from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Aude wrote:
> Though, I get the sense that maybe it's not so much a technical issue of
> implementing it but some other issues holding it up?  I thought the
> stable/delay thing was going to be tried on dewiki and then if it worked
> then brought over here.  Has it even been tried yet on dewiki? or what?

There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
(I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Aude

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
I know there are issues with comparing one day's worth of activity against
monthly averages.

But out of curiosity I've tabulated how much blocking has happened in the
past day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/adminactivity

This is to compare with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durin/Admin_activity#Top_twenty_for_time_period_January_2007

It seems the amount of blocks has gone up quite a bit since January.
Compare Can't sleep clown will eat me's blocks for the two time periods.  Or
it could be higher, because today was a school day.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
Would you support a more liberal definition of "heavy and continued
vandalism" or some other means (not sure what it would be) of curbing
vandalism?

-Aude

On 3/7/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> Aude wrote:
> > Though, I get the sense that maybe it's not so much a technical issue of
> > implementing it but some other issues holding it up?  I thought the
> > stable/delay thing was going to be tried on dewiki and then if it worked
> > then brought over here.  Has it even been tried yet on dewiki? or what?
>
> There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
> first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
> (I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.
>
> -Jeff
>
>
> --
> Name: Jeff Raymond
> E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
> WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
> IM: badlydrawnjeff
> Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
>         because you kind of get the impression she
>         sang every song either about or to her cats.
>         They seem to be the driving force in most of
>         her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Aude


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki?

body:
On 3/7/07, Steve Sanbeg <ssanbeg at ask.com> wrote:
> But the complexities won't be things like encoding whitespace, so much as
> handling templates; especially with things like that subst: bug, where we
> allow data to be polluted with weird meta templates, rather than ad new
> features that would encourage behavior we don't like, or break existing
> data by fixing a bug in the code.

Templates are an issue because it's hard to envision how to prevent
them from generating invalid XML.  Currently you can put whatever
garbage you like in templates and it will be happily evaluated,
because any string of text is valid wikitext (although it might not be
what you want).  So can you make a template with unclosed tags, say?
What happens if the resulting XML is malformed or invalid?  Just
unsubstitute the template, try to fix it, or what?  Probably making a
stab at fixing it would be best, I suppose, but it could be quite
complicated.

Of course, there shouldn't really be any need to have a template
contain XML that isn't well-formed: templates now are divided into
"start" and "end" templates sometimes because otherwise things go
insane on some input (e.g., containing pipes) due to wikisyntax's
primitive string handling.  Then the only issue would be validity, and
that could perhaps be enforced through various mechanisms.  E.g., if
you used DOM functions that threw an exception on generating
invalidity, you could catch it and deal with it appropriately.

On 3/7/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> XML is more of a data interchange than storage format.  If you're
> storing data, and the software which is using it is the only source or
> destination, there is no clear reason why one would use XML, unless
> you're using it for data structure.  But MW currently needs no
> structure; you're either storing metadata (in the db) or the
> article/page contents (text, with some output parsing, but just text;
> also in the DB, but only for convenience of access).

No, the idea is to use XML for wikimarkup.  That is, the text of each
page in the database would be stored as XML, and rendered with XSLT or
something.  So the database field would contain "<template
name="Foo"><param>16</param></template>" instead of "{{Foo|16}}", or
whatever.

On 3/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> We already have several instances of this happening:
>
> 1) Expanding signatures: ~~~~
> 2) Pipe trick: [[Help:Contents|]]
> 3) {{subst:Page}}
> ...and maybe others.

Nonsense.  There is no possible way a null edit should be able to
activate any of those, because those strings cannot exist in a saved
page (barring bugs) unless escaped somehow, in which case a null edit
still won't trigger them.

> I don't think it's as big a problem as you think.  Large changes (e.g.
> entering wiki markup and getting back XML markup) would of course be a Bad
> Thing. but so long as the rendering of the page isn't altered by null-edit
> round-tripping, I don't think it matters too much if trivial changes (e.g.
> whitespace) occur in the wiki text.

Yes, as I said, we should define some kind of canonical equivalence in
wikitext and not care if that changes.  But that still requires
formalizing wikitext.


from_name: Jim Wilson

body:
On 3/7/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Notice how the 'class' and 'href' attributes hare stripped at submission
> > time.
> If that were true that would be a bug, however it is not the case.

Hmm - sorry about that.  I guess I mistook parse-time with save-time
modifications.  I just tested this and you're correct - it doesn't happen.

I'll try to remember why it was that I thought this was the case :(

Really sorry for the confusion.

-- Jim

On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > On 3/7/07, Steve Sanbeg <ssanbeg at ask.com> wrote:
> > > But the complexities won't be things like encoding
> > whitespace, so much
> > > as handling templates; especially with things like that subst: bug,
> > > where we allow data to be polluted with weird meta
> > templates, rather
> > > than ad new features that would encourage behavior we don't
> > like, or
> > > break existing data by fixing a bug in the code.
> >
> > Templates are an issue because it's hard to envision how to
> > prevent them from generating invalid XML.  Currently you can
> > put whatever garbage you like in templates and it will be
> > happily evaluated, because any string of text is valid
> > wikitext (although it might not be what you want).  So can
> > you make a template with unclosed tags, say?
> > What happens if the resulting XML is malformed or invalid?
> > Just unsubstitute the template, try to fix it, or what?
> > Probably making a stab at fixing it would be best, I suppose,
> > but it could be quite complicated.
> >
> > Of course, there shouldn't really be any need to have a
> > template contain XML that isn't well-formed: templates now
> > are divided into "start" and "end" templates sometimes
> > because otherwise things go insane on some input (e.g.,
> > containing pipes) due to wikisyntax's primitive string
> > handling.  Then the only issue would be validity, and that
> > could perhaps be enforced through various mechanisms.  E.g.,
> > if you used DOM functions that threw an exception on
> > generating invalidity, you could catch it and deal with it
> > appropriately.
>
> You can't generate invalid XML with the DOM functions, as far as I'm aware
> (I think it maybe be considered a bug in libxml if you can) Everything
> that
> needs encoded is, and all elements are closed by the nature of the tree
> structure.
>
> The only problem with validity would be with adhering XML schemas. So
> instead of directly including a template/page in another, would have to
> locate a valid position in the DOM tree it can be inserted.
>
>

123 <template name="foo"/> 456

>
> If foo was bold it could be inserted directly.
>
123 bold 456

>
> Whoever if foo is

bar

, then would have to split the
> paragraph I think.
>
>

123

bar

 456

>
> That's what I've currently prototyped for my own wiki engine.
>
> Jared
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold [in updating pages]

body:
On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 09:31:44 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>Yes.  People were being bold in messing with long-standing guidelines and
>causing problems.

Indeed.  Like arguing for undeletion of an uncertified RfC, for
example.  Highly disruptive.

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


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > According to an "email release" CSPAN is going to shift to a cc-by-nc type
> > license.  Not quite good enough for us to use, but certainly a nice step.
> >
> > http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/7/1522/54537
>
> Nice step= a significantly increased chance of finding out exactly how
> the courts define non commercial?
>
Unfortunately, it says they're going to shift to license *like*
cc-by-nc, not to cc-by-nc, so the definition of non-commercial for
that license probably won't have any bearing on the definition under
cc-by-nc.

While we're posing hypotheticals, here are some more:

1) Giving copies away to students of a school which charges tuition.
2) Making copies to distribute around the office to employees.
3) Printing out a copy to keep on your office bookshelf for reference.
4) Including the work in your office intranet site.

Anthony


from_name: Roger Dearnaley

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Really-Free Library

body: I stumbled on this interesting essay on an admin's user page:


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nice step= a significantly increased chance of finding out exactly how
> > the courts define non commercial?
>
> Is that really big deal? Isn't non-commercial easy to define, as in
> "you can use this in your own stuff, just don't make money of of it."
> Surely the full text of the license covers this pretty well?
>
> --Oskar

Define making money out of it. If I'm a comercial company but sell at
cost is that legit? What if I have a holywood accountant defineing
cost?

What if I'm a for proffit but I'm working under contract to a charrity?
 What if I put it on my blog but my blog is hosted by someone else who
puts ads on the blog?

