from_name: Pedro de Medeiros

body:
On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Hello everybody. I haven't participated on this list for a while, but I
> have been drawn attention to this thread.
>
> > With that said, I am interest in such project if it involves coding.
> > To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
> > do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
> > in a yacc/bison manner.
>
> I am interested in continuing developing my parser (flexbisonparse) if
> other people are interested in helping me. I am happy to explain what I
> remember of how it works, because I know it's really hard to figure out,
> but I'm sure it's not that hard to explain.

Yes, that was exactly my point previously (about being hard to figure
it out). I just assumed this project was dead and no one would help me
understand it. If you can help me, I won't think twice before working
on it. :)

> I am disappointed that people are *still* trying to re-start the effort
> from scratch. Surely the plethora of existing parsers has shown that
> every new effort will end up the same, especially if no effort is made
> to understand the existing unfinished products and to recognise their
> flaws and faults. You'll just make the same mistakes again and again.

My take on "restarting" doesn't actually mean doing everything from
zero and forgetting everything that was previously attempted.
Depending on how much I can make of existing code, it may involve
breaking it down, learning from it and reassembling as I understand
how it works and maybe rewriting things that I find are confusing and
could improve.

That is what I think is implied when working on free software: you
reuse and rebuild, standing on the shoulders of previous developers.
:)

> My mistake was to fail to recognise the importance and complexity of
> HTML and HTML-like tags in the wiki mark-up. My parser can parse
> everything non-HTML/SGML-based that was part of the syntax at the time I
> wrote it. With co-operation, I'm sure we can do the rest. Without, I'm
> sure no-one can.

Maybe we should talk about what is missng and what to do next pvt'ly?

Cheers,
--
Pedro de Medeiros - Computer Science - University of Bras?lia
Email: pedro.medeiros at gmail.com - Home Page: http://www.nonseq.net
Linux User No.: 234250 - ICQ: 2878740 - Jabber: medeiros at jabber.org


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> Preliminary: This posting is *NOT* meant to re-incite a discussion that
> has already taken place and is already over: namely, the debates about
> the deletion of [[Template:User en-5]] and its equivalents for other
> languages.
...
> In reality, most non-native English speakers I know speak and write
> English way better than an average native speaker. In reality, among all
> speakers (native or non-native) there are huge variations in the level
> of skill, ranging from "lolz asl?" to Pulitzer-prize winning prose. It
> is *that* which the Babel templates are trying to gauge, *not* whether
> someone is a native speaker or not.
>
> Timwi

Really? That's odd, because most of the non-native speakers I've met
on Wikipedia were noticeably worse than native speakers.

~maru


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use image galleries in articles

references:
<20060422195956.96037.qmail@web26910.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<444A94B6.5090406@vyznev.net>
	<C6EB73C5-8148-4DFE-B5C8-DCA2B00924F2@specialbusservice.com>
	<C6EB73C5-8148-4DFE-B5C8-DCA2B00924F2-7CuHE+YKekf/05JY2t+omGXnswh1EIUO@public.gmane.org>
	<444C6550.5010800@zoomtown.com>

body:
In message <444C6550.5010800 at zoomtown.com>, Minh Nguyen
<mxn-Ij6MdEStJ8hWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Justin Cormack wrote:
>> On 22 Apr 2006, at 21:40, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>> Without seeing any particular examples, my opinion would be that a
>>> gallery of past logos used to document the evolution of the visual
>>> identity of the company in question generally ought to be acceptable
>>> fair use.
>>
>> *If* you are talking about the evolution of the company logo.
>>
>> *Not* if you are just talking about the company.
>>
>> Do we have articles about the history of individual company logos?
>> Not in these cases (yet). So not fair use. Just pretty copyvio pics.
>>
>> Justinc
>
>In fact, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_idents> is a good example of
>how to write articles on things as trivial (?) as logos -- as with
>company's hisorical logos, explaining network idents over the years
>requires a sizable amount of fair use, and this article seems to do it
>well, since the images haven't swallowed up the article.
>
>There's also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_television_idents>, but
>that article contains much less in the way of explanation, and might be
>harder to justify under [[WP:NOT]] and fair use.

Not any more, I spent most of last night writing up the history of BBC
idents. The depressing thing is that apart from the "Bat's Wings" I can
actually remember seeing most of them the first time they appeared!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter - some
	background and more

body:
On 4/25/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/4/25, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:
>
> > Now. I have read in this thread many counter-truths and misleading
> > statements. Let us make one thing very very clear.
> >
> > Chapters, whatever their form, color or shape, are not responsible for
> > the content of Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia projects. Never. Ever.
> > At best, they will increase the pool of editors through promotion for
> > the projects. At worst, they have to relay the problems that they are
> > aware of "may be problematic content" (potential legal issues) to the
> > Wikimedia Foundation. That's it. There's no *editor* Wikimedia France*
> > or *Wikimedia Polska* or *Wikimedia Nederland*. There are editors who
> > pertain only to the projects, there are editors who pertain to both
> > the project and the organisation. End of the story.
>
> I may agree with that, and you, but what about the Vereniging and
> Stichting themselves? One reason this all started up is that the
> Vereniging explicitly states in their statutes that it does not have
> influence on the contents of the wikis. The Stichting as far as
> possible copied the statutes of the Vereniging, but this point was
> apparently on purpose left out.

Apparently I have not been clear enough. This is not about you or me
agreeing on anything. It is a fact. A plain fact.

__Wikimedia chapters are not responsible for the content of the
Wikimedia projects__

And that is the case, whether or not it is in their bylaws. If it is,
fine, if it is not, it does *not* make them responsible. Bylaws,
statutes or whatever those are called of an organisation are a
contract between the founders and potentially future members of an
organisation, following a specific local set of laws.

Bylaws and statutes are *not* a contract with the authors of the
Wikimedia projects, in Dutch or any other language, they are not a
contract with the Wikimedia Foundation. They do not give any right to
the chapter organisation over the content of any project.

The fact that something is *not in the bylaws* does *not* give a
power/responsibility that the organisation *does not* have in the
first place.

I hope this is clearer now.

Delphine

--
~notafish


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> MGM wrote:
> >On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----
> >> From: Philip Welch
> >>>> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> >> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> >> >> party reliable source.
> >>>I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> >>>there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> >>>Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> >>>aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
> >>
> >> Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
> >> (http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)
> >>
> >> in particular number 7: Free the Maps!
> >>
> >> I would say absolute yes that information should be in a Wikimedia project that
> >> seamlessly integrates into Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Pete
> >>
> >
> > Perhaps, but a map is not an encyclopedia. It should all be free, but
> > not everything should necesserilly be put in this particular project.
> > Mgm
>
>
> The free encyclopedia, the free dictionary, the free news reports, the free
> media repositry, the free documents and quotes repositries, the free textbooks,
> the free species directory, <redlink>the free thesaurus</redlink> and <redlink>the free atlas</redlink>
>
> are all different sides of the same coin. With the technology provided by the Web
> we should be mixing and integrating these much much more than we are.
> It is a great shame that there is very little cross-project co-operation.
> A further frustrating aspect of a large community directing a project is that
> it is very conservative and keen to maintain the status quo.
>
> Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
> anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
What I was trying to say that even if a intersection should be
covered, it shouldn't necessarily be in Wikipedia.

Mgm


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Define and Formalize wiki markup

body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >
> > My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
> > MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
>
> Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P

I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
It's confusing.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually
spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game." - Marvin Minsky


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

body:
I've heard of markdown, never used it though - what is restructured
text?

On Apr 25, 2006, at 1:56 PM, Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>> That's, like, *so* totally a reason not to have it. Like, you
>> know, Wiki
>> syntax is so totally aimed at people who use regular expressions.
>
> As long as we're talking about radical changes to millions of pages
> and tens of software packages, I like Markdown and Restructured Text.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
On 4/25/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
> anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.

Wikiversity is in the works:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal

However, a good project needs time. There's no point in advocating a
WikiAtlas if you don't know what software you're going to use to edit
it. As for "free thesaurus", take a look at the WiktionaryZ prototype
at http://www.wiktionaryz.org/ ; we have imported the full GEMET
thesaurus, and will have some surprises coming soon.

But there's a _LOT_ we can do to make our existing projects work more
smoothly. As important as it is to take on world-changing new ideas,
it's crucial to follow up on the ones you've started.

