that every user contributions page should have links to the cur, the last diff, AND the
diff of the last edit that user made.

Ok folks. Remember, that im coming to this group because I unfortunately require the judgement and
supposed fairness of bureacracy.

If anyone's curious, Im:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hfastedge
I've been on the  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_active_Wikipedians for many months
in a row.

AND im a capable coder. See this little invention that i've been running for about 6 months now:
http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~hperes/uniwiki/date.html

__________________________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>):
> I tend to agree.  But then, I like my web pages ugly and functional.

My major concern is the ease of editing issue. I have nothing
against good-looking tables and nice designs that make a page
easy to read, but if it makes the underlying code hard to edit,
it doesn't suit Wikipedia well.

There was a large amount of discussion about this a few months
ago, and I proposed some simplifications to wikitext syntax that
I plan to implement at some point; perhaps after I get some of
the database optimizations done, since that seems to be a higher
priority at the moment (I think we set a record this morning
with 470 mysqld processes on the server).

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia not educational

body:
I disagree.  I think "clutter and redundancy" could really help wikipedia out. For example (this is not what the article really is), let's say we have a pythagorean theorem article that doesn't define a right triangle.  Then, someone reading the article might click on right triangle article and find a bunch of trigonometry there, getting them completely confused. Instead, there could be a simple definition in the pythagorean theorem of what a right triangle is (for example: A right triangle contains exactly one right angle, meaning an angle measuring 90°). This isn't just a hypothetical situation, it happens often.  A potential way to solve this while avoiding redundancy would be to put little markers that denote beginning, intermediate, and advanced, like there are in many math and programming tutorials, as well as text books, but that might be too intrusive.  The redundancy already in Wikipedia is helping. All of those year and day pages are a great refrence resource, but most of the information in those is already reported in other articles. In many biography articles, there is a summary of the person's work. This is also redundant, but helpful.  I can't think of any more examples, but there are more ways that it helps.

Jason Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:Strongly disagree. *Wikipedia* should present information in such
a way that a person of average intelligence [etc]. *Articles* should
present information understandable to the layman where possible
*without making the article less clear and concise for somebody
reasonably educated in the general field*.

Anything else leads to clutter in articles, and redundancy in
the wikipedia as a whole.

--

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

---------------------------------
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body:
> > Hi .I tried to begin a relationship with one of the developers, but it
> > mainly ended in me waiting for months and then finally repetitively using
> > AIM (instant chat) to drill information out of him. 1 of my bugs was dealt
> > with, 2 were ignored, and then Brion became extremely confrontational with
> > me after a spat over some image copyright issues. Anyway See:
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3ABrion_VIBBER_(archive) (search for
> > "hfastedge" multiple times on the page)

All of the developers have different concerns. Brion does a bang-up
job keeping the site running well, and getting all of the international
wikis upand running. Fixing bugs in the software is not a priority of
his, not the least reason for which is that he didn't write the thing.
I did, and it is my current focus to improve the software (I just
finished writing a test suite and doing some benchmarks). So if there
are bugs that annoy you, I'm probably the one to badger.

That said, just because you see something as a bug that doesn't mean
it's going to be a priority of mine either.

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


body:
Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
>--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > User 213.136.111.101 wrote a treatise on stealing credit card numbers
> > in [[Leet]] which was reverted, but the information is still there in
> > the history.  Can we get it out of there? Zoe
>
>It is a hoax. They are trying to get your credit card number, not
>telling you how to steal someone else's credit card number.
>Maybe even a candidate for [[Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense]].

I would call it "fraud" rather than a hoax. I've emailed Hotmail, informing
them of the situation, in the hopes that they will shut down the
htm_basedata_pxqcode68423 at hotmail.com account, thereby protecting gullible
fools from losing their credit card numbers.

-- Tim Starling

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


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia not educational

body:
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 06:03:51PM -0700, John Knouse wrote:
> My three cents worth (inflation, you know):
>
> Any article in Wikipedia should present information in such
> a way that a person of average intelligence who's motivated
> to learn can interpret it and use it.
> education is absolutely necessary.

Strongly disagree. *Wikipedia* should present information in such
a way that a person of average intelligence [etc]. *Articles* should
present information understandable to the layman where possible
*without making the article less clear and concise for somebody
reasonably educated in the general field*.

Anything else leads to clutter in articles, and redundancy in
the wikipedia as a whole.

--

jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [WikiEN-l] anonymous users

body:
Oh, now I realised that the problem is only on [[Special:New Pages]]. Could you fix it there?

Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:On Fri, 2003-04-18 at 19:35, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Also, on the recent changes page, for some reason, it
> doesn't let me just click on the ip adress of the
> editing user.

Could you be more specific? Clicking on an IP address in recentchanges
should give you the user contributions list for that IP.

If it's not doing that, then you're going to have to describe what it
*is* doing.

> Instead, I have to go into the article,
> then into the page history, then click on the IP
> adress.

Should work exactly the same as on RC, but note that there aren't talk
links provided next to the username/IP links.

> If a talk page like that were made, would it
> show up for the person saying you have new messages on
> the top of every screen?

Same as for logged-in users, yes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature name=signature.asc

---------------------------------
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Avoid tables -- keep it simple!

body:
It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are going
to go away because they are so damn useful and
visually appealing to the great majority of our
readers. Heck, we need /more/ not fewer tables because
Wikipedia is filled with tabular/almanac data that
isn't at all well-suited to prose.

Think of how difficult it would be to find the thermal
conductivity of lithium if there wasn't a table with
that information in it. Having this information in a
very predictable place for a themed set of articles is
a very good thing. But it is ugly in the wikicode
code, so;

tarquin wrote:
>One simple option would be to put the code for the
>table on another page, and import it -- much like we
>do with images.
>We could agree on nicer table syntax at a later date
>too.

Which is something I suggested some time ago. A
table:namespace would be most useful here. The outside
border could be clickable so that a user can navigate
to the table namespace page.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I lost track of my WikiKarma somewhere in Death Valley
- I'm sure I had some left.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
The English Wikipedia often is overdesigned; example:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait (and probably many a lot other
countries).

1. It's hard to edit tables

2. Cut-and-paste does not work that good

3. It isn't browser friendly; in lynx it comes out this way:

                                        CAPTION: Dawlat al Kuwayt

                             Kuwait flag medium.png KUW-coat.gif
                                   (In Detail)

                                             National motto: None
                                         Official language Arabic
                                                   Capital Kuwait
                                                       Emir Jabir
                                              Prime minister Saad
                                                             Area
                                                          - Total
                                           - % water Ranked 153rd
                                                       17,820 km?
                                                       Negligible
                                                       Population
                                                   - Total (2001)
                                           - Density Ranked 141st
                                                        2,041,961
                                                          115/km?
                                       Independence June 19, 1961
                                                   Currency Dinar
                                                 Time zone UTC +3
                             National anthem Al-Nasheed Al-Watani
                                                 Internet TLD .KW
                                                 Calling Code 965

Yes, it's right aligned :-(  I'm not sure whether you will rate it as a
lynx bug, though...