Things are never clean and simple when there is money involved.
--
geni


from_name: Mark Clements

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx as technologies
	forMediaWiki?)

body:
"Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:esn8km$nn0$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> > I don't think it's as big a problem as you think.  Large changes (e.g.
> > entering wiki markup and getting back XML markup) would of course be a
Bad
> > Thing. but so long as the rendering of the page isn't altered by
null-edit
> > round-tripping, I don't think it matters too much if trivial changes
(e.g.
> > whitespace) occur in the wiki text.
>
> A null edit is defined by:
> -Loading wikitext
> -Saving the same wikitext
>
> Currently
> -You have wikitext in the db
> -You get the same wikitext for editing
> -You save that wikitext
> -The db stores the same wikitext as before
>
>
> If you're using the XML approach defined before you could have this:
> -You have XML made by wikitext2xml v1
> -You get the wikitext for editing.
> -You save that wikitext
> -Current wikitext2xml (v2.5) convert it to XML
> -The db stores a different XML

Well, not really.  I would imagine that any parser changes would be
intelligent enough to avoid this type of problem.  Specifically, step 2 of
your example misses an important point - "You get the wikitext for editing"
should actually be "You get the XML from the DB", "You convert the XML to
wikitext using xml2wikitext (v2.5).".  In other words, if it was originally
saved using wiki2xml v1.5, on a later viewing it is retrieved using wiki2xml
v2.5 and upon save is converted back using xml2wiki v2.5, giving exactly the
same XML if it was a NULL edit.

Of course, the change might instead come between the first edit (under 1.5)
and the later viewing/rendering (under 2.5), but given that XML will
inherently be a lot more stable (because it is a lot more strictly defined)
and that backwards-compatibility is a key requirement for any changes to the
parser, I don't see this as something that will occur in practice.

> As the point of storing using a third syntax is to keep output the same,
> this new XML might cause a different output, which i think is what
> Simetrical pointed.
> If this different XML is going to have the same output as the original
> one, we could as well use wikitext with keeping the same parser output.
> And mentioned wysiwyg may also require a one-to-one correspondence
> between the XML and HTML output, too.

The point is NOT to have the same output.  The point is to have a syntax
with a defined meaning (although the former is inherently satisfied by the
latter).

Currently the wiki text grammar is defined as "the way the MW parser happens
to work" when it converts it to HTML.  There is currently no way for any
other parser to succesfully do this and cover all edge cases.  However, I
imagine that it is not a big leap to modify the parser to create XML instead
of HTML, which can then be stored in the DB.  This XML would be parsable by
pretty much anything, so it would be fairly simple to convert it to
HTML/PDF/RTF/whatever format you like.

HOWEVER, the problem (as I see it) is to be able to convert this XML format
back into _the same_ wiki text that created it.  A lot of the discussion
about this has focussed on how to interpret things like interlaced single
qoutes (italic/bold/quote-mark/etc.).  However, this isn't really big deal -
the answer is "the same way as we currently do".

Converting the reverse parser is where the problems come though:

e.g.

    ''test

will be converted to the following HTML:

test

Which would probably be converted back to:

    ''test''

In this example I don't think this is a problem - the parser neatly fixes
any ambiguous syntax.  However there may be situations where this matters.
I would be interested to see if anyone can come with a good example.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx as
	technologiesforMediaWiki?)

body:
On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> That requires fixing the grammar which is ambiguous. Which has already been
> ruled out by Brion, at least for the foreseeable future.

To the contrary, Brion has stated that developing a formal or
semiformal grammar and tweaking the syntax to fit would be a great
thing.  He's just stated that any substantial change to the syntax
(like Wikicreole) is out of the question for the foreseeable future.

On 3/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> In this example I don't think this is a problem - the parser neatly fixes
> any ambiguous syntax.  However there may be situations where this matters.
> I would be interested to see if anyone can come with a good example.

How about:

I love 'potatoes'!

That will become what?  I love '''potatoes'''!, naively.  It could
become I love ''<nowiki>'potatoes'</nowiki>''! or something, sure, but
that kind of weird case is something the XML-to-wikitext parser will
automatically have trouble with, because wikitext makes no clear
distinction between data and markup.

Sure, you could say, you just have to escape all possible literal
markup characters and then unescape unambiguous characters after
you're done, or whatever.  The worry is that there might be cases that
are much harder to fix, if not impossible, and we won't really know
for sure until someone takes the plunge and tries to write it.
Remember, too, that there are plenty of cases where behavior of the
parser is basically undefined, and so you should identify all such
constructs and either avoid them or define their behavior.

I suppose I'm kind of out of my depth to say how we should avoid this
(not a first on this list), but formalizing the grammar is surely a
good first step to eliminate bizarre behaviors and make the task of
figuring out a mapping easier.

On 3/7/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Essentially, right now we're optimized for editing.  Structurally, we
> could do an intermediate closer to HTML and do less
> transform-on-display, but to do that and keep Wikitext would require
> transform-on-edit and transform-on-save, which we basically don't have
> to do now.

Unless WYSIWYG is the standard, and wikitext optional.  Then most
people will use WYSIWYG, which can modify the XML directly (and render
it directly via XSL) and send back prevalidated XML.  But that's
probably more of a side benefit.

On 3/7/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > However there may be situations where this matters.
> > I would be interested to see if anyone can come with a good example.
> templates? templates including inline syntax?
> How do you store templates? as XML to revert or as wikitext?

<template src="Template:Person">
  <param name="age">42</param>
  <param name="birthplace"><link target="New York City">New York
City</link></param>
  . . .
</template>

On 3/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> My strategy for all transclusion or dynamic content (magic words, parser
> functions, etc.) would be to keep it in some unexpanded form that is filled
> in when the page is output.  My initial thought was to embed it in special
> comments (a la Dreamweaver) that get parsed and rendered before the page is
> sent to the browser, but I'm sure there are better ways.  For example,
> {{MyTemplate|bar|myarg=foo}} might be stored as .

No, using comments for semantics is evil.  They're against standards
and (partially) defeat the purpose of using XML in the first place,
namely parsing via standardized functions.

On 3/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> "Steve Sanbeg" <ssanbeg at ask.com> wrote in message
> news:pan.2007.03.08.00.37.53.753612 at ask.com...
> > How about just having an XML definition of the current wiki syntax.  I.e.
> > convert that as
> >
> > <begin-italic/>test<eol/>
> >
> > or even something like
> >
> > <begin-italic/>test<end-italic implicit/><eol/>
> >
> > which would keep more of the logic in the parser, while still being
> > reversible.
> >
> > That is, keep all of the structure; don't actually render it, but allow it
> > to be rendered with a straightforward transformation, and not an FSM or
> > such.
>
> That's an interesting suggestion.  I would be interested to see a bit more
> work in this area...  is there anything that couldn't be handled by this?

Probably not, but it will still be tricky to reverse (see my love of
'potatoes' above).  And if all your tags are self-closed, you
aren't using XML's hierarchal model, so I don't know if there's much
point in bothering with such a heavyweight syntax.  You just need some
consistent escaping to distinguish between data and markup, if you
aren't going to enforce pairing and structure as "proper" XML
requires.  (You'll still need stuff like uniqueness of id's, fine, but
it still partly defeats the point of simplicity of parsing/rendering,
I would think.)


from_name: gjzilla at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Really-Free Library

body:
Definitely an unexpected take on things. However, in this library, could one
simply restore the books back to their original condition with the wave of a
wand?