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
>
> Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?

That seems way outside Wikimedia's target area.

Why not try to revive Consumerium?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060425/069bbe1d/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
>
> Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?

That seems way outside Wikimedia's target area.

Why not try to revive Consumerium?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060425/069bbe1d/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
>
> Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?

That seems way outside Wikimedia's target area.

Why not try to revive Consumerium?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20060425/069bbe1d/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
>
> Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?

That seems way outside Wikimedia's target area.

Why not try to revive Consumerium?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20060425/069bbe1d/attachment-0001.pgp>


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

body:
On 25-apr-2006, at 13:13, Delphine M?nard wrote:

> A Vereniging is a member organisation, much on the model of all other
> Wikimedia Chapters. Its board is elected by the general assembly, made
> up of members who pay their fees to be part of the organisation.

Correct. Therefore a large group of users was in favor of a vereniging.

> Note
> that members *have* to be part of the Wikimedia projects to be members
> of the organisation. Which, if anything, puts the power in the hands
> of *the community*.

No, *anybody* can be a member of the Dutch vereniging.
You don't have to be a contributor to one of the projects.

> A Stichting is a Foundation, much on the model of our Wikimedia
> Foundation. It has a board that is appointed. One of the members of
> this board is appointed by the Verijniging. The reason given for the
> founding of this Stichting is that in NL, sponsors, and particularly
> governement or other big non-profit organisation, are less enclined
> handing out large sums of money to member organisations, as their
> "stability" is not as important as that of Stichting.

Well, that is the POV of RonaldB, but of course it is nonsense.
We have a very large and respected vereniging of car-owners here,
called ANWB, plus a vereniging for municipalities (VNG), and on the
other hand we have very obscure stichtingen as well.

> As I understand it, the Vereniging will be the primary point of entry
> for any deals with sponsors that may come to Wikimedia Nederland,

I don't think so.

> the Stichting will be used as a "buffer" for great-scale projects
> involving lots of money, potentially employing people etc..

No, the stichting will engage in *all* kinds of projects.
Not necessarily tied to the Wikimedia Foundation.

> Chapters, whatever their form, color or shape, are not responsible for
> the content of Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia projects. Never. Ever.

Well, RonaldB wanted to change that, and probably still wants to.

> At best, they will increase the pool of editors through promotion for
> the projects.

Neither the Dutch vereniging nor the stichting is devoted to the
projects solely.
Primarily they are to promote the acquisition and release of free and/
or free accessible information in any manner, be it within or without
the Florida based Foundation.

[...]

> Pretending the contrary is mixing oil and water. It simply does not
> work.

You can pretty well mix oil and water.  ;-) It is called an emulsion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulsion

> As far as the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation is
> concerned, the bylaws of both the Vereniging and the Stichting are
> very clear, and leave no room for interpretation as to whether either
> is ever going to take over the Wikimedia projects. They are not.

The bylaws of the vereniging explicitly states they won't.
The bylaws of the stichting don't. They simply state the stichting
will pursue its objectives by all legal means.

> *Backing down* from the founding process and *then* criticizing,

As I have pointed out before, I was forced to back down because the
next meeting would be for board-members only.

> is,
> in my opinion, definitely not constructive. There is a wiki, it is
> open, there is an organisation, you can become a member.

You can become a member of a toothless and pennyless vereniging,
while the stichting has the power and the money.

> The best you
> can start with is making sure you have a voice in the Vereniging to
> change things from the inside.

You can't. The vereniging has no power whatsoever.
It can't control the stichting. (It has only one representative there.)
On the other hand the stichting could easily pay for some sockpuppets
who would then control the vereniging.

+++ Muijz

Met vriendelijke groet,
Erik van den Muijzenberg, medewerker Wikipedia
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Wikipedia is een online encyclopedie in het vrije domein.
De Nederlandstalige versie bevat meer dan 150 duizend
artikelen. U vindt deze op: http://nl.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Ricky Reno

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
>From: Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked
>Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:31:32 +0100
>
>On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:13:28 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >Alkivar has rashly blocked me for a month for doing no different than the
> >people that disagreed with me.
>
>Two wrongs don't make a right.
>
>Guy (JzG)
>--
>http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-lFirst of all Guy, I?ve
>stated that I have not violated the 3rr and I also made a point of
>explaining that my detractors were doing what I was doing and much more as
>well as in a more aggressive manner.

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/25/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 4/25/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > And a doctors of law degree is almost always a honorary degree. I wonder
> > why
> > > they picked law for that.
> > > The [[Doctor of Laws]] article doesn't explain it.
> >
> > But [[honorary degree|honourary degree]] does - apparently at many
> > American universities, LLD is only given on an honorary basis.
> >
> > I would have expected Jimbo to get a Doctorate of Letters, if they
> > were going to give him an honourary degree, that would be the more
> > usual thing for someone like Jimbo (see [[Doctor of Letters]]).
>
>
> I agree - I was surprised that it was a JD and not an LLD.  But I'm sure
> they have their reasons...though, despite all the wranglings, I would see
> Wikipedia as more of a revolutionary contribution to the world of writing
> than to the world of law (WP:NLT and WP:OFFICE aside)
>
> Ian

Perhaps bu jimbo has done more in his life than wikipedia.

--
geni


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] More legal threats from Brandt

body:
Just got this charming missive.  If we're not going to do anything
about Brandt, I'll just stop editing the article like he wants because
I don't need to spend the rest of my life being hounded by a crazy
man.

Just one more edit from Jokestress on my bio article, or just one more
edit from you on my bio article <b>OR</b> on any of the two Talk pages
or my User page, regardless of the nature of the edit -- even if it is
ostensibly friendly -- and you and Jokestress are both going into a
Google-Watch sidebar with your real names and pictures. I may throw in
Sir William Reierson Arbuthnot, 2nd Baronet of Kittybrewster, into the
mix as well, since he is part of the Google Groups episode as of today
(which makes it relevant to Google-Watch.org). I don't know about him
yet because I'm not sure he knew what he was doing. By the way, this
is not a threat. It's a promise. Also, I'd advise you to put your real
name on your user page, because all of your harassment (please learn
to spell this word) from January 5, 2006 until now has been done
"without disclosing his identity," which makes you potentially liable
for criminal penalties under that new law that you deleted from my
user page. It doesn't matter that I've identified you, because you are
still operating on Wikipedia as someone whose identity is not
disclosed. Yes, please take this to Brad Patrick, Wikipedia's lawyer,
in Tampa. My position is that he should be reporting you to the U.S.
Attorney in Tampa as part of his legal obligation to protect
Wikipedia. If he doesn't, I can raise the issue with the Florida bar.
In other words, it would be a conflict of interest for Mr. Patrick to
give you any advice on this. Jokestress is off the hook in terms of
the criminal statute because she identifies herself on her user page.
I'm sending a copy of this to Jokestress by external email. --Daniel
Brandt [[User:68.93.142.243|68.93.142.243]] 18:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


body:
On 4/25/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:

> >A Vereniging is a member organisation, much on the model of all other
> >Wikimedia Chapters. Its board is elected by the general assembly, made
> >up of members who pay their fees to be part of the organisation. Note
> >that members *have* to be part of the Wikimedia projects to be members
> >of the organisation. Which, if anything, puts the power in the hands
> >of *the community*.
> >
>
> This is absolutely contradictory to what RonaldB writes. HE writes:
>
> (http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:De_kroeg#Een_poging_tot_samenvatting)
> "Iedereen, er is geen enkele beperking, kan lid worden. Zelfs mensen die
> nergens aktief zijn. Nederlanders en niet-Nederlanders, enz."
>
> "Everybody, there is no limitation, can become a member. Even people who
> are active nowhere. Dutch people, non Dutch people."

Probably my mistake. I had in mind that the Vereniging only accepted
people who were part of the Wikimedia projects. Read my interventions
on the English translations of the bylaws, I was personally against
it. And all the better if other people can become members. My
experience proves that sometimes, people who have never edited a wiki
can be excellent members of the organisation.

[snip]

>Untill people threatened to start a
> desysopping against him. then he all of a sudden responded. A person who
> acts like this ..... how can I trust him or her?

[snip]

I continue to see this mixing of the  "project" with the
"organisation", I believe it is a mistake. I am sorry, but you don't
"desysop" someone for something they have done in real life. You do if
they've abused their rights and duties as editor or administrator.

