subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Opinion about constructed minor languages and
	inclusion in encyclopedia

body:
>Hi

>Thank you Mark for your open approach of the request.

>Anthere I will take bake my candidature for the two new languages.

>As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time
>suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know,
>it was naive) I was chocked.

I think we do not give openess the same meaning Fran?ois.
Openess is not blindly saying yes to any proposal.

I do not understand why you are chocked.

You started a new language on meta. This is not the right place to do so. I could just have deleted it, I do not think anyone would have complained.
However, I did not delete your content on sight, instead I blanked it and I asked you for more information.
I forwarded your answer on this mailing list and invited you to discuss it.
You are free to talk as much as you want here. We are free to listen to you (to read you), to answer, and to have a personal viewpoint.

I think openess is very much this. You are given the opportunity to talk through several media (meta talk page and this mailing list). We also provide a mean for editors to answer you. We guarantee the freedom of all contributors to have their own opinion and to be able to offer it publicly.

But it is up to you to convince us.
Openess does not mean anarchy.  Openess does not mean we have to blindly accept proposals.
If the community supports it, then so be it; if not, then your language will not find room among our projects.

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

>I did think about this matter during the evening and the night and I think
>that different important points of view in the Wiki world are extremely
>problematical.

I do not think that people having different view points is problematic.
I do think people having all the same point of view is problematic.

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

>I will now take my distance from the Wiki movement.

Wikipedia is not wiki.
You may exist as a wiki, without belonging to Wikipedia project.
There are many wikis aside us, and you can start a wiki project whenever you want.
If you wish to do so, you may use the mediawiki software, which is a free soft.

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

I was a long time thinking about the yes or the no to become a co-worker at
Wiki. Why?

The "no":

The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a
danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by
something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for
his evaluations and  you can even look what other user did criticize. You
can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the
problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki. You consulte
an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your
comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and
there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible
to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to
influence is a question of the specific detail.
Two example:
The World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html writes for France:
"Languages:
French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal,
Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish)
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male:
99% female: 99% (1980 est.)"
The site http://www.educationnationale.com writes "Pourcentage des 16 ? 65
ans ?prouvant des difficult?s ? lire et ? comprendre des textes de la vie
quotidienne enqu?te OCDE, 1995) : Su?de 7,5 ; Pays-Bas 10,5 ; Allemagne 14,4
; Canada 16,6 ; ?tats-Unis 20,7 ; France 40,1 ; Pologne 42,6".
Between the 1 % of illeterate people of the WFB of the official institution
CIA (one information source of the President of the USA to start wars and
anihilate populations and cultures - Irak was a really problematic country
but Irak was not fundamentalistic and was theoretical lay/secular like
Turkey!) and the information of the other source (you can click on the link
"Quid" - French people considere Quid as an "eprouved" Wikipedia not as an
experiment!), there is a world of difference....
An you can see yourself in the differente wikis that the affirmation
"rapidly declining regional dialects and languages" is not certain! And if
this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start
new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the
unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the
conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect,
somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning
solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second:
Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow
that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national
language. For this reason especially in France did a law forbid the use of
special languages as the national language. Please enter following words
into the search motor www.yahoo.fr "loi fabius congr?s de milan" and you
will see a fantastic number of link on the problem that AS YOU today in
wikipedia the most important part of the population of France through his
leader as on the list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org did refuse to handicaped
people MORE THAN 100 YEARS ALONG the legitimity to develope own educative
solution especially signs languages to help the poor persones to live in the
dignity. See please http://www.a2mains.com/historique3.html . It is only a
little more as TEN YEARS legal to do that in France: propage an universal
language including a sign language: You will restrict the liberty with terms
like "audience" - "editors"- Well!

I am not entirely sure you will gain my sympathy by citing my country as one of these highly censoring countries.
Just as I am not entirely sure you gain my sympathy when confusing my giving a personal opinion as a lack of openess above, or me citing "audience" as "refusing handicaped people the legitimity to develop own creative solution to live in the dignity".

I think that on Wikipedia, we recognise and respect very much diversity of opinions because this is the essence of our project. We certainly often disagree and we will sometimes be a bit "hot" in trying to "win the case". But we generally try to accomodate and generally this means for us to have the right to speak our own mind with NO FEAR, before a consensus emerge.

The best way to irritate people and block in the most definite way an open and friendly discussion is to use fallacious arguments.
Example : implying that France refusal to welcome special languages as national language denies handicaped people a life in dignity is a bit slippery.
Example : implying that Wikipedia refusing to welcome a very minor constructed language denies handicaped people a life in dignity is certainly boosting our ego, but a bit slippery as well.

Now, it is up to you to go on this slope, but I doubt it will help.

Let's recap.

Wikipedia is not particularly the best solution to teach language signs. And providing information in musical form is not either the best idea on Wikipedia. And for all I know deaf people can read a screen just as well as I. Well, actually better, because I have poor eyesight.

The number of readers of this language is extremely limited, but I agree, more information on the language might be meaningful.

The number of potential contributors to this language is even more limited. For all I know, contributorS would be "you". It makes little sense to set up a wiki just for one editor. Even for two. The interest of a wiki is mostly to work collaboratively.

Wikipedia aims at providing knowledge and making it available to the highest number of people. Good. Now, my own feeling is that most people using solresol also speak and/or read at least another language.  So, not making available solresol is not denying them access to information. If they can READ a screen, they can very much read the screen in english or in spanish or in any other language for general information. And I suspect the quality of encyclopedic information will always be much much much better in english or spanish than in solresol. This goes as well for languages such as Klington language.

Now, I think that what is most important for this type of language is
* helping people be aware that the language exist.
* helping people learn the language.
* possibly provide some good ressources in that language.

This does not suggest me that setting a full encyclopedia is a good idea. The encyclopedia is likely to stay just a bunch of stubs, and I doubt much that it will be ever seen as a good ressource.

This suggests me this
* to promote the language : write good and comprehensive articles on wikipedias
* to help people learn the language : write a wikibooks on the topic. This book, as a free ressource, could contain all the relevant information you wish available on this language. This book might contain description, history and grammar of the language for example. When the book is ready, you may even consider printing it and distributing it. Or it might just become a great online ressource, with audio (sounds) included (you may include sounds in the book).
* to help people learn the language : a wiktionary might be eventually interesting. For example : english/solresol and french solresol
* to provide good ressources for people to train themselves (my library has some books written in big letters, or books for blind people) : write or translate books in this language. Consider translating public domain books from old authors. Or consider writing a book on disability. Or set up a cooking book with special tips for disabled people. Or whatever. Any good book will be far better than any cripled stubby-encyclopedia.

If you wish to help Wikipedia at the same time than helping SolReSol, a book which become a world wide reference on this language, will help Wikipedia get positive feedback much more than any 150 articles pseudo-encyclopedia.

And this is overall my position on many very minor languages.
Wikipedia may appear to be the royal road; but it would be nice to be realistic. A bunch of very good, very comprehensive, very well-research books and a wiktionary to help understanding, will do much more for a very minor language, than any supposed encyclopedia of less than 100 stubs.

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

Now, the "yes", my devise in the web,

A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of
possibilities accessible for a great number of other persones. Different
editors, not all, have a great experience and qualification and invest a lot
of time for other. Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and
it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only
10 Euro in Germany today) but not fully round rather with a lot of corners.
But other give access at the knowledge to persones how would be have
difficulties because of the language of because of the deficit of the
production or import of book ware in her part of the world; I did already
explain that medicine students in West Africa did learn medicine from a
Chinese professor, who was only Chinese speaker... And books where extremely
rare at the same time in this African country. Other give access to non
conventional knowledge with reduced accessibility (like Solresol and
Frater - Try to get the complete sources that I have now...)

For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and
wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.

Good. This is the correct approach.

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

But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited
email-list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org and the opinion, that a persone can
only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place,
if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this
new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they
likely to be better served by another language  * Editors : who will work on
that new project, how many people ).

The access to the mailing list is not limited. We ask for registration (which is not difficult to do) only to limit the amount of spam people get in their mail boxes.
Unregistered mails are blocked and require administrators approval. Spam is deleted, and normal mails get through.
Registration is here only meant as a nicety to readers of the list.

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

To Anwhere,

if I would have a kind of Catalan-Yahoo ( http://ct.yahoo.com/ ) for
solresol or frater, I would not move to Wikipedia (Catalan also is not a
national language; but they have a own yahoo...) after all the work would be
done and so annihilate my old work and make twice the same!

Good luck with your problematical project... I go away!

Truly ours

Fran?ois

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say freely my opinion on minor constructed languages place within the Wikimedia projects. You helped me to see better in my own thoughts on the topic and the opportunity to offer these thoughts to the other editors. Possibly, it won't be the direction the community will follow in the future, but to my opinion, wikibooks and possibly wiktionaries are a best way than an encyclopedia for most of those. But I will accept encyclopedias if there is consensus for setting them naturally.

Thanks for triggering this clarity in me.

Summary

I do think the information is important. I do think it is worth to be included in our project. I just think the encyclopedic project is not the best in your case.