On 3/7/07, Roger Dearnaley <rpdearnaley at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I stumbled on this interesting essay on an admin's user page:
>
> From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BillCJ
>
> Many years ago in a large city in the northeast USA, a man named John
> (Jonbi) Scotland opened a new "free library". This library differed from
> other public and community libraries in several ways.
>
>   1. It required no registration to use its books, although
>      registration was optional. Registered readers wore name tags to
>      identify them, but sometimes some readers would forget their tags.
>   2. The library building itself had no locks, though it did have doors
>      to keep out the elements.
>   3. The library had no paid librarians.
>         1. Instead, every reader was considered a volunteer
>            "librarian". They were to warn each disruptive reader at
>            least 3 times to "shhhhhsh" before reporting them to
>            "adlibs". This also applied to readers
>         2. There was a small group of "administrative librarians"
>            (called "adlibs") that would help "police" the library.
>            These ablibs could ask disruptive visitors to leave, though
>            the disruptive readers could come back in if they changed
>            clothes.
>   4. There was no time limit whatsoever on borrowing books, and readers
>      could borrow as many books as they wanted at a time.
>   5. Readers could also donate books to the library.
>   6. There was one room in the library for special books which did have
>      a lock, which was only open to registered readers. Registered
>      readers could nominate books for protection, but only adlibs could
>      place books in need of protection in the locked room.
>
> For awhile, everyone was happy with the new library. Then, things began
> to take unexpected turns.
>
> New books began to turn up missing, with no record of who borrowed them.
> Adlibs sent out notices to the registered readers (the only ones they
> had addresses for), but most registered readers were fairly prompt about
> returning borrowed books. In addition, many books, almost of of which
> had been borrowed by unregistered readers, were returned in bad
> conditions. Some were missing covers, or large chunks of pages (called
> "book blanking", which these readers sometimes wrote on the book's
> remaining front page).
>
> At other times, unregistered readers would walk up and down the isles,
> and write words in the books with large black markers. Most of these
> readers were not very intelligent, and so found themselves limited to
> writing such simple words and phrases as "poop", "penis" and "kATie
> mCAwLipH is h0t".
>
> Many registered readers attempted to report these "vandals", as they
> were encouraged to do by the library's "guidelines". However, they had
> to witness the vandal vandalizing at least four times within 24 hours,
> and have spoken to the person asking them them to desist after each
> witnessed occurrence. Even then, adlibs were hesitant to expel vandals,
> as they did not want to discourage other unregistered readers from
> visiting the library. Adlibs were even known to harass registered
> readers who attempted to report vandals, encouraging them not to "bite
> the new readers", but in actuality protecting the vandals, rather than
> the books being vandalized.
>
> Even when vandalized books were placed in the locked room for protection
> by adlibs, other adlibs would promptly place them back on the main
> shelves, saying that these books should ba available to everyone.
>
> The library was close to several large schools, and this presented even
> more problems. Each of these schools required school uniforms for their
> students. Thus the students causing problems resembled other students
> who were just in the library to read or borrow books. Because of this,
> adlibs were hesitant to speak to these students, as they could not tell
> one student apart from the other. The schools were not much help either,
> often complaining if one of their students was caught vandalizing, say
> it brought shame on the school, and so the vandalism should just be
> ignored.
>
> The library soon gained a reputation among its registered readers for
> having some very good books, many of whom spent much effort finding
> books to donate. However, its reputation among the outside world was
> considerably less golden. The library became known for its trashy,
> unreliable books. Many registered readers would encourage non-members of
> the library to come and check out some books. However, after finding
> several trashy or vandalized books, most of these non-members would
> never return.
>
> Many registered users, fed up with the policies of the library, began
> going to other libraries where registration was required to borrow
> books, and where there were time limits on borrowing books. In fact,
> most libraries today are of this type.
>
> After several years, the library was forced to close, as it no longer
> had any books that people wanted to read. Each time a good book was
> donated, it was borrowed, and never returned.
>
> It is said that Jonbi Scotland, when he died a few years later, still
> did not understand why his vision of the "really-free library" had failed.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Look Who's Using Wikipedia

body:
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1595184,00.html

"Search and Internet behavior data provide alarming insight into this
powerful but volatile resource ? alarming because one of the core groups
of Wikipedia users are school children."

OH MY GOD TEH CHILDREN WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!???

;-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

> Aude wrote:
>
>> Though, I get the sense that maybe it's not so much a technical issue of
>> implementing it but some other issues holding it up?  I thought the
>> stable/delay thing was going to be tried on dewiki and then if it worked
>> then brought over here.  Has it even been tried yet on dewiki? or what?
>
> There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it
> was first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still
> exists (I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth
> noting.

I think you're talking about different things. Stable versions as a
software feature (or perhaps better said, non-vandalized and reviewed
versions) is what the German Wikipedia intends to test once the feature
is actually programmed. However, finding someone who can do the
programming has been a challenge and the current developer crew is
already taxed just with keeping the site running.

Stable versions simply based on using templates and so forth, as
described at [[Wikipedia:Stable versions]], was effectively rejected.
But a significant part of the objection to it was that this should be
handled by the software instead. As to the software feature, the debate
is only about the details of implementation at this point.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx as technologies for
	MediaWiki?)

body:
 > We already have several instances of this happening:
 >
 > 1) Expanding signatures: ~~~~
 > 2) Pipe trick: [[Help:Contents|]]
 > 3) {{subst:Page}}
 > ...and maybe others.
which can be detected by saving & viewing source (btw: i didn't realise
the pipe was changed until i read it -time ago- on the list). This other
changes on the other hand, are a logic bomb.
And subtle changes, *are* important when comparing suspicious copyvio.

> I don't think it's as big a problem as you think.  Large changes (e.g.
> entering wiki markup and getting back XML markup) would of course be a Bad
> Thing. but so long as the rendering of the page isn't altered by null-edit
> round-tripping, I don't think it matters too much if trivial changes (e.g.
> whitespace) occur in the wiki text.
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)

A null edit is defined by:
-Loading wikitext
-Saving the same wikitext

Currently
-You have wikitext in the db
-You get the same wikitext for editing
-You save that wikitext
-The db stores the same wikitext as before

If you're using the XML approach defined before you could have this:
-You have XML made by wikitext2xml v1
-You get the wikitext for editing.
-You save that wikitext
-Current wikitext2xml (v2.5) convert it to XML
-The db stores a different XML

As the point of storing using a third syntax is to keep output the same,
this new XML might cause a different output, which i think is what
Simetrical pointed.
If this different XML is going to have the same output as the original
one, we could as well use wikitext with keeping the same parser output.
And mentioned wysiwyg may also require a one-to-one correspondence
between the XML and HTML output, too.

There's still another possibility, which is that the wikitext for
editing you get is not the original's one, but an _upgraded_ v2.5
wikitext. This can be seen as a good thing, but i don't like it: You're
signing as someone else a text which is not what he exactly wrote.

You could provide a _view as of version 1.0_ alternative parsing for old
XML2wikitext, but i expect i don't have to explain it'd drive us
(specially the devs) nuts.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx
	astechnologiesforMediaWiki?)

body:
On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> > [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
> > Simetrical
> > Sent: 08 March 2007 02:30
> > To: Wikimedia developers
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx
> > astechnologiesforMediaWiki?)
> >
> > On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > > That requires fixing the grammar which is ambiguous. Which
> > has already
> > > been ruled out by Brion, at least for the foreseeable future.
> >
> > To the contrary, Brion has stated that developing a formal or
> > semiformal grammar and tweaking the syntax to fit would be a
> > great thing.  He's just stated that any substantial change to
> > the syntax (like Wikicreole) is out of the question for the
> > foreseeable future.
>
> The italics & bold syntax was the ambiguity I was referring thinking of..
> And Brion's post
>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-April/022938.html
>
> seems pretty clear.

Italics and bolds do not need to be ambiguous, even if they keep the
current format.  As long as we have a way of resolving questionable
cases, it's not ambiguous.  As a counterpoint, see
http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7#c7, and a handful of other
comments on this list at various points.

(I call superiority as Prophet of Brion's Will!  Nya!  :P)


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice step= a significantly increased chance of finding out exactly how
> the courts define non commercial?

Is that really big deal? Isn't non-commercial easy to define, as in
"you can use this in your own stuff, just don't make money of of it."
Surely the full text of the license covers this pretty well?

--Oskar


body:
On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Templates are an issue because it's hard to envision how to
> > prevent them from generating invalid XML.  Currently you can
> > put whatever garbage you like in templates and it will be
> > happily evaluated, because any string of text is valid
> > wikitext (although it might not be what you want).  So can
> > you make a template with unclosed tags, say?
> > What happens if the resulting XML is malformed or invalid?
> > Just unsubstitute the template, try to fix it, or what?
> > Probably making a stab at fixing it would be best, I suppose,
> > but it could be quite complicated.
> >
> > Of course, there shouldn't really be any need to have a
> > template contain XML that isn't well-formed: templates now
> > are divided into "start" and "end" templates sometimes
> > because otherwise things go insane on some input (e.g.,
> > containing pipes) due to wikisyntax's primitive string
> > handling.  Then the only issue would be validity, and that
> > could perhaps be enforced through various mechanisms.  E.g.,
> > if you used DOM functions that threw an exception on
> > generating invalidity, you could catch it and deal with it
> > appropriately.
>
> You can't generate invalid XML with the DOM functions, as far as I'm aware
> (I think it maybe be considered a bug in libxml if you can) Everything that
> needs encoded is, and all elements are closed by the nature of the tree
> structure.
>
> The only problem with validity would be with adhering XML schemas.