I do not read Dutch, so I cannot refer to all the conversations you
point to and make my own opinion. I tried to give another perspective
on the matter and address the points I could address.

I am available to continue this discussion privately, or with the
chapters committee where relevant. I do not wish to engage further in
this debate here, as I believe this is a matter of the Dutch to
settle, it is they who should come up with a satisfying answer for all
parties involved, not those of us who don't read Dutch, nor have all
the facts.

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish


body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 04:43:35PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 02:13:59PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
> > It's confusing.
>
> I knew there was a *good* reason (y'know; in addition to "yick!" :-).
>
> Hey, chaper.  How you been?

Busy!  Among other things, I've been doing stuff like this:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6064734.html

Thanks for noticing my absence.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


body:
On 4/25/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/4/25, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:

> As for me backing down from the founding process:

[snip]

Ah, and I forgot. Just in case it wasn't clear, I was not addressing
*your* email in particular, but all of those in this thread on both
wikipedia-l and foundation-l together. The email I was top posting on
was actually Muijz. Gmail makes it sometimes complicated to follow the
right threads at the right time ;-)

Cheers :-)

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Guettarda

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One the Virtues of protecting one's pseudonymity,
	WAS: More legal threats from Brandt

body:
On 4/25/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
> > editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
> > assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
> > been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
> > like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
> > "exposure";
>
>
> Perhaps anyone considering editing that web page should create another
> account to do it with.

Wise idea.  Never thought of that...


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
Pete Bartlett wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>
>>Frankly...
>>
>>Jimbo is sure enough the Foundator of Wikipedia.
>>It does not make him a doctor of law.
>>Or the board would not need to look so much for legal expertise from
>>others....
>
>
>>Jimbo did not study and graduate from this university either, so I fail
>>to see how it bring recognition to the quality of the university...
>>I hope real previous students appreciate.
>
>
>>ant
>
>
> I think there may be something of a language barrier issue here.
> Amongst native English-speakers, only the very niave
> are unaware of the difference between an honorary degree and a degree.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Pete

okay.
thanks

ant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:34:55 +1000, you wrote:
>
> >Unfortunately, a person is not entitled to be called "doctor" if they
> >only have an honourary degree. So just "God-king" for now.
>
> Hey, if Kent Hovind can call himself "Doctor" then Jimbo can!
> Guy (JzG)

Hmmm...does an honourary degree from an accredited university trump a "real"
degree from a diploma mill?

I think I have to vote "yes"

Ian


body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

> I am available to continue this discussion privately, or with the
> chapters committee where relevant. I do not wish to engage further in
> this debate here, as I believe this is a matter of the Dutch to
> settle, it is they who should come up with a satisfying answer for all
> parties involved, not those of us who don't read Dutch, nor have all
> the facts.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish

I am not entirely sure. It is certainly the matter for the Dutch to
settle... but at the same time... there are requests for the board to
approve the relationship between the two organisations and the
Foundation. So it may be best that we are informed before voting...

Ant


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Strange behaviour opening an article on
	en.wikipedia

body:
Tjipke de Vries wrote:
> Warning: fopen(/tmp/mediawiki/messages-enwiki) [function.fopen]: failed to
> open stream: Read-only file system in
> /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/MessageCache.php on line 105
> (10.0.5.3)

srv20 remounted its filesystem read-only after some disk errors. I've shut it
down, Kyle can pull it for disk replacement when he's next on site.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060425/15ca7b49/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/4/25, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:

> I am available to continue this discussion privately, or with the
> chapters committee where relevant. I do not wish to engage further in
> this debate here, as I believe this is a matter of the Dutch to
> settle, it is they who should come up with a satisfying answer for all
> parties involved, not those of us who don't read Dutch, nor have all
> the facts.

I don't see how the Dutch can settle this now. The Stichting and the
Vereniging both exist. The Stichting is fully controlled by its board,
the Vereniging is fully controlled by its members. The only thing that
now happens is that people complain about the Stichting, and the board
defends it. Some people want a Stichting, some don't. Those who want
it, fully control it. Those who don't have no power over it
whatsoever.

About the only thing that can still be done is the decision about how
the Wikimedia Foundation behaves towards the Vereniging and the
Stichting. I would propose to them to NOT recognize the Stichting as
being in any way associated with the Wikimedia Foundation. The best
place to discuss that kind of thing seems to me to be this list.

One reason for this would be the following statements on the
discussion page of Wikimedia Nederland. RonaldB, the person who so
much wanted the Stichting and is now in its board, agreed with the
statement of an opponent that the purpose of the Stichting really is
not to support Wikipedia, but to use the good name of the Wikimedia
Foundation and the proof of concept of Wikipedia to support other
projects that are NOT Wikimedia projects, but are in line with the
goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, see
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:De_kroeg#Reactie_Peter_Boelens

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject:
[WikiEN-l]  One the Virtues of protecting one's pseudonymity,
	WAS: More legal threats from Brandt

body:
On 4/25/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just got this charming missive. If we're not going to do anything
> about Brandt, I'll just stop editing the article like he wants because
> I don't need to spend the rest of my life being hounded by a crazy
> man.
>
> Just one more edit from Jokestress on my bio article, or just one more
> edit from you on my bio article <b>OR</b> on any of the two Talk pages
> or my User page, regardless of the nature of the edit -- even if it is
> ostensibly friendly -- and you and Jokestress are both going into a
> Google-Watch sidebar with your real names and pictures. I may throw in
> Sir William Reierson Arbuthnot, 2nd Baronet of Kittybrewster, into the
> mix as well, since he is part of the Google Groups episode as of today
> (which makes it relevant to Google-Watch.org). I don't know about him
> yet because I'm not sure he knew what he was doing. By the way, this
> is not a threat. It's a promise. Also, I'd advise you to put your real
> name on your user page, because all of your harassment (please learn
> to spell this word) from January 5, 2006 until now has been done
> "without disclosing his identity," which makes you potentially liable
> for criminal penalties under that new law that you deleted from my
> user page. It doesn't matter that I've identified you, because you are
> still operating on Wikipedia as someone whose identity is not
> disclosed. Yes, please take this to Brad Patrick, Wikipedia's lawyer,
> in Tampa. My position is that he should be reporting you to the U.S.
> Attorney in Tampa as part of his legal obligation to protect
> Wikipedia. If he doesn't, I can raise the issue with the Florida bar.
> In other words, it would be a conflict of interest for Mr. Patrick to
> give you any advice on this. Jokestress is off the hook in terms of
> the criminal statute because she identifies herself on her user page.
> I'm sending a copy of this to Jokestress by external email. --Daniel
> Brandt [[User:68.93.142.243|68.93.142.243]] 18:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
"exposure"; for instance, if Brandt were to make any threats against
me, they would be completely hollow: no one on the wiki or the web
knows who I am, where I live, or what I look like; the data just isn't
there.)

~maru


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] how to find out: "double" users and administrators

body:
Hello

May be these are very trivial question:

    -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
       and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
       presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
       machines that might be misleading).

    -  How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a
       specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators,
       but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or
       something like this?

Thanks

Uwe Brauer.


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:39 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
>> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
>> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
>> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>>
> According to his proposal, yes, it does.
>
> Of course, to be realistic you'd have to add in [[Wikipedia:Article
> size]].  An article just about a four-way stop would probably be
> better off merged with another article and redirected, unless it was a
> particularly interesting four-way stop.

So [[Pullman, Washington]] would have detailed prose about each and
every single intersection? That's absurd.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 10:47:32PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> >
> >>Moin,
> >>
> >>On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >>
> >>>My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
> >>>MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
> >>
> >>Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
> >
> > I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
> > It's confusing.
>
> That's, like, *so* totally a reason not to have it. Like, you know, Wiki
> syntax is so totally aimed at people who use regular expressions.

My impression is that it's aimed at "everybody" -- which includes me.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of
others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any
Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."


body:
On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
>> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
>> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
>> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>>
>> --
>> Philip L. Welch
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>>
>
> By the way, just out of curiousity, what would those sources be?
> Remember not to violate [[WP:NOR]].
>
> I found one arguably "reliable source" at
> http://www.wmel.wsu.edu/directions/directions.html.  It's a website,
> but it's a .edu website.  Google Book Search finds nothing for the
> names of the two roads in quotes.  Maybe if it's a particularly busy
> road there would be some mention in newspapers...