* Setting up an encyclopedia in SolReSol
I will not support it. I do think it would be a loss of time, a very poor encyclopedia (encyclopedia means comprehensive information, it will never happen in this case).
If the consensus is to do such an encyclopedia, I will not oppose it, but do not expect any help from me.

* Starting a wikibook on the topic : very strong support. In particular if the book is done in half french/half SolReSol (you might imagine a bilingual book). In this case, you might host it on the french wikibooks. Of course, it would be worth asking the french community their opinion on wikifr-l at wikimedia.org. But a half english/half SolReSol or any language will have my support as well.
Any further book on any topic in full SolReSol is okay by me as well.

* Starting a wiktionary : neutral to supportive.

Anthere.

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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

body:
On the plus side, once we get someone to donate the contents of a
brief generalist encyclopedia into the GFDL, it will undoubtedly have
decent content for core articles, with only brief mentions of specific
topics.

--Sj

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 22:35:51 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is sadly true and I'm part of the problem since I love to write about
> specific topics concerning geology yet have never added much to core
> geology-related articles such as [[geology]] or [[mineralogy]]. This also seems
> to be true for articles about specific species (we have many well-developed
> ones) vs articles about core biology-related topics (not many well-developed
> ones).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>This is sadly true and I'm part of the problem since I love to write about
>specific topics concerning geology yet have never added much to core
>geology-related articles such as [[geology]] or [[mineralogy]]. This also seems
>to be true for articles about specific species (we have many well-developed
>ones) vs articles about core biology-related topics (not many well-developed
>ones).
>
>
I think this may be because writing those "easy" articles is actually
*harder*, even though they're more common in general encyclopedias.  I
can write a pretty good article about any specific topic in computer
science, and many in philosophy, given my background knowledge and a bit
of research.  But writing [[computer science]] or [[philosophy]] (or
even a sub-topic, like [[philosophy of mind]] or [[artificial
intelligence]]) is much, much harder.

Fortunately, we're not the only ones who find it so.  Our general
articles are lacking compared to other encyclopedias, but none really
have well-respected ones.  If you take an article in Britannica on a
general topic, like [[geology]] or [[biology]] or [[computer science]],
and show it to someone in the field, 90% of the time the person is going
to think it's a crappy article that misses the point in some important
way, or leaves out something crucial.  Of course, if that person writes
what they think is a better summary (and many do, in the form of
textbooks), generally only some of the field will agree it's a better
summary, and a significant percentage will think *that* description
sucks too.  It's very hard to do an NPOV description of such broad
topics that's at the same time readable as an intro...

-Mark


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Nadine.Hess@sg.ch: Copyrights]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch> -----

From: "Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV" <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 11:38:17 +0200
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Copyrights

Dear Sir Wales

At the end of 2004 our publishing house bringts out the booklet "aktuell". For this purpose we wanna use a picture on your website (see below)
prisma.png
Since it concerns a Non profit project for our school children we are dependent on each support. We are extremely grateful, if you can give us the picture either free of charge or to a special price to the order. We may ask you to answer up to the 10.10.2004. For a well-meaning examination of our inquiry we thank you cordially

Yours sincerelly

Nadine Hess
Sekretariat
Beratung und Verkauf
Kant. Lehrmittelverlag St.Gallen
Washingtonstrasse 34
Postfach
CH-9401 Rorschach

Telefon: +41 071 846 60 91
Telefax:  +41 071 841 79 94
E-Mail: nadine.hess at sg.ch
Internet: www.lehrmittelverlag.ch

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

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Nadine.Hess@sg.ch: Copyrights]

body:
Oops, sorry, didn't mean to send this here.

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> ----- Forwarded message from Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch> -----
>
> From: "Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV" <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch>
> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 11:38:17 +0200
> To: <jwales at bomis.com>
> Subject: Copyrights
>
> Dear Sir Wales
>
> At the end of 2004 our publishing house bringts out the booklet "aktuell". For this purpose we wanna use a picture on your website (see below)
> prisma.png
> Since it concerns a Non profit project for our school children we are dependent on each support. We are extremely grateful, if you can give us the picture either free of charge or to a special price to the order. We may ask you to answer up to the 10.10.2004. For a well-meaning examination of our inquiry we thank you cordially
>
> Yours sincerelly
>
> Nadine Hess
> Sekretariat
> Beratung und Verkauf
> Kant. Lehrmittelverlag St.Gallen
> Washingtonstrasse 34
> Postfach
> CH-9401 Rorschach
>
> Telefon: +41 071 846 60 91
> Telefax:  +41 071 841 79 94
> E-Mail: nadine.hess at sg.ch
> Internet: www.lehrmittelverlag.ch
>
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New Wikipedia langage solresol

body:
Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> Notice I said "constructed languages" with no native speakers rather
> than "constructed languages" which by default means they have no
> native speakers.
>
> --node

I fail to see the difference :-)


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Requests for logos

body:
On Sunday 03 October 2004 07:17, Andr? M?ller wrote:
> Shouldn't it be "la uikipedias." even, with a dot behind the name?

Dot before, too; but the dots aren't necessary. And all caps is fine for
headlines and such, at least to me.

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 12:00:45AM +0200, Victor Fari?a wrote:
> Hi again
> I develop a extremely simple extension (using the same technic as
> graphviz extension and easytimeline extension)
> with wich you can render SVG images online ...

I don't think this is a realistic approach for SVG. graphviz
language is designed for humans, SVG is for computers. Not
many people will want to write SVG by hand.

Handling SVG as a Image: type plus diff between image revisions
is a more feasible approach in my eyes.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Requests

body:
On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 09:39:34PM +0200, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Is it possible to refresh the content of a category ? I have added loads
> of categories to templates. When all the categories are refreshed, more
> than 4000 articles will be seen as being part of a category?

We need a new fundraising campaign ...


from_name: Mark Richards

body:
Sir Wales?
Congratulations!
Mark

--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Oops, sorry, didn't mean to send this here.
>
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> > ----- Forwarded message from Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV
> <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch> -----
> >
> > From: "Hess Nadine ED-AVSLV" <Nadine.Hess at sg.ch>
> > Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 11:38:17 +0200
> > To: <jwales at bomis.com>
> > Subject: Copyrights
> >
> > Dear Sir Wales
> >
> > At the end of 2004 our publishing house bringts
> out the booklet "aktuell". For this purpose we wanna
> use a picture on your website (see below)
> > prisma.png
> > Since it concerns a Non profit project for our
> school children we are dependent on each support. We
> are extremely grateful, if you can give us the
> picture either free of charge or to a special price
> to the order. We may ask you to answer up to the
> 10.10.2004. For a well-meaning examination of our
> inquiry we thank you cordially
> >
> > Yours sincerelly
> >
> > Nadine Hess
> > Sekretariat
> > Beratung und Verkauf
> > Kant. Lehrmittelverlag St.Gallen
> > Washingtonstrasse 34
> > Postfach
> > CH-9401 Rorschach
> >
> > Telefon: +41 071 846 60 91
> > Telefax:  +41 071 841 79 94
> > E-Mail: nadine.hess at sg.ch
> > Internet: www.lehrmittelverlag.ch
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> > --
> > "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of
> 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
>
> --
> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th
> article on fr.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia meetups

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Meanwhile only two people have signed up for the Chicago meetup, and
> that's counting Jimbo himself. So I just have to ask, where are all
> the Chicago Wikipedians? Is there nobody willing to make the trip
> even from Wisconsin or Indiana (and Chicago's so much closer to the
> state line than Seattle)? Doesn't anybody love Jimbo anymore?

I'm like one of those rock stars only famous in Europe. ;-)

--Jimbo

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>I don't think this is a realistic approach for SVG. graphviz
>>language is designed for humans, SVG is for computers. Not
>>many people will want to write SVG by hand.
>>
>>
>
>What about internationalization? Is it feasible to edit SVG files for the
>purpose of only translating a few strings? If so, we should probably allow
>it.
>
>
In principle, yes, although this depends on the SVG.  It's
human-readable plaintext XML, and can be written by hand, and on
occasion some people actually do (some guy in kuro5hin's diaries section
recently linked to a hand-coded SVG he made that plotted people on the
2d "political compass" spectrum).  The main problem would be the quality
of output from machine-generated SVG: Some of it, like machine-generated
HTML, is... not so human-readable.

-Mark


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] News sources citing our articles

body:
Ta bu shi da yu wrote

>What I'm
> suggesting is that if the press references one of our articles on the
> press source page that we can absolutely make sure that our references
> are up to scratch and our facts correct.

I think this is going to be a standard pressure that WP is under, from here
to eternity: fact check everything, footnote everything, generally be
academic-level research provided gratis by volunteers.

Nothing wrong with beling reliable.  The footnoted style doesn't read so
well - try some examples and see. WP will never be in serious competition
with those having five years to write a Ph.D. on a topic.