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>>(Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>):
>>I tend to agree.  But then, I like my web pages ugly and functional.
>>
>>
>
>My major concern is the ease of editing issue. I have nothing
>against good-looking tables and nice designs that make a page
>easy to read, but if it makes the underlying code hard to edit,
>it doesn't suit Wikipedia well.
>
>
One simple option would be to put the code for the table on another
page, and import it -- much like we do with images.
We could agree on nicer table syntax at a later date too.

I've suggested how this could be done for both tables and images here:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_pages


body:
Hi there,

> Hi .I tried to begin a relationship with one of the developers, but it
> mainly ended in me waiting for months and then finally repetitively using
> AIM (instant chat) to drill information out of him. 1 of my bugs was dealt
> with, 2 were ignored, and then Brion became extremely confrontational with
> me after a spat over some image copyright issues. Anyway See:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3ABrion_VIBBER_(archive) (search for
> "hfastedge" multiple times on the page)

Brion can be a bit moody, but his contributions to the software, the
content, and the project as a whole (maintenance etc.) have been enormous.
He's the closest thing we have to a Wikipedia admin, so please bear with
him if he behaves like an admin sometimes ;-)

That said, I really hope you will contribute to our codebase, as we are in
desperate need of more developers.  In my experience, it is a good idea to
discuss significant changes like the ones you propose below on wikipedia-l
or elsewhere before entering the coding stage. Otherwise people may be
pissed off when the change is instated without discussion.

> 1: make chatting better

Yeah, we definitely need to revamp the talk page process. There are many
ways to do that, and some have already been proposed.

> OR (the fact that ~~~ and ~~~~ points to user:
> instead of user_talk: is stupid, as ONLY changes to user_talk shows you a
> global notification)