According to the XML spec, well-formedness is independent of XML
schemas and depends solely on stuff like proper nesting.  As I said,
well-formedness wouldn't be a major issue; the problem would just be
how to deal with any errors, not how to stop them from getting into
the output.

The problem, as we both said (in slightly different terms), would be
validity, which the XML spec uses to refer to a document that conforms
to a particular DTD.  As you say, it would have to locate a place in
the tree where the tag could be validly inserted.


body:
On 3/7/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > We already have several instances of this happening:
> > >
> > > 1) Expanding signatures: ~~~~
> > > 2) Pipe trick: [[Help:Contents|]]
> > > 3) {{subst:Page}}
> > > ...and maybe others.
> >
> > Nonsense.  There is no possible way a null edit should be able to
> > activate any of those, because those strings cannot exist in a saved
> > page (barring bugs) unless escaped somehow, in which case a null edit
> > still won't trigger them.
>
> You do realise that the phrase "no possible way" just makes me want to find a
> way, right? ;-)
>
> Here's at least one way to get a null edit to change something, in 3 steps.

Thence the "barring bugs" bit, you know?  No page (and thus no
username) should be able to contain more than two consecutive tildes.
That should probably be added to Title::secureAndSplit.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic
	conflict...

body:
On 07/03/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rob Smith (User:Nobs) has just named a former admin who did not choose
> to name herself. Can the people monitoring the list step in, please?

That was indeed the last straw. He's on mod now.

- d.


from_name: Robth

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't
> like them don't sign them and don't have one.

See, it's tempting to say that...until you realize that the moments
when we're at our worst are those in which we most strongly resemble
the internet at large, and in which Wikipedia editors behave like your
standard internet denizens.  Having these things around makes it
mighty easy for folks to forget that we're in the free encyclopedia
business.  We're already well behind in the battle against standard
internet practice of grabbing random images or text from wherever and
barely even kicking when it comes to advancing the crazy notion of
checking your facts with print sources; this being the case let's
think about what we can do to make ourselves more distinct from the
myspaces of the world, not less.

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson schreef:
> On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nice step= a significantly increased chance of finding out exactly how
> > the courts define non commercial?
>
> Is that really big deal? Isn't non-commercial easy to define, as in
> "you can use this in your own stuff, just don't make money of of it."
> Surely the full text of the license covers this pretty well?

There's an interesting discussion going on on the Citizendium fora about
licensing. Some people want to use the cc-sa-nc license for new content
("preferrably also for Wikipedia-derived content", according to one
contributor!).

In another cz forum, someone has suggested linking ISBN's automatically
to a bookseller, with citizendium earning money in an affiliate program.

It is (in my opinion) totally unclear if these two suggestions are
compatible: if citizendium republishing the contributions of others with
added links would be a "manner that is primarily intended for or
directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation"
(which is the legal description).

Larry Sanger's current suggestion: using the GFDL may be the simplest
thing to do... Probably a good decision.

Eugene


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made
	nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 07/03/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I feel that whatever a person places on their own, personal, User Page is
> their own business. What possible difference could it make to the quality of
> the real reason we are here: the encyclopedia.

The general idea is that your user page is your own space *for project
purposes*. That's not clearly defined because anyone who doesn't get
the idea of that couldn't have it explained by a rule.

> I believe when honesty and integrity are taught from the very beginning of a
> person?s experience these values stay with them. These values are threatened
> only when the person believes their very survival is at stake. Within
> Wikipedia, if honesty and integrity were cornerstones of the very culture,
> and clearly necessary for a person to thrive within it, anyone not sharing
> those values, and exhibiting behaviors contrary to them, would not last very
> long.

That's why I think the idea of "and by the way be honest" as an
important new rule or policy or guideline is just, um, what?

I just can't get my head around the idea of a default assumption other
than honesty if you're going to work on an encyclopedia project.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
On 3/6/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It's their site, and it seems at least that these rules are consistent
> with their philosophy.

Actually they don't seem to define what their counterpart to NPOV is.
For example, is it ok to have an article which states all the horrible
things that communists have done, and none of the horrible things
Americans have done? In any normal, even "conservative" encyclopaedia,
this would still be a glaring omission. If you don't define some kind
of bounds or some central position, the whole thing just becomes
propaganda or worse.

Steve


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] New Java audio player, now with video.

body:
On 07/03/07, David Still <daveydweeb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Unfortunately, the player causes serious problems under Mac OS 10.4.8.
> Safari 2.0.4 either crashes when playing or reports that Java is
> unavailable (it's installed and enabled, so something's wrong there),
> while other browsers like Camino show other weird problems (where the
> Java player causes the entire window -- or large portions of it -- to
> appear as garbage, even after changing or closing tabs).

The earlier vibraphone video worked fine for me on our G4 earlier on
Safari (latest Mac OS 10.4, latest Java). Are you using a PowerPC or
Intel Mac?

- d.


from_name: Will

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
Don't forget the complaint at AN/I when someone joke signed Cremepuff22's
with the "Can I really edit here? Jimbo Wales 04:31 6 Mar 07 (UTC)" edit,
which was a total waste of time.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Maybe a daft question .... but ..... What is so alarming about children
using wikipedia?

Waerth

>http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1595184,00.html
>
>"Search and Internet behavior data provide alarming insight into this
>powerful but volatile resource ? alarming because one of the core groups
>of Wikipedia users are school children."
>
>
>OH MY GOD TEH CHILDREN WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!???
>
>;-)
>
>--Jimbo
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 07/03/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

I'm tempted to make my sig a hesitantly-rendered 'X'.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
> > autograph page" trend?
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover
> >
> > I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their
> > head off, I thought I'd vent here.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs
> >
> > Ack.
> >
> > Steve
>
>
> Oh dear. Wow.  It's so sweet and pre-teen.  "Please sign so I can contact
> you later. Maybe the next time you change your signature you can sign again
> so I can see it."
>
> And this is a sig??
>
>  Monotype Corsiva; font-size: 12pt;">[[User:Cremepuff222| color="#008000">Cremepuff222]] ([[User talk:Cremepuff222| color="#2F4F4F">talk]], [[User:Cremepuff222/Autograph Book| color="#2F4F4F">sign book]])
>
> I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?

Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't
like them don't sign them and don't have one.

Instead click [[special:random/image]] untill you find a copyvio then
mark it for deletion.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/03/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am all for making Wikipedia as much fun as possible...but autograph books?
>
>
> I'm tempted to make my sig a hesitantly-rendered 'X'.

I seem to recall a guideline against images in sigs. Generaly they are
a really bad idea.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Look Who's Using Wikipedia ... gerardm

body:
The problem is with the current rules on en.wikipedia which are totally
geared towards western style relevance and references ,and the bias
amongst editors,  it is difficult to get the same debt for Africa, Asia
and South America. Something has got to give. And the rules will never
be changed because of the western pov of most of our editors. So we will
have to accept that we will be weak in these areas forever. Or somehow
with a miracle an exception clause has to be made for topics regarding
this area.

Waerth

>Hoi.
>Wikipedia is very much lacking in all areas.. What Wikipedia are you
>talking about; it is not the same situation on all Wikipedias.. On the
>English Wikipedia I would say that subjects to do with Africa, Asia and
>South America could use a lot of refinement. One topic I think is
>worrisome is the lack of a full picture for Iran. It really makes it
>easy to paint them as a villain when there is so little public knowledge
>about the people, the country and the culture.
>
>The en.wikipedia is strong on Pokemon, when there is an invasion of
>these creatures we know all there is to know about them. :)
>
>Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
>
>Frederick Noronha schreef:
>
>
>>Could someone hazard a guess on which areas the Wikipedia is strong
>>in, and which areas it is still lacking? FN
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 3/6/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I really don't think "we" all in agreement on what "we" want.
>>>>
>>>>I do not have a problem with people using Wikipedia as a primary
>>>>source for information. When it comes to certain topics, I would
>>>>encourage it because I have confidence in our accuracy and wide
>>>>coverage.
>>>>
>>>>However, I would not encourage people to stake their fortune or their
>>>>health on Wikipedia at all, and there are certain topics that I would
>>>>discourage people from using Wikipedia as a primary source or in some
>>>>cases even a secondary source for (pretty much anything related to
>>>>Eastern Europe, all of which is still definitely a Work In Progress
>>>>when it comes to POV).
>>>>
>>>>Mark
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Define making money out of it. If I'm a comercial company but sell at
> > cost is that legit? What if I have a holywood accountant defineing
> > cost?
>
> If you're selling it to make a profit, it's not non-commercial. You
> are engaging in commerce after all.

