from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>You are miscontruing nearly everything I've said. It has the effect of
>putting words in my mouth.

ROTFL...this from a guy who just finished complaining that I "wished
aloud for the ability to murder me by electrocution." I think that
constitutes quite an extreme and unwarranted misconstrual of MY words.

>You then use these words in strawman arguments to disparage my
>character.

This discussion has reached a point of diminishing returns. I don't
think anything I've written has been a "straw man argument" or a
misconstrual of your words, and you haven't provided any specific
examples. If, however, you would like to point out specific cases
where you think I've misconstrued your words, I'll take a look at
them. (For the sake of sparing everyone else, perhaps we should do
this off-list.)

The main point, though, is that I'm happy to see Ed state the following:

>I will not issue unilateral temporary bans on egregious NPOV
>violators, and you
>would be just as wrong to suggest I would do such a thing as I would be
>to accuse you of plotting to murder me. (BTW, you're not plotting that,
>are you? ;-)

No, of course I'm not plotting to murder you, Ed. But if it's wrong
to suggest that you would issue unilateral temporary bans, you should
realize that your own words were what created that suggestion. This
is what you wrote in your original post:

>I'm going to start issuing official warnings to NPOV violators. If that
>doesn't slow them down, I'm going to suspend them -- give them a
>temporary ban.

Those were your words, right? How did I "misconstrue" them? Is there
some way to construe those words OTHER than as a declaration of
intent to issue unilateral bans?

In any case, I'm glad to see that Ed has now clearly stated that he
will NOT issue unilateral bans. I'm sure he also understands by now
that he has no authority to issue "official warnings." Whether this
is a retraction or a clarification doesn't matter. I thank him for
making it clear that he will do the right thing.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Speaking up against the mob

body:
Please explain what any of this has to do with Jesus is Lord!'s anti-gay edits.

RickK

Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:
As many contributors are aware, there is a growing number of Chritian
churches and congregations that are proponents of equal treatment of
GBLT people, and who do not consider GBLT lifestyles and sexual acts
sinful. Most prominent among these are the many UCC congregations who
have adopted a public "Open and Accepting" stance toward GBLT people.
Though small in number of followers, many meetings of the Society of
Friends (Quakers) have had such a doctrine for years. And there are a
few Catholic congregations that, in spite of official doctrine, publicly
support gay and lesbian people and lifestyles.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Are you trying to say that my offense at the use of this word is inappropriate?  Who are you, to know what's in my mind?  Please explain why you have the right to decide what is, and is not, acceptable.

RickK

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
Rick wrote:
> It's not at all ridiculous, and I find your characterization offensive,
> as well.
>
> RickK

It is entirely ridiculous, as is your taking offense.

--
Sean Barrett
sean at epoptic.com

_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Jeezis needs a name change

body:
Thank you for being so understanding about it.

RickK

Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com> wrote:
At 09:18 AM 10/10/2003, you wrote:
>Rick wrote:
>>It's not at all ridiculous, and I find your characterization offensive,
>>as well.
>>
>>RickK
>
>It is entirely ridiculous, as is your taking offense.
>
>--
> Sean Barrett

I'd like to congratulate both of you for engaging in this conversation in
public on the list rather than over private email. It takes great courage
to waste everyone's time so blatantly and annoy so many people so
frivolously. Good work!

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
-Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

_______________________________________________
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from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
> Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here.
> It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were)
> to report the deletion to the mailing list

That was me. More controversial than I thought, though - I don't think I'll do
this again (the deleting, not the reporting :-)

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Jimmy-
> The current balance in the Paypal account is $7,040.09 USD.

> This came as a complete shock to me and is primarily the result of a
> single large contribution of $5,000.

> I'm not sure of the proper etiquette here, I am bursting at the seams
> to thank this person publicly, but with no indication really that
> I have permission, I'll let them remain anonymous for right now!

Wow! That is fantastic. I guess it goes to show how much goodwill there is
out there -- we probably don't have to fear for our future after all. I
hope you have requested permission from them to list them. I think it is
really important to give credit to people who make significant
contributions, this is well-documented as being an encouraging factor
(status and all that).

For future donations, I suggest the following policy:

Donations >$50 will be listed on [[Wikipedia:Donations]] (to be protected
and only edited by admins) with the name of the giver, unless the giver
requests to remain anonymous. How about adding this to the donation
webpage?

Should we remove the donation text for now as the preliminary goal has
been reached? If not, we need to set a new goal.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Persistence of cult leader

body:
Ed wrote:
> 1,000 software methodologists can't be wrong!

See, this kind of logic explains how cults come into existence.

;-)

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server purchase plan - advice needed quickly

body:
I drool at this server's description.
The RAM and RAID 5 choices seem wise.
The DB's pretty small yet, so HD space shouldn't be an issue... but I'd
advise making sure it's fairly easily expanded. Just my paranoia kicking in.
But all in all, it sounds like we'll be golden with this setup.

-- Jake, still drooling


from_name: Schneelocke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PayPal total updates?

body:
> And if we hit the $6,000 figure real quick, we could
> always find another thing to shoot for (I'm sure the
> developers can think of something - such as maybe
> hiring a PHP/MySQL expert to audit MediaWiki's code
> and suggest/implement optimization changes).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Actually, if the mark of 6,000 USD is reached that quickly, I think it would
be better to start saving up for the next wave of server upgrades - given
Wikipedia's growth, they will be necessary pretty soon again already.

--
 1:58AM  up 51 days, 10:20, 2 users, load averages: 0.16, 0.14, 0.18

Every non-empty totally disconnected perfect compact metric space is
homeomorphic to the Cantor set.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
> P.S.  If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to
> view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I
> just can't think of any.

Two primary reasons: Copyvios and people using it as advertising or trolling
or anything else where they just want people to see it.
Some would say it weakens deletion, means there's less point to doing so;
others would say that it makes deletion seem less dire, because it'll still
be visisble until it's cleaned out... leading to increased deletion with the
theory 'if they think it's important, they'll undelete it.', etc. This is
the gist of what I recall of previous debates about this issue... maybe
someone else can explain it clearer.

-- Jake


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Targuin wrote:
>One thing we could try in future is and initial
>vote on concepts, just to get an idea of what
>peopel would like to see.

That was my understanding of the vote we did do - perhaps that should have
been made more clear.

>I'm happy with the nohat logo. I say go ahead and add it :)

Me to. Make it so! I'm sure some people will suggest even better tweaks in the
next few weeks after we give the winning Nohat logo some exposure.

>perhaps one of the runner-ups from the 10 finalists
>could be the Wiki*M*edia logo.

I suggested the very same thing a while ago. Neolux's concept got second place
in the first vote and this specific logo
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/f/f1/Ncwikicol.png got second place in the
second vote. So I say we should go with that (or another Neolux variant) at
least for a temp Wikimedia logo. NOTE: There still is the nagging issue that
the Neolux logos look like another famous logo, but nobody has been able to
pin that down. Perhaps it is an inherent brilliance of the design.

>At least until we decide to do this all over again to
>try to get a unified look across all project logos.
>I like the funky W in spots.

Eh? IMO, each project needs to have its own unique logo that is designed by
its own participants. There is not much in common between the different
Wikimedia projects other than an umbrella organization and the fact that they
are all free content wikis. The Wikiquote logo is brilliant, for example, and
I wouldn't change a thing. How could that be tied in with the other logos?