Well, the purpose of the user link is not strictly to enable a direct
reply, but to allow me to check who the person in question is. The ~~~ and
~~~~ are also used for voting and in other places where a link to the talk
page would not be what is desired. And a sudden change of the link would
create an ugly mess as people try to navigate old and new signatures.

Furthermore, I personally think that splitting replies across many
different pages should be discouraged. That makes it almost impossible to
follow a conversation. Yeah, I know, you get the nice message
notification, but if that drives people to splitting up a conversation,
then something is wrong with our talk page process. I would much prefer a
solution that addresses this.

In the meantime, I suggest replying directly on the talk page where you
receive a message, and using your "My contributions" link to check whether
people have responded to messages you have written (if so, yours will no
longer be the top edit).

> The most conservative solution
> would be for changes on the user: page to activate the "you have new
> messages" feature as well.

That would encourage people to use the user pages as talk pages. This is a
bad thing for several reasons, among them being the fact that the behavior
of pages in the talk namespace is already subtly different from those in
other namespaces, and may become moreso in the future. Conversations
should therefore be confined to the talk space, so that all of them
benefit from features we add to this namespace.

Let me repeat, I agree that we need to fix the talk page process, but I
think we should address the core of the problem, namely how people have
conversations on Wikipedia. The two features I am most interested in:

 - threaded discussions (without giving up openly editable pages) -- have
   a tag that is appended to a message that allows others to click a
   "reply" link and post a reply without having to edit the entire page
 - have a better way to watch your discussions, e.g. "My conversations" as
   a separate section in "My contributions", which would highlight changes
   to talk pages you have recently edited

> 2: A feature to change collections of links. Namely suppose you move an
> article, and want the areas of text that link to this article to instantly
> reflect the new name.

I am very, very wary of all features that do something to a lot of pages
simultaneously, mainly because I am always worried about their potential
for evil. Imagine an edit war across several pages, with a vandal renaming
all instances of an author's name to "Cunt", and sysops having to revert
it. Not only that, think about handling edit conflicts when you have just
made a change to 20 pages.

Also note that redirects should work nicely in many cases. In other cases,
I think it *should* be somewhat of an effort to make a substantial name
change so that people will not do it lightly and unnecessarily. Frequent
title changes can be very annoying.

Maybe as a sysop feature, but we try to avoid having too many of those.

> And im not really sure right now if its a good
> idae  to go a step further and have an
> instantaneously-change-all-textual-links-to-new-name-without-this-human-veri
> fication-process-that-I -just-laid-out.

Let me assure you, it is not :-)

> 3: slight improvements to the history sections. Namely: besides a "page
> history" link, each article should also have, on the top level, a link to
> the diff between the cur and last revision.

Why? I'm trying to think of the process where this is useful. I can come
from several places to an article:

1) From RC. When I do that, I often check a change directly from RC by
clicking the "cur" link.

2) From watchlist or contributions page. Watchlist has diff link, contri
list doesn't, but should.

3) From internal search or search engine. In this case, I'm either
interested in the article's entire history or the content only.

I do not see the rationale here.

> Next: is that every user
> contributions page should have links to the cur, the last diff, AND the diff
> of the last edit that user made.

Not sure what you mean with "the diff of the last edit that user made". To
this specific page or in general? I think we only need one link, namely
the one that shows the user's edit to this page, and that should simply be
called "diff". I hate the "cur","last" distinction and, I have learned, so
do others. It's confusing as hell. But the contri list definitely needs a
diff link.

Hope that helps. If you want to contribute to a redesign of the talk page
process, please join wikitech-l and let us hear your thoughts.

Regards,

Erik


body:
> The English Wikipedia often is overdesigned; example:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait (and probably many a lot other
> countries).

> 1. It's hard to edit tables
> 2. Cut-and-paste does not work that good

Ugly to edit, but very useful in some instances. The country page template
is one example. Having the most essential information in one common place
has become tremendously useful, and I now use Wikipedia over the CIA World
Factbook where the information is from, in part because it is easier to
find in Wikipedia. If we reverted back to flat text, stuff like the
population data would again be buried in a complex textual hierarchy. I
always cringe when I come across a country page that doesn't use the new
layout yet.

The lack of a table syntax is really the core problem here, and it is one
that we have pushed aside many times. Many conflicting syntax proposals
have been made, and any one which is chosen to implement would probably
generate controversy because it isn't *quite* as capable as real HTML, or
almost as complex. I favor starting with something very simple and adding
more features as the need arises.

But when you have something like

||right
\\ Dawlat al Kuwayt
\\gray [[Image:foo.jpg]]
\\ National motto: foo
\\ Official language: | Arabic
\\ Capital | Kuwait
\\ Emir | Jabir
\\ Prime minister | Saad
\\ Area

- Total

- %water |
Ranked 153

17,820 km2

Negligible
||

||alignment=table |=cell \\color=row

It gets a lot more readable, doesn't it?

Regards,

Erik


in_reply_to:
<8kGcVXYxpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "21 Apr
 2003 19:14:00 +0200")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> ||right
> \\ Dawlat al Kuwayt
> \\gray [[Image:foo.jpg]]
> \\ National motto: foo
> \\ Official language: | Arabic
> \\ Capital | Kuwait
> \\ Emir | Jabir
> \\ Prime minister | Saad
> \\ Area

> - Total

> - %water |
> Ranked 153

> 17,820 km2

> Negligible
> ||
>
> ||alignment=table |=cell \\color=row
>
> It gets a lot more readable, doesn't it?

No, this looks like Perl ;)  Let us use a simple list:

Magic for [[Image:foo.jpg]] to display it at the right.

* Name: Dawlat al Kuwayt
* National motto: foo
* Official language: Arabic
* Capital: Kuwait
* Emir: Jabir
* Prime minister: Saad
* Area:  17,820 km? (water: xxx%)
* Population:  2,041,961 (2002),  Desity 115/km?
etc.

The rank info is of arguable value.  I'd also vote to leave out the
info on the "leaders"; info on them belongs to the "politics" section.

To me the resulting HTML looks good enough.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Slow again

body:
Is there someone playing again with (unmastered) SQL queries?
Wikipedia is again almost dead.

--
Looxix


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are going
> to go away because they are so damn useful and
> visually appealing to the great majority of our
> readers.

We could eliminate them through code, i.e. don't let people enter
them.  This might be (and probably would be!) a terrible idea, but
it's important to keep in mind that unlike matters of prose style,
etc., we actually can control this one at the level of code-enforced
policy.

I'm not saying that we should enforce that there be no tables.
But I do agree with the general critique that some of our pages are
too "over designed" and that tables have been overused to make pages
look pretty, at the expense of simplicity and of the ability to easily
render the pages in other media.  (Like text-browsers, for instance)

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
> My major concern is the ease of editing issue. I have nothing
> against good-looking tables and nice designs that make a page
> easy to read, but if it makes the underlying code hard to edit,
> it doesn't suit Wikipedia well.

Obviously many Wikipedians are willing to put in some effort to make a
nice page layout. Html tables make a page more attractive and
information easier to digest.

If Karl finds html table syntax too tedious (it is tedious sometimes), I
suggest he leaves them to others to add/maintain. But restricting their
use is like a person that orders a pizza everyday and objects to other
people  still cooking their own meals.

Erik Zachte


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are going
>>to go away because they are so damn useful and
>>visually appealing to the great majority of our
>>readers.
>>
>
>We could eliminate them through code, i.e. don't let people enter
>them.  This might be (and probably would be!) a terrible idea, but
>it's important to keep in mind that unlike matters of prose style,
>etc., we actually can control this one at the level of code-enforced
>policy.
>
>I'm not saying that we should enforce that there be no tables.
>But I do agree with the general critique that some of our pages are
>too "over designed" and that tables have been overused to make pages
>look pretty, at the expense of simplicity and of the ability to easily
>render the pages in other media.  (Like text-browsers, for instance)
>
In standing up to be counted, I clearly come out in favour of tables.
 Although I find that they are sometimes difficult to work with, it is a
clear benefit to the non-contributing reader to be able to look up
countries or elements or whatever else is appropriate, and be able to
know exactly where to find a country's population or the isotopes of an
element.  Wading through a lot of text when you are looking for a very
specific piece of information can be very frustrating.  If the
information is missing from text it is not always evident, but a blank
box in a table is very clear.  Although it is necessary to strive for a
balance the benefit of the reader seems a higher mission than the