Maps, Pullman Transit schedules, driving directions.

Here's some more information that is verifiable from third party
reliable sources: there is a "Turney Hitler" living in Lakeside
California, and his phone number is 619-390-9009. The third party
reliable source in question is anywho.com, an online telephone
directory. I don't think poor Mr. Hitler deserves mention in
Wikipedia, however.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Christopher Erickson

body:
My point regards ANY POV-pushing source. Rightest rags don't work either.

-- Chris (Gudsthegn)

On 4/25/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:05:11 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >My beef is this ... What counts as a reliable source?  Does a mention of
> a
> >POV-pushing political phrase in heresy-hunting leftist rag count as a
> >reliable source
>
> Not that your POV is showing or anything...
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
or rightist either. :-)

On 4/25/06, Christopher Erickson <cerickson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> My point regards ANY POV-pushing source. Rightest rags don't work either.
>
> -- Chris (Gudsthegn)
>
>
>
> On 4/25/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:05:11 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> > >My beef is this ... What counts as a reliable source?  Does a mention
> > of a
> > >POV-pushing political phrase in heresy-hunting leftist rag count as a
> > >reliable source
> >
> > Not that your POV is showing or anything...
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 02:13:59PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
> > > MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
> >
> > Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
>
> I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
> It's confusing.

I knew there was a *good* reason (y'know; in addition to "yick!" :-).

Hey, chaper.  How you been?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 4/25/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am not entirely sure. It is certainly the matter for the Dutch to
> settle... but at the same time... there are requests for the board to
> approve the relationship between the two organisations and the
> Foundation. So it may be best that we are informed before voting...

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. We need more information, but it
seems to me it is coming here in a very individual and unstructured
manner. And this what I meant when I said I was ready to continue this
conversation in the appropriate places.

Any formal request put to the chapters committee (address on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee), will of course be
heard and managed appropriately.

Cheers,

Delphine

--
~notafish


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

body:
On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> That's, like, *so* totally a reason not to have it. Like, you know, Wiki
> syntax is so totally aimed at people who use regular expressions.

As long as we're talking about radical changes to millions of pages
and tens of software packages, I like Markdown and Restructured Text.


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
It is a sad situation that a perceived lack of communication gets us
to a state where the long awaited Dutch chapter is even more delayed.
The people who have set up both the "vereniging"  and the "stichting"
have done this to set up an organisation in the Netherlands. To get
there, someone had to do it. Now there is an organisation; people can
become member of the vereniging. It is for the members of the
"vereninging" to choose the board of there organisation. When people
are concerned, all they have to do is become a member go to the
meetings and choose or confirm the members of the board.

When the board of the vereniging and the board of the stiching find
that they do not / can not cooperate, that will be the appropriate
time to discuss with the Wikimedia Foundation how to resolve the
situation.

On the nl.wikipedia many moderators have been confirmed for another
year. Both Oscar and Galwaygirl (the chairman and the secretary of the
vereniging io) have received the trust of the Dutch Wikipedia
community. When some people of the nl.wikipedia community want to
clarify the relation between this project and the Dutch chapter, they
find their answer either in the bylaws of the chapter or in the bylaws
of the project.

Practically, the first "ledenvergadering" has to be convened. This
will be the first time where members of the vereniging can decide on
how to move forward. This will be for the members  of the chapter and
not for the Dutch Wikipedia community to decide. This meeting will be
public.

When people who do not want to become members and are part of a Dutch
project want to discuss the relation with the Dutch and eventually a
Belgian chapter, they can do so in their project and not bother the
rest of the Wiki world.

PS The Dutch chapter is there to be active in the Netherlands. It
wants to do good for any and all projects. It is not and should not be
only about the Dutch Wikipedia.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 4/25/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:
>
> > I am available to continue this discussion privately, or with the
> > chapters committee where relevant. I do not wish to engage further in
> > this debate here, as I believe this is a matter of the Dutch to
> > settle, it is they who should come up with a satisfying answer for all
> > parties involved, not those of us who don't read Dutch, nor have all
> > the facts.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Delphine
> > --
> > ~notafish
>
> I am not entirely sure. It is certainly the matter for the Dutch to
> settle... but at the same time... there are requests for the board to
> approve the relationship between the two organisations and the
> Foundation. So it may be best that we are informed before voting...
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 25/04/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> > http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
> >
> > Monday, April 24, 2006
> >
> > GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> > degree recipients.
> >
> > Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
> > former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
> > Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
> > ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
> >
> > - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
> >
> > http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml
>
> I understand nothing of these honorary degree.
> Jimbo is not a lawyer, nor does he have any special knowledge on legal
> issues. What does that mean to receive a degree in a topic you know
> nothing about ?

An honorary degree is a degree "honoris causa", "for the sake of
honor". The idea is that the university is recognising the
achievements of an individual made outside of their system, but which
they feel compelled to honour. (Think of it as like the academic
equivalent of a governmentally-awarded medal)

Historically these were simply recognitions of intellectual work by
someone not involved with the university; of late, it's become more
common to award them for general achievements. For example, in the
1750s Benjamin Franklin recieved one from Oxford for his scientific
works; two hundred years later, his fellow-countryman Eisenhower was
awarded the same degree by them for having won WWII. Some institutions
give them to mark a visit by an important figure:

http://www.gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/nobelfoundation/degrees.cfm

(It's also not unknown to award them to senior members of the faculty
who unaccountably failed to ever actually study at the university, or
to give them to people like governors or Visitors either when they
take office or when they retire. But I digress.)

Traditionally, honorary degrees are chosen from a small set of
degrees; in the US, the "doctor of laws" degree is one of these, and
it's rarely if ever awarded as an actual PhD-level award. (In the UK,
the common one is the "doctor of letters"). Generally, a given
institution will pick the most appropriate, but they're pretty broad
groupings. (Again using Oxford, since I have their Calendar on my
desk, it generally falls into "politicians", "artists/writers/actors",
"scientists", with rarely awarded doctorates in Music or Divinity)

In the case of Knox, they're awarding honorary doctorates of Fine Arts
and of Laws, and have in the past awarded them in Humane Letters and
in Science. This doesn't leave much to choose from - he's not a
creative artist, and he's not a scientist.

So it's "doctor of laws" or "doctor of humane letters". The
definitions here are vague and fuzzy - they can vary from place to
place, and are rarely explicitly written down - but you could make a
decent case that "laws" is for contributions to society, and "humane
letters" for contributions to the humanities. (In the example
mentioned above, Eisenhower, the leading commanders in 1945 were
awarded doctorates in Civil Law...)

And is the project a contribution to society, or one to scholarship?
Ay, there's the rub.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This, of course, raises the question of how exactly one must address
> Jimbo now; "Dr. God-king"? "the good God-king Dr. Wales"? "revered
> founder and God-king of Wikipedia, and doctor of laws Mr. Wales?"

Unfortunately, a person is not entitled to be called "doctor" if they
only have an honourary degree. So just "God-king" for now.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

references:
<e2lm8l$qcc$1@sea.gmane.org> <444E804E.4030108@apple.com>
	<e2m9sd$thj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

>>It's simply that it's extremely rare for a non-native speaker to have
>>absorbed all the culture and reflexes that inform a native speaker.
>>[...] even less-educated native speakers can pick out the foreigners,
>>even though they might not be able to articulate what cues they are
>>noticing.
>>
>
>This might apply to writing novels or translating films or something,
>but surely not to Wikipedia.
>
I don't have any good real-life examples to put up here, but likely
cases would include judgement whether a particular phrasing is neutral
or slanted, or what is the most common term for something. For
instance, native US speakers have a finely-tuned sense of when the
"N-word" is offensive or not (as our article explains in some depth),
and considering the number of our articles that use the word, it
would be good to have editors that know how to use it appropriately
in articles. I suspect that even an average high-school senior from
Arkansas would get it right more often than an anthropologist from
Sweden.

Stan


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 4/24/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:
>
> > I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> > wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> > party reliable source.
>
> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>
According to his proposal, yes, it does.

Of course, to be realistic you'd have to add in [[Wikipedia:Article
size]].  An article just about a four-way stop would probably be
better off merged with another article and redirected, unless it was a
particularly interesting four-way stop.