Charles


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Register, Round Three

body:
Well, it says little for the register to mouth off about Wikipedia users as
"wiki-fiddlers" based on a very small but vocal minority who send them long
and abusive emails. I tend to ignore the criticisms of Wikipedia from "The
Register" in much the same way I ignore criticisms I can't fix on Featured
Article Candidates because they're not actionable. Though adding references
and improving the quality of articles in general is a good approach to
responding to general criticism, however this is not my response to the
Register: this is something I want to do anyway.

Ta bu shi da yu

"Jim Redmond" <jim at scrubnugget.com> wrote in message
news:2423.68.164.15.247.1095299785.spork at webmail.scrubnugget.com...
Andrew Lih wrote:
> It's up to you to consider the value of responding to these folks. :)

Ah, but the problem is that, as a grassroots effort, we have no control
over the impulses of our participants.  Our more... fanatic... devotees
are likely to respond to this latest slight with mouths a-foaming and
fingers a-misspelling.

I plan to counter El Reg's criticisms by improving articles.  AFAIC it's
the only appropriate response.

--
Jim Redmond
jim at scrubnugget.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hmm, something that strikes me looking at those results is that on
>>several categories Wikipedia seems to do worse on the "easy" topics
>>but better on the "hard" ones. I don't know if I'm just imagining it,
>>and it could just be a coincidence, but that seems like an interesting
>>finding (were there any graphs in the article? one could probably
>>construct a graph that demonstrated patterns like that).
>>
>
>This is sadly true and I'm part of the problem since I love to write about
>specific topics concerning geology yet have never added much to core
>geology-related articles such as [[geology]] or [[mineralogy]]. This also seems
>to be true for articles about specific species (we have many well-developed
>ones) vs articles about core biology-related topics (not many well-developed
>ones).
>
I've experienced that too - one of the things I'm planning to do
on my next library sojourn to look at present-day encyclopedias'
main articles on computer science and other of my areas, and draw up
little outlines showing scope and size of their parts, as a way of
learning by example about how to organize them. Our specific topics
have plenty of raw material, so I think main article work is more
about judicious wordsmithing than anything else.

Stan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.01net.com

body:
http://www.01net.com/article/252216.html

Le net est sympathique. A l'heure du d?jeuner j'ai
r?pondu ? quelques questions, ? l'heure du diner,
l'article est d?j? sorti :-)

Anthere

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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: clusty

body:
They may think the name "clusty" sounds cute, but to me it sounds like "crusty".

--node

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 14:54:38 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, Clusty's way of showing "clustered" categories in the left
> panel provides an interesting new way of surfing Wikipedia articles.
> It's quite heartening to see folks customizing searching/sifting
> algorithms to work directly on WP's content.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 02:26:41 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:08:50 -0700, Michael Snow
> > <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the
> > > search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example
> > > of how great they are.
> > >
> > > --Michael Snow
> >
> > Yes, it was very much a "which of these things is not like the others" list
> > of innovations.  That name and the 50's-throwback look of the site would
> > really get to me if I used the site for my searches, though.
> >
> > +sj+
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih at gmail.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: News sources citing our articles

body:
Ta bu shi da yu wrote

> Dont get me wrong, I understand that it may not be practical, but the
> attitude should be that it's feasible and desirable to do this!

What's "this"?  Obviously it's a plus to make all high-profile articles
accurate and creditable.  The 'be bold' motto, though, is in conflict with
anyone should holding back from adding material to articles.  Clearly no one
advocates the deliberate adding of untrustworthy or inaccurate stuff.  But
an insistence on 'high standards' will inhibit growth - and in my experience
also leads to a certain 'drying-up' of style.

I think it is neither practical nor feasible to get the whole of WP into a
state where journalists could confidently cite it, without further work.  WP
is going to remain a 'single unconfirmed source' for most things.  Actually
I think emphasis on factual accuracy misses one of the major strengths,
which is the top-down organisation and wikilinks.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Editorial purposes only" images

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> As I say, we can do two things with images:
> (1) distribute a GFDL version of Wikipedia with only those images that
> are compatible with the GFDL, and a separate version which includes
> all images, but is under a more restrictive licence that is compatible
> with the licence of *all* images used; fair use images, strictly,
> should not appear in the former; and the latter may actually breach
> the GFDL's terms for "derivative works" for all I know.
> or (2) throw out any image that is not GFDL-compliant
>
> AFAIK, currently, we are following option (0), which is "fudge it by
> saying we haven't decided yet, and offer the images for reuse under a
> label saying 'these may or may not actually be legal for you to
> reuse'; and rely on the fact that nobody hates us enough yet to
> challenge us over it". I may be wrong on that bit, but that's my
> understanding.

I would not characterize it this way at all.  We are following option
(2) to the best of our ability.  There is an ongoing problem with untagged
images, but progress is being made.

--Jimbo


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>  Since Wikimedia refuses to define freeness itself,

*sigh*

Anthony, please don't keep saying things like this.  It just is not
true.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Distributing fonts

body:
Zinnmann wrote:
> >>I don't think, we have to mirror every single GPL software. But maybe
> >>a comprehensive catalogue of free software and data (like fonts) would
> >>be a good idea.
> >>
> >>
> MM> It fits into the emotional state of this discussion that suddenly "a
> MM> free OGG player" has become "every single GPL software"...
>
> Sorry, Magnus, my comment wasn't meant to be offensive. I apologize if
> it sounds like that.
>
> No, it's just, that IMHO theres no need to distribute software as
> there enough download location. Of course a small Ogg-Player wouldn't
> harm our bandwith, but it might be a signal into a different diretion.
> Knowledge is our domain. And in my opinion we should stick to that.
> It's absolutely ok, to guide people to the (GPL) software they need.
> But we dont't have to offer it ourself.

I see merit in both positions.  By taking a stand for OGG over MP3, we
are inconveniencing people in the name of free content.  We have an
obligation to minimize that inconvenience, and this might be in part
be resolved by hosting some GPL software and very user-friendly
instructions for installing it.  We can decide on a case by case basis.

A lot of GPL software is hosted on nerdy websites that would simply
frighten inexperienced users.  When that's the case, it would be nice
if we used our public communication skills to help out.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Importing RFEs from sourceforge

body:
On Oct 4, 2004, at 8:38 AM, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:28:48 +0200, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Just send me an e-mail when you've finished closing those that
>> shouldn't
>> be migrated, and then I'll run the script again to migrate those that
>> are still open.
>
> Well, as far as I can see I still have no "permission bits" on
> sourceforge, but if someone would set those for me, I'll have a go.
> There are about 75 RFEs which were opened during 2002 which would
> probably make a good place to start... :D

(tweak, tweak) Try it now...

>> Thanks for volunteering to sift through them!
>
> Let's just hope most of the decisions are pretty obvious, else I may
> regret offering (serves me right for sending e-mails in the middle of
> the night :/ )

Bwahaahaa! :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright concerns

body:
Hi,

Le Monday 4 October 2004 03:05, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
> I personally believe that we could show a lot more courage in matters of
> copyright.  There is a great deal of material out there that is
> technically protected by copyright, but which could be republished with
> impunity simply because there is no-one there to own the copyright.
> This does not mean that we go ahead and willy-nilly republish anything
> that strikes our fancy; that would be an act of stupidity.  Some
> criteria would need to be followed.  Anything that we would so republish
> (Wikisource being most affected) would need to state the possible
> problems right up front, and to state that we would remove the material
> if so requested by a person who establishes that he has the legal right
> to make such a request.  If no-one makes a request for three years, the
> limitation period for civil copyright suits, the doctrine of laches may
> be applicable.

I am very interested to work on that line, and this would apply a lot for
Wikicommons.

> Ec

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

body:
But this sort of permission is inadequate for us.  We need a free license.

Magnus Manske wrote:

> <Farnsworth>Good news, everyone!</Farnsworth>
>
> I contacted Michael Connors from www.morguefile.com, a free image
> repository, about use of the images on wikipedia. Short answer: Go
> ahead! Long answer: below...
>
> Happy image-hunting!
>
> Magnus
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Hey mangus, first off for a site like Wikipedia, you can certainly use any
> image photographed by mconnors free and clear of all terms or by-lines and
> you have my written permission. The problem is that I don't own these
> images, I only have permission to redistribute them. Or at least all of the
> images that I haven't photographed. And I wrote the disclaimer myself, which
> is why it's so shoddy. (even more so then the coding) You are correct, what
> I plan to do is have a lawyer provide us with proper terms. My only real
> concern was preventing someone from downloading the entire collection and
> finding a morgeufile CD for sale at wal-mart. And I have gotten request from
> people who want to just rip off as many prints as they can and sell them at
> every street vendor in NYC, in which case I tell them they should at least
> stick a calendar on it. If your using the images on a webpage, that's really
> not the same- they would be really bad prints. The intent of the site was
> definitely to serve sites not unlike wikipedia, so I think you should run
> with using the images, I honestly believe the contributors would be tickled
> to know there work is being used by your site. Give me another 6 months to
> hire the lawyers and we'll have a solid license. For now you can contact the
> contributor of a specific photo- I'm sure you won't have any problems
> getting permission. Thanks a lot for the advice, it is greatly appreciated.
> mconnors
>
>
> On 8/25/04 3:43 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >
> >I am writing you on behalf of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> >(http://www.wikipedia.org ).
> >
> >I recently found your great site at http://www.morguefile.com and
> >thought it would be a wonderful source for images on Wikipedia. However,
> >we are a little uncertain about the copyright policy.
> >
> >You *do* state that the images on your site are free to use, even for
> >commercial projects. The Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free
> >Documentation License, the equivalent of the GPL (think Linux) for
> >written text. The GFDL allows for commercial use as well, no problem so
> >far.
> >
> >But, you also state on your About page "Although selling prints, selling
> >the images directly or claiming the photo is yours is prohibited." Of
> >course we will appropriately credit the image source, but by "just"
> >using an image of yours on our site, someone might produce single prints
> >and sell them, which is good with the GFDL, but violates your terms of use.
> >
> >A solution would be for you to co-license all your images under GFDL,
> >which would ensure that the information stays free (as in "free speech",
> >not "free beer":-) but this is of course entirely your decision. IMHO,
> >it would seem to fit the spirit of your site, though.
> >
> >Anyhow, if you allow us to use some of your images on Wikipedia, please
> >supply us with a short note we can put on the image description below
> >the source citing, similar to
> >  "This image is *not* under GFDL. You are free to use it in any way
> >except for selling high-quality versions of it digitally or in print,
> >and as long as you cite the source."
> >
> >Thank you in advance for your time, and for a great image resource.
> >
> >Magnus Manske
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
On Oct 3, 2004, at 11:01 PM, Jens Frank wrote:
> Handling SVG as a Image: type plus diff between image revisions
> is a more feasible approach in my eyes.

Incidentally, last night I checked in some quick hacky code to CVS to
support rasterizing SVG images to PNG via ImageMagick when a
'thumbnail' size is given.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Victor Fariña Infante

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
yes , its true ... but i am thinking on a wiki used for manage
documentation on a development, and the need is
to share documentation, one important part of the documentation are the
UML diagrams, and sharing it on SVG
format its usefull to control version and to publish on the wiki.
I am not thinking on images, but its an added feature (with no visible
utility)

I am using this format not to edit at hand , but with omondo UML or
together exporting and importing
SVG formats ...

Jens Frank wrote:

>On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 12:00:45AM +0200, Victor Fari?a wrote:
>
>
>>Hi again
>>I develop a extremely simple extension (using the same technic as
>>graphviz extension and easytimeline extension)
>>with wich you can render SVG images online ...
>>
>>
>
>I don't think this is a realistic approach for SVG. graphviz
>language is designed for humans, SVG is for computers. Not
>many people will want to write SVG by hand.
>
>Handling SVG as a Image: type plus diff between image revisions
>is a more feasible approach in my eyes.
>
>Regards,
>
>JeLuF
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>

--

         www
        (o o)     Linux -- the choice of a GNU generation
+---oOO--(_)--OOo----------+  +-------------------------+
|                          /  /                         |
| Victor Fari?a Infante    \  \ SMS:vicmovil at comasis.com|
| http://www.wickle.com    /  / vic at wickle.com          |
| --- CoffMan ---          \  \                         |
+--------------------------+  +-------------------------+


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] clusty

body:
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 20:17:34 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The new search engine "clusty" features wikipedia fairly prominently.
> http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/03/1230223.shtml?tid=95

I was just testing this when your mail came in. :)

The original article from SJ Mercury News about Clusty/WP isn't very good:
"Clusty is also one of the first search sites to index and display
results from the sometimes controversial Wikipedia, the online
encyclopedia being compiled from contributions by Internet users. Some
researchers do not view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of
information because it is created by Web users."

They should have said Clusty features Wikipedia in its own tab very
prominently, and it even returns pictures from WP in the search
results. Example:
http://clusty.com/search?query=octopus+card&v%3Aproject=clusty-encyclopedia

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

>
> I overheard some talk about GNU FDL compliance, and I just wanted to
> let everyone know that I talked to the CEO of Vivisimo last week
> (before they launched) and (a) they love us and (b) there will be no
> GNU FDL compliance problems with them.
>
> So, I will contact them in a few days after I have a chance to
> assess what, if anything, we'd like to have them adjust.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> --
> "La n?fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Membership and payment

references:
<415A007C.1080903@yahoo.com>
	<cjjq7q$lao$1@sea.gmane.org>	<0568E405-13BE-11D9-B634-0003931DCE20@ropersonline.com>
	<cjktop$bcv$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi a ?crit:
>
> Thanks for your help with clarifying the point in the task outlined by
> Anthere, Jens.
>
> It seems to me that it would best be done as part of the database
> redesign, or after the database redesign (hoping the redesign would be
> extensible enough), but somehow it feels like the Foundation would want
> it sooner ;-)
>
> Timwi

Hummm

The fact is
1) I have no idea when the redesign will be done (it has been an ongoing
discussion for a long time). Prospectives ?
2) if there are some implications in the redesign, then, it is a GOOD
idea that the membership considerations are taken into account in the
redesign.

Other than that, I realised I forgot to put a few relevant links in the
process :-)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_task/membership

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership fees

and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda

A meeting of the board is planned next week end, and the question of how
membership will be handled will be discussed (ie, if no online solution,
we might to have to set a traditional paper membership).


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Membership and payment

body:
Another link for anyone interested in helping set membership :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikimedia_committees#Structure.2C_membership.2C_and_other_questions_about_committees

If a membership committee was created to organise all membership related
issues (not only joining and payment of fees) but also mailing lists,
feedback, nice graphics, etc... would you (general you) be willing to help ?

anthere

Anthere a ?crit:
>
>
> Timwi a ?crit:
>
>>
>> Thanks for your help with clarifying the point in the task outlined by
>> Anthere, Jens.
>>
>> It seems to me that it would best be done as part of the database
>> redesign, or after the database redesign (hoping the redesign would be
>> extensible enough), but somehow it feels like the Foundation would
>> want it sooner ;-)
>>
>> Timwi
>
>
> Hummm
>
> The fact is
> 1) I have no idea when the redesign will be done (it has been an ongoing
> discussion for a long time). Prospectives ?
> 2) if there are some implications in the redesign, then, it is a GOOD
> idea that the membership considerations are taken into account in the
> redesign.
>
> Other than that, I realised I forgot to put a few relevant links in the
> process :-)
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_task/membership
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership fees
>
> and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda
>
> A meeting of the board is planned next week end, and the question of how
> membership will be handled will be discussed (ie, if no online solution,
> we might to have to set a traditional paper membership)
> .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anarchopedia

body:
Hi, just don't call it "a wikipedia", or people will naturally be confused.

Milos Rancic wrote:

> I started new Wikipedia, Anarchopedia (www.anarchopedia.org). In this
> moment it is blank MediaWiki, but I hope it would become real free
> anarchist encyclopedia.
>
> The main difference between Wikipedia and Anarchopedia is that
> Anarchopedia _is_ test for anarchy. Also, we would have more
> anarchistic articles then Wikipedia.
>
> Anarchopedia has sister AnarchApedia (www.anarchapedia.org).
>
> Where to announce new Wikipedian project?
>
> I would like to hear your suggestions as well as I would like to see
> Wikipedians anarchists to work on Anarchopedia and Anarchapedia.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
Jens-
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 12:00:45AM +0200, Victor Fari?a wrote:
>> Hi again
>> I develop a extremely simple extension (using the same technic as
>> graphviz extension and easytimeline extension)
>> with wich you can render SVG images online ...

> I don't think this is a realistic approach for SVG. graphviz
> language is designed for humans, SVG is for computers. Not
> many people will want to write SVG by hand.

What about internationalization? Is it feasible to edit SVG files for the
purpose of only translating a few strings? If so, we should probably allow
it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: clusty

body:
Actually, Clusty's way of showing "clustered" categories in the left
panel provides an interesting new way of surfing Wikipedia articles.
It's quite heartening to see folks customizing searching/sifting
algorithms to work directly on WP's content.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 02:26:41 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:08:50 -0700, Michael Snow
> <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the
> > search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example
> > of how great they are.
> >
> > --Michael Snow
>
> Yes, it was very much a "which of these things is not like the others" list
> of innovations.  That name and the 50's-throwback look of the site would
> really get to me if I used the site for my searches, though.
>
> +sj+
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] UN Images

body:
The question has come up on [[Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images]] about
images licensed under the UN license.  That license says:

"UN photographs can be reproduced for editorial purposes only. They may not
be used in advertising. All photos used must show the UN Photo credit line."

Personally I think these images are "free enough", as they could be used by
any encyclopedia, commercial or non-commercial.  But a couple people have
argued against this.

I'd like to invite anyone interested to comment at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Possibly_unfree_images


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:28:48 +0200, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Just send me an e-mail when you've finished closing those that shouldn't
> be migrated, and then I'll run the script again to migrate those that
> are still open.

Well, as far as I can see I still have no "permission bits" on
sourceforge, but if someone would set those for me, I'll have a go.
There are about 75 RFEs which were opened during 2002 which would
probably make a good place to start... :D

> Thanks for volunteering to sift through them!