benefit of the contributor. If the general public finds Wikipedia easy
to mine for information, they'll keep coming back.

Nobody  is obliged to work on a table.  Many of our best contributors do
quite well working on text alone.  If they work an an article where a
table is appropriate it follows the principle of "Always leave something
undone" to have someone else build in the table

Eclecticology


body:
>2: A feature to change collections of links. Namely suppose you move an
>article, and want the
>areas of text that link to this article to instantly reflect the new name.
>So, I would like to
>code this in such a way that it will bring up an interface that lets you
>edit all in one page each
>reference to this article. Namely, today I was browsing wikipedia and i
>came accross this:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizeau-Foucault_Apparatus  well, i felt the
>article was pretty poor,
>so I did some googling, and it turns out that Fizeau and Focault worked
>independantly on the
>projects. Because of this, I felt there was a need to move the article. But
>looking at "what links
>here" immediately frustated me because what I propose would make this task
>of verifying the
>textual integrity of the articles after you change the name of an article
>much MUCH easier. And im
>not really sure right now if its a good idae  to go a step further and have
>an
>instantaneously-change-all-textual-links-to-new-name-without-this-human-verification-process-that-I
>-just-laid-out.

I have suggested exactly that, and I offered to code it myself. It's still
coming, I got distracted with other things. You can see the general idea at
http://starling.f2g.net/move.html . See also the April archives of this list
under "Server-side backlink redirects".

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Nobody  is obliged to work on a table.  Many of our best...

I too dislike tables. I can work with them (and do so for work) but
don't like them.

I simply ignore articles that have tables, even thought I might
otherwise work on them.

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

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Ray Saintonge schrieb:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>> It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are going
>>> to go away because they are so damn useful and
>>> visually appealing to the great majority of our
>>> readers.
>>>
>>
>> We could eliminate them through code, i.e. don't let people enter
>> them.  This might be (and probably would be!) a terrible idea, but
>> it's important to keep in mind that unlike matters of prose style,
>> etc., we actually can control this one at the level of code-enforced
>> policy.
>>
>> I'm not saying that we should enforce that there be no tables.
>> But I do agree with the general critique that some of our pages are
>> too "over designed" and that tables have been overused to make pages
>> look pretty, at the expense of simplicity and of the ability to easily
>> render the pages in other media.  (Like text-browsers, for instance)
>>
> In standing up to be counted, I clearly come out in favour of tables.

Of course tables are a good thing. But the more complicatet our "source
code" gets, the more people shy away from editing it. Especially new
users, who click on the edit button for the first time and only see
interlanguage links and html code will never do it again, if they aren't
firm with this.

I worried about the interlanguage links some time ago on this list, and
Brion supposed to put them beneath the text, so they aren't the first
thing people see. But I thought it wouldn't be nessesairy because
Magnus' idea to keep them in a separate table was making progress. But
if this will take longer we should ask people on the announcement pages
to copy the interlanguage links beneath the text.

I like the idea of a table namespace very much, indeed we can handle
tables like we do handle images now, or better like we will handle svg
graphics in the future. Nobody will be frightened by something like
"[[table:Parliament Discography]]". There should be links to the
articles table pages beneath the edit box, and maybe the table borders
could be clickable and lead to the corresponding table page.

Kurt


body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Heck, we need /more/ not fewer tables because
> Wikipedia is filled with tabular/almanac data that
> isn't at all well-suited to prose.

This is not the truth.  Most of this data stuff is lists of labeled
items (in HTML talk it's definition lists):

Official language

Arabic

Capital

Baghdad

    ...

Please, don't turn those data into tables.  Offering tables as an
alternate view might be okay.

BTW, rendering tables takes CPU power; probably this isn't an issue for
you and me, but in some parts of the world modern PCs are simply "not
available".

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> But I do agree with the general critique that some of our pages are
> too "over designed" and that tables have been overused to make pages
> look pretty, at the expense of simplicity and of the ability to easily
> render the pages in other media.  (Like text-browsers, for instance)

Yes, and on audio devices table-less info is easier to "read", too (I'm
told).

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>(in HTML talk it's definition lists):
>
>

>
Official language

>
Arabic

>
>
Capital

>
Baghdad

>
>    ...
>

>
>
And in Wiki markup it's just
; foo : bar
; foo2 : bar2

Great for stuff that needs only 2 columns. Eg the Nobel Prize lists.
But for more complex data, Mav is right - tables are vital.
Move them out of the article source text & we're all happy :-)
* readers get clear tables
* easily-scared n00bs get no evil table HTML in source code
* anyone who wants to edit the article text doesn't have to scroll down
through pages and pages of table code

(and as for text-only browsers...
 has been around for a LONG
time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with
them?)


in_reply_to:
<3EA5C346.7080107@planetunreal.com> (tarquin@planetunreal.com's
 message of "Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:33:42 +0100")

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

>>

>>
Official language

>>
Arabic

>>
>>
Capital

>>
Baghdad

>>
>>    ...
>>

> And in Wiki markup it's just
> ; foo : bar
> ; foo2 : bar2

Sure.  Please allow "|" as an alternate term delimiter, BTW; ":" often
is part of the term (URLs!!) and thus you cannot use it without
"<nowiki>" tricks.

> Great for stuff that needs only 2 columns. Eg the Nobel Prize lists.
> But for more complex data, Mav is right - tables are vital.
> Move them out of the article source text & we're all happy :-)
> * readers get clear tables
> * easily-scared n00bs get no evil table HTML in source code
> * anyone who wants to edit the article text doesn't have to scroll down
>   through pages and pages of table code

It's of no use to talk about such a strategie without referring to
existing articles ;)  Let's modify the Kuwait article accordingly...

Also you must not use table for navigation bars.

> (and as for text-only browsers...
 has been around for a LONG
> time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with
> them?)

No, not really.  w3m is advanced, but I cannot use it for various
reasons (e.g., UTF-8 support it's flaky) and tables in general will not
work as long as you cannot use a wide xterm (80 chars are often not
enough).

Another drawback concerning tables is, that when printed they often
don't look that good.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
> (and as for text-only browsers... <table> has been around for a LONG
> time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with
> them?)

Yes they do, and some of them are quite good at it. Lynx is worst (it does
the right-alignment Karl describes), w3m is acceptable and links even puts
nice little borders around the cells. Links can even handle frames, it is
really quite impressive. There is also a graphical version of Links:
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/

The CPU usage is negligible in text browsers and most graphical browsers,
the only common browser that sometimes has problems with complex tables is
Netscape 4. Some people have a strange affection towards it, but it really
must die as soon as possible. Phoenix, Galeon etc. use the Mozilla engine
without the bloat and provide much faster rendering than Netscape 4.

Regards,

Erik


in_reply_to:
<8kOcbVVxpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "23 Apr
 2003 04:51:00 +0200")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> Yes they do, and some of them are quite good at it. Lynx is worst (it does
> the right-alignment Karl describes), w3m is acceptable and links even puts
> nice little borders around the cells.

Putting borders around cells is even worse.  This way you waste
precious horizontal space.  Another ugly issue is, the
formatting/displaying of the tables happen "on-the-fly"; thus often you
cannot start reading a partially downloaded page because elments are
flipping around...

BTW, rule of thumb: if you cannot read a page using lynx, it is not
worth reading at all ;)

> The CPU usage is negligible in text browsers and most graphical
> browsers,

Don't forget that many a lot "low end" notebooks are stil in use; on
them using Galeon or Mozilla often isn't an option (on 233MHz, 64MB RAM
and a 800x600 display I refuse to run it).

CPU usage isn't the strongest argument, but it sums up together with all
the other arguments and leads to the conclusion that table usage is of
dubious value for the reader.

The nicer a page looks the less info it carries.  But people seems to
ask for it and they get it...

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Raised number of max connections

body:
I've been getting a lot of timeouts lately. A fair chunk of connections
are from the 'grub' distributed search engine spider, which connects too
often and doesn't play with robots.txt as nicely as I'd like. Some time
ago I'd put them in the 403 rejection list but, they don't get the hint
and keep on trying to connect.

This doesn't touch the database, but does eat up some apache connections.
Although I have now explicitly banned grub in robots.txt and filled out