Anthony


from_name: Rotem Liss

body:
   1.
      Install the extension CheckUser
      (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:CheckUser) and use it.
   2.
      What do you mean? You can ask the sysops to specify it in their
      user page, and there is the page Special:Listadmins. An
      administrator can configure his signature in talk pages to show
      "USERNAME (sysop)", of course, but not in the history pages.

Uwe Brauer wrote:

>Hello
>
>May be these are very trivial question:
>
>    -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
>       and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
>       presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
>       machines that might be misleading).
>
>    -  How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a
>       specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators,
>       but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or
>       something like this?
>
>Thanks
>
>Uwe Brauer.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


body:
On 4/24/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>

By the way, just out of curiousity, what would those sources be?
Remember not to violate [[WP:NOR]].

I found one arguably "reliable source" at
http://www.wmel.wsu.edu/directions/directions.html.  It's a website,
but it's a .edu website.  Google Book Search finds nothing for the
names of the two roads in quotes.  Maybe if it's a particularly busy
road there would be some mention in newspapers...

Anthony


from_name: Timwi

body:
Hello everybody. I haven't participated on this list for a while, but I
have been drawn attention to this thread.

> With that said, I am interest in such project if it involves coding.
> To make this change into a valid summer of code project, I propose to
> do a wiki parser, for which I have already designed some draft rules
> in a yacc/bison manner.

I am interested in continuing developing my parser (flexbisonparse) if
other people are interested in helping me. I am happy to explain what I
remember of how it works, because I know it's really hard to figure out,
but I'm sure it's not that hard to explain.

I am disappointed that people are *still* trying to re-start the effort
from scratch. Surely the plethora of existing parsers has shown that
every new effort will end up the same, especially if no effort is made
to understand the existing unfinished products and to recognise their
flaws and faults. You'll just make the same mistakes again and again.

My mistake was to fail to recognise the importance and complexity of
HTML and HTML-like tags in the wiki mark-up. My parser can parse
everything non-HTML/SGML-based that was part of the syntax at the time I
wrote it. With co-operation, I'm sure we can do the rest. Without, I'm
sure no-one can.

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
On 4/25/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
>
> Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?
>
> Magnus

What's the point of starting a new project?  Products are allowed in
an encyclopedia, aren't they?

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
Hi.

Preliminary:  This posting is *NOT* meant to re-incite a discussion that
has already taken place and is already over: namely, the debates about
the deletion of [[Template:User en-5]] and its equivalents for other
languages.

I just wanted to note one thing that struck me as significant and no-one
else seems to have brought this up anywhere in the discussion (the AfD
discussion; I haven't followed the mailing list):

The entire discussion blatantly reflects the stereotypical
English-speakers' language ignorance, which postulates that a native
speaker is necessarily "perfect" or "best", and a non-native speaker is
necessarily worse than a native speaker. The entire discussion assumes
that "native speaker" is an adequate label for a level of skill.

In reality, most non-native English speakers I know speak and write
English way better than an average native speaker. In reality, among all
speakers (native or non-native) there are huge variations in the level
of skill, ranging from "lolz asl?" to Pulitzer-prize winning prose. It
is *that* which the Babel templates are trying to gauge, *not* whether
someone is a native speaker or not.

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] OT: Amazon trademarks "Real Name"?

body:
On 4/25/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 4/25/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm
> >
> > Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
> > patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?
> >
> > Magnus
>
> What's the point of starting a new project?  Products are allowed in
> an encyclopedia, aren't they?
>
> Anthony
>
Speaking of Amazon being evil WRT IP law, I just noticed while
browsing their wiki that they've apparently claimed a trademark on the
phrase "Real Name".

Googling for more info, I see
http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2005/06/23/amazon-have-trademarked-real-name/

Anyone know more about this one?

Anthony


from_name: Locke Cole

subject: [Wikitech-l] odd behaviour of {fullurl:...}

body:
On 4/25/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:

>   [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/{{{1}}}{{{2}}}|limit=999}} links]
>
> Always works.

Because it's part of the full URL generated (see below).

> Is there some reason that fullurl stops encoding spaces to underscores
> when it runs into a pipe?

The pipe adds parameters, basically {{fullurl:...}} seems to take this:

{{fullurl:<page>|<param-1>|<param-2>|...|<param-n>}}

And convert it into:

<page: converted to full URL>?<param-1>&<param-2>&...&<param-n>

> And speaking of syntax, why {{fullurl: instead of {{#fullurl: to match
> the latest parser syntax?

Probably because the latter would break existing pages relying upon
{{fullurl: ...}}. Also, my understanding of {{# was that it was only
used for parser extensions (not built-in magic words/functions).

Anyways, getting back to the problem of spaces in parameters, I don't
think URL encoding parameters would work. A better solution (IMO)
would be to add two new magic words:

{{urlencode:<string>}}
{{urldecode:<string>}}

Which would allow us to encode/decode URL parameters as necessary. Now
if a dev could be convinced this is wise, we'd be set. =)

-L


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 11:49:27AM +0200, Dirk Riehle wrote:
> > and I expect a standardized wiki markup to be an
> > important topic (I hope we will have workshop on
> > it).
>
> I wish you hadn't told me that, Dirk.
>
> My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
> MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that

Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Tue Apr 25 19:21:12 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 I'm a Sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sinnahr...

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 481 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060425/fbdd12af/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter -
 some	background and more

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

>I am top posting and breaking the thread on purpose, as I am not
>trying to address all the concerns in this thread, but rather trying
>to give a little background and a different perspective.
>
>I have followed, in my position as local chapter coordinator, the
>different steps in the founding of both the Vereniging (member
>association) and Stichting (Foundation). For those who are puzzled by
>this double organisational background, let me give you some
>explanation.
>
>A Vereniging is a member organisation, much on the model of all other
>Wikimedia Chapters. Its board is elected by the general assembly, made
>up of members who pay their fees to be part of the organisation. Note
>that members *have* to be part of the Wikimedia projects to be members
>of the organisation. Which, if anything, puts the power in the hands
>of *the community*.
>

This is absolutely contradictory to what RonaldB writes. HE writes:

(http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:De_kroeg#Een_poging_tot_samenvatting)
"Iedereen, er is geen enkele beperking, kan lid worden. Zelfs mensen die
nergens aktief zijn. Nederlanders en niet-Nederlanders, enz."

"Everybody, there is no limitation, can become a member. Even people who
are active nowhere. Dutch people, non Dutch people."

And this is just the first of a couple of contradictions between what
you write in English and what RonaldB writes in Dutch. You write the
rosy "it is al ok, trust us version" . RonaldB writes how he wants it to
be .... which is the reason why more and more people do not trust it
..... version! Have you ever read RonaldB's how he sees Wikipedia? See
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:RonaldB/De_wiki_als_systeem
......  The wiki as a system) All his statements in there are
contradictionary to what the current system is. Basically he wants to
create a Wikistate. With wikiparliament etc. He has openly said before
he wants to use a foundation to reach this goal.

There were 5 meetings. In the notules of the 4th meeting we can see:
RonaldB proposes a foundation to be started as well. But it was decided
to wait with that untill after the starting of an association. In the
notules of the 5th and last meeting all of a sudden it pops up again.
RonaldB proposes creation of a foundation and all of a sudden everyone
agrees! After which RonaldB goes of quickly and does this.

Now RonaldB was the one registering both the foundation and association,
he is the only person in the board of both, they are both registered in
the place that he lives. With RonaldB's openly stated goals of a totally
different future for the projects, him taking the lead in everyhing and
him refusing to responding to questions or delaying his response .....
he waited with answering for a week! Untill people threatened to start a
desysopping against him. then he all of a sudden responded. A person who
acts like this ..... how can I trust him or her?

Apart from that RonaldB doesn't answer questions. He writes around them.
I know the writing style very very very well. I have studied on it a
long time ago when I still was in school. No direct answers anywhere,
just repeating of statements.

In short this whole thing has gone against the explicit wishes in a vote
of the community. A majority when asked was for association. Almost
everybody was against the foundation form. Now I know their is a request
to the board to recognize both foundation and association. I feel that
if for now the board recognizes the association so the community has
more time to look at the foundation that would be a way to go forward.
After all the forming of an association was discussed for a year. The
foundation was just pushed through without a discussion!