Let's just hope most of the decisions are pretty obvious, else I may
regret offering (serves me right for sending e-mails in the middle of
the night :/ )

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG extension to mediawiki

body:
yes , of course you can modify text , almost on SVG's generated by
Omondo UML, MagicDraw and Poseidon ...
Again you can test it at http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/SVG_extension
you can change use cases texts and so ...

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jens-
>
>
>>On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 12:00:45AM +0200, Victor Fari?a wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hi again
>>>I develop a extremely simple extension (using the same technic as
>>>graphviz extension and easytimeline extension)
>>>with wich you can render SVG images online ...
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>I don't think this is a realistic approach for SVG. graphviz
>>language is designed for humans, SVG is for computers. Not
>>many people will want to write SVG by hand.
>>
>>
>
>What about internationalization? Is it feasible to edit SVG files for the
>purpose of only translating a few strings? If so, we should probably allow
>it.
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>

--

         www
        (o o)     Linux -- the choice of a GNU generation
+---oOO--(_)--OOo----------+  +-------------------------+
|                          /  /                         |
| Victor Fari?a Infante    \  \ SMS:vicmovil at comasis.com|
| http://www.wickle.com    /  / vic at wickle.com          |
| --- CoffMan ---          \  \                         |
+--------------------------+  +-------------------------+


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Gaming Collaboration of the week launches

body:
User:pie4all88 has launched a new collaboration project dedicated to
computer and video game articles. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gaming_Collaboration_of_the_week
for the project page. If you know of any gaming articles that are in
need of improvement, feel free to nominate them.

--Slowking Man


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anarchopedia

body:
On Oct 4, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Hi, just don't call it "a wikipedia", or people will naturally be
> confused.
>

Welcome to the problem of every trademark holder.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Ta bu shi da yu wrote
>
>
>>What I'm
>>suggesting is that if the press references one of our articles on the
>>press source page that we can absolutely make sure that our references
>>are up to scratch and our facts correct.
>>
>>
>I think this is going to be a standard pressure that WP is under, from here
>to eternity: fact check everything, footnote everything, generally be
>academic-level research provided gratis by volunteers.
>
>Nothing wrong with beling reliable.  The footnoted style doesn't read so
>well - try some examples and see. WP will never be in serious competition
>with those having five years to write a Ph.D. on a topic.
>
>
One thing that I've mentiioned before was the idea of double
synchronized boxes.  The one on the left could be for the text of the
article; the one on the right for footnotes, translations or whatever
other dependent data might be desired.  Keeping the right one open would
be at the user's option for those who just want a good read of the
article.  The relative width of the two could be variable.  I just don't
know how technically feasible the concept is.

If we're going to have academic quality documentation, it would need to
be as easy to do as our current basic wiki markup.

Ec


from_name: Mario Salzer

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiMarkupStandard WG + mailing list

body:
There has been much talk about a potential WikiMarkupStandard, but
so far not much has happened. There is however a new attempt to fully
discuss that topic, this time on an official mailing list (an ID/RFC
is planned):

 http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandardWorkingGroup

Discussions may be lengthy and not all too pleasant for everyone (any
standard can only be a big collection of compromises), and initial
debates may be very lame I fear. However I'd like to invite any
interested from the WikiMedia crew and user base, so we can also have
your thoughts, opinions and preferences heard. That's important to
get the best possible out of this process - a markup standard that
only very few people agree on isn't worth anything; and because
MediaWiki is one of the most widespread engines and most people first
learn WikiWikiWeb by it, it is surely the most interesting.

It hasn't started yet, we'll first have to negotiate on a few basic
"meta rules" for what the markup standard should look like. My opinion
is, that it should only be a 'recommendation' and nothing more. Merely
promoting the "best" markup and mentioning a few viable alternatives.
All WikiEngines should be free to add as many extensions as possible
(that's the biggest advantage of Wiki anyhow, and shall remain it).
And it's likely that we negotiate on a general MIME media type as well,
so "Content-Type: text/wiki; variant=mediawiki" could be used with
WebDav, AtomApi protocols and eventually even EMail in the future.

Ok, I don't want to go in too deep detail here. Please anyone consider
taking part in that discussion; it would help if we could hear all
ideas up front - there will be a final WikiWorldWide voting or such,
but problems and incompatibilities should be worked out as early as
possible of course.

Best,
mario

(please Cc: me, unsubscribing again)


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Distributing fonts

body:
I think everyone agrees we should have a page of "this site best
viewed with the following tools/software: " followed by a list of
fonts, browsers, media players.
Then we could link to a page of Known Issues with other tools, so interested
readers could decide how important it is to install something new.

We should start with this page, before deciding on the minor issue of whether
to host the files ourselves...

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 10:47:19 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> A lot of GPL software is hosted on nerdy websites that would simply
> frighten inexperienced users.  When that's the case, it would be nice
> if we used our public communication skills to help out.

This is very true.  If we can link directly to another site's download
page, or to a
specific file, from our list -- and if that site is fast enough to be
pleasant to download from -- let's do that.  If not, we might mirror
the download ourselves.

--
+sj+


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 04 Oct 2004 20:46:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> The issue is that we need to communicate better that fair use should only
> be used as a last resort, and replaced with free content whenever
> possible, even if the free version is inferior. This is something many
> newbies and even some oldtimers don't get - they tend to treat fair use as
> a loophole to upload anything they want. Unfortunately this tends to seep
> through to other Wikipedias, who then simply say "from en:", even if they
> don't have fair use.

This is what I have battles with people about.  For example, people
who want to remove an "unprofessional" but GFDL image to put up a
"professional" press photo we have to use under fair use.

There are certainly some things we will forever have problems finding
a GFDL or PD image for (forever, assuming the Mickey Mouse perpetual
copyright extension situation continues!)  Fair use is probably going
to have to be accepted there ...

-Matt


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia meetups

body:
Some German celeb once stated that they were "world famous in Germany".
;-D

On 4 Oct 2004, at 17:36, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>> Meanwhile only two people have signed up for the Chicago meetup, and
>> that's counting Jimbo himself. So I just have to ask, where are all
>> the Chicago Wikipedians? Is there nobody willing to make the trip
>> even from Wisconsin or Indiana (and Chicago's so much closer to the
>> state line than Seattle)? Doesn't anybody love Jimbo anymore?
>
> I'm like one of those rock stars only famous in Europe. ;-)
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
> --
> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on
> fr.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

body:
I disagree. Apologies if this sounds rude or abrupt, but it seems like a
bit of a copout! I've been referencing and footnoting the Strathfield
page, so I know it can and should be done.

Dont get me wrong, I understand that it may not be practical, but the
attitude should be that it's feasible and desirable to do this!

Ta bu shi da yu

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Ta bu shi da yu wrote
>
>
>>What I'm
>>suggesting is that if the press references one of our articles on the
>>press source page that we can absolutely make sure that our references
>>are up to scratch and our facts correct.
>
>
> I think this is going to be a standard pressure that WP is under, from here
> to eternity: fact check everything, footnote everything, generally be
> academic-level research provided gratis by volunteers.
>
> Nothing wrong with beling reliable.  The footnoted style doesn't read so
> well - try some examples and see. WP will never be in serious competition
> with those having five years to write a Ph.D. on a topic.
>
> Charles


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>> Since Wikimedia refuses to define freeness itself,
>>
>>
>*sigh*
>
>Anthony, please don't keep saying things like this.  It just is not
>true.
>
Hmm.  One of the ironies of freeness is that if you try too hard to
define it it isn't free anymore.

Ec


from_name: Angela

body:
On 04 Oct 2004 20:46:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> Do we have a nice, easy crash course in Wikimedia's copyright ethics and
> rules somewhere that we can point people to?

The copyright FAQ is a good place to start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_FAQ

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Copyright and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights also answer a
lot of the questions people have about copyrights and fair use on
Wikipedia.

Angela.


body:
Jimmy-
> I would not characterize it this way at all.  We are following option
> (2) to the best of our ability.  There is an ongoing problem with untagged
> images, but progress is being made.

The issue is that we need to communicate better that fair use should only
be used as a last resort, and replaced with free content whenever
possible, even if the free version is inferior. This is something many
newbies and even some oldtimers don't get - they tend to treat fair use as
a loophole to upload anything they want. Unfortunately this tends to seep
through to other Wikipedias, who then simply say "from en:", even if they
don't have fair use.

There used to be a fairly complex process page at Wikipedia:Fair use, but
it has been replaced with a much simpler process ("explain why you think
it is fair use"), which again is mostly ignored. Perhaps a middle ground
can be found as part of the upload form redesign.

I'm a big believer in both copyleft and the public domain, but preserving
our fair use rights and making good use of them in cases of historically
significant images is important. We just need to find the right balance.

Do we have a nice, easy crash course in Wikimedia's copyright ethics and
rules somewhere that we can point people to?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who founded Wikipedia?

body:
Time for a little quiz.