their little update form, they're still connecting -- even to the banned-
for-all /w subdirectory. It's pissing me off.

I've upped the max connections on apache from 175 to 260, and on mysql
from 400 to 560. Lee or Magnus; if we get mysql too-many-connections
errors, either bring down the apache limit or move up the mysql limit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, Nick Reinking wrote:
> Perhaps it would be best to put in an iptables rule to deny a TCP/IP
> connection from their crawler (assuming it comes from a reasonably
> limited set of IPs)?

No, see, it's a *distributed* crawler. So I don't know where the fuck
they're coming from. Like I said, it's really pissing me off.

See also:
http://www.grub.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=124

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning with cookies

body:
I'm a lurker on the mailing list, but I wanted to note
my support for the cookie-banning idea.  I am
viciously opposed to cookies, and I wouldn't support
anything more difficult than a simple cookie to get
rid of (I know how to do that, and I'm
computer-retarded).  The user Michael/Weezer, however,
probably does not know.  I have no reason to suspect
this, except that he doesn't really seem to be capable
of doing anything (i.e. writing complete sentences,
responding to others like a human being, avoiding
creating facts) and his dozens of IP addresses, which
change with nearly every edit, make banning simply not
a feasible option.  I would guess that a cookie-block
would keep him from editing, leaving me and Zoe and
Salsa Shark and Eloquence and KQ and everyone else
much more time to add actual content to the Wikipedia.

TUF-KAT

PS: I've been wholesale reverting everything he does,
as has many other people.  Does anyone have a problem
with me outright deleting articles that have nothing
to revert to?  These are almost entirely minor
punkish-emo bands and the track listings for their
albums (presumably, I don't check whether or not he's
correct anymore) and I just delete them if there is
nothing to revert to.

PPS:  On my user page, you will find a link to
[[TUF-KAT/Pseudo-album stubs]].  Please add a link to
any article on an album that does not have:
*A track listing
*Album cover
*Complete personnel/Billboard chart positions
*At least a sentence or three about how it fits in the
band/genre's oeuvre (sp?)

Including the above will make these articles
worthwhile stubs, while "XXX is an album by ZZZ" with
a track listing helps no one.

PPPS:  While I'm posting anyway, could we all make an
effort to include our Wikipedia names in our posts if
isn't the same as whatever is in our "from" box?  I've
been confused on more than one occasion for this
reason.  (I know I haven't always done this, but let's
all make a pledge...)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
I hadn't heard about this Grub project, but I'm not impressed.  I'd be
impressed if they made the resulting data available via a free
license.

--Jimbo


from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 07:58:27AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've been getting a lot of timeouts lately. A fair chunk of connections
> are from the 'grub' distributed search engine spider, which connects too
> often and doesn't play with robots.txt as nicely as I'd like. Some time
> ago I'd put them in the 403 rejection list but, they don't get the hint
> and keep on trying to connect.
>
> This doesn't touch the database, but does eat up some apache connections.
> Although I have now explicitly banned grub in robots.txt and filled out
> their little update form, they're still connecting -- even to the banned-
> for-all /w subdirectory. It's pissing me off.
>
> I've upped the max connections on apache from 175 to 260, and on mysql
> from 400 to 560. Lee or Magnus; if we get mysql too-many-connections
> errors, either bring down the apache limit or move up the mysql limit.

Perhaps it would be best to put in an iptables rule to deny a TCP/IP
connection from their crawler (assuming it comes from a reasonably
limited set of IPs)?

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


body:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 08:32:49AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I hadn't heard about this Grub project, but I'm not impressed.  I'd be
> impressed if they made the resulting data available via a free
> license.
>
> --Jimbo

I agree.  I'm not impressed either way - the attitude of the developers
is, quite frankly, obnoxious.

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


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confusing user names (was: Banning with cookies)

body:
--- Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> could we all make an
> effort to include our Wikipedia names in our posts if
> isn't the same as whatever is in our "from" box?  I've
> been confused on more than one occasion for this
> reason.

I agree. I also don't like that our software makes it easy to sign
comments with nicknames different from usernames. By now there are some
people for whom you need to memorize three names (nickname, username,
mailing list name), and some people even change their nicknames around.
This behavior is childish and makes it harder to follow discussions. I
think it shouldn't be encouraged by the software.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
> > I hadn't heard about this Grub project, but I'm not impressed.  I'd be
> > impressed if they made the resulting data available via a free
> > license.
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
> I agree.  I'm not impressed either way - the attitude of the developers
> is, quite frankly, obnoxious.

They've gotten plenty of press lately (Slashdot, New Scientist, et al.)
but I have to say I'm not terribly impressed with their operation
either. Basically, they've got an interesting idea, but a lousy
execution, and not muc of a clear vision.

Maybe submitting a Slashdot story about their problems would be a
kick in the pants?

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


body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:
>
>
>
>>And in Wiki markup it's just
>>; foo : bar
>>; foo2 : bar2
>>
>>
>
>Sure.  Please allow "|" as an alternate term delimiter, BTW; ":" often
>is part of the term (URLs!!) and thus you cannot use it without
>"<nowiki>" tricks.
>
>
"|" will probably be used for wiki table syntax, if it ever comes about
- better reserve it for that.
";:" is fairly standard across wikis for DLs. There shouldn't be a
clash, as only the first ":" has a meaning - why would you put a URL in
the DT?


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning with cookies

body:
I don't think there's anything wrong with album listings on wikipedia. They could be useful, and they are information, even if an encyclopedia wouldn't print it.

Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:PS: I've been wholesale reverting everything he does,
as has many other people. Does anyone have a problem
with me outright deleting articles that have nothing
to revert to? These are almost entirely minor
punkish-emo bands and the track listings for their
albums (presumably, I don't check whether or not he's
correct anymore) and I just delete them if there is
nothing to revert to.

PPS: On my user page, you will find a link to
[[TUF-KAT/Pseudo-album stubs]]. Please add a link to
any article on an album that does not have:
*A track listing
*Album cover
*Complete personnel/Billboard chart positions
*At least a sentence or three about how it fits in the
band/genre's oeuvre (sp?)

Including the above will make these articles
worthwhile stubs, while "XXX is an album by ZZZ" with
a track listing helps no one.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] New additions to the guidelines/policies

body:
Zoe expounded: "No, we shouldn't.  That's why Wikipedia is a collaborative
effort.  Others with more knowledge can add what they know, which we do not.
It's not a user's responsibility to cover all material if they don't know
it."

This seems to make sense. But examining it logically - ironically,
(irologically) this tends to mean that WP becomes a repository of what
people do *not know, rather than what they do.  -Steve :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
> (Thomas Corell <T.Corell at t-online.de>):
>
> Is there somewhere a information abount missing translations?

I just added a script "checktrans.php" to the maintenance directory
in the phase3 source tree. Running that script will check your live
installation and report all untranslated messages.

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


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

in_reply_to:
<3EA6879F.4030203@planetunreal.com> (tarquin@planetunreal.com's
 message of "Wed, 23 Apr 2003 13:31:27 +0100")

references:
<20030422171957.40722.qmail@web12807.mail.yahoo.com>
	<shbryyl5cs.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
	<3EA5C346.7080107@planetunreal.com>
	<shu1cqj5li.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de> <3EA6879F.4030203@planetunreal.com>

body:
tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> writes:

> "|" will probably be used for wiki table syntax, if it ever comes about
> - better reserve it for that.

If you will even go for it, please do it properly.  Make use of well
defined SGML features (shortref and usemap) -- you will be surprised how
smart this could be (QWERTZ and linuxdoc are examples for such features).

> ";:" is fairly standard across wikis for DLs. There shouldn't be a
> clash, as only the first ":" has a meaning - why would you put a URL in
> the DT?

It isn't that important.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
> >>Is there somewhere a information abount missing translations?
> >I just added a script "checktrans.php" to the maintenance directory
> >in the phase3 source tree. Running that script will check your live
> >installation and report all untranslated messages.
>
> You still trying to convince me to install my own wikipedia ;)

It doesn't actually have to run, you just have run the install
script to move the files over. Something I haven't cleaned up yet
is the fact that many of the include files have complex dependencies,
so even the maintenance scripts have to do all the includes that the
