subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
On 2/6/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Its not a matter of handicaps, its about facilitation of an annyoying
> problem of having two "wiki"s in the same title. The extra characters no doubt tax
> the servers.

So in other words - you find typing Wikipedia:WikiProject <xxx> a PITA
and want to type Wikiproject:<xxx>.  Not entirely an invalid point but
I don't think we create namespaces for the purposes of typing
convenience.  The content of WikiProjects is quite validly within the
definition of what the Wikipedia: namespace is supposed to be, so I
don't see an issue there.  We created Portal: because portals aren't
really part of the encyclopedia proper but are content for the users,
not for the project, so placing them in Wikipedia: didn't really work.
 We split Template: from MediaWiki: because templating is different
from interface string localization.

It sounds like what you really need are shortcut redirects or something.

-Matt


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

body:
On mediawiki.org we quite often seem to get new pages created similar to the
following:

Page name: /w/w/index.php?title=Extension:Guestbook/w/w/index.php
Page text: Dear web-master ! I looked your site and I want to say that yor
very well made it .All information on this site is represented for users. A
site is made professionally. So to hold !

The similarities are that the pages titles always contain index.php?title=xx
(with various depths of /w or /wiki) and that the message is congratulating
us on our site.  The user is always an anon, but without being able to
search the deleted pages I don't know whether the IP address is always the
same.  There never seems to be any link spam or any of the other common
vandalism/spamming traits in the page text.

Have any other wikis experienced this?  Some kind of spambot gone wrong, or
a mischievous repeat visitor?  It's happened too often for me to think it's
a genuine congratulatory comment posted by someone with a screwy browser...

Is there anything we can do about it?

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of logos within Wikimedia sites

body:
On 2/7/07, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Geni,
>
> I must say, I admire your intellectual consistency, if
> nothing else.  By extension, all Wikimedia logos
> should also be deleted from Commons since they are
> unfree.

Pretty much. They can be hosted locally on projects for the places
where they have to be included (wiki.png and cross project links on
main page) and on:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

> However, since the logos exist to help foster brand
> identity and benefit the project, I think a better
> solution is to set appropriate usage guidelines and
> allow them to be used by users within the various
> Wikimedia sites.

I think that would result in a mind bending complex situation. For
example who really owns the copyright on this image:

[[Image:Wikipe-tan-in-seaside.png]]

(the likely free version exists at
[[Image:Wikipe-tan-in-seasidewhiteball.PNG]] )

> I don't think it is either hard or
> burdensome to regard "Copyright by Wikimedia" as an
> exception to Wikipedia's fair use criteria,

Results in a very mess situation with derivatives and the use of the
logo when it isn't needed.

>and for
> the most part that has been the going practice since
> forever.
>

Apparently it has been going practice forever to tag images which
people had uploaded without copyright tag with
[[Template:GFDL-presumed]] I was not exactly happy about that either.

Our past copyright practices have been somewhere between poor and
appalling but the cleanup has begun.

> Unfortunately, since the WMF does own the logos, a
> certain amount of asking permission does seem to make
> sense, but this thread seems to reveal that the
> boundaries for what is or is not permitted are largely
> unresolved at this time.

We do not allow "with permission" images on en.

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: stvrtg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
On 2/7/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> And many of those same programmers will tell you that in practice,
> namespaces can generate their own nightmare of trying to figure out
> which namespace things are in this week, and it's often the case that
> the horrendous namespace structure was imposed by busybody
> coding-standard-writers who don't actually make any useful contributions
> to functionality. 1/2 :-)

I guess  programmers were a bad example. :|

I work in several wikiprojects, and have yet to hear someone say - "you
> know, we're really being handicapped by not having our own namespace".
>

Its not a matter of handicaps, its about facilitation of an annyoying
problem
of having two "wiki"s in the same title. The extra characters no doubt tax
the servers.

-SV


from_name: Matthew Flaschen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>> I'm not sure if the Wikipedia cookie is
>>> being treated as authentication for the purposes of this definition, but if it is, caching
>>> the site-wide CSS or JS seems unlikely to hurt (since it really is "public") - but
>>> obviously caching the user-specific CSS or JS would be bad.
>> Why?  User-specific CSS and JS is still public.
>
> That's true - I had assumed it was private (not that I've ever put anything there that I
> particularly cared about being private) - but you're correct, it's not ... which in turn
> raises another question:
>
> root at bling:/var/www/hosts/mediawiki/wiki/skins# curl --silent --include --head
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nickj/monobook.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"
> HTTP/1.0 200 OK
> Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:17:41 GMT
> Server: Apache
> X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.2
> Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=2678400
> Last-Modified: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:56:29 GMT
> Content-Type: text/javascript; charset=utf-8
> X-Cache: MISS from sq16.wikimedia.org
> X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq16.wikimedia.org:80
> Via: 1.0 sq16.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE9)
> Connection: close
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> So, the question is:
> Why is the cache-control line for raw custom JS and CSS marked as "private" ?
>
>>From http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9.1 , it defines the
> "private" directive as:
> -------------------------------
> private
>     Indicates that all or part of the response message is intended for a single user and MUST NOT
>     be cached by a shared cache. This allows an origin server to state that the specified parts
>     of the response are intended for only one user and are not a valid response for requests by
>     other users. A private (non-shared) cache MAY cache the response.
> -------------------------------
>
> So, if the web page is public anyway, and people *do* use other people's custom CSS & JS (as I'm
> doing), why mark it as private when action=raw, and thus defeat shared caching?

I have no idea.  I suspect with widely used scripts like popups that
could significantly degrade performance.

P.S. To clarify, user css and js can't be *edited* by other users
(admins can edit everything)

Matthew Flaschen

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from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
stvrtg wrote:
>
> [[Namespaces]], as any programmer can tell you, are a convenient and novel
> way to separate different kinds of data - to give indentify a kind of
> context for the data therin.
>
> On WP, the general principle has been to keep the main free of metadata.
> Meta stuff
> traditionally belongs in the Wikipedia: namespace. I suggest the idea
> because
> using a separate project namespace might be a way to feature projects to
> emphasise
> the idea of getting used to joining and working within certain projects .
>
> With WP growth the need for specialised meta namespaces seems a bit obvious
> to me
> - but thats one basic argument. As other wikis have done, maybe you might
> want to
> ask why those who have have already done so?
>

If I understand your arguments correctly, your main reason is to
emphasize the existence of projects so people get used to working within
them.

Other ideas you mention:
-because namespaces are novel
-because namespaces are useful in separating data types
-because as the size of Wikipedia grows, the need for more namespaces is
obvious
-because other wikis have created multiple namespaces

(I'm not sure what to make of your "as any programmer can tell you..."
lead in. If you're suggesting that any programmer would immediately
agree with you, I can tell you that you are incorrect. I have over 15
years of professional programming experience, and am all too familiar
with the idea, especially common among programmers, that "if a feature
exists, we must use it.")

Of your reasoning, the only one that seems to have any validity is the
idea that having a separate namespace will draw attention to projects
and encourage people to work in them. However, I don't really see how
that will be true.

-Rich Holton


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bandspam

body:
On 2/7/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> <gripe>
> I suggest the new term "bandspam" to refer to the promotional pushing of
> song links etc
> as a way to differentiate internal linkspam from the nominal external
> variety. Bands of course
> are the most typical form, but sometimes people
> Im of course talking about hatnotes - anything on disambig pages should be
> fair game.
>
> Current example; some fan pushing this important note at the top of [[Space
> suit]]:
> *
>     "Space Suit" is also an instrumental track from They Might Be Giants'
>      1992 album* Apollo 18<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_18_%28album%29>
> *.*
>   A *space suit* is a complex system of gaments, equipment and environmental
>
>   systems designed to keep a person alive...
>
> -SV

{{sofixit}}

Ohh, wait, I guess you have :P


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] An expanded-topic Mailing List

body:
on 2/7/07 4:35 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm at macgyvermagic at gmail.com wrote:

> social/cultural discussions are too likely
> to turn into giant flamewars.

They don't have to deteriorate into that; either the flamers control it or
the serious participants do - you can decide.

> There's no point in such discussion as you're very unlikely to actually
> convince someone to change their views.

How about participating to learn - not to convince.

Marc Riddell


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto 'd Sera

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fair-use furry porn on Russian Wikipedia

body:
Hi!

> I become
> concerned when an allegation of copyright infringement is used
> tactically to achieve a removal of supposed pornography.
Yeap! Down here pretty often Communist morals have turned into Nationalistic
morals while remaining just as dumb. Too bad that people DO have sex all
over the world, not all of them reach orgasm from the sole sight of
Hitler/Stalin's portraits and all of them DO read weird linguistic imports
like ????... They DO deserve a fair source of information about it.