Simply have "A [Wikimedia] project" below every logo on every Wikimedia
project ([Wikimedia] would be a link to the portal at http://wikimedia.org/).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians,
> is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.
>
> To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious,
> since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]].
> And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.

Yes, I admit I was being (ever-so-slightly) facetious when I wrote the
message. I was mildly annoyed when I heard that the page had been
deleted because the insatiably curious part of me me wanted to see what
was so horrible as to warrant summary deletion. And being level-headed
and straightforward when posting to the list requires so much effort and
extra words that I though I would let my barbed wit show through. I hope
I didn't offend anyone, I was just making my point, tersely.

> Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here.
> It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were)
> to report the deletion to the mailing list,
> since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded
> (at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions)
> as justified by en.Wikipedia policy.
> But, having brought it to the list's attention,
> some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves
> unable to look at the situation being discussed.
>
> The solution?  I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes.
> (And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!)
> The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting,
> but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]?
> Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion
> to see if all agreed that there was good reason
> that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.
 >
> The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians,
> such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy
> but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons).
> And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^

I think the best solution would be to allow regular logged-in users to
view deleted pages. Of course only admins should be able to delete and
undelete, but I don't really see any good reason why the contents of
deleted pages should be not viewable by regular users. Of course,
deleted pages should stay invisible to anons, so e.g. spiders don't
index deleted stuff.

Cheers!

- Nohat (David Friedland)

P.S.  If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to
view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I
just can't think of any.

P.P.S. Feel free to nominate me for adminship if you believe my
contributions to Wikipedia and the lists warrant it. It's not in my
character to be so temerarious as to nominate myself. :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ahem

body:
I used the verb "warrant" twice in this message. For stylistic purposes,
imagine that one of those times I actually used "merit".

David Friedland wrote:

> Toby Bartels wrote:
>
>> Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians,
>> is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.
>>
>> To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious,
>> since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]].
>> And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.
>
>
> Yes, I admit I was being (ever-so-slightly) facetious when I wrote the
> message. I was mildly annoyed when I heard that the page had been
> deleted because the insatiably curious part of me me wanted to see what
> was so horrible as to warrant summary deletion. And being level-headed
> and straightforward when posting to the list requires so much effort and
> extra words that I though I would let my barbed wit show through. I hope
> I didn't offend anyone, I was just making my point, tersely.
>
>> Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here.
>> It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were)
>> to report the deletion to the mailing list,
>> since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded
>> (at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions)
>> as justified by en.Wikipedia policy.
>> But, having brought it to the list's attention,
>> some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves
>> unable to look at the situation being discussed.
>>
>> The solution?  I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes.
>> (And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!)
>> The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting,
>> but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]?
>> Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion
>> to see if all agreed that there was good reason
>> that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.
>
>  >
>
>> The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians,
>> such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy
>> but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons).
>> And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^
>
>
> I think the best solution would be to allow regular logged-in users to
> view deleted pages. Of course only admins should be able to delete and
> undelete, but I don't really see any good reason why the contents of
> deleted pages should be not viewable by regular users. Of course,
> deleted pages should stay invisible to anons, so e.g. spiders don't
> index deleted stuff.
>
> Cheers!
>
> - Nohat (David Friedland)
>
> P.S.  If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to
> view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I
> just can't think of any.
>
> P.P.S. Feel free to nominate me for adminship if you believe my
> contributions to Wikipedia and the lists warrant it. It's not in my
> character to be so temerarious as to nominate myself. :-)


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
> Two words: Speed & Scalability

One more word: Reliability

Raid 5 sounds great.

Erik Zachte

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
What mav said, and I too especially favor a variant of Neolux's logo for the
Wikimedia logo.

-- Jake


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Congratulations on your sucessful and sustainable NPO
> startup.  I would add that Brion isnt the only skilled
> developer who gives his valuable time and skills to
> WP, though.

That's absolutely true and I meant no favoritism.  But it has to be
said that Brion does a lot of 'grunt work' that isn't that fun, and as
Erik put it to me the other day, the entire project would have
collapsed months ago without him.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l viewing deleted pages

body:
>I think the best solution would be to allow regular
>logged-in users to view deleted pages. Of course only
>admins should be able to delete and undelete, but I
>don't really see any good reason why the contents of
>deleted pages should be not viewable by regular
users. >Of course, deleted pages should stay invisible
to >anons, so e.g. spiders don't index deleted stuff.

>Cheers!

>- Nohat (David Friedland)

>P.S.  If there is a very good reason regular users
>aren't allowed to view deleted pages, I'd like to
know >what it is. There may be one; I just can't think
of >any.

I strongly advocated that position of you some months
ago (you may find most of it in the ml archives, and
in
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletion_management_redesign

At that time, there was no [[pages for undeletion]]
(so no official process for undeletion), and
undeletion was very painful to do, so very few people
took the time to do it.

I supported your view quite vehemently, but Erik
opposed the option for reasons I could not understand
then, though he was claiming the reasons had been
extensively discussed.

Since what you suggest is requesting work from a
developper, and since one of the developper strongly
oppose it, there is very little chance it is ever
done.

Erik explained to me off-line why he considered he was
right, so I do not feel free to report his arguments,
and I think he will be certainly  much more fluent to
explain his position (if he does not think it has been
discussed ad-nauseam :-)).

It should be admitted once and for all that regular
users are quite low in the hierarchy. An alternate
solution (not so good, but better than what it was
before) has been the [[pages for undeletion]] setting
and the great improvment brought to the previously
horrible undeletion process.

But all in all, the only real option left is to ask to
be a sysop (that was why I finally gave up and
accepted being one, after I realised Erik would never
accept this
see-a-deleted-article-even-if-not-sysop-even-though-part-of-the-community

Admitedly, some of Erik arguments were good (yes), but
this was not a community decision, just a good push
over, with good classical arguments used to kill a
discussion, such as "this was already discussed ad
nauseam" or distraction with "we can't let people see
copyvio".

With the latter argument, I will indicate that my
proposition then, was :

what about adding an additional case when proceeding
to a deletion, to check in case the deletion was done
because of a copyvio. In that case, the deleted
article is stamped as *cp* in the database. After say
two months in the db, a marked *cp* deleted article
will be automatically and permanently deleted from the
database.
This would reduce dramatically the above mentionned
risk of letting loggued in user chance to see
something they should not, and reduce the risk of
Wikipedia being "attacked" for having cp stuff in its
database.

Well, though I thought Erik arguments were good, I
also thought this proposition of mine was quite
decent...but...well, I got no feedback, and since I am
no developper, it is out of question it will ever be
done.

So, I can only recommand that you climb a level in the
hierarchy, because unfortunately, as long as a sysop
is not willing to undelete a page to suit your
curiosity...you are out :-)

Incidentally, if you need such an undeletion, you are
welcome to ask me. I sometimes drop by and do so even
if I do not let comments :-)

Because every user should have a right to see a
deleted page to give his opinion on it.

Otherwise, it is just admitting only sysops can give
an enlightened opinion on articles.