live software does, and that's easiest if it gets them from the
actual install. I'll fix that over time, but it will take a while.

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


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:
> > Maybe submitting a Slashdot story about their problems would be a
> > kick in the pants?
> Or telling them that we're regarding it as a DDOS attac and sue them if
> they don't stop? (Just threaten to do it, of course.)

Worse than that, we'll write a NPOV article about their problems and
post it in the most authoritative encyclopedia on the net, Wikipedia.
Heh, that'll get 'em.

--Jimbo


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confusing user names

body:
> -+- Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> could we all make an
>> effort to include our Wikipedia names in our posts if
>> isn't the same as whatever is in our "from" box?  I've
>> been confused on more than one occasion for this
>> reason.

> I agree. I also don't like that our software makes it easy to sign
> comments with nicknames different from usernames. By now there are some
> people for whom you need to memorize three names (nickname, username,
> mailing list name), and some people even change their nicknames around.
> This behavior is childish and makes it harder to follow discussions. I
> think it shouldn't be encouraged by the software.

Agreed. I think the nickname/username distinction was well-intended, but
creates more problems than it solves.

Regards,

Erik (Eloquence)


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Banning with cookies

body:
At 02:23 PM 4/23/03 -0700, TUFKAT wrote:

>PPS: On my user page, you will find a link to
>[[TUF-KAT/Pseudo-album stubs]]. Please add a link to
>any article on an album that does not have:
>*A track listing
>*Album cover
>*Complete personnel/Billboard chart positions
>*At least a sentence or three about how it fits in the
>band/genre's oeuvre (sp?)
>
>Including the above will make these articles
>worthwhile stubs, while "XXX is an album by ZZZ" with
>a track listing helps no one.

While I agree that track listings aren't enough, I can easily imagine a
useful article about, say, _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ that
doesn't have the Billboard chart positions. Similarly, a complete list
of personnel isn't the most important information about a Jethro Tull
or Frank Zappa album (though it would be worth adding).
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Here is an update with typo corrections for LanguageDe.php.

A user detected that "longapgewarning" was not translated. Please check if
the added array element works properly (included in the patch).

Is there somewhere a information abount missing translations? A small grep
shows some problem (other missing elements):

Language.php:1
LanguageCs.php:0
LanguageDa.php:1
LanguageDe.php:0
LanguageEn.php:0
LanguageEo.php:1
LanguageEs.php:0
LanguageFr.php:1
LanguageIt.php:0
LanguageJa.php:0
LanguageKo.php:0
LanguageNl.php:1
LanguagePl.php:1
LanguageRu.php:0
LanguageSv.php:0
LanguageZh.php:0

Smurf
--
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Patch for LanguageDe.php

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>>(Thomas Corell <T.Corell at t-online.de>):
>>
>>Is there somewhere a information abount missing translations?
> I just added a script "checktrans.php" to the maintenance directory
> in the phase3 source tree. Running that script will check your live
> installation and report all untranslated messages.

You still trying to convince me to install my own wikipedia ;)

Smurf
--
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:

> Maybe submitting a Slashdot story about their problems would be a
> kick in the pants?

Or telling them that we're regarding it as a DDOS attac and sue them if
they don't stop? (Just threaten to do it, of course.)

Kurt


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confusing user names

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>I agree. I also don't like that our software makes it easy to sign
>>comments with nicknames different from usernames. By now there are some
>>people for whom you need to memorize three names (nickname, username,
>>mailing list name), and some people even change their nicknames around.
>>This behavior is childish and makes it harder to follow discussions. I
>>think it shouldn't be encouraged by the software.
>>
>>
>
>Agreed. I think the nickname/username distinction was well-intended, but
>creates more problems than it solves.
>
>
>
*sigh* if only people were *sensible* with these things....
"mav" for "Maverick149" is pretty clear.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #291 - 7 msgs

body:
Oh, I agree, don't misinterpet me.  I'm not
capable/don't have the time to write an article that
fully explores the social and musical context and
effects of every album worthy of it.  The point is
simply to turn something available on about a million
websites into something a little more useful and, most
importantly, more inviting for other users to add more
info to.

<Vicki wrote>

While I agree that track listings aren't enough, I can
easily imagine a
useful article about, say, _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band_ that
doesn't have the Billboard chart positions. Similarly,
a complete list
of personnel isn't the most important information
about a Jethro Tull
or Frank Zappa album (though it would be worth
adding).

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin status

body:
By the way, Kingturtle has asked for sysop status on the Village pump page. Zoe

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Simplified & generalized diff selection

body:
Our current way of selectin diffs with (cur) and (last) is quite
confusing and restrictive. Often when listing a page's history, I see a
group of edits from a single user and would like to check the net
effect of that group of edits, but the software doesn't let me do this.

Here's a proposal for an improvement: on the page's history, (cur) and
(last) are junked. Instead, every listed version has two checkboxes in
front of it. To get the diff from version x to version y, you check the
first box in front of x and the second box in front of y, then click on
the diff button.

Only one button can be checked per column. When initially viewing a
page history, the buttons for the two most recent versions are already
checked, so that hitting the diff button immediately will show the
effect of the last edit.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Jeff Dairiki

body:
> Here's a proposal for an improvement: on the page's history, (cur) and
> (last) are junked. Instead, every listed version has two checkboxes in
> front of it. To get the diff from version x to version y, you check the
> first box in front of x and the second box in front of y, then click on
> the diff button.

I think the interface is even cleaner with just a single column
of checkboxes.  (You have to check two.)

Current PhpWiki does this.  For an example, see:

http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/AllTimeHammondPopHits?action=PageHistory

(Try it with and without javascript to see two slightly different
interfaces.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

body:
Slrubenstein asked me to post the following on his behalf.
Everything below was written by him; I deleted some irrelevant parts.

----
I have been in an edit war with JTDIRL and 172 on the China page, and I
think there is both a need for some intervention, and an intervention
that is not based on any argument about China, but rather about
Wikipedia conventions, especially NPOV and naming conventions.  [...]
And, as I said, I think what is most needed now is some explicit
discussion of Wikipedia conventions.

To fully grasp the debate behind the edit war you would have to read a
lot.  Minimally, I would suggest reading the entire [[Talk: China
(Archive 3)]] and [[Talk: China]] pages (which I know is a lot to ask
of someone who may not be so interested.  As a party to the dispute and
biased, I don't want to misrepresent it, but I will try to sum it up.

The question is, how to identify the Chinese (specifically, PRC) state.
 The article identified the state as communist.  I checked the Chinese
Constitution which states that it is a socialist state; an official
Chinese website states that it is not a communist state.  JTDIRL and
172 responded that all political scientists identify China as a
communist state and that we should go by what Western scholars do.  I
talked to a few colleagues of mine -- a sociologist, two
anthropologitsts, and a political scientist.  They told me that many
political scientists used to label China a communist state but that
they are moving away from that designation, considering it inaccurate
and meaningless; that many political scientists and most other scholars
identify China as a socialist state, although some qualify it as "late"
or "post" socialist.  Now JTDIRL claims that it doesn't matter what
political scientists say, that what ought to be presented is a "formal
encyclop?dic definition."

Now, I never heard of this phrase and doubt that it should be the basis
of our deciding how to identify any state, as what we are trying to do
is, arguably, devise a formal encyclopedic definition.  I think he
means we should call it a communist state because other encyclopedias
do.  I still think we ought to call it something that reflects the
current state of scholarship.

But I hope you can see why I think this is a matter of clarifying
general wikipedia conventions or norms, and not just a debate over
China.  [...]

I am ''not'' asking anyone to say "SLR is right and JTDIRL is wrong."
I am asking the community, such as it is, to discuss the conventions
and clarify them as they may apply to the case.

(written by Slrubenstein)
-----

Axel

__________________________________________________
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http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> Imho, here is two very NPOV articles :
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation
> I read english better I wrote it, so I can't correct
> myself, but I hope
> someone will pov those articles.
> Shame,
>
> Aoineko

Aoi, je ne saurais d?crire la profondeur de perplexit?