It would also be hard to explain where exactly this article can be deemed as
worse than the set of illustrations enclosed in
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anal_sex (faint ye not, ye blesseth moralists! people
have "depraved sex" in the U.K., too :)

One thing our "Holy Fighters for the Final Solution of the Cyrillic Problem"
could think about it is making a good translation into their idioms of the
quoted article. They could also open the equivalent of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Sexuality in their own editions.

Mind you, one could also be constructive and add a "quotation needed" mark
in places where the article seems to come out of nowhere (this much is 100%
true and I do believe that sources can and MUST be found, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words ). But I suppose
those people would rather die than be constructive towards a hated Cyrillic
wiki, right? :))))) My God, how boringly predictable this soccer hooliganism
is...

As for the pics, when copyright is a problem you can always launch an
informal campaign to get young people draw them for your wiki and donate
them. Ru.Wiki does not have a "Donate" link, I'd say you could open one to
collect (at least) pictures that people can donate to Commons.

Digital cameras are everywhere, so an "Illustrated Russian Wiki" project
could use at least content donations. I'd also say that finding a Furry Porn
designer wishing to have his work exposed shouldn't be too difficult, these
days. It would solve all of your troubles. You could put a stamp
"Illustration needed" on the pages and drive traffic there.

I liked the article (and the pics). It was very clear without being
exceedingly vulgar, and as a non-native Russian speaker it did teach me
something about contemporary Russian slang, which is what a wiki is supposed
to do. So my thanks to the author(s).

Yet the concern about *weasel words* remains. On such potentially
controversial matters the risk of falling into the "original research"
boundaries is quite substantial. That's the part of the pillars I myself
sometimes hate, yet pillars are pillars, no matter how little one likes
them.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 12:55:35AM -0500, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> >
> > It should be possible to serve these files compressed through Apache
> > with mod_gzip set up, which should squish them by probably 2/3.
>
> Is there a reason everything shouldn't be compressed?
>
MediaWiki already compresses all wiki pages. But static files are being
served from apache directly and thus aren't compressed currently.

	jens


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

body:
I think #wikipedia does that job well enough.

On 07/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> To one & all,
>
> I have been participating in this Mailing List for a relatively short
> time,
> but in that time I have found us to be a somewhat eclectic- &
> diverse-thinking group. This turns me on. (OK, I'm easy :-) )
>
> I realize this List is restricted to subjects directly related to all
> things
> Wikipedia. What would you think, and how would you feel about creating a
> similar Wikipedia-community-based Mailing List in which broader
> sociocultural issues are discussed?
>
> Would you participate in such a group?
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> Marc Riddell
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 05:17:44PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I took a quick peek at the sampled squid log and found that CSS and JS
> files together are eating a lot of bandwidth; together they make up
> about 20% of what's served:
>
> https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Squid_bandwidth_breakdown
>
> (May be inaccurate due to coding mistakes in my counter or weird dupe
> caching effects.)
>
> It should be possible to serve these files compressed through Apache
> with mod_gzip set up, which should squish them by probably 2/3.
>
All projects have the same codebase, so that main.css is the same for
de.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org. Can we move the common CSS and JS
to a common address? This would reduce the number of identical copies that we
store in the squids - and of course it would reduce the load time for
users accessing different projects.

Regards,

	jens


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Possible spam]Re:  Bandspam

body:
On Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:32:07 -0500, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:

>I suggest the new term "bandspam" to refer to the promotional pushing of
>song links

What's wrong with the existing term, Vanispamcruftisement?

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Possible spam]Re: Bandspam

body:
On 07/02/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:32:07 -0500, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:

> >I suggest the new term "bandspam" to refer to the promotional pushing of
> >song links

> What's wrong with the existing term, Vanispamcruftisement?

It assumes bad faith.

We've been through this particular one on the list before. A useful
way of dealing with it is to put {{otheruses}} on the main article and
make a disambiguation page with two entries. Everything is where it
belongs and the song links at the top of generic articles don't make
you go "wtf?"

- d.


from_name: Jim Hu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Advice on a custom extension

body:
Hi,

I'm thinking about writing an extension...and I haven't really done
one totally from scratch yet, so please forgive the waste of
bandwidth if I'm missing something in the documentation...and the
length of this message.

Here's what I want to do and why.  I'm running some wikis related to
biology/genomics.  We use Cite.php, and I'd like to automatically
create pages for the references cited by citations in Cite. php.
I've already modified Cite so that if someone enters "PMID:<id
number>" as either the input text or the name= part, a block of code
(essentially an extension of Cite where I've added a "hook" in
Cite.php) goes to Pubmed, retrieves the detailed information about
the citation and substitutes the reference text.

For example, if you have

	<ref name='PMID:2167309'/>

as the third citation, the reference that shows up is

	3. ? Rathod PK & Khatri A (1990) Synthesis and antiproliferative
activity of threo-5-fluoro-L-dihydroorotate. J Biol Chem 265:14242-9
PMID:2167311

I like this because it reduces markup clutter that is a criticism of
Cite.  The next thing I want to do is change the external link to
Pubmed to an internal link to a page in the wiki, where users can add
commentary about the reference.  These pages will be stubbed with
more information from Pubmed, including a template, the abstract, and
the reference.  I'm thinking of two possible strategies:

1) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when the parser
renders a page with a <ref> tag.
2) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when a user clicks
on the link in the references section

These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but what I like about #2
is that I don't create pages unless someone actually wants to look at
them (upon reflection, this may create pages when the search engines
hit the links, but that may be OK) and, more importantly, I think
this can be done so that the page will be created if someone searches
for the reference and the citation doesn't already exist.

The way I'm thinking of doing this is to hook into AlternateEdit and
branch off to something that grabs the desired template from the
templates namespace, populates the wikitext with data, saves it, and
redirects to the saved page.  Questions:

Q1) Am I nuts? (default=true) Is there anything that I'm forgetting
that will make this blow up?
Q2) Is that the right place to hook?
Q3) What's the best way to do the create/save/redirect step?
Q4) Has anyone already done something like this that I can adapt?
Q5) Would this be useful to anyone else?

For Q2 and Q3, I don't want the user to see the edit form.  I want it
to look like the page was there all along.  For #3 I have a kludgy
way to do it: create the page as XML and run maintenance/importDump.
There must be a better way, right? Thanks for any advice.

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 2/7/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> There is the "official policy" that has been discussed on Meta at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy
>
> There is also the derivitive logo policy that is perhaps more closely
> related to what you are talking about:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_logo_derivatives
>
> Although on both of these pages it should be apparent that the policy is
> still "in progress" and not something that has been formally decided.

Keep in mind that there are the formal visual identity guidelines:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_visual_identity_guidelines

Although these seem mainly to apply to the Wikimedia logo and not to
the individual project logos also.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jens Frank wrote:
> All projects have the same codebase, so that main.css is the same for
> de.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org. Can we move the common CSS and JS
> to a common address?

In theory.

1) Where? Upload cluster or something else?
2) How to set up compression for it?

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
To be honest, I wouldn't be interested.
I get enough email as it is and social/cultural discussions are too likely
to turn into giant flamewars.
There's no point in such discussion as you're very unlikely to actually
convince someone to change their views.

Mgm

On 2/7/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/6/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/6/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I think #wikipedia does that job well enough.
> >
> >
> > IRC is a cesspool - you should include a warning to people before
> sending
> > them that way.
>
> I second that.  Last time I was in #wikipedia, I actually got
> chastised for trying to draw attention to something actually relevant
> to Wikipedia.
>
> Anyhow, I would be potentially interested in the proposed list.
>
> -Sage
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-07

body:
On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 12:15:35AM -0800, brion at pobox.com wrote:
> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:
>
> This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19811).
>
> Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
> Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
> Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...
>
>    3 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
>       * Blank ref followed by ref with content  [Fixed between 06-Feb-2007 08:15:27, 1.10alpha (r19802) and 07-Feb-2007 08:15:18, 1.10alpha (r19811)]

Since I complained about the language of this test harness a month or
so ago, I guess it's incumbent on me to say "wow; it looks whizzer now!"

:-)

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


from_name: Jim Wilson

body:
Hi Jim,

You mention that you might want to have the reference pages created 'on
demand' - if so, how do you know what content to put into those pages?  Is
it simply static text as read from a Template?   And if so, what would that
Template say?