Q. Who started Wikipedia?

a. Howard Rheingold
b. Jimmy Wales
c. Lyndon LaRouche
d. Larry Sanger

If you answered c, you too could work on the student newspaper at Ohio
State University! I guess the true nature of the Wikipedia cabal has
been revealed. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up:

http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.Shouts.Argues.With.Bush.Supporters-740977.shtml?page=2

Now the Howard Rheingold mistake, made recently by the International
Herald Tribune, I can vaguely understand. But this is so bizarre I can't
even fathom how they came up with it. Not even the most diehard LaRouche
activist has the imagination for this. I even spent some time googling
to see if this claim was being made anywhere that they might have picked
it up, and found nothing. Considering that Larry Sanger now teaches at
Ohio State, the situation is even more surreal.

Save your breath when it comes to flaming these poor souls, though, I've
already politely informed them of their mistake.

--Michael Snow


body:
This = provide references. We already demand this on Featured article
candidates. Besides, this is an ideal, not a hard and fast rule.

TBSDY

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Ta bu shi da yu wrote
>
>
>>Dont get me wrong, I understand that it may not be practical, but the
>>attitude should be that it's feasible and desirable to do this!
>
>
> What's "this"?  Obviously it's a plus to make all high-profile articles
> accurate and creditable.  The 'be bold' motto, though, is in conflict with
> anyone should holding back from adding material to articles.  Clearly no one
> advocates the deliberate adding of untrustworthy or inaccurate stuff.  But
> an insistence on 'high standards' will inhibit growth - and in my experience
> also leads to a certain 'drying-up' of style.
>
> I think it is neither practical nor feasible to get the whole of WP into a
> state where journalists could confidently cite it, without further work.  WP
> is going to remain a 'single unconfirmed source' for most things.  Actually
> I think emphasis on factual accuracy misses one of the major strengths,
> which is the top-down organisation and wikilinks.
>
> Charles


from_name: Vina Wang

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to refresh the special pages

body:
On the Chinese wiki, some of the special pages, such as Special:Deadendpages, Special:Uncategorizedpages, are all very old.

These pages are from a backup (which looks to be at least a few months old).  How can these be refreshed?  Also, would it be possible to show which backup the page is from?

Is this something only a developer can do, or something that a sysop can do as well?

-Vina


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Mario Salzer wrote:

>It hasn't started yet, we'll first have to negotiate on a few basic
>"meta rules" for what the markup standard should look like. My opinion
>is, that it should only be a 'recommendation' and nothing more. Merely
>promoting the "best" markup and mentioning a few viable alternatives.
>All WikiEngines should be free to add as many extensions as possible
>(that's the biggest advantage of Wiki anyhow, and shall remain it).
>And it's likely that we negotiate on a general MIME media type as well,
>so "Content-Type: text/wiki; variant=mediawiki" could be used with
>WebDav, AtomApi protocols and eventually even EMail in the future.
>
>
Some of us (well, one of us, Timwi, but I'm planning on joining the
effort;-) are working on a mediawiki-to-XML parser, a "real" one, not
the usual regexp stuff otherwise used on wikis. This seems to be an
ideal intermediate format, as that XML standard is not fully established
yet, and can contain any number of extensions. It has the potential to
describe any given wiki source. All it needs is
* a wiki-to-XML parser, which we will likely have soon for mediawiki,
and which should be relatively easy to adapt to other flavors
* a XML-to-wiki "generator", which is dead-easy to implement by
following the XML tree and appending the text and appropriate wiki
markup to a long string

Imagine : "mediawiki2xml source.txt >xml2usemodwiki" as a converter, to
produce human-editable texts. Any wiki can keeps its own markup variant
and still be compatible with all the others. Also, the XML should be
easier to parse by mail programs, web browsers and who-knows-what than
*any* conceivable wiki markup.

Magnus


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: How to get a list of all pages without
	interlanguage links

body:
>Me! I did a SQL with the latest dump. I made a file which contains the list
>of the articles with no interwiki :
http://mboquien.free.fr/nointer_zh.zip . It is coded in UTF-8.

Thank you very much.  The list has been reformatted into links and uploaded to Chinese wiki.  Please feel free to remove the zip file.

Several people has started chugging through the list, over 4800 to go through.  When I uploaded the file with all of the links, I thought I might have crashed the server when I asked for the preview..

-Vina


subject: [Wikitech-l] daily-article-l

body:
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 23:25:30 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:

> If some subscriber were to send an email to the Featured Article by
> email (daily-article-l) mailing list, would all list subscribers
> receive that?

No, they wouldn't. All posts need to be approved by the list owners
(Kate and Raul654) before they get sent out.

Angela.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who founded Wikipedia?

body:
woah woah woah wait... Wikipedia wasn't founded by Madonna!?

--node

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:55:29 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Time for a little quiz.
>
> Q. Who started Wikipedia?
>
> a. Howard Rheingold
> b. Jimmy Wales
> c. Lyndon LaRouche
> d. Larry Sanger
>
> If you answered c, you too could work on the student newspaper at Ohio
> State University! I guess the true nature of the Wikipedia cabal has
> been revealed. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up:
>
> http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.Shouts.Argues.With.Bush.Supporters-740977.shtml?page=2
>
> Now the Howard Rheingold mistake, made recently by the International
> Herald Tribune, I can vaguely understand. But this is so bizarre I can't
> even fathom how they came up with it. Not even the most diehard LaRouche
> activist has the imagination for this. I even spent some time googling
> to see if this claim was being made anywhere that they might have picked
> it up, and found nothing. Considering that Larry Sanger now teaches at
> Ohio State, the situation is even more surreal.
>
> Save your breath when it comes to flaming these poor souls, though, I've
> already politely informed them of their mistake.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
I believe only developers can refresh Special pages. Try asking on
Meta for one to do so.

--Slowking Man

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 21:48:49 -0700, Vina Wang <vwang at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> On the Chinese wiki, some of the special pages, such as Special:Deadendpages, Special:Uncategorizedpages, are all very old.
>
> These pages are from a backup (which looks to be at least a few months old).  How can these be refreshed?  Also, would it be possible to show which backup the page is from?
>
> Is this something only a developer can do, or something that a sysop can do as well?
>
> -Vina


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anarchopedia

body:
You are right. I said Wikipedia in the sense of "large public wiki".

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 13:44:22 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Hi, just don't call it "a wikipedia", or people will naturally be confused.
>
>
>
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> > I started new Wikipedia, Anarchopedia (www.anarchopedia.org). In this
> > moment it is blank MediaWiki, but I hope it would become real free
> > anarchist encyclopedia.
> >
> > The main difference between Wikipedia and Anarchopedia is that
> > Anarchopedia _is_ test for anarchy. Also, we would have more
> > anarchistic articles then Wikipedia.
> >
> > Anarchopedia has sister AnarchApedia (www.anarchapedia.org).
> >
> > Where to announce new Wikipedian project?
> >
> > I would like to hear your suggestions as well as I would like to see
> > Wikipedians anarchists to work on Anarchopedia and Anarchapedia.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
> "La n?fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
>


from_name: Steven Melenchuk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy proposal: Administrator Activity Policy

body:
A new policy proposal has been created, titled "Administrator Activity
Policy". It can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrator_Activity_Proposal.
Discussion is set to last two weeks followed by a two week vote. Feel
free to direct your comments to the talk page thereof.

~Grunt (Steven Melenchuk)


subject: [Wikitech-l] daily-article-l

body:
I've got a daft question:
If some subscriber were to send an email to the Featured Article by
email (daily-article-l) mailing list, would all list subscribers
receive that?

If yes, is there a way this can be prevented?

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


from_name: Borodaev Andrey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error with MySQL >= 4.1

body:
Hi!

      I have some problems with installation WikiMedia on my site with
next software installed on system:
FreeBSD 4.1
Apache 2.0.51
mysql-max-4.1.5-gamma-unknown-freebsd4.7-i386
php-4.3.9
Problem discribed here
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-August/001021.html
( this is error in the beginning of installation )

Reason can be finded here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html
( MySQL 4.1 and up uses an authentication protocol based on a password
hashing  algorithm  that  is  incompatible  with  that  used  by older
clients. If you upgrade the server to 4.1 )

One of possible solutions:

Reset  the password to pre-4.1 style for each user that needs to use a
pre-4.1  client  program.  This  can  be  done  using the SET PASSWORD
statement and the OLD_PASSWORD() function:
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR
    -> 'some_user'@'some_host' = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd');

    It's must make it twice:
    1. For database user root ( I dont remember error message)
    2. For database user wikiuser ( Error message "Sorry! The wiki is
    experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the
    database server")

PS Sorry for small english :\

--
Best regards,
 Borodaev                          mailto:andruxa at rambler.ru


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who founded Wikipedia?

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.Shouts.Argues.With.Bush.Supporters-740977.shtml?page=2

In case they update the story, I wanted to preserve it in the logs for
posterity, it's just too funny...

"LaRouche, an outspoken political activist, set the record for
consecutive attempts at the presidency by running eight times. He
started Wikipedia.com, a Web site functioning as both a free
encyclopedia and a wiki community, which allows users to add
information to posted articles. He is known to be a promoter of
conspiracy theories and has frequently been accused of being a fascist
and an anti-Semite - claims he has denied."