dans laquelle ton message me plonge...

?!?

Anthere

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Andrew Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin status

body:
Hi All,

Ed Poor has just made me a sysop (thanks Ed!) and asked me to inform the list.

Thanks,

Andrew (Ams80)
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from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin status

body:
At 23:16 24/04/2003 +0100, Andrew wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>Ed Poor has just made me a sysop (thanks Ed!) and asked me to inform the list.

I certainly don't have a problem with Ams80 being made a sysop, but I
thought that the idea behind potential sysops asking on this list for
adminship was so that any concerns about them having sysop powers could be
aired before they had the potential to delete all the articles about
Hinduism (or whatever). If we're not going to do this on the list any more
(and I'm all for not doing it on the list any more), can we have
[[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]] or something similar?

Perhaps such a page already exists and I've missed it - if so, could
somebody please point me to it? If it doesn't exist yet, then I'm happy to
make it myself if there's agreement that that would be a better way of
doing things.

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Babson task]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> Aoi, je ne saurais d?crire la profondeur de perplexit?
> dans laquelle ton message me plonge...

Ben pourquoi ?

Aoineko

ben, parce que tu indiques que ces deux articles sont tr?s neutres, et que quelqu'un doit absolument leur injecter des positions non neutres.Avoue que cela a de quoi laisser perplexe...:-) ne voulais tu pas dire le contraire plutot ? Ou bien est ce de l'humour ? Noir l'humour, forc?ment. :-))) J'ai perdu deux soir?es enti?res sur [[media manipulation]], en raison de l'attitude obstructionniste de little bouda, qui s'est senti oblig? de faire jouer la montre en pr?textant que le contenu de l'article n'avait aucune valeur puisque le nom sous lequel se trouvait le contenu n'?tait pas report? par google. Alors qu'en r?alit?, ses deux uniques probl?mes ?tait l'un que l'article initial ?gratinait l'amour propre am?ricain (en prenant des exemples sur le mod?le am?ricain - probl?me pouvant facilement et sans douleur ?tre r?solu en ajoutant d'autres exemples) et l'autre qu'il s'ennuyait consid?rablement et avait besoin d'une petite confrontation pour se fouetter les sangs. On a peut ?tre pas la m?me d?finition du [[boodism]].:-) Au final, l'article r?sultant, quoique issu d'une bataille parfaitement *d?bile* consistant essentiellement ? prouver sa capacit? ? faire c..... les autres, me semble acceptable en terme de neutralit?. Ceeeeeeeertes, tr?s centr? sur des exemples am?ricano-am?ricains, associ? d'un peu de coups de batte de base ball sur Chirac, mais enfin...au final...il est pas mal.  Ce qui est le plus g?nant dans toute l'histoire de cet article est surtout la d?monstration que certains sont incapables de construire par collaboration, mais uniquement par confrontation et attaques personnelles sur les autres.Et qu'?videmment, ? Rome, fait comme les romains. ------------- Quand ? l'article sur le [[anti-french sentiment in the United States]], je pense que tu voulais dire au contraire, qu'il est un exemple parfait d'article non-neutre, absolumment pas respectueux des diff?rents points de vue sur la question. En quoi tu as *totalement* raison. En fait, j'ai commis une erreur en essayant de l'?diter; j'aurais du au contraire le laisser tel quel, sous cloche de verre, telle la preuve ultime que la neutralit? expos?e sur le fronton est une imposture de la plus belle esp?ce. Mais, non, l'a fallu que j'essaye d'arranger les choses. J'ai vu en repr?sailles certains de mes edits sur d'autres articles r?vert?s (par erreur m'a t-on soutenu), mes commentaires et questions dans la page de discussion supprim?s (accidentellement egalement bien sur). Maintenant, quand je fais des commentaires dans d'autres articles n'ayant aucun rapport avec celui ci, je suis suivie ? la trace, et la moindre de mes erreurs est mont?e sur ?pingle. Dans cet article, il faut justifier absolumment le moindre petit commentaire concernant la position fran?aise, alors que le reste de l'article ne se prive pas de se contenter de "certains disent", "certains pensent", "certains affirment", "des critiques indiquent" dans le flou artistique le plus total. La position am?ricaine peut se permettre de ne pas avoir ? se justifier (normal, tout peut ?tre lu dans les nouvelles bien sur) alors qu'?videmment la position fran?aise doit ?tre prouv?e point par point. Evidemment une attaque facile est de signaler qu'un fran?ais ne lisant pas la presse am?ricaine ne peut pas ?diter un article sur lequel ?videmment il n'a pas le recul n?cessaire. Cela s'appelle l'?galit? entre les points de vue. Tu te souviens de ce que disait Coluche "on est tous ?gaux, mais certains plus que d'autres". Ou "dans les bus, y a pas de noirs, y a pas de blancs, tout le monde est bleu, alors les bleus clairs devant, les bleus fonc?s derriere." Actuellement, sur la wikipedia anglophone, les fran?ais sont bleu fonc?, c'est tout. Avec un peu de chance, ?a finira par passer. Putain de camion. Anth?re

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

body:
Regarding the policy issue, I wonder if our "standard techniques" for
dealing with a controversy are perfectly adequate to deal with the
issue.  Ironically, the effort to clarify the issue for the mailing
list may point the way to resolving the question on the page.

How about this:
>China has been traditionally considered a communist state, although
>the Chinese Constitution states that China is a socialist state.
>Western scholars are moving away from the label "communist" and
>calling China "socialist", "[[late socialist]]", or "[[post socialist]]".

I'm not saying that this is a really *good* formulation; I'm sure it
could be refined quite easily.  But it eliminates a controversy by
stating the controversy.  All parties can agree to it.

--Jimbo

p.s.  Regarding the content issue, it is my understanding that China
is nowadays a confused and somewhat internally contradictory place.
Shanghai in particular is often cited as being relatively capitalist,
even!  I don't really know anything about that other than what I read
in the newspapers and magazines, though.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp>
wrote:
> Oups, I have better to stop trying to write in
> english...
> It is last one ;o)
>
> Imho, here is two very NON-NPOV articles :
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation
> I read english better I wrote it, so I can't correct
> myself, but I hope
> someone will NPOV those articles.
> Cheer,
>
> Aoineko (cheese-eater)

Noone will

Anthere (snail-eater)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

in_reply_to: <00a501c30aed$881af1e0$0101a8c0@arcsy.co.jp>; from gblanchard@arcsy.co.jp on Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 02:43:00PM +0900

body:
I think you've got the terminology backwards, but yeah, these articles
are both terrible.  (NPOV is good, POV is bad!)

"Anti-French sentiment in the United States" is a somewhat balanced
article, but is it _encyclopedic_?  At the very least, it needs a
better title, one more closely matching the contents, which are
strongly linked to current events.

I think there is a valid topic lurking here, but to be encyclopedic, I
think we need to place the current state of French-American relations
into the context of history.  America and France have had a love-hate
relationship for a very long time, and the cultural friction between
us is not simply the product of current events.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

in_reply_to: <BACE82F4.1AA5%fredbaud@ctelco.net>; from fredbaud@ctelco.net on Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 06:15:16AM -0600

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I think the fundamental problem is that several parties to this
> controversy essentially want an article written from a sympathetic
> point of view. I suggest that they should have that freedom on
> Wikipedia with critical views in a seperate article perhaps
> entitled, China: A crititical view.

I think this is a very bad idea _for wikipedia_.  I think the idea of
a website with critical essays written in wiki-fashion is an
interesting one, but it isn't right for us.

> The problem are not limited to this
> particular question but extend to deletion of mention of the democracy
> movement and of Tiananmen protests.

Who deleted those things?  I would say that no article on China
could be NPOV without discussing those things.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> Here's a proposal for an improvement: on the page's history, (cur) and
> (last) are junked. Instead, every listed version has two checkboxes in
> front of it. To get the diff from version x to version y, you check the
> first box in front of x and the second box in front of y, then click on
> the diff button.

Yes, yes, yes!  This is the way the new UseModWiki software does it.
It is running on Meatball Wiki.
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=history&id=MeatballWiki

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

body:
I think the fundamental problem is that several parties to this controversy
essentially want an article written from a sympathetic point of view. I
suggest that they should have that freedom on Wikipedia with critical views
in a seperate article perhaps entitled, China: A crititical view.

I stirred up this hornet's nest  by inserting a link to [[authoritarianism
and totalitarianism|authoritarian]] into the first paragraph of the article.
I think this is a fair characterization of the regime (regardless of what
ever other adjective might describe it). The problem are not limited to this
particular question but extend to deletion of mention of the democracy
movement and of Tiananmen protests.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 04:51:11 -0700
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?
>
> Regarding the policy issue, I wonder if our "standard techniques" for
> dealing with a controversy are perfectly adequate to deal with the