Waerth/Walter


from_name: William Allen Simpson

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
>> Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
>
> In general, no.  Handwritten underlines are customarily rendered in
> print as italics, hence that mapping.  You're right; the extra
> flexibility would be nice, but it doesn't match what I most commonly
> see people do, and that was my goal.  It makes no sense changing markup
> just for fun; mine was an Installed Base attempt to conform with the
> Principle of Least Astonishment.
>
Actually, Jay, you must not go back in usenet far enough, because those
actually *WERE* the old markup.  Underscores are _underlines_ and slashes
are /italics/ (probably because of the association with slant).

Much to my surprise, I see that Thunderbird displays them!  So, we have
both Installed Base and Least Astonishment.

Admittedly, I also like <parameter>, but that got hijacked by some
newfangled thing or other.  Apparently, somebody thought the standard
[n|t]roff markups aren't good enough?

However, a bunch of us stopped using usenet somewhere around 1988, when it
became unusable with too much useless traffic.  (I hear it's gotten worse.)
Mailing lists are far better!

I'd be in favor of bringing the usenet markups here, and reverting '' to
"<em>" and ''' to "<strong>", as I seem to remember from not-so-long-ago
around wikidom.

But first, even better to get a firm grasp on the existing syntax....


body:
On 4/25/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> I've heard of markdown, never used it though - what is restructured
> text?

It was sort of tongue-in-cheek, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructured_Text


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unjustifiably blocked

body:
On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:13:28 -0400, you wrote:

>Alkivar has rashly blocked me for a month for doing no different than the
>people that disagreed with me.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

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


body:
On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:05:11 -0500, you wrote:

>My beef is this ... What counts as a reliable source?  Does a mention of a
>POV-pushing political phrase in heresy-hunting leftist rag count as a
>reliable source

Not that your POV is showing or anything...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:34:55 +1000, you wrote:

>Unfortunately, a person is not entitled to be called "doctor" if they
>only have an honourary degree. So just "God-king" for now.

Hey, if Kent Hovind can call himself "Doctor" then Jimbo can!
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
A couple of us were trying to figure out the syntax to add a working
link to Special:Log in a template.

  [{{fullurl:Special:Log|page={{{1}}}{{{2}}}}} log]

Works fine as long as parameter 2 is only one word.  With a space in 2,
only the first word shows up in the URL.

Tried wrapping {{fullurl:{{{1}}}{{{2}}}}}, but page= won't take a full
page name.

  [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/{{{1}}}{{{2}}}|limit=999}} links]

Always works.

Is there some reason that fullurl stops encoding spaces to underscores
when it runs into a pipe?

And speaking of syntax, why {{fullurl: instead of {{#fullurl: to match
the latest parser syntax?


from_name: Rob

body:
On 4/25/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:>

 Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
> editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
> assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
> been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
> like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
> "exposure"; for instance, if Brandt were to make any threats against
> me, they would be completely hollow: no one on the wiki or the web
> knows who I am, where I live, or what I look like; the data just isn't
> there.)

Too bad you couldn't go back in time to give that particular advice to
myself as a college freshman.


body:
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:27:46PM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> >> Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
> >
> > In general, no.  Handwritten underlines are customarily rendered in
> > print as italics, hence that mapping.  You're right; the extra
> > flexibility would be nice, but it doesn't match what I most commonly
> > see people do, and that was my goal.  It makes no sense changing markup
> > just for fun; mine was an Installed Base attempt to conform with the
> > Principle of Least Astonishment.
> >
> Actually, Jay, you must not go back in usenet far enough, because those
> actually *WERE* the old markup.  Underscores are _underlines_ and slashes
> are /italics/ (probably because of the association with slant).

1983, though DejaGoo doesn't seem to be able to find any of my postings
earlier than dec 85.  People who used /this marking/ were, IME,
substantially in the minority.

> Much to my surprise, I see that Thunderbird displays them!  So, we have
> both Installed Base and Least Astonishment.

Does it, really?  Cool!

> Admittedly, I also like <parameter>, but that got hijacked by some
> newfangled thing or other.  Apparently, somebody thought the standard
> [n|t]roff markups aren't good enough?

I dunno.

> However, a bunch of us stopped using usenet somewhere around 1988, when it
> became unusable with too much useless traffic.  (I hear it's gotten worse.)
> Mailing lists are far better!

No, it's not.  No, they're not.

If you think Usenet is useless, you're a) not using slrn or haven't
figured out how to score, or b) hanging out in the wrong newsgroups.

> I'd be in favor of bringing the usenet markups here, and reverting '' to
> "<em>" and ''' to "<strong>", as I seem to remember from not-so-long-ago
> around wikidom.
>
> But first, even better to get a firm grasp on the existing syntax....

You missed the part where I said that I don't ever expect MWtext to
change, right?  Don't go getting *me* in trouble, here... :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On 4/25/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
> > editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
> > assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
> > been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
> > like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
> > "exposure";
>
>
> Perhaps anyone considering editing that web page should create another
> account to do it with.
>
> Theresa

Nope.  New accounts can't edit that page.

Anthony


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser verification errors

body:
How does one resolve errors in checkuser results?~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just 2?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


body:
On 4/25/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:39 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> >> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> >> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> >> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
> >>
> > According to his proposal, yes, it does.
> >
> > Of course, to be realistic you'd have to add in [[Wikipedia:Article
> > size]].  An article just about a four-way stop would probably be
> > better off merged with another article and redirected, unless it was a
> > particularly interesting four-way stop.
>
> So [[Pullman, Washington]] would have detailed prose about each and
> every single intersection? That's absurd.

Strawman.  I never said anything about [[Pullman, Washington]] *or*
every intersection.

Anthony


body:
On 4/25/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> >> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> >> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> >> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Philip L. Welch
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
> >>
> >
> > By the way, just out of curiousity, what would those sources be?
> > Remember not to violate [[WP:NOR]].
> >
> > I found one arguably "reliable source" at
> > http://www.wmel.wsu.edu/directions/directions.html.  It's a website,
> > but it's a .edu website.  Google Book Search finds nothing for the
> > names of the two roads in quotes.  Maybe if it's a particularly busy
> > road there would be some mention in newspapers...
>
> Maps, Pullman Transit schedules, driving directions.
>
I thought of these, but I didn't think they'd have the fact that there
was a four-way stop sign.

> Here's some more information that is verifiable from third party
> reliable sources: there is a "Turney Hitler" living in Lakeside
> California, and his phone number is 619-390-9009. The third party
> reliable source in question is anywho.com, an online telephone
> directory. I don't think poor Mr. Hitler deserves mention in
> Wikipedia, however.

Well, that begs the question, now doesn't it?

Anthony


body:
>
>I am available to continue this discussion privately, or with the
>chapters committee where relevant. I do not wish to engage further in
>this debate here, as I believe this is a matter of the Dutch to
>settle, it is they who should come up with a satisfying answer for all
>parties involved, not those of us who don't read Dutch, nor have all
>the facts.
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>Delphine
>--
>~notafish
>
Thank you anyway that you are trying to help out. It is a matter to
solve within the nl community yes. But the problem is if they stay deaf
and do not answer the questions directly and then the board acknowledges
them it is kinda a "fait accompli" isn't it? I again want to urge
RonaldB to please answer the questions we asked (and no it is not just
me asking them, as usual I am just one of the more vocal ones).

Waerth/Walter


from_name: geni

body:
On 4/25/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just got this charming missive.  If we're not going to do anything
> about Brandt, I'll just stop editing the article like he wants because
> I don't need to spend the rest of my life being hounded by a crazy
> man.
>

Not much we can do. If he is starting to cause real world hassel
probably best that you walk away and enjoy the other parts of
wikipedia.

--
geni


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

references:
<e2lm8l$qcc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f5238c30604251105x3b87e6ffr2b4a10e9529ecd6b@mail.gmail.com>
	<e2ma01$thj$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > Really? That's odd, because most of the non-native speakers I've met
> > on Wikipedia were noticeably worse than native speakers.
>
> Those that aren't noticeably "bad" will not stick out to you as
> non-native speakers.
>
> Timwi

That would be true, except that I have a pretty good idea of the
nationalities of various editors, and the non-native ones are
noticeably worse. And besides, as others have pointed out, a crappy
native speaker's writings are just plain *different* (as I know all
too well from their frequent contributions to Star Wars pages) than a
crappy non-native speaker's. To me, the difference is fairly striking.