And yes, so-called black sheeps have the right to see
deleted articles as much as so-called white sheeps
ihmo.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
> >I prefer voting/expressing my opinion on actual
> variants. For example, I
> >might prefer a color variant of Nohat's logo, but I
> do not like the
> >current color variants much (too pale). I might
> want *some* kind of text,
> >
>
> One thing we could try in future is and initial vote
> on concepts, just
> to get an idea of what peopel would like to see.
>
>
> I'm happy with the nohat logo. I say go ahead and
> add it :)
>
> perhaps one of the runner-ups from the 10 finalists
> could be the
> Wiki*M*edia logo. At least until we decide to do
> this all over again to
> try to get a unified look across all project logos.
> I like the funky W in spots.

any Nohat logo is good (2nd is the least good ihmo)

Tarquin, can you put it on the fr wiki ?

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Thinking about it, Steve similar one in yellow (the
one on the left) is great too,

and yellow is the color we gave for community

(would be nice if logos had numbers or names)

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list: textbook-l

from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] history texts

body:
> I think that's a possibility. **As long as the
> framework standards are
> adhered to**, the book should pass California (and
> many other states) peer
> review. Note that the California frameworks are
> considered to be very
> progressive, and thorough, even by institutions that
> are outside the public
> school system, including home and private schools.

We should still keep our focus on making good
textbooks, even if that means deviating from the
standards in some cases. We should not delete or
summarize any existing content in accordance with the
framework.
>
> If you look at the frameworks for just about any
> course, they're really
> quite thorough. The beauty of open source content is
> that a lot more
> creativity and variety can be placed around
> state-approved curriculum
> frameworks. In this scenario, everyone wins. In
> fact, I know several home
> schoolers - both in and out of California - who use
> California K-12 textbook
> as part of their home-based curriculum.
>
> Further, it's not at all accurate to say that home
> schoolers and private
> schools eschew state-approved books. I spent 15
> years in the academic school
> book business; both home and private schools use
> "state-approved" books in
> very large numbers.

IANAFormer academic school book writer/seller, but
would it possible that this could be because most
textbooks are written according to standards? Even if
one standard is better than the others, most textbooks
are still written according these standards
>
> The whole idea behind the Wikipedia K-12 textbook
> project is to create open
> source K-12 textbooks. yes, it's well within the
> realm of possibility to
> create K-12 books that don't adhere to state
> frameworks. Personally, I think
> that would be a massive strategic mistake that leads
> to gross
> inefficiencies.
>
> Sure, *some* private schools and some home schools
> might chose to use
> non-framework books; however, the *vast* amount of
> good that could be done
> by providing *better, cheaper, more flexible*
> content scenarios to *10's of
> millions* of students, worldwide, would be lost. We
> would not be able to use
> these materials in public schools. Millions of
> public school students would
> lose out - many of these students are from poor
> districts, which badly need
> quality content that is affordable.We also need to
> realize that the content
> created to state framework standards would be used
> by countries like India
> and China, who look to approved framework-standard
> materials in English to
> teach their students  (many schools teach the native
> tongue, and English,
> simultaneously).

I don't think it's a certainty that these books will
be used just because they're approved.

Don't you think that foreign countries would want
textbooks written in simpler English?
>
> The argument for writing to a state framework
> standard is unassailable,
> especially in distributed, open, content
> environments. The fact is that is a
> book is written to a framework standard, it *will*
> be used by public
> institutions, and internationally. It *will* also be
> used by private and
> home schools (even some of the radical ones).
The radical ones use real books. I think that's a lot
of what Wikibooks should be doing (not specifically
for the homeschoolers, though).
> Those
> private and home schools
> who want to variate Wikipedia K-12 content (picking
> and choosing and
> modifying what they want) would be able to do so,
> and/or add their own open
> source contributions to make it fit their exact
> needs. Thus, choosing to
> ignore state frameworks in this project severely
> reduces it's overall
> impact. Writing to state framework standards is
> clearly the only way to go,
> *if* we want to make the largest difference
> possible.
>
> Let's do this project right, and create a K-12
> textbook publishing
> revolution that makes a real difference, changes the
> way K-12 content is
> sourced and distributed, and sets an example -
> worldwide - that is nothing
> short of a gold standard.
>
> Sanford

Let's be realistic: probably no wikibooks will be
printed, and if one is printed, it will be a
highly-edited and non-wikified, and this won't happen
for a while. I think that the goal of Wikibooks
shouldn't be centered around things like the
High-school extentions book, the programming
tutorials, and other things aimed at informal
self-study.
LDan

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from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-scientific bias has me hopping mad!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>
>>That would carry a lot of weight? That's the most
>>baseless argument I've heard so far, that it's
>>unsourced. Almost all of Wikipedia is unsourced!
>>
>>
>
>And almost all of Wikipedia is uncontested, too.  One benefit of our
>NPOV process is that at any given point in time, 99%+ of what is
>written is something that everyone who isn't bonkers could agree with.
>
>
Not bonkers, yes. But see:

 >... an equally out-of-control Blomberg inspired crowd (libertarians
mainly) who are convinced -- almost to the point of religious princple
-- that global warming is a giant left-wing conspiracy and that Kyoto
was an anti-american plot (amongst whom, sadly, I number Ed Poor).

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>
>
>I prefer voting/expressing my opinion on actual variants. For example, I
>might prefer a color variant of Nohat's logo, but I do not like the
>current color variants much (too pale). I might want *some* kind of text,
>

One thing we could try in future is and initial vote on concepts, just
to get an idea of what peopel would like to see.

I'm happy with the nohat logo. I say go ahead and add it :)

perhaps one of the runner-ups from the 10 finalists could be the
Wiki*M*edia logo. At least until we decide to do this all over again to
try to get a unified look across all project logos.
I like the funky W in spots.

>
>
>
>

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> We should still keep our focus on making good
> textbooks, even if that means deviating from the
> standards in some cases. We should not delete or
> summarize any existing content in accordance with the
> framework.

That is what optional modules are for! :) We could have base distributions
of a book that are each in 100% compliance with different standards and
then have optional, more in depth, modules that can be added on top of
whatever base distribution an instructor chooses to use in the classroom.
Of course that does require WikiBook software functionality (which will
come - even if I have to learn PHP - do we have a textbook on that yet?).

> Let's be realistic: probably no wikibooks will be
> printed, and if one is printed, it will be a
> highly-edited and non-wikified, and this won't happen
> for a while. I think that the goal of Wikibooks
> shouldn't be centered around things like the
> High-school extentions book, the programming
> tutorials, and other things aimed at informal
> self-study.

Well it is a good thing that you are not the only person in the project
then! ;) Go ahead and work on the self study guides and other people will
be writting standards-compliant textbooks that will one day be "printed" on
digital paper (many of our textbooks will be maturing by the time digital
paper becomes popular, IMR - killing trees bad and transferring webpages to
dead tree book form requires a great deal of formatting).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 05:48:55PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> One of the toughest decisions is which exact RAM to buy.  1GB pieces
> are a lot cheaper, and there are 8 total slots available.  So I
> thought: buy 4 1GB pieces, and there's plenty of room for growth.
> When 2GB pieces drop in price (which I'm sure they will, and quickly),
> we have room for 8 gig more or 12 total.  Or, if absolutely needed,
> we could move these 1GB pieces to other machines in our future network,
> and fill this server up to the full 16gig.