By defintion selling at cost means not makeing a proffit.

The fun comes in when defineing cost remeber Forrest Gump made a net loss

> >  What if I put it on my blog but my blog is hosted by someone else who
> > puts ads on the blog?
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but if you read the whole thing it says this in section 4b:
>

So what about the person hosting the blog?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/7/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I'm sick and tired of people misunderstanding what an "administrator"
> of Wikipedia is. It was a misnomer to begin with, and we've had
> nothing but trouble with this name ever since. Users misunderstand it
> (and ask admins to make editorial decisions). Media misunderstand it
> (and either do not explain it, or connect it to power and influence).
> And it's no wonder. "Administrator" could refer to a manager, or
> someone appointed by a court; it typically describes someone in an
> important official position.

It's true that "admin" is a bad name for the role. However, it's also
true that it's a bad role, which blends all kinds of different
priveleges together. For example, allowing admins to edit protected
pages (a content role), banning people (a policing role), editing
mediawiki pages (development) and viewing deleted pages (purely an
issue of trust).

So, yes, by all means, rename, but to what? "Housekeeper" is good, but
why can a housekeeper ban people? "Sysop" is ok, but why does a sysop
get to choose which version of a page to keep in a content dispute?
Since when do "janitors" tinker with system-wide JavaScript?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
> > autograph page" trend?
>
> I agree.  I got the message too.  MFD?
> --Mets501
>

You want another usebox fiasco? let it go with have other bigger
problems (copyright, copyright, false info in articles, copyright and
admin backlogs).
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 07/03/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:

> Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on
> takes you to Special:Random.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif
> I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their
> userpage?  I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number
> of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

Put it this way: the risk of the Foundation suing is 0.

And apparently the strident enforcement of the visual identity
guidelines only applies to the Wikimedia Foundation logo, not the
actual fourth-best brand in the world. So that's all right then.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> Smartie960's user page has this bouncing Wikipedia logo, which clicking on
> takes you to Special:Random.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif
>
> I know the logo is copyrighted, but I suppose people can put it on their
> userpage?  I find it distracting in this case, but since apparently a number
> of other users put it on their user pages then it's okay?

The answer to the west lothian question is not to ask the west lothian question

Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio but the foundation hasn't complained and the
copyright cabal has 146609 other more important issues to deal with
first.

--
geni


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a
	fundamentally a problematic conflict...

body:
On 07/03/07, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:

For those wondering, Rob has been banned from English Wikipedia for a
long time, and has finally been placed on moderation on wikien-l just
a short time ago.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > By defintion selling at cost means not makeing a proffit.
>
> But the license doesn't talk about you actually making a profit, it
> talks about if you use it in a way that would imply commercial gain.
> Meaning, if you engage in commerce intended to earn you money, you've
> crossed the line.
>

Sure If you can prove I'm intendeding to earn money

> Still, it was a commercial enterprise.

What If I used the same tricks on something I claimed wasn't?

> I'm not saying it's not tricky, but all law is tricky. That's why you
> go to school for a bunch of years. Still, since the sticking point
> here is the concept of "commerce" and "commercial gain", I imagine
> that this is an area where the boundaries are pretty clear. I mean,
> come on, there are libraries filled with law books that deal with
> companies and charities and tax law and such. How is this a "murky"
> part of jurisprudence?
>

Because there are a lot of people out there employed to see that it
remains murky.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 07/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio

Er, how?

I appreciate someone wanting to mirror the userpages might have some
trouble. (Cue picture of 100nm violin.)

> but the foundation hasn't complained

Well, yes.

> and the
> copyright cabal has 146609 other more important issues to deal with
> first.

Not that that ever stopped a really dedicated rabid semi-Aspergic
human killbot on Wikipedia.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 07/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

> > I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be
> > less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude.

> Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it
> alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step

I'll stop when given an actual reason.

(Fun Fact! The bouncy wiki logo comes from Uncyclopedia. Your starter
for 10 is why the Foundation couldn't stop them using it even if they
wanted to.)

- d.


body:
Mark Clements wrote:
> Well, not really.  I would imagine that any parser changes would be
> intelligent enough to avoid this type of problem.  Specifically, step 2 of
> your example misses an important point - "You get the wikitext for editing"
> should actually be "You get the XML from the DB", "You convert the XML to
> wikitext using xml2wikitext (v2.5).".  In other words, if it was originally
> saved using wiki2xml v1.5, on a later viewing it is retrieved using wiki2xml
> v2.5 and upon save is converted back using xml2wiki v2.5, giving exactly the
> same XML if it was a NULL edit.
I mentioned that possibility later.

> ...given that XML will
> inherently be a lot more stable (because it is a lot more strictly defined)
> and that backwards-compatibility is a key requirement for any changes to the
> parser, I don't see this as something that will occur in practice.
Then it's not XML, but trying to achieve with it what wikitext needs:
well-defined, and backwards compatible.

> The point is NOT to have the same output.  The point is to have a syntax
> with a defined meaning (although the former is inherently satisfied by the
> latter).
The point for the users is having the same output. The defined meaning
is a need of the coders. Client doesn't mind if we store it as hieroglyphs.

> Currently the wiki text grammar is defined as "the way the MW parser happens
> to work" when it converts it to HTML.  There is currently no way for any
> other parser to succesfully do this and cover all edge cases.  However, I
> imagine that it is not a big leap to modify the parser to create XML instead
> of HTML, which can then be stored in the DB.  This XML would be parsable by
> pretty much anything, so it would be fairly simple to convert it to
> HTML/PDF/RTF/whatever format you like.
The point is not having XML, but having code "parseable by pretty much
anything" ie. a defined syntax.

> In this example I don't think this is a problem - the parser neatly fixes
> any ambiguous syntax.
Another good point. The parser must produce correct output with broken
input, but should it store the original or a fixed version?

> However there may be situations where this matters.
> I would be interested to see if anyone can come with a good example.
templates? templates including inline syntax?
How do you store templates? as XML to revert or as wikitext?


from_name: David Still

body:
Jimbo Wales doesn't care about children. Film at 11.

On 3/7/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1595184,00.html
>
> "Search and Internet behavior data provide alarming insight into this
> powerful but volatile resource ? alarming because one of the core groups
> of Wikipedia users are school children."
>
>
> OH MY GOD TEH CHILDREN WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!???
>
> ;-)
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Define making money out of it. If I'm a comercial company but sell at
> cost is that legit?
> What if I'm a for proffit but I'm working under contract to a charrity?
>  What if...

There is no consensus on many of these "what ifs". See
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/User:Angela/NonCommercial_use_cases
for some other examples.

Angela


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yeah tehnicaly a copyvio
>
>
> Er, how?
>
> I appreciate someone wanting to mirror the userpages might have some
> trouble. (Cue picture of 100nm violin.)
>

Derivative of a copywritten work made without permission

> Not that that ever stopped a really dedicated rabid semi-Aspergic
> human killbot on Wikipedia.

He who dies haveing delt with the most copyvios wins.

Nah there are various odds and ends that we know are potential
problems (game screenshots people didn't make themselves the old GFDL
presumed images) but we are not careing about for the time being.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Define making money out of it. If I'm a comercial company but sell at
> cost is that legit? What if I have a holywood accountant defineing
> cost?

If you're selling it to make a profit, it's not non-commercial. You
are engaging in commerce after all.

> What if I'm a for proffit but I'm working under contract to a charrity?

If you are using it to make a profit, then that would be a violation.

>  What if I put it on my blog but my blog is hosted by someone else who
> puts ads on the blog?

I'm not a lawyer, but if you read the whole thing it says this in section 4b:

"You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3
above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward
commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of
the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing
or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed
toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided
there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with
the exchange of copyrighted works."

This, I think, is pretty clear. I'm not a lawyer, but I interpret it
to mean that you can certainly put it up on your website for others to
download, and even if your host has ads its ok because you are not
exercising this right in a way that is primarily intended for or
directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary
compensation".