~maru


body:
On 4/25/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:

> But urlencode and urldecode (and rawurlencode and rawurldecode) are PHP
> functions.  They don't work the way we'd like, they encode spaces as '+'
> "for historical reasons" (that is, M$ visual basic), while we need '_'.

The method used need not be the standard PHP urlencode/urldecode
functions. But I've rethought things a little, see below.

> Maybe something like that is needed, but I'd rather concentrate on fixing
> possible bugs in this function before going off and making yet another
> almost but not quite the same as a floor wax and a dessert topping.
> (Mixing Hitchhikers Guide with Firesign Theatre metaphors.)

Agreed. And I've entered what I believe to be an accurate (or at
least, accurate enough to diagnose and fix the issue) bug report at--

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5720

Vote/comment/etc. as you see fit. =)

-L


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One the Virtues of protecting one's pseudonymity,
 WAS: More legal threats from Brandt

body:
* maru dubshinki wrote:

> Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
> editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
> assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
> been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
> like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
> "exposure"; for instance, if Brandt were to make any threats against
> me, they would be completely hollow: no one on the wiki or the web
> knows who I am, where I live, or what I look like; the data just isn't
> there.)

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Admins_willing_to_make_difficult_blocks
for a related idea.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 02:56:09AM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> You could even start alt.dumps.wikipedia where you post an article
> (converted to Usenet markup) each hour for the next 125 years.

Well, the strawman is delightful, Lars, really, but I *had* already
made clear that I realized the issue was academic in both meanings of
the word.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
>
> Good grief. I'm starting to wonder whether we should have a group of
> editors who haven't been foolish enough to break their pseudonymity
> assigned to articles like this (the idea being that if they haven't
> been foolish enough to give out their names and pictures for people
> like Brandt to abuse, they'll be less liable to be threatened by
> "exposure";

Perhaps anyone considering editing that web page should create another
account to do it with.

Theresa


body:
Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
>
>>Moin,
>>
>>On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>
>>>My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen with
>>>MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens, noting that
>>
>>Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
>
> I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
> It's confusing.

That's, like, *so* totally a reason not to have it. Like, you know, Wiki
syntax is so totally aimed at people who use regular expressions.

Timwi


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?

body:
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06042526.htm

Remembering ten things to be freed, and how amazon is Evil (tm)
patent-wise, would this warrant a "counter-strike"? products.wikimedia.org?

Magnus


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikiproject?


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

body:
On 4/25/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And a doctors of law degree is almost always a honorary degree. I wonder why
> they picked law for that.
> The [[Doctor of Laws]] article doesn't explain it.

But [[honorary degree|honourary degree]] does - apparently at many
American universities, LLD is only given on an honorary basis.

I would have expected Jimbo to get a Doctorate of Letters, if they
were going to give him an honourary degree, that would be the more
usual thing for someone like Jimbo (see [[Doctor of Letters]]).

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
>> Why is that as a community we haven't been badgering the board to do
>> anything dramatic since Wikinews was set up /18/ months ago.

>Cuz Wikinews isn't good yet, Wikipedia is only good in one language
>(German) and usable in a couple more (English, etc.), Wiktionary is
>just there, Wikibooks is a mess, and Wikiversity doesn't even know
>what it is yet.

>It would be best if we didn't subdivide our efforts even more than
>they are now, or we won't get anything done!

 Well "dramatic" didn't have to mean a new project!

Why is de: better than en: is a great question. They appear to have
covered classic encyclopedic topics much better than en: and
their proportion of Exzellente Artikeler is double that of our FAs, despite
standards. How to learn from de would be a great thing to discuss.

You also note that other projects are stumbling along and that they
are cause a sub-division of effort. We should change things so that
projects collaborate routinely. You can click on any word in Britannica
Online and get a dictionary definition for example. Why not have this in
Wikipedia?

Why not have extensions that auto-detect the existence of quotations
or source material by or about a person and even drag a snippet of it
into the sidebar?

Yep there is lots to do, but recently the unimaginative debates
about notability seem to be dominating.

Pete


body:
Locke Cole wrote:
> William Allen Simpson wrote:
>>   [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/{{{1}}}{{{2}}}|limit=999}} links]
>>
>> Always works.
>
> Because it's part of the full URL generated (see below).
>
Look it is carefully.  It uses a / to indicate the parameter, yet when
you use the navigation bar, it generates:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=
   Special:Whatlinkshere&target=User%3AWilliam_Allen_Simpson

I just tried hand typing:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=
   Special:Whatlinkshere/User%3AWilliam_Allen_Simpson

So, both forms work, and I'm guessing that the slash form was created as
a workaround for the parsing issue.

>> Is there some reason that fullurl stops encoding spaces to underscores
>> when it runs into a pipe?
>
> The pipe adds parameters, basically {{fullurl:...}} seems to take this:
>
> {{fullurl:<page>|<param-1>|<param-2>|...|<param-n>}}
>
> And convert it into:
>
> <page: converted to full URL>?<param-1>&<param-2>&...&<param-n>
>
Yes, but it's parsing the parameters, yet failing to do the escaping on
them.  Seems like a *bug* to me.  However, there might be a good reason,
it's just not documented....

>> And speaking of syntax, why {{fullurl: instead of {{#fullurl: to match
>> the latest parser syntax?
>
> Probably because the latter would break existing pages relying upon
> {{fullurl: ...}}. Also, my understanding of {{# was that it was only
> used for parser extensions (not built-in magic words/functions).
>
The "{{#if:" started using the standard PHP "if", although it now is
a variant more like CPP #ifdef.

I'm not clear on the difference between parser extensions and magic
functions.  But I've not really looked at the code yet....

> Anyways, getting back to the problem of spaces in parameters, I don't
> think URL encoding parameters would work. A better solution (IMO)
> would be to add two new magic words:
>
> {{urlencode:<string>}}
> {{urldecode:<string>}}
>
> Which would allow us to encode/decode URL parameters as necessary. Now
> if a dev could be convinced this is wise, we'd be set. =)
>
But urlencode and urldecode (and rawurlencode and rawurldecode) are PHP
functions.  They don't work the way we'd like, they encode spaces as '+'
"for historical reasons" (that is, M$ visual basic), while we need '_'.

Maybe something like that is needed, but I'd rather concentrate on fixing
possible bugs in this function before going off and making yet another
almost but not quite the same as a floor wax and a dessert topping.
(Mixing Hitchhikers Guide with Firesign Theatre metaphors.)


body:
Pedro de Medeiros wrote:
>
> Maybe we should talk about what is missng and what to do next pvt'ly?

Sure.


from_name: S.M.Sabri S.M.Ismail

subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months ... wiki maps

body:
From: "geni" <geniice at gmail.com>
>>>> Recalling Jimbo's "Ten Things That Should Be Free"
>>>> (http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_manifesto.php)
>>>> in particular number 7: Free the Maps!
>>> Perhaps, but a map is not an encyclopedia. It should all be free, but
>>> not everything should necesserilly be put in this particular project.
>>> Mgm
>> <redlink>the free atlas</redlink>
> Wikimaps sadly isn't really practicle. A lot of work goes into makeing
> a map and a lot of that has to be done on the ground.

With the spread of consumer GPS devices, from Garmin/Magellan and others, "free
map" is getting more practical. A wiki method of creating the maps would split
"trackers" who uploads the tracks of roads and other features, and  "mappers"
who trace over the tracks and storing/compiling in useable formats format.

Exactly the above methodology is used by the trackers and mappers on
http://www.malsingmaps.com . The maps there covering Malaysia and Singapore are
free. Online version of the map at http://www.malsingmaps.net .

I remember there is already a sort of wiki map project by someone in UK. Lets
see, googling "wiki map". Here it is, http://www.openstreetmap.org/
"OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people
like you. OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a
collaborative way from anywhere on Earth."

regards, sabre23t =^.^=

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.6/323 - Release Date: 24.04.06


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
> It's simply that it's extremely rare for a non-native speaker to have
> absorbed all the culture and reflexes that inform a native speaker.
> [...] even less-educated native speakers can pick out the foreigners,
> even though they might not be able to articulate what cues they are
> noticing.

This might apply to writing novels or translating films or something,
but surely not to Wikipedia.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
> Really? That's odd, because most of the non-native speakers I've met
> on Wikipedia were noticeably worse than native speakers.