Sounds very wise. 4 Gigs should fit the current need and is open for
future increase.

> For the RAID, I selected 4x36gig in a RAID 5 array, for a logical
> drive capacity of 105 gig.  I also selected 1 extra hot spare drive,
> just for that much more added reliability.  There are many other
> possibilities for this, and I'm open to recommendations.  My
> impression is that with RAID 5, more drives means more performance,
> but with enough RAM, we shouldn't be hitting the drives that hard
> anyway.

When doing RAID 5, all two SCSI channels have to work properly. If
one fails (e.g. one drive doing some noise on the SCSI cable, one
controler chip broken), than the entire RAID will be inaccessible.
The RAID 5 configuration can't cover this.

A RAID 0+1 configuration, with data striped over two disks on one
adapter and mirrored to the other adapter, is more reliable and
probably a little bit faster.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
> > We should still keep our focus on making good
> > textbooks, even if that means deviating from the
> > standards in some cases. We should not delete or
> > summarize any existing content in accordance with the
> > framework.
>
> That is what optional modules are for! :) We could have base distributions
> of a book that are each in 100% compliance with different standards and
> then have optional, more in depth, modules that can be added on top of
> whatever base distribution an instructor chooses to use in the classroom.
> Of course that does require WikiBook software functionality (which will
> come - even if I have to learn PHP - do we have a textbook on that yet?).
-----------
Exactly.

> > Let's be realistic: probably no wikibooks will be
> > printed, and if one is printed, it will be a
> > highly-edited and non-wikified, and this won't happen
> > for a while. I think that the goal of Wikibooks
> > shouldn't be centered around things like the
> > High-school extentions book, the programming
> > tutorials, and other things aimed at informal
> > self-study.
>
> Well it is a good thing that you are not the only person in the project
> then! ;) Go ahead and work on the self study guides and other people will
> be writting standards-compliant textbooks that will one day be "printed"
on
> digital paper (many of our textbooks will be maturing by the time digital
> paper becomes popular, IMR - killing trees bad and transferring webpages
to
> dead tree book form requires a great deal of formatting).
-----------------
Good insight. One caveat. Digital paper is maturing, but probably not
rapidly enough to see ubuquitous use within the next decade (I've spent some
time in that sector, having had to look hard into Gyricon (Xerox PARC's
spin-off) and eInk as part of an investment diligence a few years ago. This
is wonderful technology, and someday it *will* largely replace paper, but
that is some 1.5-3 decades away, maybe longer.

Printed books do use paper, but paper can be made to be a "cradle-to-cradle"
resource http://www.mbdc.com/, rather than a "cradle-to-grave" resource.
Also, intelligent environmental planning can eliminate the environmental
threat caused by over-printing on paper. Much of the world will depend on
paper, or "paper-like" products for decades. This is the reality. Another
reality is that most schools - whether public or private - will not
universally use a "textbook" that is available only in digital format. Not
in the foreseeable future (see above).

Question: The Connexions Project at Rice http://cnx.rice.edu/ has the
facility to be able to create printed pages quite easily, or so I've been
led to be;ieve by several people who have participated in that project. Is
there any possibility of hooking up this pilot project with Connexions, or
learning from them, as regards the printing constraints in Wikipedia?

Sanford

> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias surpass English version

body:
Very exciting news at:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News

I've made some changes to the press release to reflect this and also the fact
that we missed the 300,000 milestone.

There were some complaints that "one third of a million" and "1/3 million" do
not translate well, so I created an alternate headline and intro (the
headline is the same as the subject line of this email).

Diff showing change:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikimedia%27s_first_press_release&diff=0&oldid=18697

Updates to all different versions of the press release will be needed.

Diff since Sep 22 (the original day that the press release was supposed to be
frozen to anything but minor edits):

http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikimedia%27s_first_press_release&diff=0&oldid=16798

(diff is VERY wide due to Russian Unicode).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>...Brion does a lot of 'grunt work' that isn't that fun,
>and as Erik put it to me the other day, the entire
>project would have collapsed months ago without him.

I'm in 100% agreement with that. So it is very fitting that Brion now has
enough money to get the notebook computer he wanted.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Jens Frank wrote:
>A RAID 0+1 configuration, with data striped over
>two disks on one adapter and mirrored to the
>other adapter, is more reliable and probably a little
>bit faster.

That's what my partner said when I told him about the proposed database server
(he has to deal with RAID issues at work sometimes).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User names

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>But I haven't been able to edit the talk page yet.
>>It may change further depending on JiL's responses
>>to attempts to convince him to choose a new name
>>volunatarily;
>>but I haven't been able to read his responses yet.)
>
>
> What do his responses have to do with your opinion on
> the merits of the name? I would agree with those who
> caution that the issue should be separate from
> behaviour.  Tim pointed this particularly important
> bug out to me.  Part of maintaining a consistent
> policy is abstaining from the sideissues -- Just vote
> on the merits of the name, dagummit thats it.

If JiL asks for a change of name, then you've won. You have been arguing
all along that the name should be changed to something more appropriate,
and that's exactly what will occur if JiL gives in. The only difference
is that it won't be controversial, which as far as I'm concerned is a
good thing.

> The real problem issue I see is with the tacit
> deferment of action on these matters to developers--
> like Tim, who's mostly used his conversion script for
> non-inflammatory changes, and seems a little tender
> about just getting it over with.  This shouldnt be a
> big deal -- ideally we want people to agree to a
> change, but barring that, its a conflict between the
> consensus and the ego of one person.  Are sysops *not
> to enforce a nay vote on a username, always defering
> to a developer?  This puts developers in a bind,
> because in order for them to make a decision they seem
> to think they need to get involved. They dont-- they
> just need to do the bidding of the community.

I'm obliged by the current system to make a judgement on the state of
the argument. That's not always easy but as far as I'm concerned, that's
  where my obligation stops. Also, I'll always act on any declaration
from Jimbo.

I can also stall. A suggestion for a compromise has been made, and I'm
happy to wait until JiL has a chance to accept or reject it. If you're
not happy with this, I suggest you either ask Jimbo to make a
declaration, or try to convince one of the other developers to use my
script (the details of which are now public).

Of course, as stalling goes, you're the expert. If you hadn't set up
that vote, the discussion would probably be over by now. Votes require
voting periods. Toby Bartels suggested one week.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I think the standard on user names should be:
>
> "Anyone can call themselves anything, until and unless several people
> say that it offends them."
>
> By that standard, TMC had to be changed. But JisL has only 1.5 objectors
> so far: one says they're offended (after I SOUGHT a list of offended
> people), and the other says they slightly or mildly offended. That's no
> consensus.
>
> Much ado about nothing.
>

It's more like 19 favor a name change, IIRC.

So yes, there is a consensus (unless you twist things by only counting
people who you think are truly offended).

You should work in politics Ed. ;-)

--mav


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> One thing we could try in future is and initial vote
> on concepts, just
> to get an idea of what peopel would like to see.
>
>
> I'm happy with the nohat logo. I say go ahead and
> add it :)

I support both of these statements.
~S~

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> as Erik put it to me the other day, the entire
project
> would have
> collapsed months ago without him.