-- Jim R. Wilson

On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm thinking about writing an extension...and I haven't really done
> one totally from scratch yet, so please forgive the waste of
> bandwidth if I'm missing something in the documentation...and the
> length of this message.
>
> Here's what I want to do and why.  I'm running some wikis related to
> biology/genomics.  We use Cite.php, and I'd like to automatically
> create pages for the references cited by citations in Cite. php.
> I've already modified Cite so that if someone enters "PMID:<id
> number>" as either the input text or the name= part, a block of code
> (essentially an extension of Cite where I've added a "hook" in
> Cite.php) goes to Pubmed, retrieves the detailed information about
> the citation and substitutes the reference text.
>
> For example, if you have
>
>         <ref name='PMID:2167309'/>
>
> as the third citation, the reference that shows up is
>
>         3. ? Rathod PK & Khatri A (1990) Synthesis and antiproliferative
> activity of threo-5-fluoro-L-dihydroorotate. J Biol Chem 265:14242-9
> PMID:2167311
>
> I like this because it reduces markup clutter that is a criticism of
> Cite.  The next thing I want to do is change the external link to
> Pubmed to an internal link to a page in the wiki, where users can add
> commentary about the reference.  These pages will be stubbed with
> more information from Pubmed, including a template, the abstract, and
> the reference.  I'm thinking of two possible strategies:
>
> 1) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when the parser
> renders a page with a <ref> tag.
> 2) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when a user clicks
> on the link in the references section
>
> These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but what I like about #2
> is that I don't create pages unless someone actually wants to look at
> them (upon reflection, this may create pages when the search engines
> hit the links, but that may be OK) and, more importantly, I think
> this can be done so that the page will be created if someone searches
> for the reference and the citation doesn't already exist.
>
> The way I'm thinking of doing this is to hook into AlternateEdit and
> branch off to something that grabs the desired template from the
> templates namespace, populates the wikitext with data, saves it, and
> redirects to the saved page.  Questions:
>
> Q1) Am I nuts? (default=true) Is there anything that I'm forgetting
> that will make this blow up?
> Q2) Is that the right place to hook?
> Q3) What's the best way to do the create/save/redirect step?
> Q4) Has anyone already done something like this that I can adapt?
> Q5) Would this be useful to anyone else?
>
> For Q2 and Q3, I don't want the user to see the edit form.  I want it
> to look like the page was there all along.  For #3 I have a kludgy
> way to do it: create the page as XML and run maintenance/importDump.
> There must be a better way, right? Thanks for any advice.
>
> Jim
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
On 2/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06/02/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Keep in mind that there are the formal visual identity guidelines:
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_visual_identity_guidelines
> > Although these seem mainly to apply to the Wikimedia logo and not to
> > the individual project logos also.
>
> Delphine clarified that this was the case on the comcom list as well -
> the visual identity guidelines are specifically about the Wikimedia
> logo, not the puzzle globe.
>
> Which may be something worth reconsidering, seeing as it's "Wikipedia"
> (and the puzzle globe) that's the number four brand by some reckoning
> or other, and no-one's ever heard of Wikimedia.

Yes. I think that the guideline about the minimum margins to be placed
around the logo (when printed, or combined with other material) is one
that should be applied to all of the project logos, for example.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
On 2/7/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> The extra characters no doubt tax
> the servers.

The extra characters do not tax the servers.


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is cute.
>      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NotSuckBanner.jpg
>
> It strikes me that images such as this one, which use project logos (not
> the Foundation logo) should
>
>   a) be available under a specific license describing how they can be
> reused without permission
>   b) be fairly unrestricted for community use, allowing derivations
>

Sounds extreamly messy. Define community.

> There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
> "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
> Debian's dual logos here:
>     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]
>
> --SJ
>


body:
On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is cute.
>      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NotSuckBanner.jpg
>
> It strikes me that images such as this one, which use project logos (not
> the Foundation logo) should
>
>   a) be available under a specific license describing how they can be
> reused without permission
>   b) be fairly unrestricted for community use, allowing derivations
>

Sounds extreamly messy. Define community.

> There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
> "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
> Debian's dual logos here:
>     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]
>
> --SJ
>

>From what I understand the result of that is that most people use the
free one for pretty much everything.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiDump

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

? Firefoxman wrote:
> It (http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20070124/) seems to have been stuck
> for a while. Is it broken?

Yes, grab the next one when it reaches the part you want (running
currently).

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFyjTcwRnhpk1wk44RAol0AJ9AwOIEiDd3iic4uq0kvV6KJp6b0gCglwvY
3YGwCf2NspbyqclQtS9lJdw=
=XkjT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dr Steel

body:
It appears someone else already did, but I doubt it will remain. It doesn't
follow notability guidelines [[WP:N]] and it isn't independantly verifiable
as far as I can tell.

Mgm

On 2/6/07, dean williamson <williamson_dean at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can you please add a page dedicated to Dr Steel and his army of Toy
> soldiers.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: · Firefoxman

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiDump

body:
It (http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20070124/) seems to have been stuck
for a while. Is it broken?

--
-Firefoxman


subject: [WikiEN-l] Bandspam

body:
On 2/7/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <gripe>
> I suggest the new term "bandspam" to refer to the promotional pushing of

Atleast it isnt a -cruft.

--
-Firefoxman


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with local wikipedia dump

body:
On 2/7/07, err <err at netstudent.polito.it> wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> Don`t know if it`s the right place to ask, but trying anyway...
>
> I`ve tried to install on my pc a wikipedia dump from
> download.wikipedia.org:
> - I installed mediawiki-1.9.0rc2 on php 5.1.6 and mysql 4.1.22
> - I downloaded and imported on mysql the
> itwiki-20061021-pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 (I was interested keeping
> history, the 20061021 is a dump done from mw 1.9) with mwdumper.jar.
>
> All seems to have correctly finished, I can see all the pages, but in
> almost every page there are present a lot of spurious characters and texts,
> like "{{#if:" followed by what appear interwiki links or something like
> this.
>
> What I have missed in installation? Some option in LocalSettings.php?
> I had this problem with also with the older dump...
>
> Thanks,
> --
> E.Richiardone
> Linux.Studenti staff
> http://linux.studenti.polito.it
>
> Have you installed the ParserFunctions extension?

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


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] svwikis evil twin, Metapedia

body:
Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:

>Hello,
>
>(I?m new to this emaillist so please forgive any mistakes I make.)
>
>I?m the press contact for the Swedish Wikipedia (
>http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal). Recently I was
>contacted by a journalist who pointed out a fairly new wiki called
>Metapedia, at http://www.metapedia.se, which was founded by a known racist
>and leader of a small nationalistic (and antidemocratic) party in Sweden (I
>can give several newspaper articles to back up that claim.). I checked it
>out and discovered several things:
>
>1. It used MediaWiki and thus look *very* similiar to Wikipedia. Even their
>logo is in the same colour range. One could easily mistake one for the
>other. This is one spinoff effect of the free MediaWiki, and probably one we
>will see again. But the site uses the same phrases as svwiki, such as
>L?sv?rd artikel (featured article) and so on.
>
Such phrases are not trademarked, nor as I'm aware something you could
trademark, which would be the only reason to consider them protected
anyway.  The "look and feel" might be copyrighted by somebody, but I'm
not sure exactly who would hold out here, especially if most of this is
part of the standard install of MediaWiki software.  That interface
would be GPL'd because of the software.  The "main page" might be
copyrighted by specific Swedish Wikipedia contributors, but that is even
debatable here and not something to worry to hard about.

>2. It has around 1300 articles, but the majority is about either a) people
>connected to nazism, holocaust denial or critics of the Jewish conspiracy
>(and their works)
>
While not something I would do personally, there is nothing here illegal.

>3. Their articles are often copied and edited versions of the svwiki
>counterparts, with apparent POV-slant in their favour.
>
<*snip*>

>Since Wikipedia is GFDL they could easily have borrowed that article. (But I
>guess it didn?t suit their purposes.)
>
This is where they might get into a bit of trouble.  This is not a
violation of the terms of the GFDL to have copied these articles and
altered them in such a fashion, but they must also pass on the same
licensing terms onto others who come and visit their website.  If you or
somebody you know (with a note on the Swedish Wikipedia's village pump,
for instance) want to enforce your copyright on content you have
written, you might want to let this website owner know that you would
like the full terms of the GFDL to be enforced.  Who knows, you might
even be able to move some of these articles back to sv.wikipedia if they
are of any better quality, of course correcting for POV issues.

>4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
>called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
>this makes sense? Also, they have not given the full text of the
>GFDL-licence. Don?t you have to do that?
>
Even Wikimedia projects have had some problems with this in the past, so
I wouldn't throw stones too far on this one.  The full text must be
linked somehow and "on the network", however you want to define that.  A
"local copy" on the website itself would be a good idea, but I'm not
sure how necessary that is from a legal standpoint.  A copy is required
to be in the same medium, such as a paper copy of the license if you
have a printed version, or it must be a file on a CD-ROM, etc.