Those that aren't noticeably "bad" will not stick out to you as
non-native speakers.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
On 4/26/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > It's simply that it's extremely rare for a non-native speaker to have
> > absorbed all the culture and reflexes that inform a native speaker.
> > [...] even less-educated native speakers can pick out the foreigners,
> > even though they might not be able to articulate what cues they are
> > noticing.
>
> This might apply to writing novels or translating films or something,
> but surely not to Wikipedia.
>
> Timwi

Considering the number of problems caused by misunderstandings
(cultural or otherwise) it may well apply to wikipedia.

--
geni


body:
On 4/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
....
> The irony in all this is that Brandt started out claiming that he wanted
> to protect people's privacy on the internet. How making everyone reveal
> their names and IPs helps achieve this, I'm not exactly sure.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

I think he's changed his line; he's now an "activist" or an
"accountability activist", not a "privacy activist".

~maru


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-04-26

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!

Passed 300 of 303 tests (99.01%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] 18 months

body:
>Because our Devs are already hopelessly overloaded with feature requests.

Yes I am aware how easily this could become "Request A Feature" thread.
I think the devs we have do a fabulous job and do not want to pound on them.

One wonderful thing Brion has done recently is get the Foundation signed
up for the Google Summer of Code. Let's make sure the community tells
the devs what is important to us. There are a list of possible projects at

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2006

Pete


from_name: Tjipke de Vries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange behaviour opening an article on en.wikipedia

body:
Hi there,

If I open the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vianden, I get very big
characters and an errormessage:

Warning: fopen(/tmp/mediawiki/messages-enwiki) [function.fopen]: failed to
open stream: Read-only file system in
/usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/MessageCache.php on line 105
(10.0.5.3)

Obviously, something goes wrong here.

I don't know where to report this, so I report this here. Sorry if it is the
wrong place, but I guess the people needed to sove this, are on this list.

Best regards,

Tjipke de Vries


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
Anthere wrote:

>And as a result of this mix-up... because of the need to "trust" the
>checkuser, we have zizanie (does that exist in english ?). We have
>internal fight and rancor).
>
Larouse first describes this as "discord" but the French word
"d?saccord" seems very weak; it lacks the nuances of "zizanie".  Perhaps
"stir things up" works.  The idea that a problem was started where there
was none before does not easily translate into English.  Does this help?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Tuesday 25 April 2006 22:13, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 07:21:37PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > Moin,
> >
> > On Tuesday 25 April 2006 16:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > > My one fond wish, which I've come to understand will never happen
> > > with MWtext, is to get *bold* and _italics_ as markup tokens,
> > > noting that
> >
> > Wouldn't that be *bold*, _underlined_ and /italics/? :-P
>
> I'd rather not.  /italics/ always looks like a matching regex to me.
> It's confusing.

Yeah you are right. Funny thing is, even with me /(writing|carving)/
regexs thousand times a day, it didnt occur to me that it looks like
one. :)

I still like the POD way to do B<bold>, I<italics>, U<underlined>,
C<code>, L<link> text. But its more to type, especially the shifty angle
brackets.

As they say: simple, easy-to-parse, nestable. Pick two :)

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Wed Apr 26 00:47:06 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in
 this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000
 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't
 do it that way." - Jack Valenty in http://tinyurl.com/2y65n

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 481 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060426/2f04f6e9/attachment.pgp>


body:
On 4/26/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>
>     -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
>        and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
>        presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
>        machines that might be misleading).

Only users with access to CheckUser (a very small, trusted group) can
check this, and it is only used in limited circumstances. See
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_Policy>

>     -  How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a
>        specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators,
>        but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or
>        something like this?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Admins are admins on the whole
wiki, not just on individual pages.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image deletion

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Justin Cormack wrote:
>
>
>> On 11 Apr 2006, at 12:42, Andrew Gray wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Of which 1600 have been marked for more than a week - admins, please!
>>>
>>> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/report_orphan_fair_use.py
>>>
>>>
>> And they are such a load of rubbish too. We need to stop this stuff
>>
> >from being uploaded. Maybe we should allow non-admins to delete
>
>> images...
>>
>>
> It's been said before, but further study of upload patterns bears
> it out - a large percentage of bad uploads could be prevented by
> disallowing image upload until a new user has been around for at
> least a week, and by blocking persistent copyviolaters.
>
> Many of the uploaders are so new they haven't even figured out
> how to get images displayed in an article. The contributions list
> shows edits to topic X, then upload of X-copyvio.jpg, then maybe
> another couple of edits, and then that's it - the image, good or
> bad, is an orphan. The especially sad cases are when they upload
> pictures of themselves, but never edit their user page.
>
> Stan
>
>
I agree. We already restrict uploading to logged-in users only, since
allowing IP-only uploads was a disaster; increasing that restriction to
allow only logged-in users whose accounts are not recently created,
using the same criteria used in the semi-protection mechanism, seems
eminently reasonable to me.

-- Neil


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Uwe Brauer wrote:
>
>
>>     -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
>>        and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
>>        presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
>>        machines that might be misleading).
>>
>
> You cannot find this out with technical means.  There is a tool
> called CheckUser that tries to do this, see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
>
> But access to CheckUser is only available to highly trusted
> people, and it never gives 100% accuracy anyway.  Many people can
> use the same IP address, and one person can use many IP addresses,
> especially through anonymous proxies.
>
> There are people with split personalities that are experts in
> Greek archaeology when they are Mr Hyde, and experts in hip hop
> music when they are Dr Jekyll.  In order to maintain the illusion,
> such Wikipedia sock puppets can sometimes vote against each other
> in Wikipedia opinion polls.
>
> There are also people who have nothing else to do, but are awake
> 18 hours a day, working 9 hours as Mr Hyde and 9 hours as Dr
> Jekyll, only leaving 6 hours for sleep.  Don't get surprised!
>
>
[snip]

A shared writing style, including the use of characteristic idioms,
spelling mistakes and punctuation foibles, is often a dead giveaway in
these cases.  It's hard to consistently disguise one's writing style
over a long period of time without serious effort. This is best spotted
by the experienced human eye -- at the moment, there's no automated
support for this kind of analysis in MediaWiki.

-- Neil


body:
On 4/26/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> So all he needs to do is bully people out of editing certain pages.

Wont work to well. The people you can shift through bullying are those
most likely to be fair.

> Giving out personal details on the net is dangerous, giving out other
> people's details is criminal and should be stopped.
>
> Can't we (or rather the people who keep getting threatened by him)
> step to the police and get something done?
>
> Mgm

Under what law?

--
geni


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Uwe Brauer wrote:

>     -  How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
>        and give the false impression that many users contribute. I
>        presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user
>        machines that might be misleading).

You cannot find this out with technical means.  There is a tool
called CheckUser that tries to do this, see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser

But access to CheckUser is only available to highly trusted
people, and it never gives 100% accuracy anyway.  Many people can
use the same IP address, and one person can use many IP addresses,
especially through anonymous proxies.

There are people with split personalities that are experts in
Greek archaeology when they are Mr Hyde, and experts in hip hop
music when they are Dr Jekyll.  In order to maintain the illusion,
such Wikipedia sock puppets can sometimes vote against each other
in Wikipedia opinion polls.

There are also people who have nothing else to do, but are awake
18 hours a day, working 9 hours as Mr Hyde and 9 hours as Dr
Jekyll, only leaving 6 hours for sleep.  Don't get surprised!

Note that this is not forbidden.  As long as Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll
both contribute to articles, this is fine.  It only becomes a
problem when they enter into conflict with other people.

The only 100% working solution is to get in touch with the people
in real life.  If they turn up at a meeting or a conference, they
can prove whether they are one person or two different ones.  If
only Mr Hyde shows up, but never Dr Jekyll, you cannot know.
Telephone and e-mail are not good enough.  Unless you meet them in
person, you always have to be in doubt.

You can get quite certain in cases where two characters are more
famous, covered by media, etc.  For example, I have never met
Nelson Mandela or George Bush, but I'm quite sure they are not the
same person.  If they were indeed the same person, and tried to
cover up this secret fact, the effort of this cover-up would be
far greater than the benefit.  This is not a proof, but an
indication based on mathematics and probability.  And that's also
what you can get from CheckUser.  Sometimes that's good enough.

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