And in flames too. :)

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia

body:
I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language
wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com.
It seems that they created the name independently of
us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force
them to change their name, but should we at least get
them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia?
LDan

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from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 11:48:20AM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
> >A RAID 0+1 configuration, with data striped over
> >two disks on one adapter and mirrored to the
> >other adapter, is more reliable and probably a little
> >bit faster.
>
> That's what my partner said when I told him about the proposed database server
> (he has to deal with RAID issues at work sometimes).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

However, I believe RAID 0+1 will give you less performance than RAID 5,
and cuts the amount of space you have as well.  It will probably perform
better than RAID 5 in the case of a disk failure, however.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
> > I think the standard on user names should be:
> >
> > "Anyone can call themselves anything, until and
> unless several people
> > say that it offends them."
> >
> > By that standard, TMC had to be changed. But JisL
> has only 1.5 objectors
> > so far: one says they're offended (after I SOUGHT
> a list of offended
> > people), and the other says they slightly or
> mildly offended. That's no
> > consensus.
> >
> > Much ado about nothing.
> >
>
> It's more like 19 favor a name change, IIRC.
>
> So yes, there is a consensus (unless you twist
> things by only counting
> people who you think are truly offended).
>
> You should work in politics Ed. ;-)
>
> --mav

Most of those people only thought that others would be
offended. I don't think that if a critical mass of
people think that others will be offfended by the
username, that that user should have to change names.
I guess that's kinda what happened to me, but it was
consentual on my part, and you weren't considering
banning me if I didn't change. Did anyone ask these
people if they'd switch usernames?
LDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] disambiguations

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Is it possible to hide the Robbot disambiguations?
> They are really littering
> up the Recent Changes page?
>
> Danny

Looks like those are only robot-assisted and that an
actual person is doing the changing, so robot
detection wouldn't work. I think (and correct me if
I'm wrong, because I probably am) that the robot
detection does something like makes sure the edits
aren't too close together, and that's why NashuBot
edits aren't blocked out on Wiktionary.
LDan

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from_name: ray at ganymede.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] importing sql dumps and such

body:
Hello -

I am downloading en.wikipedia and trying to get both the cur and old
tables on my system.

I was able to do an import into a 3.* version of MySQL, but I do not
have administrative control of that machine, so I could get the table
space set up to be big enough.

I have total control over this machine. It is a Mac OS X 10.3 running
MySQL 4.1.0-alpha-debug. The SQL files that I was able to download gave
me a syntax error before any data makes it into the tables. I am
re-downloading to see if that helps.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Are there known issues with importing
into 4.1.* MySQL?

I see that there were, last January, discussions about being able to be
a replication client of the databases, but I do not any follow-up on
these discussions, so it is not clear that one can become a replication
client at this point.

Also, is there a history of the downloadable files? In other words, if
I look at today's file, I can see that the md5 digest for
http://download.wikipedia.org/archives/en/20031010_old_table.sql.bz2 is
6178dc8bbb25c9788b04cd5cb692a70b, but given a copy of
20030922_old_table.sql.bz2, I cannot seem to tell what its md5 digest
was supposed to be. It would be helpful to be able to look at a list of
the data files that were put up in the past and see what their digest
was.

thanx - ray


from_name: Chris Seaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
Why not just use the existing PHP code? Can't PHP be invoked from the
command line just like any C++ program? I'm not very familiar with
Wikimedia, but if it's modular then you should just be able to use the
existing parser to do exactly what you've done in C++. Plus PHP is free
software so it can be used for things like distribution on physical
media.

On Sat, 2003-10-11 at 15:04, Magnus Manske wrote:
> As some of you might remember, I tried to write a wiki(pedia) offline
> reader/editor a while ago. After some trouble with the GUI, and because
> someone pointed (rightly!) out that my parser won't do unicode, I
> stopped working on this.
>
> Lately, I had several people asking me about a stand-alone wiki(pedia)
> parser. The latest related request was on the mailing list yesterday
> ("Java code...").
>
> Now, I have created a (partly) working parser, written in C++. It is
> based on a string object I also wrote, natively using 16-bit chars and
> thus supporting unicode. (A function to actually import/export mysql
> unicode remains to be written, though).
>
> Together with this, I started rewriting the common wikipedia functions
> (skins, languages, user management, etc.). That part is still at its
> beginning, but it can already render the "Wikipedia:How to edit a page"
> in a half-complete standard skin. This includes a function to parse the
> "LanguageXX.php" files, so no need to rewrite all of that. (Import is a
> little slow, though, so that won't be a permanent solution; it rather
> screams "conversion").
>
> As an example, the whole thing comes as a command line tool, which can
> render a wiki-style text (from file or pipe) into HTML (no skin or
> standard skin, by parameter).
>
> I have commited the sources (hereby under GPL) at the wikipedia CVS,
> into a new module called "Waikiki" (seemed like the natural extension of
> wiki to me;-)
>
> This could be the basis for several wiki(pedia) software projects:
> * Offline editor
> * Reader, to be distributed on CD/DVD
> * Wiki(pedia) apache module
>
>
> So, fire up those compilers and go to work! ;-)
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
--
Chris Seaton

chris at chrisseaton.com
http://www.chrisseaton.com/


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
As some of you might remember, I tried to write a wiki(pedia) offline
reader/editor a while ago. After some trouble with the GUI, and because
someone pointed (rightly!) out that my parser won't do unicode, I
stopped working on this.

Lately, I had several people asking me about a stand-alone wiki(pedia)
parser. The latest related request was on the mailing list yesterday
("Java code...").

Now, I have created a (partly) working parser, written in C++. It is
based on a string object I also wrote, natively using 16-bit chars and
thus supporting unicode. (A function to actually import/export mysql
unicode remains to be written, though).

Together with this, I started rewriting the common wikipedia functions
(skins, languages, user management, etc.). That part is still at its
beginning, but it can already render the "Wikipedia:How to edit a page"
in a half-complete standard skin. This includes a function to parse the
"LanguageXX.php" files, so no need to rewrite all of that. (Import is a
little slow, though, so that won't be a permanent solution; it rather
screams "conversion").

As an example, the whole thing comes as a command line tool, which can
render a wiki-style text (from file or pipe) into HTML (no skin or
standard skin, by parameter).

I have commited the sources (hereby under GPL) at the wikipedia CVS,
into a new module called "Waikiki" (seemed like the natural extension of
wiki to me;-)

This could be the basis for several wiki(pedia) software projects:
* Offline editor
* Reader, to be distributed on CD/DVD
* Wiki(pedia) apache module

So, fire up those compilers and go to work! ;-)

Magnus


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Saturday, Oct 11, 2003, at 15:15 US/Pacific, ray at ganymede.org wrote:
> Does anyone have any suggestions? Are there known issues with
> importing into 4.1.* MySQL?

I've never tried it with 4.1... try on 4.0 and compare. (Also knowing
exactly what the syntax erorrs are would help.)

> I see that there were, last January, discussions about being able to
> be a replication client of the databases, but I do not any follow-up
> on these discussions, so it is not clear that one can become a
> replication client at this point.

Not yet, no. A key issue is how to deal with the user tables.

> Also, is there a history of the downloadable files?

You want the md5sums-YYYYMMDD files in
http://download.wikipedia.org/archives/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
LDan wrote:
>Most of those people only thought that others
>would be offended. I don't think that if a critical
>mass of people think that others will be offfended
>by the username, that that user should have to
>change names.