> issue.  Ironically, the effort to clarify the issue for the mailing
> list may point the way to resolving the question on the page.
>
> How about this:
>> China has been traditionally considered a communist state, although
>> the Chinese Constitution states that China is a socialist state.
>> Western scholars are moving away from the label "communist" and
>> calling China "socialist", "[[late socialist]]", or "[[post socialist]]".
>
> I'm not saying that this is a really *good* formulation; I'm sure it
> could be refined quite easily.  But it eliminates a controversy by
> stating the controversy.  All parties can agree to it.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> p.s.  Regarding the content issue, it is my understanding that China
> is nowadays a confused and somewhat internally contradictory place.
> Shanghai in particular is often cited as being relatively capitalist,
> even!  I don't really know anything about that other than what I read
> in the newspapers and magazines, though.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
"Anti-French sentiment in the United States" is a somewhat balanced
article, but is it _encyclopedic_? At the very least, it needs a
better title, one more closely matching the contents, which are
strongly linked to current events. Point is the americans think it balanced, when the french think it is not balanced. Hence, by definition, if some think this article is not fair, it is not NPOV.

I think there is a valid topic lurking here, but to be encyclopedic, I
think we need to place the current state of French-American relations
into the context of history. America and France have had a love-hate
relationship for a very long time, and the cultural friction between
us is not simply the product of current events.

--Jimbo
You are right. I forgot his name, but one person decided to start an *historical* [[anti-french sentiment in the United-States]]. It appears to me the point of replacing it in an historical context is a good move; much better than focusing on couple of months old (or even couple of years old) events. The current article will result in an article of a deceiving viability on the long term. Besides, replacing an article in historical context will attract more historians, who show integrity. However, as regards Chadolar (well, the person with this type of name, I really apologize for not remembering) is planning to do, I think we are heading directly in an article even more biaised than this one, and even more offending to french people. The fact is, it is not good for an article to be just a collection of facts poorly reflecting a more global feeling. For the ones hated can only watch being displayed in dismay a list of facts they can not reflect on. With such a list as the one currently provided, there is little that can be done to try to explain why it is so, and why now, and why perhaps hate is not justified sometimes, and the different patterns of love and hate. It is certainly interesting for french people to read such a list of reasons to hate us, a collection of proofs of hateful feeling, for as we already privately discussed it together, we are not aware really of the level of hate you currently feel for us.But, I wonder which interest this type of article has on american people, except for fondly recollecting their emotions, except of nourrishing their resentment with further facts they had not been aware of, except for having a good time writing it and having fun at our reaction reading it. In short, I don't think an encyclopedic article only dealing with one side of a relationship can be anything else than unbalanced. In particular because many people writing the article are *not* having any intention for it to be fair. It appears to me that if such a wider article was to be written, it should be more something like [[Relationship between France and United States]] or [[Americans-French relationships]]. Then, we can start communicating instead of bashing, reflecting instead of ruminating aggressive feelings, learning of both sides, and perhaps adding some water in the wine (well...americans need to stop pouring the french wine on french imported cars before, right ?). And also, seeing there are some hate feelings, as well as love feelings.I think it potentially more fruitful. And then, I will renew my son american passport.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
Ah, yes, the prospective seed of my future unhappiness lays here

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temp:Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
Anthere wrote:

> that if such a wider article was to be written, it should be more
>something like [[Relationship between France and United States]] or
>[[Americans-French relationships]].

I think this is an excellent suggestion.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

body:
I'll look this up later, rl busy, not ignoring the question.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 05:22:53 -0700
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I think the fundamental problem is that several parties to this
>> controversy essentially want an article written from a sympathetic
>> point of view. I suggest that they should have that freedom on
>> Wikipedia with critical views in a seperate article perhaps
>> entitled, China: A crititical view.
>
> I think this is a very bad idea _for wikipedia_.  I think the idea of
> a website with critical essays written in wiki-fashion is an
> interesting one, but it isn't right for us.
>
>> The problem are not limited to this
>> particular question but extend to deletion of mention of the democracy
>> movement and of Tiananmen protests.
>
> Who deleted those things?  I would say that no article on China
> could be NPOV without discussing those things.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anti-French sentiment

body:
I tend to agree with Anthere that a more useful article would be
"French and American relations" or similar, rather than focussing
solely on the negatives.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam/Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason/Dietary Fiber back as new user

body:
Wow. The list is getting long.

I personally think that Shino Baku should first be
warned that we *think* (not know) that he/she is Adam,
and that he'll be banned if he misbehaves. From what
happens from there, we will decide whether or not to
bann him

--- james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:
> A growing number of people have reached the
> conclusion that a new user,
> Shino Baku, is the multiple banned user
> Adam/Bridget/Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan
> Mason/Dietary Fiber. Shino's edit pattern is similar
> to Adam's. Shino's tone
> (start reasonable, then become more extreme, making
> increasingly ludicrous
> assertions) is the same. But when last night Shino
> put a message on 172's
> talk page, it immediately rang worrying bells for
> users. Susan Mason used to
> wait until a row had died down and was almost over.
> Then a message would be
> sent to a user, always written in the first person
> singular, re-igniting the
> row by stating categorically something which even
> the person who first made
> the statement had backed off from or abandoned.
> Shino did EXACTLY THAT last
> night, almost word for word in the way Susan Mason
> always did. Take out last
> night's assertion from the sentence and you could
> slot in any of
> Lir/VC/SM/DF's past arguments into the space in the
> sentence without
> changing a thing. The whole thing is eerily
> reminiscent of past conflicts,
> past approaches and past sentences used. A couple of
> people saw the message
> on 172's talk page and immediately and independently
> reached the same
> conclusion as to who had wrote it. And when it was
> mentioned around, a
> number of people who had 'feelings' about Shino
> immediately said that
> looking back on Shino's actions, it was blatently
> obvious who Shino really
> is. Either he is 7th reincarnation of Adam, or he
> has an extraordinary
> likeness that is spooky.
>
> What is the policy towards MULTIPLE-banned users who
> keep coming back and
> repeating the same behaviour over and over again?
> Those who remember Adam's
> past antics know that while some of his identities
> behaved somewhat better
> than others, each one in turn started OK, then
> became worse and worse every
> day until each in turn had to be kicked out, only to
> be replaced by the next
> member of the Adam Family. Should Jimbo leave a note
> on Shino's page warning
> that if they are Adam, they had better behave
> differently to past versions
> or else they will be banned. Or as a multiple banned
> user who has not
> approached Jimbo to sort out the situation but just
> keeps coming back,
> should they be banned immediately?
>
> JT.
>
>
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> _______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>The question is, how to identify the Chinese (specifically, PRC) state.
> The article identified the state as communist.  I checked the Chinese
>Constitution which states that it is a socialist state; an official
>Chinese website states that it is not a communist state.  JTDIRL and
>172 responded that all political scientists identify China as a
>communist state and that we should go by what Western scholars do.  I
>talked to a few colleagues of mine -- a sociologist, two
>anthropologitsts, and a political scientist.  They told me that many
>political scientists used to label China a communist state but that
>they are moving away from that designation, considering it inaccurate
>and meaningless; that many political scientists and most other scholars
>identify China as a socialist state, although some qualify it as "late"
>or "post" socialist.  Now JTDIRL claims that it doesn't matter what
>political scientists say, that what ought to be presented is a "formal
>encyclop?dic definition."
>
Well whose opinion is he going to take? The proverbial man on the street's?
It's obviously unclear how to identify it. But we have the answer right
here:

"China's whatsit state is somewhat unclear. Its constitution defines it
as .....; however, ..... ; some qualify it as "post socialist", meaning
that (explain the justification of the new term here)"

>
>
>