As I said, I'm not a lawyer, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot
of murky legal ground here. I mean, commerce is a pretty well defined
concept. I don't see how this would be such an unclear area.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
> autograph page" trend?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

Oh dear lord. I never had that big of a problem with the userboxes
(except when it got insane), but this is so MySpace that I want to
vomit! "Please be my friend!" I want to hurl!

--Oskar


from_name: xaosflux

body:
This is great news, hope it catched on even more!
x

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 9:04 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: And now for the good news (coverage)

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6422877.stm
>
> Students assessed with Wikipedia
>
> Students at a UK university are working on the Wikipedia online
> encyclopedia as part of their degree course.
> Postgraduates at the University of East Anglia are being assessed as
> they edit existing Wikipedia articles and research and write their own
> pieces.
> [...]
> Politics lecturer, Nicola Pratt, says using Wikipedia can develop
> students' research skills.
>
> (spotted by GerardM on wikipedia-l)
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> By defintion selling at cost means not makeing a proffit.

But the license doesn't talk about you actually making a profit, it
talks about if you use it in a way that would imply commercial gain.
Meaning, if you engage in commerce intended to earn you money, you've
crossed the line.

> The fun comes in when defineing cost remeber Forrest Gump made a net loss

Still, it was a commercial enterprise.

> So what about the person hosting the blog?

I'm guessing that he would have take it down if sent a DMCA takedown
notice since he is exercising "the rights granted to You in Section 3
above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward
commercial advantage". As I said, I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure,
but this cannot be too complicated for a legal professional to parse.

I'm not saying it's not tricky, but all law is tricky. That's why you
go to school for a bunch of years. Still, since the sticking point
here is the concept of "commerce" and "commercial gain", I imagine
that this is an area where the boundaries are pretty clear. I mean,
come on, there are libraries filled with law books that deal with
companies and charities and tax law and such. How is this a "murky"
part of jurisprudence?

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> I'm in favor. Does not facilitate, etc. OTOH, I am ill, and I tend to be
> less tolerant when I don't feel well, so that may be affecting my attitude.

Lets just politely ask them to stop, and it they do, we leave it
alone. If they persist, then we'll figure out the next step

--Oskar


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-08

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20223).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

   3 previously passing test(s) now FAILING! :(
      * Blank ref followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]
      * Regression: non-blank ref "0" followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]
      * Regression sanity check: non-blank ref "1" followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 490 of 511 tests (95.89%)... 21 tests failed!


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 3/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> Sure If you can prove I'm intendeding to earn money
[...]
> What If I used the same tricks on something I claimed wasn't?
[...]
> Because there are a lot of people out there employed to see that it
> remains murky.

These are all arguments that have nothing to do with with the legal
question though, these only have to do with tactics lawyers employ.
You could use these arguments to say that murder is a murky legal
territory. "If i can prove that I didn't intend to earn money, then
it's manslaughter", "I could claim that I wasn't murdering someone"
and "There are a lot of people out there employed to see that the case
remains murky".

See what I mean? The essential legal question is this: is the material
used in a way intended for commercial advantage or monetary gain?
There is nothing in that sentence that isn't well defined. Just
because you can argue about whether something was commercial or not is
irrelevant because you can argue about anything in law.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold [in updating pages]

body:
Another fundamental principle that seems to have changed when I wasn't
looking: "Be bold" is now "Be bold in updating pages". Was it that
ambiguous?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold_in_updating_pages

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Define making money out of it. If I'm a comercial company but sell at
>>cost is that legit?
>>What if I'm a for proffit but I'm working under contract to a charrity?
>> What if...
>>
>>
>There is no consensus on many of these "what ifs". See
>http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/User:Angela/NonCommercial_use_cases
>for some other examples.
>
I've quickly reviewed the list, and agreed on some but not others.
Others are likely to come to a similar conclusion but with a different
division of opinions.  In most of those situations it depends on the
particular circumstances.

As I see it commercial advantage is a purposive test.  It needs to be
looked at in the context of a person's entire activity.  Whether a
single sale of something yields a profit does not matter in itself.  If
you give away basic software in the hope that the recipient will later
buy the super-duper advanced version of the same software that giveaway
is done for the purpose of commercial advantage.  If you sell below cost
with the intent of having a business loss that you can claim on your tax
return that is for commercial advantage.

Going through a series of what-ifs sounds very much like the George
Carlin skit where the kids go to confession to confuse the priest with
the weirdest sinful circumstances they can think of.

Ec


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:esneog$hqp$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Mark Clements wrote:
> > ...given that XML will
> > inherently be a lot more stable (because it is a lot more strictly
defined)
> > and that backwards-compatibility is a key requirement for any changes to
the
> > parser, I don't see this as something that will occur in practice.
> Then it's not XML, but trying to achieve with it what wikitext needs:
> well-defined, and backwards compatible.

Well, to be honest, I don't care if it's XML or not.  XML is a good choice
because it stops us having to re-invent the wheel, and because many parsers
already exist for it.  However there may be reasons why it is a bad choice,
or other alternatives that are better.

> > The point is NOT to have the same output.  The point is to have a syntax
> > with a defined meaning (although the former is inherently satisfied by
the
> > latter).
> The point for the users is having the same output. The defined meaning
> is a need of the coders. Client doesn't mind if we store it as
hieroglyphs.

Well, yes, but we've already got that - users always get the same output for
the same input and the source code can be round-tripped without any changes
at all.  The reason to _change_ what we already have is for the coders - the
people who want to manipulate the text in some new way, whether that is
WIKIWYG, PDF rendering, content extraction or whatever else.  Therefore, the
primary purpose of any change is to get a stable data representation that
can be used for more than simply rendering the text in a wiki page.

> > Currently the wiki text grammar is defined as "the way the MW parser
happens
> > to work" when it converts it to HTML.  There is currently no way for any
> > other parser to succesfully do this and cover all edge cases.  However,
I
> > imagine that it is not a big leap to modify the parser to create XML
instead
> > of HTML, which can then be stored in the DB.  This XML would be parsable
by
> > pretty much anything, so it would be fairly simple to convert it to
> > HTML/PDF/RTF/whatever format you like.
> The point is not having XML, but having code "parseable by pretty much
> anything" ie. a defined syntax.

Agreed.

> > In this example I don't think this is a problem - the parser neatly
fixes
> > any ambiguous syntax.
> Another good point. The parser must produce correct output with broken
> input, but should it store the original or a fixed version?

Sanbeg's suggestion is a going in the right lines if we want to preserve the
original code.  If we don't care so much (i.e. we are happy to let the
parser 'fix' our syntax) then we store the fixed version.  We should never
need to store both versions, however (as was suggested somewhere in this or
a related thread).

> > However there may be situations where this matters.
> > I would be interested to see if anyone can come with a good example.
> templates? templates including inline syntax?
> How do you store templates? as XML to revert or as wikitext?

My strategy for all transclusion or dynamic content (magic words, parser
functions, etc.) would be to keep it in some unexpanded form that is filled
in when the page is output.  My initial thought was to embed it in special
comments (a la Dreamweaver) that get parsed and rendered before the page is
sent to the browser, but I'm sure there are better ways.  For example,
{{MyTemplate|bar|myarg=foo}} might be stored as <!--MWTemplate _source="dab"
_1="bar" myarg="foo" -->.

Certainly, whatever method is used, templates will not be expanded in the
source code at any point - that is part of the rendering process.

Your point about templates that include in-line syntax is an interesting
one, and the answer depends how MW processes these.  E.g. if it allows
syntax fragments that can be combined within the template but which are
meaningless on their own then this is a bit of a problem - although again
Sanbeg's suggestion might help resolve this.  This is one area where any
attempt to parse wikitext intelligently becomes a complete nightmare.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
The post by Rob Smith is a rambling affair. It is not clear at all what his
argument is. The fact that he has been banned from the English Wikipedia and
is currently on moderation on the wikien-l does not help understanding
either. It does not help his case to come here in this way.

When I go to the archive, I understand that there is an issue with content
for payment where there is a direct relation between the subject of the
content and the organisation paying the money, they are the same. This seems
to me only slightly less problematic from a situation where someone writes
about himself or his organisation.

I do not have a problem with people being paid to write content for our
projects; the quality of a paid for article will be quite different from
what an average vandal produces, as such it is a relief :). Certainly when
it is known what is done by whom and why, there needs not be a problem.
Remember, a Wikipedia article is to be encyclopaedic, it is to by NPOV and
it is not to be original science. When the work is done for Wikibooks or
Wikiversity it can be a teacher working on material that is to be used in
class. There are many motivations for paying for content, making it a
fundamental problem is imho truly fundamentally flawed.