Offense is only part of the picture. Equally important is the impression
people get about Wikipedia by looking at Recent Changes and page histories.
The page history issue is most important; would a downstream user want to
list "Jesus is Lord!" as on of the five authors of a page? How does it make
Wikipedia look when user:Jesus is Lord! is one of the authors to
controversial subjects such as homosexuality and religion? That doesn't give
the impresion of neutrality that we want and its mere presence in RC is an
implicit way to welcome people of that POV while offending others who don't
share that POV. All just affirmative (bumper sticker-like) statements should
be banned from user names.

And yes, I am very much offended by the user name.

[[User:AIDS kills fags dead]] (if it existed) would be similarly "cute."

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] disambiguations

body:
Is it possible to hide the Robbot disambiguations? They are really littering
up the Recent Changes page?

Danny
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> LDan wrote:
> >Most of those people only thought that others
> >would be offended. I don't think that if a critical
>
> >mass of people think that others will be offfended
> >by the username, that that user should have to
> >change names.
>
> Offense is only part of the picture. Equally
> important is the impression
> people get about Wikipedia by looking at Recent
> Changes and page histories.
> The page history issue is most important; would a
> downstream user want to
> list "Jesus is Lord!" as on of the five authors of a
> page? How does it make
> Wikipedia look when user:Jesus is Lord! is one of
> the authors to
> controversial subjects such as homosexuality and
> religion? That doesn't give
> the impresion of neutrality that we want and its
> mere presence in RC is an
> implicit way to welcome people of that POV while
> offending others who don't
> share that POV. All just affirmative (bumper
> sticker-like) statements should
> be banned from user names.

Our contributers have views, all of them. Just because
someone's views are expressed in their username
doesn't mean they should be banned.

If people didn't like wikipedia because usernames
might reveal something about them, then shouldn't I
change my username to something not implying I'm a
child? After all, children, just like christians,
can't write good encyclopedia articles.
>
> And yes, I am very much offended by the user name.
>
> [[User:AIDS kills fags dead]] (if it existed) would
> be similarly
>"cute."
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

You're offended because someone is expressing that
view? I'm against religion is school, but this is like
telling people they can't say they have a religion
when they're in the classroom. Jesus is Lord! is just
a slogan, and it's not like telling people "You have
to believe in Jesus, otherwise you're going to go to
hell". *That* would be questionable, but this is not.
"AIDS kills fags dead" is expressing a prejudice
against gays, but IMHO "Jesus is Lord!" only
reiterates the central (or at least original)
Christian belief that seperates it from Judaism.
LDan

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
LDan wrote:
>Our contributers have views, all of them. Just
>because someone's views are expressed in
>their username doesn't mean they should be
>banned.

Where did I say that they should be banned? Changing a user name does not ban
the user. Think of it as a dress code; the great majority of employers do not
allow their employees to wear shirts expressing controversial opinions. Why?
Because it is disruptive and creates divisiveness in the workplace.

>If people didn't like wikipedia because usernames
>might reveal something about them, then shouldn't I
>change my username to something not implying I'm a
>child? After all, children, just like christians,
>can't write good encyclopedia articles.

Where did that come from? Please lay off the straw men.

>You're offended because someone is expressing
>that view? I'm against religion is school, but this is
>like telling people they can't say they have a religion
>when they're in the classroom.

Saying something on a talk page or a mailing list post is rather different
from having your name itself make a POV statement /all the time/ in every
context.

>Jesus is Lord! is just a slogan,

And a slogan does not a user name make. It is s /slogan/, not a name. A slogan
servers a POV evocative purpose while a name serves a nominative one.

>and it's not like telling people "You have
>to believe in Jesus, otherwise you're going
>to go to hell".

Funny, I get told that often by people who wear "Jesus is Lord!" t-shirts.

Simply put; user names should not be slogans.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
Ok, I heard in the last days about Java and C++ parsers. Add mine in Perl
and there are three. Next, there's TomeRaider, plus some others I don't
remember clearly. Of course one could modify the existing PHP scripts... I
think wikipedia will need to take a decision soon.

About my code, it's a SQL dump -> static html converter written in
Perl that is working fairly well (for now, only on the English wiki)
I didn't make any news about it since i had some fairly busy weeks, and
given the current hardware problems, it's better if the focus stays there
for a while.

Ah, while it runs, my script can be configured to download new images and
Tex formulas directly from the Wikipedia web server, so of course I will
NOT run it again until the new server is up :-)

The script is temporarily hosted at:

http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~puglisi/wiki2static.txt

(renamed to "txt" due to some server misconfig). I don't have web space
to host the 1GB output...

Ciao,
Alfio

On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Chris Seaton wrote:

>Why not just use the existing PHP code? Can't PHP be invoked from the
>command line just like any C++ program? I'm not very familiar with
>Wikimedia, but if it's modular then you should just be able to use the
>existing parser to do exactly what you've done in C++. Plus PHP is free
>software so it can be used for things like distribution on physical
>media.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking up against the mob

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> But isn't that what the word in fact means?
> To report on anti-gay prejudice is not to be
> anti-gay;
> quite the contrary.
>
> I found the article informative, and I'm hardly
> anti-gay.
> While I have grave suspicions about JiL's intentions
> here,
> I must protest the condemnation of this article /as
> such/.
> If JiL is anti-gay, then he is being more subtle
> about it
> (as any decent troll would be) than you seem to be
> inferring.
>
> Indeed, this is the perfect edit for a troll;
> it would let a troll call us "fudgepackers" in its
> heart,
> while not explicitly condoning the word's usage
> in any of the article text that the troll actually
> writes.
> But the proper response is to neutralise the troll's
> activities --
> say by incorporating the information into
> [[Homophobic hate speech]]
> on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary,
> thus avoiding a proliferation of articles named
> after slurs
> without any appearance of direct censorship --
> rather than to attack the troll directly, which only
> feeds it.
> (I'm not committed to the position that JiL is a
> troll, BTW.
> But I find it a plausible hypothesis, and I'm
> willing to accept it
> for the sake of this argument.)
> -- Toby

Then it should be moved to Wiktionary, not just
deleted.
LDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
So you would support a rule against any user name constituting an opinion?