>My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
>and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better? Unfortunally, I
>suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
>shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow? The
>journalist who called me seemed to hold Wikipedia in high esteem and seemed
>also to want to know what would be our reaction to this "evil twin"-version
>of Wikipedia. I hope you can help me with your opinion.
>
>I await your answers.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Lennart, aka Hannibal
>
If there are copyright violations, you can try and enforce the
copyright.  That would mean enforcing the GFDL.  I'm not familiar with
Swedish copyright and publishing law, but there may be some libel issues
if the POV goes a little to far for somebody who is currently living,
such as en.wikipedia had with John Siegenthaler.  In that case it would
be the person who is "featured" that would have to start legal action if
they didn't like what was being said about them.

There may be something like the German law that restricts the usage of
symbols of the Nazi party and name, but I hope you know what would apply
in Sweden in that situation.  All you could do there anyway is to
contact the appropriate law enforcement agency if it is illegal.

Otherwise, don't give them too much attention.  Groups like this love
and seek attention, and if you deprive them of that attention they soon
fold up and disappear.  Because this group obviously has an axe to grind
and political message, I wouldn't worry about trying to compete and out
do them.  se.wikipedia is in a strong enough position that the best
response you can give to a reporter is "Yeah, I've heard about them.
 They have nothing to do with Wikipedia."  Don't comment any more, and
if you are pressed for more from a reporter, note that the content of
se.wikipedia is available under the GFDL, and that anybody can copy this
content, even if you don't necessarily agree with their political
idologies.  It might end up being a rather interesting conversation
about free content licenses and what even the reporter and their
newspaper could do with Wikipedia articles.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
For your consideration and consternation...

Is it:
A) Ilegal
B) Immoral
C) Fattening

...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
erased that section of the image with photoshop)...

Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
over again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Q_clearance&action=history

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On 2/6/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> I took a quick peek at the sampled squid log and found that CSS and JS
> files together are eating a lot of bandwidth; together they make up
> about 20% of what's served:
>
> https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Squid_bandwidth_breakdown
>
> (May be inaccurate due to coding mistakes in my counter or weird dupe
> caching effects.)
>
> It should be possible to serve these files compressed through Apache
> with mod_gzip set up, which should squish them by probably 2/3.

Another option (which won't require more sysadminning or server CPU)
is to compress them "manually" by stripping all whitespace and
comments.

For example, looking at
  http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55
it appears that comments and whitespace comprise more than 20% of the
bytes in the file:
> maincss.gsub(/\/\*.*?\*\//m, '').gsub(/\s{2,}/, ' ').length / maincss.length.to_f
=> 0.79468590655243

You could likely do better with a real CSS parser.


subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
On 2/7/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/02/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For your consideration and consternation...
> >
> > Is it:
> > A) Ilegal
> > B) Immoral
> > C) Fattening
> >
> > ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
> > staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
> > came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
> > badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
> > is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
> > Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
> > photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
> > government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
> > erased that section of the image with photoshop)...
> >
> > Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
> > and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
> > what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
> > have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
> > over again.
>
> I am reminded of a nice chap, editing from somewhere deep in *.mil,
> who kept trying to remove a map of the Green Zone, citing "operational
> security" reasons. The fact that we had obtained the map from the
> website of a US Congressman didn't seem to faze him...
>
> (On examination, that claim boiled down to the user not understanding
> that a rule which said *he* couldn't talk about something didn't have
> to apply to everyone else)
>
> In this case... if there is a legal issue, please direct him to Brad
> and ask him to cite chapter and verse.

Can someone ensure that Brad is aware of this and doesn't get
blindsided by a call from someone at the Department of Energy raising
random threats of government security stuff?

Thanks...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

body:
On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
> "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
> Debian's dual logos here:
>     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]

And we have our own open-use community logo, although not widely
recognized yet. Please take a look at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Community_Logos

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


from_name: Annie

subject: [Wikipedia-l]  Milestones

body:
Congratulations to the Italian, Finnish and V?ro Wikipedias!

Another milestone is approaching: Hungarian Wikipedia is about to reach
50,000 articles today. (It has 49,958 right now. :-)


body:
If I want to learn about other people's views I can read Wikipedia.
It would have a similar effect and save a lot of inbox space.

Mgm

On 2/7/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/7/07 4:35 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm at macgyvermagic at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > social/cultural discussions are too likely
> > to turn into giant flamewars.
>
> They don't have to deteriorate into that; either the flamers control it or
> the serious participants do - you can decide.
>
>
> > There's no point in such discussion as you're very unlikely to actually
> > convince someone to change their views.
>
> How about participating to learn - not to convince.
>
> Marc Riddell
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cafepress store redesign

body:
--- Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Ben Yates wrote:
> > I just redesigned the layout of the cafepress store --
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia .  Let me know what you think.
>
> The edit link is cool ;-)

Indeed. Nice work.

> Some suggestions:
>

> * if you move the "other wikimedia projects" right beside the "jigsaw
> globe" you have two items of similar height in the first row. Walt
> Whitman could be placed in the third row centered.

I agree. Also, in retrospect, this should have been set-up from the start as the Wiki*m*edia store
that has direct links to a Wikipedia section. But changing that now might be a PITA.

> * "Copyright ? 1999-2007 CafePress.com. All rights reserved." - are the
> contents of the site really copyright Cafepress? Might leave a wrong
> impression about the copyright status of the things presented there.

That is an annoyingly confusing notice. I distinctly remember reading on that site that only the
Cafepress-specific formatting and content is copyright by them and that anything uploaded is the
responsibility of the copyright owners and trademark holders of that content. I just can?t find
the page where I read that.

-- mav

____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news


body:
Hi Jim,

The content will come from a query to an external web service, which
will be used to fill the template.  This is based on the page title
being parsed to look for an accession to the external database.

Does that make sense?

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Feb 7, 2007, at 12:06 PM, Jim Wilson wrote:

> Hi Jim,
>
> You mention that you might want to have the reference pages created
> 'on
> demand' - if so, how do you know what content to put into those
> pages?  Is
> it simply static text as read from a Template?   And if so, what
> would that
> Template say?
>
> -- Jim R. Wilson
>
> On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm thinking about writing an extension...and I haven't really done
>> one totally from scratch yet, so please forgive the waste of
>> bandwidth if I'm missing something in the documentation...and the
>> length of this message.
>>
>> Here's what I want to do and why.  I'm running some wikis related to
>> biology/genomics.  We use Cite.php, and I'd like to automatically
>> create pages for the references cited by citations in Cite. php.
>> I've already modified Cite so that if someone enters "PMID:<id
>> number>" as either the input text or the name= part, a block of code
>> (essentially an extension of Cite where I've added a "hook" in
>> Cite.php) goes to Pubmed, retrieves the detailed information about
>> the citation and substitutes the reference text.
>>
>> For example, if you have
>>
>>         <ref name='PMID:2167309'/>
>>
>> as the third citation, the reference that shows up is
>>
>>         3. ? Rathod PK & Khatri A (1990) Synthesis and
>> antiproliferative
>> activity of threo-5-fluoro-L-dihydroorotate. J Biol Chem 265:14242-9
>> PMID:2167311
>>
>> I like this because it reduces markup clutter that is a criticism of
>> Cite.  The next thing I want to do is change the external link to
>> Pubmed to an internal link to a page in the wiki, where users can add
>> commentary about the reference.  These pages will be stubbed with
>> more information from Pubmed, including a template, the abstract, and
>> the reference.  I'm thinking of two possible strategies:
>>
>> 1) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when the parser
>> renders a page with a <ref> tag.
>> 2) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when a user clicks
>> on the link in the references section
>>
>> These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but what I like about #2
>> is that I don't create pages unless someone actually wants to look at
>> them (upon reflection, this may create pages when the search engines
>> hit the links, but that may be OK) and, more importantly, I think
>> this can be done so that the page will be created if someone searches
>> for the reference and the citation doesn't already exist.
>>
>> The way I'm thinking of doing this is to hook into AlternateEdit and
>> branch off to something that grabs the desired template from the
>> templates namespace, populates the wikitext with data, saves it, and
>> redirects to the saved page.  Questions:
>>
>> Q1) Am I nuts? (default=true) Is there anything that I'm forgetting
>> that will make this blow up?
>> Q2) Is that the right place to hook?
>> Q3) What's the best way to do the create/save/redirect step?
>> Q4) Has anyone already done something like this that I can adapt?
>> Q5) Would this be useful to anyone else?
>>
>> For Q2 and Q3, I don't want the user to see the edit form.  I want it
>> to look like the page was there all along.  For #3 I have a kludgy
>> way to do it: create the page as XML and run maintenance/importDump.
>> There must be a better way, right? Thanks for any advice.
>>
>> Jim
>> =====================================
>> Jim Hu
>> Associate Professor
>> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
>> 2128 TAMU
>> Texas A&M Univ.
>> College Station, TX 77843-2128
>> 979-862-4054
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
> and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
> what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
> have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
> over again.
>
I really really hope my large number of tax dollars is not paying the
salary of this lamer...