When paid for content is created, it is best to be open about it as the
worst thing that can happen is that good content is binned because of some
mob justice. There is also a lot of precedent for publicly known paid for
content. In all the instances I know of it was known in advance that this
was going to happen

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 3/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 07/03/07, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> For those wondering, Rob has been banned from English Wikipedia for a
> long time, and has finally been placed on moderation on wikien-l just
> a short time ago.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Review

body:
stvrtg wrote:

>The question that Im left with is the matter of process: Why was Essjay
>forced to resign when he didn't even get a proper in-process review from the
>Arbcom? That of course is why the Arbcom exists, to sort of try to
>investigate a case and see if things actually violated the rules.
>
When someone accepts a decision why would he want to appeal?

Ec


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx
	astechnologies	forMediaWiki?)

body:
"Steve Sanbeg" <ssanbeg at ask.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2007.03.08.00.37.53.753612 at ask.com...
> How about just having an XML definition of the current wiki syntax.  I.e.
> convert that as
>
> <begin-italic/>test<eol/>
>
> or even something like
>
> <begin-italic/>test<end-italic implicit/><eol/>
>
> which would keep more of the logic in the parser, while still being
> reversible.
>
> That is, keep all of the structure; don't actually render it, but allow it
> to be rendered with a straightforward transformation, and not an FSM or
> such.

That's an interesting suggestion.  I would be interested to see a bit more
work in this area...  is there anything that couldn't be handled by this?

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
> autograph page" trend?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

May I offer a solution? http://guestbook.wikia.com/ - a wiki purely
for signing autograph pages. And perhaps the first wiki inspired by a
post on wikien-l. :)

Angela
--
**********
Sign my autograph book!
http://guestbook.wikia.com/wiki/User:Angela/Guestbook
**********


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>Aude wrote:
>
>
>>Though, I get the sense that maybe it's not so much a technical issue of
>>implementing it but some other issues holding it up?  I thought the
>>stable/delay thing was going to be tried on dewiki and then if it worked
>>then brought over here.  Has it even been tried yet on dewiki? or what?
>>
>>
>There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
>first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
>(I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.
>
I don't remember any such consensus against it.

Ec


from_name: Marcus Buck

subject: [Wikitech-l] Shared upload variable

body:
Hello,

The syntax {{ns:x}} resolves to the name of the namespace x. Is there a
syntactical construct providing the name, URL or the interwiki code of
the shared upload Wiki used on the local installation of Mediawiki? For
example returning "Commons" for Wikimedia projects. If there is none,
shouldn't there be one? Would be useful for messages like
MediaWiki:Sharedupload, but also for other pages.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.9.3 rebuildall.php hangs with errors

body:
The rebuildall.php script in MediaWiki 1.9.3 hangs after importing the
enwiki-20070206 XML dump during text search rebuilding.

The import loaded 4,500,000 pages (1,500,000 articles) and completed.
When rebuildall.php is invoked, the text search reports
2 X the number of pages (9,500,000+), runs till it reaches this number,
then deadlocks.   Thread state is NS (stopped).

There is no state information when attempts are made to use gdb and
attach to the process.

Jeff


from_name: Steve

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
nice!

On 3/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with Inkscape:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
>
> How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Alphachimp (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
It :). Responses like that are typical. I used to get complaints from users
when my bot migrated their userboxes per WP:GUS. Why they'd be upset at me
for fixing a broken template, I'll never know. I guess I'll just handle it
politely. :/

alphachimp

On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover
>
> To continue the story, ANNAfoxlover apologises for spamming.
> Alphachimp removes the spam from all the affected users. Affected
> users thank Alphachimp, and award him (her/ it?) a barnstar. And then:
>
> --
> After the above comment I thought I'd let you know (if you didn't
> already... ) that others (such as myself) do not believe it was a good
> idea what you did. Sure deleting spam from articles and even article
> talk pages as well is a good thing, but it is my belief that you
> should let the user decide what do with stuff that is on the user's
> talk page.
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alphachimp
>
> *sigh*
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jared Williams

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
> Simetrical
> Sent: 08 March 2007 02:30
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx
> astechnologiesforMediaWiki?)
>
> On 3/7/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > That requires fixing the grammar which is ambiguous. Which
> has already
> > been ruled out by Brion, at least for the foreseeable future.
>
> To the contrary, Brion has stated that developing a formal or
> semiformal grammar and tweaking the syntax to fit would be a
> great thing.  He's just stated that any substantial change to
> the syntax (like Wikicreole) is out of the question for the
> foreseeable future.

The italics & bold syntax was the ambiguity I was referring thinking of..
And Brion's post

http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-April/022938.html

seems pretty clear.

Jared


body:
>
> On 3/7/07, Steve Sanbeg <ssanbeg at ask.com> wrote:
> > But the complexities won't be things like encoding
> whitespace, so much
> > as handling templates; especially with things like that subst: bug,
> > where we allow data to be polluted with weird meta
> templates, rather
> > than ad new features that would encourage behavior we don't
> like, or
> > break existing data by fixing a bug in the code.
>
> Templates are an issue because it's hard to envision how to
> prevent them from generating invalid XML.  Currently you can
> put whatever garbage you like in templates and it will be
> happily evaluated, because any string of text is valid
> wikitext (although it might not be what you want).  So can
> you make a template with unclosed tags, say?
> What happens if the resulting XML is malformed or invalid?
> Just unsubstitute the template, try to fix it, or what?
> Probably making a stab at fixing it would be best, I suppose,
> but it could be quite complicated.
>
> Of course, there shouldn't really be any need to have a
> template contain XML that isn't well-formed: templates now
> are divided into "start" and "end" templates sometimes
> because otherwise things go insane on some input (e.g.,
> containing pipes) due to wikisyntax's primitive string
> handling.  Then the only issue would be validity, and that
> could perhaps be enforced through various mechanisms.  E.g.,
> if you used DOM functions that threw an exception on
> generating invalidity, you could catch it and deal with it
> appropriately.

You can't generate invalid XML with the DOM functions, as far as I'm aware
(I think it maybe be considered a bug in libxml if you can) Everything that
needs encoded is, and all elements are closed by the nature of the tree
structure.

The only problem with validity would be with adhering XML schemas. So
instead of directly including a template/page in another, would have to
locate a valid position in the DOM tree it can be inserted.

123 <template name="foo"/> 456

If foo was bold it could be inserted directly.

123 bold 456

Whoever if foo is

bar

, then would have to split the
paragraph I think.

123

bar

 456

That's what I've currently prototyped for my own wiki engine.

Jared


from_name: darthvader1219 at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I may not have explained it well. Would this help:
>
> 7.55: World sees "Mary is smart." Editors see "Mary is smart."
> 8:00: World sees "Mary is smart." Editors see "Mary is a poopoo."
> 8:05: World sees "Mary has an IQ of 130." Editors see "Mary has an IQ of 130."
> 8:15: World sees "Mary has an IQ of 130." Editors see "Mary has an IQ of 130."
>
> So you see, at 8:05, a registered editor sees the anon change, and
> fixes it. Since the editor is registered, their change goes live
> straight away.
>
> Steve

This sounds like a good idea in theory, but I rather think the
implementation will be problematic. From what I understand of what you
said, registered users will be able to see all edits immediately, and
have all their edits applied immediately, while anons can not see the
edits made by any other anon for fifteen minutes. If this is the case,
it could be pretty jarring for an anon to go to the edit screen only
to find out that three people have edited it but haven't had their
edits made live yet, and will only make anonymous editing (which from
what I understand constitutes the majority of the editing that takes
place) of any highly trafficked article more annoying and stressful
and could reduce the amount of editing that takes place altogether. It
would (considering the speed at which any blatant vandalism is
reverted) only moderately improve how the encyclopedia looks for the
majority of readers at the expense of a rather large amount of
inconvenience for the majority of editors, and from my point of view
it is simply not worth the negative effects.