Now you see, I've heard some interesting things before, but this one
is very perplexing.  I've had a hostile inquiry as to whether we're
funded by Rev. Moon before, but this was from someone mad at Ed Poor,
so at least I understood it.  I haven't heard Scientology yet, but
expect it, since they have worldwide headquarters not far from my
house.

But LaRouche?


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Successful completion of Wikimedia's fundraising
	drive

body:
I am pleased to report that Wikimedia has successfully reached its
goal of $50000 in our latest fundraising drive. Over the past 14 days
we raised $51,177 thanks to hundreds of different donors across the
world.

A breakdown of the money raised can be seen at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2004/Q4 which includes
links to the comments people gave when making their donations (if they
chose to make these public).

For an idea of how this might be spent, please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_order_October_2004 and for
longer term plans,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_capacity_growth_planning

Here's a sample of ten of the comments made by donors on the final day
of fundraising:

* With Wikipedia, the Internet is finally starting to realize its potential!

* I hope that this will become the greatest repository of knowledge
since the Library at Alexandria. There is a very real chance that it
will become one of humanity's greatest achievements.

* A necessary resource for the world community.

* You are providing a phenomenal resource. Please keep it going!

* I'm happy to donate to Wikipedia because I feel it is the most
valuable website on the internet. Keep up the great work!

* Thanks Wikimedia for the great sites that give me solutions to my
school work and personal life.

* Thank you Wikipedia for making the world better connected and informed.

* This is an amazing resource that I use for teaching and my own
benefit. Thanks for the great service.

* Thank you for everything you've done to help spread "the knowledge"!

* Many thanks to you all who gather the collective word--the
collective will of man, to share between ourselves for the betterment
of all. History will sing of this.

The fundraising message at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your local wiki
can be removed by replacing the text with a hyphen (-). If the message
was not translated, it will have disappeared automatically. If the
message is protected and you have no sysops, please ask at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions

Thanks again to everyone who donated, and also to the thousands of
editors who created a product worth donating to.

Angela Beesley


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I have looked at a couple of articles, [[Anwar Ibrahim]] and [[Education in
Malaysia]]. I see a few sharp words but nothing like the protracted deadlock
that can result from contested points of view in certain instances on
Wikipedia. You all seem polite and restrained.

Fred

> From: John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 21:05:04 +0800
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Addressing bias in Malaysian political articles
>
> I have posted two or three times to [[WP:RFC]] (a few months apart),
> twice to [[WP:VP]] (two or three weeks apart), and once on [[WP:PR]]
> (regarding [[Anwar Ibrahim]]'s potential to become a featured article)
> for help on addressing this, but since there's still no response, I have
> no choice but to ask for help on the mailing list.
>
> Several Malaysian editors have expressed doubts about the (N)POVness of
> several articles related to Malaysian politics. Since I arrived last
> year, things have only deteriorated. Even [[Malaysia]] has not been
> spared - the second half doesn't mince its words in showing its open
> criticism of the government, declaring the court that judged Anwar to be
> a kangaroo court (the least that could have been done was to explain
> that the justice involved was unknown and inexperienced and other such
> reasons for accusing the government of unfair manipulation), and at one
> point, makes the blanket statement that "almost anything to do with the
> government involves corruption". I'm in the process of NPOVing this.
>
> [[Anwar Ibrahim]] and [[Bumiputra]] both have NPOV notices on them, and
> there's been a furious discussion on both Talks where much has been
> hashed out but little has come out to improve the NPOV value of both
> articles, beyond the effort of those who originally complained. (An
> excellent deal of other work was done on [[Anwar Ibrahim]], though.) A
> storm is brewing in [[Malaysian New Economic Policy]] which is overtly
> pro-NEP in the beginning and suddenly switches to full-blown opposition
> with completely inappropriate wording, directly stating the Malays are
> "robbing" the Chinese and Indians.
>
> The main issue here is that several editors have been doing great work
> expanding these articles, but are not wording their edits in accord with
> our NPOV policy. Sometimes crucial facts and opinions of those
> supporting the government are not available at all, creating an
> unbalanced impression, such as in [[Anwar Ibrahim]] (I NPOVed the last
> section as a lot of material was available on it before complaining on
> the Talk, whereupon it just degraded into all hot air and no actual work
> done on NPOVing the article).
>
> Another issue is that [[User:Malbear]], one of the few users other than
> me actively involved in these articles has accused me of deleting
> material that I don't agree with, such as on [[Education in Malaysia]].
> Malaysian politics is highly impassioned, so I would really appreciate
> if someone could tell me and [[User:Jpatokal]] that we're just paranoid
> and overreacting, or that there really is an issue with how NPOV
> Malaysian political articles are.
>
> Thanks very much,
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who founded Wikipedia?

body:
We should start cataloging these. How about [[Apocraphyl tales of
Wikipedia's history]]? :)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:55:29 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Time for a little quiz.
>
> Q. Who started Wikipedia?
>
> a. Howard Rheingold
> b. Jimmy Wales
> c. Lyndon LaRouche
> d. Larry Sanger
>
> If you answered c, you too could work on the student newspaper at Ohio
> State University! I guess the true nature of the Wikipedia cabal has
> been revealed. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up:
>
> http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.Shouts.Argues.With.Bush.Supporters-740977.shtml?page=2
>
> Now the Howard Rheingold mistake, made recently by the International
> Herald Tribune, I can vaguely understand. But this is so bizarre I can't
> even fathom how they came up with it. Not even the most diehard LaRouche
> activist has the imagination for this. I even spent some time googling
> to see if this claim was being made anywhere that they might have picked
> it up, and found nothing. Considering that Larry Sanger now teaches at
> Ohio State, the situation is even more surreal.
>
> Save your breath when it comes to flaming these poor souls, though, I've
> already politely informed them of their mistake.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

body:
Angela wrote:
> One reason is that the differences between American and British
> English are more involved than simply changing the spelling of a few
> words. Punctuation and grammar are also involved. If you changed
> behavior to behaviour in an otherwise AE sentence, the sentence would
> then be wrong in both languages. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences

I just wanted to second this, and add one more thing.

Differences between American and British English are too involved for
computers, but _quite easy_ for humans.  Therefore, people should just
relax about it.  It adds a lot of richness to wikipedia, I think.

--Jimbo


body:
David Friedland wrote:
> Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are
> equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that
> they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause
> problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.

Why do you say it is a fiction?  I don't see any real problems with it
at all.  There must be some examples that would tend to persuade me,
but color/colour and the like are not very compelling.

I discovered the last time I was in London that what we Americans call
'arugula' is called 'rocket'.  This is a rather preposterous name for
a lettuce, in my opinion, but nonetheless, that's what they say.  And
I was pleased to have learned about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arugula

would have informed me of this quite well.  Would it be better to have
used fancy wiki markup to deny me this learning opportunity?

Where the languages are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, we
don't need to do anything.  Where the languages are different enough
to cause trouble, we have a delightful teaching opportunity which adds
considerable richness to our work.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting

body:
A board meeting (board + Mav) is planned on saturday.

Please, consult the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda

If you feel like other topics might be mentionned, or if you want to
clarify things, please add a comment over there.

Thanks :-)

anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting


subject: [WikiEN-l] Australian projects

body:
Hi all,

I figure I might as well put this out to the mailing list, but there are
quite a few Australian projects/bulletin boards popping up. If any
Aussie (or anyone else interested) would like to participate, here they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sydney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Melbourne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Australian_wikipedians%27_notice_board
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Australian_Collaboration_of_the_Week

Cheers,
Ta bu shi da yu


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: Stadium Pics

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Bosnak" <abosnak at glcomm.com>
To: <daily-article-l-owner at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 12:30 PM
Subject: Stadium Pics

> -- Hello-How are you? My name is Andy Bosnak and I do  photo research for
> General Learning Communications. Our company makes non-broadcast
> educational
> video supplements for textbooks. I would like permission to use some of
> your
> photos. I saw them at the website
> http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/0/04/Reliant_Park.jpg
> My deadline is Wednesday October 6, 2004.
> Please contact me to discuss details. Thank you.
>
>  Andy Bosnak
>  PhotoResearch
>  General Learning Communications
>  847.205.3168
>  abosnak at glcomm.com
>


from_name: KNOTT, T

body:
To see who last edited a page click the "history" tab. You will see a
list of every edit made to that page.

I took a look at your web site. I see you have some novel ideas about
the nature of vacuum. It's always good to try new ways of thinking about
things, and I wish you all the luck with your hypothesis but please note
that we do not accept original research into Wikipedia.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Miller's Hotmail [mailto:misterblues39 at hotmail.com]
Sent: 05 October 2004 15:31
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Vacuum article and how to get in touch

Aloha!

I read an article about vacuum and others. I wonder if one can contact
the
author of an article or the person who did edit it last.

Steffen Schenk

-------
Vacuum was when the volume of the O - room was bigger
than the volume of the mass of it particles.