-evil saltine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 5:25 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

> LDan wrote:
> >Our contributers have views, all of them. Just
> >because someone's views are expressed in
> >their username doesn't mean they should be
> >banned.
>
> Where did I say that they should be banned? Changing a user name does not
ban
> the user. Think of it as a dress code; the great majority of employers do
not
> allow their employees to wear shirts expressing controversial opinions.
Why?
> Because it is disruptive and creates divisiveness in the workplace.
>
> >If people didn't like wikipedia because usernames
> >might reveal something about them, then shouldn't I
> >change my username to something not implying I'm a
> >child? After all, children, just like christians,
> >can't write good encyclopedia articles.
>
> Where did that come from? Please lay off the straw men.
>
> >You're offended because someone is expressing
> >that view? I'm against religion is school, but this is
> >like telling people they can't say they have a religion
> >when they're in the classroom.
>
> Saying something on a talk page or a mailing list post is rather different
> from having your name itself make a POV statement /all the time/ in every
> context.
>
> >Jesus is Lord! is just a slogan,
>
> And a slogan does not a user name make. It is s /slogan/, not a name. A
slogan
> servers a POV evocative purpose while a name serves a nominative one.
>
> >and it's not like telling people "You have
> >to believe in Jesus, otherwise you're going
> >to go to hell".
>
> Funny, I get told that often by people who wear "Jesus is Lord!" t-shirts.
>
> Simply put; user names should not be slogans.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
I think the name is "jesuS islorD" backwards. er... unless you were talking
about something else... nevermind.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Starling" <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 9:12 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

> Drolsi Susej requested a name change. S/he (I'm not going to try to guess
> the gender of foreign names again)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:
>
>
>>Congratulations on your sucessful and sustainable NPO
>>startup.  I would add that Brion isnt the only skilled
>>developer who gives his valuable time and skills to
>>WP, though.
>>
>>
>
>That's absolutely true and I meant no favoritism.  But it has to be
>said that Brion does a lot of 'grunt work' that isn't that fun, and as
>Erik put it to me the other day, the entire project would have
>collapsed months ago without him.
>
>
Not to mitigate Brion's work, which is certainly very valuable, but
development work also isn't the only useful thing that goes on at
Wikipedia (as many sites seem to forget).  For example, a good use of
funds (in my mind) would be to pay researchers a minimal token salary
for adding information on relatively un-fun but
need-to-be-in-an-encyclopedia topics.  Currently everyone is
volunteer-only, and if I were to pick one place to start going to "paid
labor", I'm not sure it'd be the backend side of things.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Stevertigo wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Congratulations on your sucessful and sustainable NPO
>>> startup.  I would add that Brion isnt the only skilled
>>> developer who gives his valuable time and skills to
>>> WP, though.
>>>
>>
>>
>> That's absolutely true and I meant no favoritism.  But it has to be
>> said that Brion does a lot of 'grunt work' that isn't that fun, and as
>> Erik put it to me the other day, the entire project would have
>> collapsed months ago without him.
>>
>>
> Not to mitigate Brion's work, which is certainly very valuable, but
> development work also isn't the only useful thing that goes on at
> Wikipedia (as many sites seem to forget).  For example, a good use of
> funds (in my mind) would be to pay researchers a minimal token salary
> for adding information on relatively un-fun but
> need-to-be-in-an-encyclopedia topics.  Currently everyone is
> volunteer-only, and if I were to pick one place to start going to
> "paid labor", I'm not sure it'd be the backend side of things.

I realize I forgot to fully explain my reasons I think this will become
more necessary.  In addition to simply filling in boring but important
gaps (probably the best initial use, IMO), I think it will become
necessary in the future to pay some people to keep track of volatile
topics.  Especially in light of the recent discussion of the possibility
of astroturfing Wikipedia, I think it would be very valuable to have a
few known-neutral-and-knowledgeable people keeping watch on certain
areas.  If something like genetically modified food turns into a turf
war between, say, Monsato and environmentalists, it's likely any neutral
and knowledgeable people will want to be completely uninvolved after a
certain amount of time, while if there's at least some token payment,
perhaps it'd be easier to convince a few reliable people to devote more
attention to it.

(Note also that I'm thinking of it more as a token payment, to help
people justify their time spent on Wikipedia --- certainly nothing along
the lines of a real salary.  If I had to pick a number, perhaps more in
the range of $100-$200/month.)

-Mark


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mirroring (was Re: Fundraising)

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> The architecture that I would advocate is a single MySQL backend
> (possibly with a cold or hot standby) and multiple parallel PHP+Apache
> frontends, that are all equal and balance the load among them.

Yes!  This is precisely the architecture we are pursuing.

--Jimbo


body:
Yes, I have adjusted my configuration to that.  To get the same amount
of disk space is a bit more expensive, but I really like the
combination of speed and redundancy this gives us.

I've requested an electronic transfer of the U.S. dollar balance from
PayPal to our real bank account, because for now I don't have a
bankcard for the PayPal account directly, so I will need the money in
the bank so that I can do online ordering.

This is said to take a few business days (3, I think they said), and
since I did it on Saturday Morning, I expect that the actual purchase
will be Wednesday or Thursday.

So we can keep chatting if anyone has good ideas.

--Jimbo


body:
Thomas Luft wrote:
> >SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 Preload
> >
> I dunno, but for security and upgrade reasons I would prefer Debian (or
> is this not available for the Opteron yet?!

I would prefer Redhat just for compatibility with everything else I
have.  At least at Penguin, SuSE is the only option, and I'm under the
vague impression that SuSE is the first-to-market with a GNU/Linux
system optimized for Opteron.

I am mostly indifferent between SuSE and Redhat and willing to try
Debian if the main developers want it, but SuSE is what will ship on
the machine, so we might just accept that and go.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Drolsi Susej requested a name change.

I'd like to express my appreciation for that gesture of conciliation
towards others, and I hope that we do take seriously the complaint
that our handling of this was perhaps less than sensitive and that our
policy needs to be clarified and improved.

Droli, thanks so much for your kindness in this matter.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: AstroWikipedia

body:
This is probably something that Alex can comment on helpfully.

We probably do need to setup a wiki-legal.  In any event, althugh
Daniel posted this on wikien-l, I'm moving it to Wikipedia-l.

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language
> wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com.
> It seems that they created the name independently of
> us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force
> them to change their name, but should we at least get
> them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia?
> LDan
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Delirium wrote:
>For example, a good use of funds (in my mind)
>would be to pay researchers a minimal token
>salary for adding information on relatively
>un-fun but need-to-be-in-an-encyclopedia topics.

With a large enough grant we could hire college professors part time to
contribute to selected topics. Yes, that would be neat.

One thing I would love to see happen would be a college (or even high school
for that matter) Latin instructor work with his or her students on creating a
whole bunch of Latin articles. Heck, he or she could also work on a Latin
textbook too!

We could have year long contracts and move from language to language among the
smaller Wikipedias. /That/ would majorly kick-start many language Wikipedias
that might otherwise languish for years. I'm a firm believer that one of the
major reasons why Wikipedia took off was due to the fact that Larry Sanger
was a full time paid editor of Wikipedia during its first year.

A webpage designer and usability experts could also be hired to revamp our
user interface. With enough money we could get a lot of the less-than-fun
stuff done that would otherwise take a long time relying only on volunteers.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Andrew wrote:
>So you would support a rule against any user name constituting an opinion?

Any POV slogan that is deemed to be controversial or any user name created for
shock value.

-- mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Drolsi Susej requested a name change.

The mirroring makes the name more subtle. I still don't like it but I'll hang.

-- mav


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion

body:
The undeletion system has stopped working perhaps a
week ago on the french wiki.