Stan


body:
That makes sense, though I wonder, does the web-service already have a
web-interface?  I guess what I'm getting at is, if the information already
exists on another web site, why do you want to duplicate it in your own
wiki?

(Not sure I understand all the problem parameters - I want to help, I'm just
trying to get a grasp of what's involved.  Thanks in advance.)

On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> The content will come from a query to an external web service, which
> will be used to fill the template.  This is based on the page title
> being parsed to look for an accession to the external database.
>
> Does that make sense?
>
> Jim
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> On Feb 7, 2007, at 12:06 PM, Jim Wilson wrote:
>
> > Hi Jim,
> >
> > You mention that you might want to have the reference pages created
> > 'on
> > demand' - if so, how do you know what content to put into those
> > pages?  Is
> > it simply static text as read from a Template?   And if so, what
> > would that
> > Template say?
> >
> > -- Jim R. Wilson
> >
> > On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm thinking about writing an extension...and I haven't really done
> >> one totally from scratch yet, so please forgive the waste of
> >> bandwidth if I'm missing something in the documentation...and the
> >> length of this message.
> >>
> >> Here's what I want to do and why.  I'm running some wikis related to
> >> biology/genomics.  We use Cite.php, and I'd like to automatically
> >> create pages for the references cited by citations in Cite. php.
> >> I've already modified Cite so that if someone enters "PMID:<id
> >> number>" as either the input text or the name= part, a block of code
> >> (essentially an extension of Cite where I've added a "hook" in
> >> Cite.php) goes to Pubmed, retrieves the detailed information about
> >> the citation and substitutes the reference text.
> >>
> >> For example, if you have
> >>
> >>         <ref name='PMID:2167309'/>
> >>
> >> as the third citation, the reference that shows up is
> >>
> >>         3. ? Rathod PK & Khatri A (1990) Synthesis and
> >> antiproliferative
> >> activity of threo-5-fluoro-L-dihydroorotate. J Biol Chem 265:14242-9
> >> PMID:2167311
> >>
> >> I like this because it reduces markup clutter that is a criticism of
> >> Cite.  The next thing I want to do is change the external link to
> >> Pubmed to an internal link to a page in the wiki, where users can add
> >> commentary about the reference.  These pages will be stubbed with
> >> more information from Pubmed, including a template, the abstract, and
> >> the reference.  I'm thinking of two possible strategies:
> >>
> >> 1) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when the parser
> >> renders a page with a <ref> tag.
> >> 2) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when a user clicks
> >> on the link in the references section
> >>
> >> These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but what I like about #2
> >> is that I don't create pages unless someone actually wants to look at
> >> them (upon reflection, this may create pages when the search engines
> >> hit the links, but that may be OK) and, more importantly, I think
> >> this can be done so that the page will be created if someone searches
> >> for the reference and the citation doesn't already exist.
> >>
> >> The way I'm thinking of doing this is to hook into AlternateEdit and
> >> branch off to something that grabs the desired template from the
> >> templates namespace, populates the wikitext with data, saves it, and
> >> redirects to the saved page.  Questions:
> >>
> >> Q1) Am I nuts? (default=true) Is there anything that I'm forgetting
> >> that will make this blow up?
> >> Q2) Is that the right place to hook?
> >> Q3) What's the best way to do the create/save/redirect step?
> >> Q4) Has anyone already done something like this that I can adapt?
> >> Q5) Would this be useful to anyone else?
> >>
> >> For Q2 and Q3, I don't want the user to see the edit form.  I want it
> >> to look like the page was there all along.  For #3 I have a kludgy
> >> way to do it: create the page as XML and run maintenance/importDump.
> >> There must be a better way, right? Thanks for any advice.
> >>
> >> Jim
> >> =====================================
> >> Jim Hu
> >> Associate Professor
> >> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> >> 2128 TAMU
> >> Texas A&M Univ.
> >> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> >> 979-862-4054
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikitech-l mailing list
> >> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mets501 wrote:
>> However, that will make debugging very hard indeed.  Not sure how big a
>> consideration that is, but I know that I have often looked into the MW
>> stylesheets to see how particular stylings are acheived when making my own
>> css rules.
>>
>> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
> Just from a quick check of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55, removing all the
> possible white space will reduce it in size from 30882 bytes to 23411 bytes,
> saving 7471 bytes (24%).  That's a drastic change in size, and if done would
> save a ton of bandwidth (over time).

It's small compared to actual compression, though.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFylb6wRnhpk1wk44RAqLrAJ9y0oQaPkcfZt7KQvv1cjuU6fVolQCgtXOa
UnHB8274HVPUB1dBVH+mBFg=
=3CbN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

references:
<eqb9ee$omv$1@sea.gmane.org> <eqbli0$jtp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<45C963F9.1070803@gatech.edu> <eqda57$fmc$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
I suppose it goes without saying that this could be achieved with an
Extension.  Perhaps some kind of regex blacklist or whitelisting extension?

So for example you could have a page called [[MediaWiki:TitlesBlacklist]]
which could be a newline separated list of regular expressions to block for
title creation. (With of course an associated
[[MediaWiki:TitlesWhitelist]]).  Then have an extension which applies the
rules prior to page submission, and also on retrieval (in case some
malicious user finds a way through).

Or even better, a page called [[MediaWiki:TitlesFilter]] with each line
delimiting and "allow" or "deny" rule.  Something like this:

------------------------- SNIP ----------------
# Comments and blank lines are ignored

# Disallow any title like this
- /.*index\.php\?title=.*/i

# Allow anything else
+ /.*/
------------------------- SNIP ----------------

This is how Nutch decides whether or not to allow a page.[1]

[1] http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/tutorial8.html#Intranet%3A+Configuration

On 2/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "Matthew Flaschen"
> <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote in message
> news:45C963F9.1070803 at gatech.edu...
> > Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > > With spammers, the IP addresses always change (they've gotten good
> about
> > > that over the past few years), so I suppose the best way to control
> > > these "scout messages" is to grep [[Special:Newpages]] regularly for
> > > telltale page titles (like ".php") and delete on sight.
> >
> > An admin bot should be able to delete those pages automatically, if
> > someone cares to write it.
> >
>
> Is there a way of telling MW to block certain page names, e.g. to disallow
> new pages that match the regex "/index\.php\?title=/i"?  If not then this
> seems like a worthwhile config setting to add.
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
On 2/7/07, Brad Patrick <bpatrick at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> /me pops his head up
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at waterwiki.info]
> >> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 02:53 PM
> >> To: 'English Wikipedia', 'English Wikipedia'
> >> Cc: bpatrick at wikimedia.org
> >> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...
> >>
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Andrew Gray [mailto:shimgray at gmail.com]
> >>> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 02:23 PM
> >>> To: 'English Wikipedia'
> >>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...
> >>>
> >>> On 07/02/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> For your consideration and consternation...
> >>>>
> >>>> Is it:
> >>>> A) Ilegal
> >>>> B) Immoral
> >>>> C) Fattening
> >>>>
> >>>> ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
> >>>> staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
> >>>> came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
> >>>> badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
> >>>> is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
> >>>> Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
> >>>> photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
> >>>> government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
> >>>> erased that section of the image with photoshop)...
> >>>>
> >>>> Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
> >>>> and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
> >>>> what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
> >>>> have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
> >>>> over again.
> >>> I am reminded of a nice chap, editing from somewhere deep in *.mil,
> >>> who kept trying to remove a map of the Green Zone, citing "operational
> >>> security" reasons. The fact that we had obtained the map from the
> >>> website of a US Congressman didn't seem to faze him...
> >>>
> >>> (On examination, that claim boiled down to the user not understanding
> >>> that a rule which said *he* couldn't talk about something didn't have
> >>> to apply to everyone else)
> >>>
> >>> In this case... if there is a legal issue, please direct him to Brad
> >>> and ask him to cite chapter and verse.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> - Andrew Gray
> >>>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> >> Done
> >>
> >> Fred
> >
> > Well, No I did not refer him to Brad, but gave Brad a heads up. There is a chance that there is such a law, after all, and it is a public relations problem at any event.

Hey Brad... If you can take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:205.254.147.8

...when you get a sec, that's the second and more persistent of the
two anon editors in question.  I pointed them at the Foundation
contact page and to talk to you; you can change that if you want.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
David Strauss wrote:

>The famous Apple Computer v. Microsoft established that "look and feel"
>is not copyrightable.
>
>
Under U.S. Copyright law.  I don't know swedish copyright law, so I
can't say.  Besides, a user interface is copyrightable, and all that the
Apple vs. Microsoft did was establish that the particular user interface
for Windows was not a complete rip off of Apple's, with a preceedent
that if there were some functional differences that it couldn't be used
as grounds for copyright infringement.