--Dycedarg


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/8/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Been around since before the new year. Harmless really. If you don't
> > like them don't sign them and don't have one.
>
> See, it's tempting to say that...until you realize that the moments
> when we're at our worst are those in which we most strongly resemble
> the internet at large, and in which Wikipedia editors behave like your
> standard internet denizens.  Having these things around makes it
> mighty easy for folks to forget that we're in the free encyclopedia
> business.  We're already well behind in the battle against standard
> internet practice of grabbing random images or text from wherever and
> barely even kicking when it comes to advancing the crazy notion of
> checking your facts with print sources; this being the case let's
> think about what we can do to make ourselves more distinct from the
> myspaces of the world, not less.
>

Most problem images are not upload by members of the community.

The amount of damage such pages cause is less than the damage that
would be caused by fighting them. Thus the do nothing approach would
appear to be the logical course.

If you  want people to stop uploading copyvios you educate them about
copyvios. If you want people to use sources you educate them about
about sources. There are no shortcuts.

--
geni


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Subversion server upgrade

body:
Rob Church wrote:
>
> On 07/03/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Rob Church wrote:
>> > On 07/03/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> >> I'm upgrading Subversion to 1.4.3 on the server; theoretically if I
>> >> upgrade the repository this can same some disk space as well though
>> I'm
>> >> not going to do that just yet.
>> > Just pinch some cash for another disk...
>> It's the principle of the thing. ;)
> If I'd suggested a new Mac, you'd have been filling in an expenses
> claim like a bloody whippet!
>
You mean holding the pencil in his jaws and salivating all over the form?
--
Phil
running and hiding now ;-)
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Subversion-server-upgrade-tf3363327.html#a9372279
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
On 3/8/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 08/03/07, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2007/3/8, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> > > A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with
> Inkscape:
> > >
> > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
> > >
> > > How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
> >
> > We have many of them, maybe you haven't spotted?
>
> We have many. We want thousands :-)

Automatically make a lot more people admins.

Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.

Assume Good Faith from contributors.

Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human eye

body:
A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with Inkscape:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg

How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Learning

body:
To any and all,

Just a thought I wanted to share today:

We are born naked, screaming, and reaching.

Soon afterwards we are taught to cover up, keep our mouths shut, and keep
our hands to ourselves.

Marc


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 3/8/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >> A lot of our videos aren't even used in the projects, even though
> >> there are interesting and informative.. like
> >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pop-o-matic_video.ogg
> >
> > Audio for this doesn't seem to be aligned for me. (Giant pop sound,
> > then I watch the hand hit the button.) Using Java 2 1.5.0, FF
> > 1.5.0.10, WinXP.
> >
> > Brianna
>
> It happens to me too, *also with Videolan*. Does anyone hear it while
> the button is pressed?

It's the fault of the file. I suppose I should have picked a different
example, but I'd checked that one while I had my sound off. :)


from_name: Aude

body:
I have put together a few charts, with block activity for the period of
February 19 - March 7th.  May do more with this data later, tonight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/adminactivity

My perception that vandalism drops off significantly on the weekends is
true.  I also recall a sharp increase in vandalism last September when
school resumed in the U.S. and other places.

Vandalism is also highest during the day and evenings (in the U.S.), the U.S.
is by far the biggest source of vandalism, and schools/universities comprise
approximately 1/4 of all vandalism from IP addresses.

I think this means I (and others) need to make blocks of school IPs be for
longer duration... the same for other repeat vandals.

-Aude


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
2007/3/8, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with Inkscape:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
>
> How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?

We have many of them, maybe you haven't spotted?

AJF/WarX


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model

body:
On 3/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> also on:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credentials#Simplified_voluntary_model
>
> After some more thought, I would suggest an almost completely
> voluntary model, where the only requirement would be that a user
> claiming credentials should put one of four templates on their user
> page:
>
> # "This user's stated credentials have not been verified." => If
> placed by another user
> # "This user's verification of stated credentials is pending."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, and
> asks you to assume good faith."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, because
> they should not matter to you. Please judge edits on their merits."
>
> I know the intent is good, but this seems like something written by a
robot or an alien.

By that I mean it attempts to supply a rigid system to achieve what most
people accomplish through normal interaction. Such attempts rarely work.

One should build technological systems that complement and extend human
abilities, not attempt to supplant them.

More simply, templates should not make requests about someone's state of
mind, e.g.  "asks you to assume good faith"; "they should not matter to you"
"please judge edits on their merits".


from_name: Alexander Ian Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki?

body:
Simetrical wrote:
>On 3/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
>> We already have several instances of this happening:
>>
>> 1) Expanding signatures: ~~~~
>> 2) Pipe trick: [[Help:Contents|]]
>> 3) {{subst:Page}}
>> ...and maybe others.
>
>Nonsense.  There is no possible way a null edit should be able to
>activate any of those, because those strings cannot exist in a saved
>page (barring bugs) unless escaped somehow, in which case a null edit
>still won't trigger them.
{{subst:NonExistingPage}} doesn't transform on save.
If [[NonExistingPage]] is then created, and a null edit is done to the
original page, the original page will transform even though no changes
have been made (I've just tested this: [[w:en:User:ais523/Sandbox]]).
So this sort of behaviour happens already.
--
ais523


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
Huh? What was that about?

On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve all
> problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
>
> 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
>
> >
> > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> >
> > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> >
> > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> >
> > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
autograph page" trend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover

I got a request from a different user. Rather than [[WP:BITE]] their
head off, I thought I'd vent here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smartie960/Autographs

Ack.

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Shared upload variable

body:
On 08/03/07, Marcus Buck <wiki at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> The syntax {{ns:x}} resolves to the name of the namespace x. Is there a
> syntactical construct providing the name, URL or the interwiki code of
> the shared upload Wiki used on the local installation of Mediawiki? For
> example returning "Commons" for Wikimedia projects. If there is none,
> shouldn't there be one? Would be useful for messages like
> MediaWiki:Sharedupload, but also for other pages.

It would be reasonable to assume that, if one has a shared upload
repository established, then one will probably also have an interwiki
link established.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
On 3/8/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Interesting argument that the majority of readers are American, so that American spelling should be used. What numbers do we have on that? ComScore has something; our total readership is in the region of 150m?

These arguments seem to be predicated on the false assumption that any
English speaker can write equally well in British or US spelling. It's
not the case. Most Americans think "tyre" is a typo, not a British
spelling.

Steve


from_name: David Still

body:
Unfortunately, the player causes serious problems under Mac OS 10.4.8.
Safari 2.0.4 either crashes when playing or reports that Java is
unavailable (it's installed and enabled, so something's wrong there),
while other browsers like Camino show other weird problems (where the
Java player causes the entire window -- or large portions of it -- to
appear as garbage, even after changing or closing tabs).

Is there any way to test the player on these systems?

-D

On 3/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, Cary Bass <bastique at bastique.com> wrote:
> > It worked perfectly on my system, although there was some considerable
> > buffering delay.
>
> The image server (amane) is seriously overloaded.  Our squids do not
> cache files over 600KBytes, so when amane suffers video and audio
> become mostly useless.   I have solved this for the in-browser player
> by setting up a seperate squid which is only used by the in browser
> player. I've preloaded it with all of our videos and the most popular
> audio.
>
> Performance should now be very good.
>
> > I rather enjoyed the orchestra, although my first choice
> > for an example would have been a much shorter selection, like, say:
> > http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/commonsJOrbisPlayer.php?path=Blen
> > der3D+BouncingSoftbodyBall.ogg
>
> I wanted something with sound. :)
>
> I've fully populated http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video
> and every video has a play in browser link.
>
> We only have about 600 videos on commons, so there is still plenty of
> room to grow.  :)
>
> A lot of our videos aren't even used in the projects, even though
> there are interesting and informative.. like
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pop-o-matic_video.ogg
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, "Steve Bennett" wrote:
>
>
>>These arguments seem to be predicated on the false assumption that any
>>English speaker can write equally well in British or US spelling. It's
>>not the case. Most Americans think "tyre" is a typo, not a British
>>spelling.
>>
>>
>Two great nations divided by a common language :-)
>
>
They never tyre of their differences. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold [in updating pages]

body:
On 3/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Yes.  People were being bold in messing with long-standing guidelines and
> causing problems.

And "be bold in updating pages" solved that problem?

OTOH, I love the "page in a nutshell": "If in doubt, fix it."

Steve


from_name: Steve

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
I am pretty sure he was playing the logical role of a "if these are
WP's worst problems we're doing great" deletionist.

-S

On 3/8/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Huh? What was that about?
>
> On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve all
> > problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
> >
> > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> >
> > >
> > > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> > >
> > > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> > >
> > > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> > >
> > > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>