See my threads or those I replyed to:
http://209.25.203.234/search.php?
- type misterblues in the search field on the
  upper right side
- click Search Now at the bottom of page

Go here and watch the video:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E29515A09

My personal web space:
http://www.mdcc.de/note.image/
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: David Friedland

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> David Friedland wrote:
>
>>Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are
>>equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that
>>they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause
>>problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
>
> Why do you say it is a fiction?  I don't see any real problems with it
> at all.  There must be some examples that would tend to persuade me,
> but color/colour and the like are not very compelling.

Well, let's talk about the million/milliard/billion/billiard/trillion
fiasco.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]

It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard
gold marks"

Now, I'm a fairly linguistically tuned-in guy, and I'm familiar with the
word "milliard", but only in the sense that it's a large number that has
something to do with "million" and "billion". I just quickly asked all
my co-workers if they knew how much a milliard was, and none of them had
even heard of the word, let alone knew how much it was (and they all
have degrees in linguistics).

If Wikipedia is to be maximally accessible, it shouldn't use dialectical
words like this that are mostly inaccessible to to a large group of
native speakers (in this case, Americans).

But the alternative is not entirely satisfactory to the speakers of
en-gb  and related dialects. To them, a "billion" can be
1,000,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 depending on which system is being
used. To them, the least ambiguous way to describe the number
226,000,000,000 is to say "226 milliard", as was done is this article.

So what is the solution? One suggestion would be just to avoid these
words, of which admittedly there aren't many. "Milliard" and "billion"
could just be written out as large numbers. The problem with this
solution is that it sacrifices overall readability. It's much easier to
read "1 billion" than "1,000,000,000" (did you notice yourself counting
the zeroes?).

Another example is the verb "slate":

According to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_British_and_American_English],
slate means "to disparage" in en-gb but "to schedule" in en-us. In the
(admittedly not very good) article
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Mongoose], we have "the idea of giving
him a tattoo could be seen as a bit mature so the idea was slated". To
an en-us reader, this sentence will be at best confusing and at worst
misleading. Was the idea of giving him a tattoo disparaged or scheduled?

I want to note that all my examples are from the American perspective
because I am American. Also, it is my understanding (although I don't
have any firm proof of this) that American culture has a stronger
overall impact on the British than the reverse, due partly to global
American cultural hegemony and partly to rampant cultural isolationism
in the US. In other words, my guess is that it is more likely British
readers will be familiar with American usage than the other way around.

The differences are indeed few and the likelihood of confusion small,
but nevertheless possible. Rather than gloss over these problems or
embrace them in the name of diversity, we should endeavor to eliminate
the likelihood of confusing our readers. We will have done the reader a
great disservice if he or she reads an article, and based on dialectical
differences, comes away with a misunderstanding of the topic.

In most cases, the potential misunderstanding can be fixed by rewording,
but as in the milliard example, alternatives are non-ideal. Should we
settle for a non-ideal solution, or should we create a solution that is
ideal?

It is a fact that modern browsers can be configured to specify what
language and dialect they prefer, and this feature _could_ be used to
help reduce the amount of potential misunderstanding on Wikipedia. Why
not take advantage?

In my last post, I made a proposal to use templates for dialect marking.
Thus, in the examples above, making the wikitext the following would fix
  it:

a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 {{milliard}} gold
marks

would appear to an en-gb reader as

a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks

and to an en-us reader as

a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks

And if we allow that, who's it going to hurt to allow "The primary
{{colours}} are red, yellow, and blue."? Certainly a few extra {{ }}
marks aren't any more burdensome than ''' marks.

Our primary duty is to inform, and we should create solutions for
impediments to our duty.

 > I discovered the last time I was in London that what we Americans call
 > 'arugula' is called 'rocket'.  This is a rather preposterous name for
 > a lettuce, in my opinion, but nonetheless, that's what they say.  And
 > I was pleased to have learned about it.
 >
 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arugula
 >
 > would have informed me of this quite well.  Would it be better to have
 > used fancy wiki markup to deny me this learning opportunity?

If you were reading about the primary exports of a small region of an
obscure country and in the list was "rocket", is it possible you could
have come away from the article believing that the obscure country is a
mjor exporter of rockets? Under ideal conditions, yes, these kinds of
dialectical differences can be illuminating, but under equally likely
non-ideal conditions, the differences can be confusing and misleading.

 > Where the languages are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, we
 > don't need to do anything.  Where the languages are different enough
 > to cause trouble, we have a delightful teaching opportunity which adds
 > considerable richness to our work.

While I admire the pluck of characterizing inconsistency as richness, I
think that "down in the trenches" the reality of the differences in
dialect (mostly between en-us and en-gb, but also, for example between
pt-pt and pt-br) is a continuous stream of conflict, debate, confusion,
and frustration that policy has failed to allieviate.

There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and
not significantly burden editors. Should we reject this solution on the
wishful notion that our differences can unite rather than divide us?

- David


from_name: David Gerard

body:
There are many things we evidently do not yet understand about vacuum!

   http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=cjaq33%2423t%241%40spock.usc.edu

;-)

- d.

KNOTT, T wrote:

> To see who last edited a page click the "history" tab. You will see a
> list of every edit made to that page.
>
> I took a look at your web site. I see you have some novel ideas about
> the nature of vacuum. It's always good to try new ways of thinking about
> things, and I wish you all the luck with your hypothesis but please note
> that we do not accept original research into Wikipedia.
>
> Theresa
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Miller's Hotmail [mailto:misterblues39 at hotmail.com]
> Sent: 05 October 2004 15:31
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Vacuum article and how to get in touch
>
> Aloha!
>
> I read an article about vacuum and others. I wonder if one can contact
> the
> author of an article or the person who did edit it last.
>
> Steffen Schenk
>
> -------
> Vacuum was when the volume of the O - room was bigger
> than the volume of the mass of it particles.
>
> See my threads or those I replyed to:
> http://209.25.203.234/search.php?
> - type misterblues in the search field on the
>   upper right side
> - click Search Now at the bottom of page
>
> Go here and watch the video:
> http://makeashorterlink.com/?E29515A09
>
> My personal web space:
> http://www.mdcc.de/note.image/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
David Friedland wrote:

>
> See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]
>
> It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226
> milliard gold marks"

When people write for a wide audience, I often see "thousand
million", which is less graceful, but unambiguous. Alternatively,
[[milliard]] is a quick way to inform the person unfamiliar with
the term (and it forestalls editors "fixing" the "thousand million"
usage).

Good writing for the rocket/arugula case would say "rocket lettuce"
or "arugula lettuce", and/or link them, because a reader from India
will probably not recognize either term!

It's certainly possible for Americans to use terms that mystify
others - even the OED doesn't know "bumbershoot", without which the
Seattle festival is unintelligible - and likewise for other
dialects, but our goal should be to explain it all, not try to
cover it up.

Anyway, there are a bunch of Britishisms I prefer, like "US"
instead of "U.S.", so there's no preference setting that
would be completely satisfactory to me. There are also
subdialects to think of; US military usage is closer to British
English than civilian usage, due to years of NATO coordination.

Stan


from_name: Steve Miller's Hotmail

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vacuum article and how to get in touch

body:
Aloha!

I read an article about vacuum and others. I wonder if one can contact the
author of an article or the person who did edit it last.

Steffen Schenk

-------
Vacuum was when the volume of the O - room was bigger
than the volume of the mass of it particles.

See my threads or those I replyed to:
http://209.25.203.234/search.php?
- type misterblues in the search field on the
  upper right side
- click Search Now at the bottom of page

Go here and watch the video:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E29515A09

My personal web space:
http://www.mdcc.de/note.image/


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Who founded Wikipedia?

body:
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 05:32:48 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
> > http://www.thelantern.com/news/2004/10/04/Campus/Larouche.Pac.Group.Sings.Shouts.Argues.With.Bush.Supporters-740977.shtml?page=2
>
> In case they update the story, I wanted to preserve it in the logs for
> posterity, it's just too funny...

Funny, but in a slightly worrying way: given that it comes in the
middle of what is essentially a list of reasons this man [who, by the
way, I've never heard of, being British, but anyway] is a bit of a
crackpot, one has to wonder what the writer thought they were
referring to here. Perhaps somebody fed them the line as a joke, to
see if they'd include it without knowing what they were talking about?
He sure sounds like an odd fellow, so maybe the writer just thought
"an encyclopedia that anyone can edit? That sounds like a rather
stupid idea, it must be his..."

BTW, I like the description of this guy's father on an official
biography as a "technologist and internationally active consultant in
the footwear industry". How, um, glamourous... :D

<geek>And what's with the "one page view, and then you have to
register; or you could just block our cookies" thing on that
site?</geek>

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> David Friedland wrote:
>
>> There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and
>> not significantly burden editors.
>
>
>
> See, the trouble is that both of those assertions probably aren't the
> case and have been questioned already on this list without sufficient
> answer.
>
>
> - d.

In fact no one has replied in specific to my most recent proposal as to
why it might be unacceptable
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/035317.html)

- David