It didn't help Apple that they had ripped off most of their interface
from Xerox, but who is splitting hairs here anyway.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Marcus Buck

subject:
[Wikitech-l] conversion to Phase III (no,
	you didn't accidentally enter the 2003 archives)

body:
Zitat von ?????????????????? ?????????????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com>:

> Iomete cxe
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://nds.wikipedia.com
>
> --
> Alexander Sigachov

Thank you for the tip, but sadly none of the archived versions there actually
works. They point to the English Main Page or to error pages or to newer
versions after January 2004.

Sch?ne Gr?ten
Slomox
Marcus Buck


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

references:
<eqb9ee$omv$1@sea.gmane.org> <eqbli0$jtp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<45C963F9.1070803@gatech.edu>

body:
"Matthew Flaschen"
<matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:45C963F9.1070803 at gatech.edu...
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > With spammers, the IP addresses always change (they've gotten good about
> > that over the past few years), so I suppose the best way to control
> > these "scout messages" is to grep [[Special:Newpages]] regularly for
> > telltale page titles (like ".php") and delete on sight.
>
> An admin bot should be able to delete those pages automatically, if
> someone cares to write it.
>

Is there a way of telling MW to block certain page names, e.g. to disallow
new pages that match the regex "/index\.php\?title=/i"?  If not then this
seems like a worthwhile config setting to add.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> I took a quick peek at the sampled squid log and found that CSS and JS
> files together are eating a lot of bandwidth; together they make up
> about 20% of what's served:
>
> https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Squid_bandwidth_breakdown
>
> (May be inaccurate due to coding mistakes in my counter or weird dupe
> caching effects.)

Please forgive me if this is a dumb question, but if I check the headers returned for
two successive requests, like so:

======================================================
root at bling:/var/www/hosts/mediawiki/wiki# curl --silent --include --head http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:56:31 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: max-age=2592000
Expires: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:56:31 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:04:40 GMT
ETag: "60874b-709d-45c8df58"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 28829
Content-Type: text/css
Age: 2
X-Cache: HIT from sq30.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from sq30.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 sq30.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE9)
Connection: close

root at bling:/var/www/hosts/mediawiki/wiki# curl --silent --include --head http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:56:26 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: max-age=2592000
Expires: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:56:26 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:04:40 GMT
ETag: "15c02de-709d-45c8df58"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 28829
Content-Type: text/css
Age: 9
X-Cache: HIT from sq20.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from sq20.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 sq20.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE9)
Connection: close

root at bling:/var/www/hosts/mediawiki/wiki#
======================================================

... then I have two questions:

1) Does it matter that the ETag varies between successive requests? Reason I ask is that
the http://www.web-caching.com/mnot_tutorial/how.html page says: "HTTP 1.1 introduced a
new kind of validator called the ETag. ETags are unique identifiers that are generated
by the server and changed every time the object does. Because the server controls how the
ETag is generated, caches can be surer that if the ETag matches when they make a
If-None-Match request, the object really is the same."

I.e. if the ETag changes between requests, as it did in the above example, could that
make requesters think that the object has changed too, thus reducing caching?

2) Would it help using "Cache-Control: max-age=2592000, public" instead of
"Cache-Control: max-age=2592000" ?  Public is defined as "marks the response as cacheable,
even if it would normally be uncacheable. For instance, if your pages are authenticated,
the public directive makes them cacheable." I.e. I'm not sure if the Wikipedia cookie is
being treated as authentication for the purposes of this definition, but if it is, caching
the site-wide CSS or JS seems unlikely to hurt (since it really is "public") - but
obviously caching the user-specific CSS or JS would be bad.

> It should be possible to serve these files compressed through Apache
> with mod_gzip set up, which should squish them by probably 2/3.

Last time I looked mod_gzip seemed to be losing favour somewhat - the new "in"
compression method for apache2 seems to be mod_deflate
( http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html ), partially because it's an
apache module, rather than a 3rd-party module; however it got a few percentage points
less efficient compression than mod_gzip, but the suggestion was that it caused less
CPU load to do its compression. It was about a year ago that I looked at this stuff
though, so the state of play may have changed since.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
Generally speaking, anyone who leaves an edit summary of "You're
breaking the law!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (sic) is probably not someone with
legitimate authority. 18 exclamation points does not a legal point make.

-- Jake Nelson

George Herbert wrote:
> For your consideration and consternation...
>
> Is it:
> A) Ilegal
> B) Immoral
> C) Fattening
>
> ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
> staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
> came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
> badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
> is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
> Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
> photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
> government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
> erased that section of the image with photoshop)...
>
> Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
> and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
> what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
> have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
> over again.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Q_clearance&action=history
>


from_name: Geoffrey Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia futurology

body:
On Mon Feb 5 15:54:41 UTC 2007, David Gerard wrote:

> "I wiki'd it" will probably be used. People already use "wiki" to mean
> "Wikipedia."

And the other way around. Last weekend I witnessed Ward Cunningham saying
"Wikipedia" when he meant "Wiki".

Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there.

Geoff


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
If the image is clear enough that it could conceivably be used as an aid to
falsified badges, then there is probably a problem.

And I'd add that until we have better information, it'd probably be better
to remove it and err on the side of caution.

Parker

On 2/7/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For your consideration and consternation...
>
> Is it:
> A) Ilegal
> B) Immoral
> C) Fattening
>
> ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
> staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
> came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
> badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
> is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
> Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
> photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
> government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
> erased that section of the image with photoshop)...
>
> Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
> and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
> what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
> have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
> over again.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Q_clearance&action=history
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Strauss

body:
The famous Apple Computer v. Microsoft established that "look and feel"
is not copyrightable.

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> (I?m new to this emaillist so please forgive any mistakes I make.)
>>
>> I?m the press contact for the Swedish Wikipedia (
>> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal). Recently I was
>> contacted by a journalist who pointed out a fairly new wiki called
>> Metapedia, at http://www.metapedia.se, which was founded by a known racist
>> and leader of a small nationalistic (and antidemocratic) party in Sweden (I
>> can give several newspaper articles to back up that claim.). I checked it
>> out and discovered several things:
>>
>> 1. It used MediaWiki and thus look *very* similiar to Wikipedia. Even their
>> logo is in the same colour range. One could easily mistake one for the
>> other. This is one spinoff effect of the free MediaWiki, and probably one we
>> will see again. But the site uses the same phrases as svwiki, such as
>> L?sv?rd artikel (featured article) and so on.
>>
> Such phrases are not trademarked, nor as I'm aware something you could
> trademark, which would be the only reason to consider them protected
> anyway.  The "look and feel" might be copyrighted by somebody, but I'm
> not sure exactly who would hold out here, especially if most of this is
> part of the standard install of MediaWiki software.  That interface
> would be GPL'd because of the software.  The "main page" might be
> copyrighted by specific Swedish Wikipedia contributors, but that is even
> debatable here and not something to worry to hard about.
>
>> 2. It has around 1300 articles, but the majority is about either a) people
>> connected to nazism, holocaust denial or critics of the Jewish conspiracy
>> (and their works)
>>
> While not something I would do personally, there is nothing here illegal.
>
>> 3. Their articles are often copied and edited versions of the svwiki
>> counterparts, with apparent POV-slant in their favour.
>>
> <*snip*>
>
>> Since Wikipedia is GFDL they could easily have borrowed that article. (But I
>> guess it didn?t suit their purposes.)
>>
> This is where they might get into a bit of trouble.  This is not a
> violation of the terms of the GFDL to have copied these articles and
> altered them in such a fashion, but they must also pass on the same
> licensing terms onto others who come and visit their website.  If you or
> somebody you know (with a note on the Swedish Wikipedia's village pump,
> for instance) want to enforce your copyright on content you have
> written, you might want to let this website owner know that you would
> like the full terms of the GFDL to be enforced.  Who knows, you might
> even be able to move some of these articles back to sv.wikipedia if they
> are of any better quality, of course correcting for POV issues.
>
>> 4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
>> called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
>> this makes sense? Also, they have not given the full text of the
>> GFDL-licence. Don?t you have to do that?
>>
> Even Wikimedia projects have had some problems with this in the past, so
> I wouldn't throw stones too far on this one.  The full text must be
> linked somehow and "on the network", however you want to define that.  A
> "local copy" on the website itself would be a good idea, but I'm not
> sure how necessary that is from a legal standpoint.  A copy is required
> to be in the same medium, such as a paper copy of the license if you
> have a printed version, or it must be a file on a CD-ROM, etc.
>
>> My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
>> and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better? Unfortunally, I
>> suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
>> shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow? The
>> journalist who called me seemed to hold Wikipedia in high esteem and seemed
>> also to want to know what would be our reaction to this "evil twin"-version
>> of Wikipedia. I hope you can help me with your opinion.
>>
>> I await your answers.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lennart, aka Hannibal
>>
> If there are copyright violations, you can try and enforce the
> copyright.  That would mean enforcing the GFDL.  I'm not familiar with
> Swedish copyright and publishing law, but there may be some libel issues
> if the POV goes a little to far for somebody who is currently living,
> such as en.wikipedia had with John Siegenthaler.  In that case it would
> be the person who is "featured" that would have to start legal action if
> they didn't like what was being said about them.
>
> There may be something like the German law that restricts the usage of
> symbols of the Nazi party and name, but I hope you know what would apply
> in Sweden in that situation.  All you could do there anyway is to
> contact the appropriate law enforcement agency if it is illegal.
>
> Otherwise, don't give them too much attention.  Groups like this love
> and seek attention, and if you deprive them of that attention they soon
> fold up and disappear.  Because this group obviously has an axe to grind
> and political message, I wouldn't worry about trying to compete and out
> do them.  se.wikipedia is in a strong enough position that the best
> response you can give to a reporter is "Yeah, I've heard about them.
>  They have nothing to do with Wikipedia."  Don't comment any more, and
> if you are pressed for more from a reporter, note that the content of
> se.wikipedia is available under the GFDL, and that anybody can copy this
> content, even if you don't necessarily agree with their political
> idologies.  It might end up being a rather interesting conversation
> about free content licenses and what even the reporter and their
> newspaper could do with Wikipedia articles.
>


from_name: Jim Wilson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

references:
<eqb9ee$omv$1@sea.gmane.org> <eqbli0$jtp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<45C963F9.1070803@gatech.edu> <eqda57$fmc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ac08e8d0702071247x28a130dfva87b91e4859fb060@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqdgsn$a90$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> I would suggest that it only applies when creating new pages -
particularly if it is editable on-wiki,

I can imagine three places where the check would need to occur:
1) On page creation
2) On page move (in case someone tries to move a page to a restricted title)
3) On page retrieval (in case the rules have changed since the page was
first created).

> otherwise you risk hiding legitimate content,

That's true - I certainly agree that this is a risk that must be evaluated
by the person making the change.  Perhaps a "what would this affect" special
page to test out a filter prior to application?

> or being unable to delete the vandalism.

A special page that shows all pages with invalid titles, with options to
delete/rename them?

> A bad regex could disable the whole wiki, for example.

That's certainly possible.  Such a problem could be avoided by hardcoding in
a rule that Sysops can bypass the filter for administration purposes.

> i.e. this is not a way of implementing regex-based page protection.

Does everyone feel this way? I like the idea of putting the filters in a
MediaWiki page because it allows people with little or no PHP experience, or
Sysops without filesystem level access to administrate the site filters.

And the filters don't necessarily have to be regex.  Firefox's AdBlock
add-on has a good filter mechanism that permits both regular expressions,
and simple '*' based wildcarding.  This wouldn't be hard to imitate.

Your thoughts?

-- Jim

On 2/7/07, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "Jim Wilson" <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:ac08e8d0702071247x28a130dfva87b91e4859fb060 at mail.gmail.com...
> > I suppose it goes without saying that this could be achieved with an
> > Extension.  Perhaps some kind of regex blacklist or whitelisting
> extension?
> >
> > So for example you could have a page called
> [[MediaWiki:TitlesBlacklist]]
> > which could be a newline separated list of regular expressions to block
> for
> > title creation. (With of course an associated
> > [[MediaWiki:TitlesWhitelist]]).  Then have an extension which applies
> the
> > rules prior to page submission, and also on retrieval (in case some
> > malicious user finds a way through).
> >
> [Example snipped]
>
> I would suggest that it only applies when creating new pages -
> particularly
> if it is editable on-wiki, otherwise you risk hiding legitimate content,
> or
> being unable to delete the vandalism.  A bad regex could disable the whole
> wiki, for example.  i.e. this is not a way of implementing regex-based
> page
> protection.
>
> On a slightly tangentual note, I don't know if other people have realised
> this, but with the new cascading protection you can block named pages from
> being created, by creating e.g. [[Project:Banned pages]], transcluding any
> pages that users shouldn't be able to create, and enabling cascading
> protection.  All the included pages can now no longer be created (or
> require
> login to create, depending on protection level).
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> ETag: "60874b-709d-45c8df58"
>
> [...snip...]
>
> ETag: "15c02de-709d-45c8df58"
>
> [...snip...]
>
> 1) Does it matter that the ETag varies between successive requests? Reason I ask is that
> the http://www.web-caching.com/mnot_tutorial/how.html page says: "HTTP 1.1 introduced a
> new kind of validator called the ETag. ETags are unique identifiers that are generated
> by the server and changed every time the object does. Because the server controls how the
> ETag is generated, caches can be surer that if the ETag matches when they make a
> If-None-Match request, the object really is the same."
>
> I.e. if the ETag changes between requests, as it did in the above example, could that
> make requesters think that the object has changed too, thus reducing caching?

Just found how to stop this - The ETag comes from 3 sources of information - the inode, the
file size, and the file modified time.

That's why these two are different yet similar:

> ETag: "60874b-709d-45c8df58"
> ETag: "15c02de-709d-45c8df58"

I.e. the format currently is ETag: "<inode value>-<date value>-<file size value>". [which is
the apache2 default, I think].

The inodes differ for the different systems, but the date and the file values are the same,
as you can see.

The solution therefore is to add this line to the cluster's apache2.conf:
-------------------------
FileETag MTime Size
-------------------------

Then the result will be: ETag: "709d-45c8df58" for all boxes serving this example file.

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> However, that will make debugging very hard indeed.  Not sure how big a
> consideration that is, but I know that I have often looked into the MW
> stylesheets to see how particular stylings are acheived when making my own
> css rules.
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)

Just from a quick check of
http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55, removing all the
possible white space will reduce it in size from 30882 bytes to 23411 bytes,
saving 7471 bytes (24%).  That's a drastic change in size, and if done would
save a ton of bandwidth (over time).  If you're concerned about readability,
perhaps two files are warranted, a "readable" file and a "usable" file, and
the readable one could be linked from a comment at the top of the usable
one.


from_name: Jim Hu

body:
The new page would allow wiki-based annotation of the information
from the other site, which is PubMed...so, yes it has a very nice and
heavily trafficked web interface indeed!

For example, the web service at Pubmed provide the abstract and links
to full text (at yet another website) for a publication.  My users
would want to add things like:
"This paper describes a resource that turned out to be useful for
doing X" or
"Figure 1 in this paper shows this thing that the authors didn't
notice" or
"The xxx gene described in this paper is also known as yyy; they were
shown to be the same 10 years later"
etc.

These are kinds of knowledge that are scattered throughout the
scientific community.  My wikis are hoping to gather some of that
distributed wisdom.
Also, the page in my wiki would collect what other pages in the wiki
refer to that item via the "what links here" capability.

If you'd like to see the kind of content I'm talking about, check out
Pubmed. There's a long url, but I usually just use http:pubmed.com,
which redirects.  If you're in the US, your tax dollars support
PubMed, and we're grateful for that!  Mediawiki already recognizes
this as a major resource, since typing a PMID <idnum>  in a page
automatically creates an external link to PubMed...it's an Easter Egg
that we stumbled across.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PMID
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Feb 7, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Jim Wilson wrote:

> That makes sense, though I wonder, does the web-service already have a
> web-interface?  I guess what I'm getting at is, if the information
> already
> exists on another web site, why do you want to duplicate it in your
> own
> wiki?
>
> (Not sure I understand all the problem parameters - I want to help,
> I'm just
> trying to get a grasp of what's involved.  Thanks in advance.)
>
> On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jim,
>>
>> The content will come from a query to an external web service, which
>> will be used to fill the template.  This is based on the page title
>> being parsed to look for an accession to the external database.
>>
>> Does that make sense?
>>
>> Jim
>> =====================================
>> Jim Hu
>> Associate Professor
>> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
>> 2128 TAMU
>> Texas A&M Univ.
>> College Station, TX 77843-2128
>> 979-862-4054
>>
>>
>> On Feb 7, 2007, at 12:06 PM, Jim Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jim,
>>>
>>> You mention that you might want to have the reference pages created
>>> 'on
>>> demand' - if so, how do you know what content to put into those
>>> pages?  Is
>>> it simply static text as read from a Template?   And if so, what
>>> would that
>>> Template say?
>>>
>>> -- Jim R. Wilson
>>>
>>> On 2/7/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I'm thinking about writing an extension...and I haven't really done
>>>> one totally from scratch yet, so please forgive the waste of
>>>> bandwidth if I'm missing something in the documentation...and the
>>>> length of this message.
>>>>
>>>> Here's what I want to do and why.  I'm running some wikis
>>>> related to
>>>> biology/genomics.  We use Cite.php, and I'd like to automatically
>>>> create pages for the references cited by citations in Cite. php.
>>>> I've already modified Cite so that if someone enters "PMID:<id
>>>> number>" as either the input text or the name= part, a block of
>>>> code
>>>> (essentially an extension of Cite where I've added a "hook" in
>>>> Cite.php) goes to Pubmed, retrieves the detailed information about
>>>> the citation and substitutes the reference text.
>>>>
>>>> For example, if you have
>>>>
>>>>         <ref name='PMID:2167309'/>
>>>>
>>>> as the third citation, the reference that shows up is
>>>>
>>>>         3. ? Rathod PK & Khatri A (1990) Synthesis and
>>>> antiproliferative
>>>> activity of threo-5-fluoro-L-dihydroorotate. J Biol Chem
>>>> 265:14242-9
>>>> PMID:2167311
>>>>
>>>> I like this because it reduces markup clutter that is a
>>>> criticism of
>>>> Cite.  The next thing I want to do is change the external link to
>>>> Pubmed to an internal link to a page in the wiki, where users
>>>> can add
>>>> commentary about the reference.  These pages will be stubbed with
>>>> more information from Pubmed, including a template, the
>>>> abstract, and
>>>> the reference.  I'm thinking of two possible strategies:
>>>>
>>>> 1) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when the parser
>>>> renders a page with a <ref> tag.
>>>> 2) Run something that creates the page (if needed) when a user
>>>> clicks
>>>> on the link in the references section
>>>>
>>>> These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but what I like
>>>> about #2
>>>> is that I don't create pages unless someone actually wants to
>>>> look at
>>>> them (upon reflection, this may create pages when the search
>>>> engines
>>>> hit the links, but that may be OK) and, more importantly, I think
>>>> this can be done so that the page will be created if someone
>>>> searches
>>>> for the reference and the citation doesn't already exist.
>>>>
>>>> The way I'm thinking of doing this is to hook into AlternateEdit
>>>> and
>>>> branch off to something that grabs the desired template from the
>>>> templates namespace, populates the wikitext with data, saves it,
>>>> and
>>>> redirects to the saved page.  Questions:
>>>>
>>>> Q1) Am I nuts? (default=true) Is there anything that I'm forgetting
>>>> that will make this blow up?
>>>> Q2) Is that the right place to hook?
>>>> Q3) What's the best way to do the create/save/redirect step?
>>>> Q4) Has anyone already done something like this that I can adapt?
>>>> Q5) Would this be useful to anyone else?
>>>>
>>>> For Q2 and Q3, I don't want the user to see the edit form.  I
>>>> want it
>>>> to look like the page was there all along.  For #3 I have a kludgy
>>>> way to do it: create the page as XML and run maintenance/
>>>> importDump.
>>>> There must be a better way, right? Thanks for any advice.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>> =====================================
>>>> Jim Hu
>>>> Associate Professor
>>>> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
>>>> 2128 TAMU
>>>> Texas A&M Univ.
>>>> College Station, TX 77843-2128
>>>> 979-862-4054
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

/me pops his head up

Fred Bauder wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud at waterwiki.info]
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 02:53 PM
>> To: 'English Wikipedia', 'English Wikipedia'
>> Cc: bpatrick at wikimedia.org
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Andrew Gray [mailto:shimgray at gmail.com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 02:23 PM
>>> To: 'English Wikipedia'
>>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...
>>>
>>> On 07/02/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> For your consideration and consternation...
>>>>
>>>> Is it:
>>>> A) Ilegal
>>>> B) Immoral
>>>> C) Fattening
>>>>
>>>> ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
>>>> staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
>>>> came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
>>>> badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
>>>> is that it's illegal to show the badge, despite the fact that Linton
>>>> Brooks wore it in public all the time, there are numerous public press
>>>> photos of it, and that the image in question came from an unclassified
>>>> government press image freely released (though, they subsequently
>>>> erased that section of the image with photoshop)...
>>>>
>>>> Several of us have asked the people removing it to identify themselves
>>>> and explain whether the image was subsequently classified or tell us
>>>> what law prevents us from legally hosting it, if there is one, and
>>>> have heard nothing back.  All they are doing is deleting it over and
>>>> over again.
>>> I am reminded of a nice chap, editing from somewhere deep in *.mil,
>>> who kept trying to remove a map of the Green Zone, citing "operational
>>> security" reasons. The fact that we had obtained the map from the
>>> website of a US Congressman didn't seem to faze him...
>>>
>>> (On examination, that claim boiled down to the user not understanding
>>> that a rule which said *he* couldn't talk about something didn't have
>>> to apply to everyone else)
>>>
>>> In this case... if there is a legal issue, please direct him to Brad
>>> and ask him to cite chapter and verse.
>>>
>>> --
>>> - Andrew Gray
>>>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>> Done
>>
>> Fred
>
> Well, No I did not refer him to Brad, but gave Brad a heads up. There is a chance that there is such a law, after all, and it is a public relations problem at any event.
>
> Fred
>
>
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from_name: geni

body:
On 2/7/07, ?ukasz Garczewski <lgarczewski at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There has been work in other communities regarding distinguishing between
> > "official" and open-use community logos.  For instance, you can see
> > Debian's dual logos here:
> >     http://www.debian.org/logos/  [1]
>
> And we have our own open-use community logo, although not widely
> recognized yet. Please take a look at:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Community_Logos
>

Wikipe-tan is more popular:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TAN

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia futurology

body:
On Wed Feb 7 23:48:52 UTC 2007 Thomas Dalton wrote:

> > And the other way around. Last weekend I witnessed Ward Cunningham saying
> > "Wikipedia" when he meant "Wiki".
> >
> > Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there.
>
> I wasn't there, so I don't believe it... you sure you understood him correctly?

Well, considering that he was sitting only a few feet away from me & that I
corrected him immediately, I'd say I'm pretty sure. All assembled had
a moment's laugh at his slip of the tongue.

If you still don't believe me, all I can say is "No, I was not abusing any mind-altering
drugs, so I can't share them with you."

Geoff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> > Just from a quick check of
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55, removing all the
> > possible white space will reduce it in size from 30882 bytes to 23411
bytes,
> > saving 7471 bytes (24%).  That's a drastic change in size, and if done
would
> > save a ton of bandwidth (over time).
>
> It's small compared to actual compression, though.

> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)

Yes, but it may be a good temporary measure.
--Mets501


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On 2/7/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but it may be a good temporary measure.
> --Mets501

We've survived this long...

Has anyone tried to figure out why it seems on average users load only
slightly more than two pages for every time they load css?

Is really so much of our traffic "one click from a search engine and
then depart" that it is shifting  so much of our hits towards CSS
loads?  ... if so, it may be an indication that something is wrong
with our service from the perspective of our readers.

(Perhaps they are so used to seeing spam with Wikipedia content that
they just hit "back".  :) )


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> We've survived this long...
>
> Has anyone tried to figure out why it seems on average users load only
> slightly more than two pages for every time they load css?
>
> Is really so much of our traffic "one click from a search engine and
> then depart" that it is shifting  so much of our hits towards CSS
> loads?  ... if so, it may be an indication that something is wrong
> with our service from the perspective of our readers.
>
> (Perhaps they are so used to seeing spam with Wikipedia content that
> they just hit "back".  :) )

I think most people just search google, and then encounter Wikipedia for one
or two pages.  I see my friends working in the library or other places doing
research, and they search first on Google, click the first or second result
(which is often Wikipedia), read that page, and then move on to other sites.
--Mets501


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> > Yes, but it may be a good temporary measure.
>
> Well, no, not if it takes us more effort to integrate this whitespace
> stripping into the software than it does to configure things so that
> this stuff is compressed properly.
>
>
> Rob Church

I actually wasn't thinking of working it into the software, but rather just
removing the white spaces in the main monobook css file (which is all most
users load anyway).
--Mets501


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> > I actually wasn't thinking of working it into the software, but rather
just
> > removing the white spaces in the main monobook css file (which is all
most
> > users load anyway).
>
> Well, from a developer's point of view, that's not actually
> acceptable, because we have to be able to maintain the damn file.
>
>
> Rob Church

Listen, it was just a suggestion.  If it's not acceptable, no problem.
You're the programming professional, I'm not.
--Mets501