I supposed it bothers nobody else but me, since I am
the only one to apparently have noticed :-)

Could it be fixed please ? Thanks a lot

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion

body:
On Saturday, Oct 11, 2003, at 23:51 US/Pacific, Anthere wrote:

> The undeletion system has stopped working perhaps a
> week ago on the french wiki.
>
> I supposed it bothers nobody else but me, since I am
> the only one to apparently have noticed :-)
>
> Could it be fixed please ? Thanks a lot

What happens?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>For example, a good use of funds (in my mind)
>>would be to pay researchers a minimal token
>>salary for adding information on relatively
>>un-fun but need-to-be-in-an-encyclopedia topics.
>>
>>
>
>With a large enough grant we could hire college professors part time to
>contribute to selected topics. Yes, that would be neat.
>
>One thing I would love to see happen would be a college (or even high school
>for that matter) Latin instructor work with his or her students on creating a
>whole bunch of Latin articles. Heck, he or she could also work on a Latin
>textbook too!
>
>We could have year long contracts and move from language to language among the
>smaller Wikipedias. /That/ would majorly kick-start many language Wikipedias
>that might otherwise languish for years. I'm a firm believer that one of the
>major reasons why Wikipedia took off was due to the fact that Larry Sanger
>was a full time paid editor of Wikipedia during its first year.
>
>A webpage designer and usability experts could also be hired to revamp our
>user interface. With enough money we could get a lot of the less-than-fun
>stuff done that would otherwise take a long time relying only on volunteers.
>
>
I agree with all these ideas---another way of getting funding for
content that pops to mind would be encouraging others to make these
sorts of payments, either in addition to or instead of donating to us
directly.  It's already fairly commonplace for grants to be written to
fund development of open-source software (so far the US government is
the biggest spender here, but there are a few others), so perhaps we
could get people to give money for the purpose of contributing to an
open-content Wikipedia.

I could see, among many other examples, a [Greek/Polish/Italian/etc.]
cultural heritage organization being willing to give a grant to a
professor for contributing to the [xx] culture and history section of
the English Wikipedia, or just in general to the [xx]-language
Wikipedia, as such an endeavor would fit perfectly with their mission of
spreading awareness of [xx] culture---whereas simply donating cash to
Wikipedia would be harder to justify within their charter.  Of course,
NPOV will be an issue (we don't want a fiercly nationalistic Greek or
Turk writing the history of that conflict, for example), but we deal
with those already, and I think such grants could have lots of benefits.

-Mark


body:
On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 10:13:58PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Thomas Luft wrote:
> > >SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 Preload
> > >
> > I dunno, but for security and upgrade reasons I would prefer Debian (or
> > is this not available for the Opteron yet?!
>
> I would prefer Redhat just for compatibility with everything else I
> have.  At least at Penguin, SuSE is the only option, and I'm under the
> vague impression that SuSE is the first-to-market with a GNU/Linux
> system optimized for Opteron.
>
> I am mostly indifferent between SuSE and Redhat and willing to try
> Debian if the main developers want it, but SuSE is what will ship on
> the machine, so we might just accept that and go.
>
> --Jimbo

Well, I prefer Debian over SuSE, it's really easy to administer.  But,
SuSE is fine as well.

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


from_name: Peter Bartlett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Grevers
>On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 16:54:18 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> gave

>utterance to the following:
>
>> The current balance in the Paypal account is $7,040.09 USD.
>>
>> This came as a complete shock to me and is primarily the result of a
>> single large contribution of $5,000.
>>
>> I'm not sure of the proper etiquette here, I am bursting at the seams
>> to thank this person publicly, but with no indication really that
>> I have permission, I'll let them remain anonymous for right now!
>>
>
>I think it is for the best if they remain anonymous. I can see
potentially
>undesirable consequences of active wikipedians making large dontaions,
>being named, and then, should some dispute arise invoving that person
in
>the future, the fact of the donation being misused with "proprietorial"

>implications. The risk of it being used as an accusation against the
donor
>is probably greater than it being used by the donor or their advocate
in
>the dispute.
>  And it's quite a nice feeling having mystery benefactors :-) And let
us
>not forget all the "widows mites" as well.

A completely reasonable point.

However I think this donation is absolutely fabulous news and would
personally like to honour the contributor in some way as a tiny token of
thanks. Therefore I offer to write a good article or fix two stubs on
the subject of the donator's choice [*]. If he/she wishes to take up the
offer, he/she could remain anonymous to me in various ways if needed.

Pete

[*] Please no slippery slope arguments right now on where this could
lead. This is a day for rejoicing!


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 03:15:19PM -0700, ray at ganymede.org wrote:
>
> I have total control over this machine. It is a Mac OS X 10.3 running
> MySQL 4.1.0-alpha-debug. The SQL files that I was able to download gave
> me a syntax error before any data makes it into the tables. I am
> re-downloading to see if that helps.

What message did it give exactly?

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Periodic lag problem

body:
On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 12:23:18AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> I wrote a little perl script to monitor the health of Wikipedia by
> regularly checking the file size of the main log. The idea was that it
> would email me if apache crashed. I soon discovered something rather
> interesting and unexpected.
>
> Once every 15 minutes or so, Wikipedia shuts down for a minute or two.
> This is bad, needless to say. During these episodes, it shows few if any
> log entries. Load is depressed slightly (from ~20 to ~10), so CPU
> starvation didn't seem likely. I suspected database troubles.
>
> Attached is a zip file containing the output from SHOW PROCESSLIST.
> There is one file showing "typical" output, between the episodes, and
> three showing output in the middle of an episode. One thing stands out
> like a sore thumb:
>
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='167.206.112.85'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='217.244.15.107'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='80.55.166.58'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='66.196.90.11'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='172.176.254.188'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='220.54.212.24'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_id=7580
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='194.78.48.226'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='80.225.14.29'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='144.32.128.73'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='62.216.15.127'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='134.151.225.179'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='213.81.145.123'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='129.137.208.159'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='195.93.72.17'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='218.19.141.2'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='68.11.187.242'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='63.34.208.93'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='81.196.21.16'
> SELECT 1 FROM user_newtalk WHERE user_ip='202.156.2.82'
>
> Millions of user_newtalk requests, conspicuously absent from the typical
> dump. Many of them are doing "statistics", whatever that means, and the
> rest are locked. One side of me is curious as to what "statistics" means
> and why it produces this behaviour. The other side of me says

Could these hanging selects be just a part of the phenomenon?
I mean, assume, the mysql has some reason not to respond, but
still accepts new requests. Then all anonymous users reading
a page will add a new process looking for a newtalk flag. They
don't cause the slowdown, they are its victims.

So the question is: Why does it slow down every 15 minutes?
Do we have some cron jobs running every quarter of an hour?

Regards,

JeLuf


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia

body:
On Sat, 2003-10-11 at 21:40, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language
> wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com.
> It seems that they created the name independently of
> us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force
> them to change their name, but should we at least get
> them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia?
> LDan
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to
Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list
which sites are ours.


from_name: Thomas Luft

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 Preload
>
I dunno, but for security and upgrade reasons I would prefer Debian (or
is this not available for the Opteron yet?!
Regards

Thomas


body:
From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-English Wikipedias surpass
English version

>Very exciting news at:

>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News

>I've made some changes to the press release to
reflect >this and also the fact
>that we missed the 300,000 milestone.

>There were some complaints that "one third of a
>million" and "1/3 million" do
>not translate well, so I created an alternate
headline >and intro (the  headline is the same as the
subject >line of this email).

>Diff showing change:

>http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikimedia%27s_first_press_release&diff=0&oldid=18697

>Updates to all different versions of the press
release >will be needed.

This is very thougthful of you Mav, and I appreciate
it.

I would like to say however, that presumably, this
won't be a very good title for most international
wikipedias.

See...perhaps the media that which you will send the
release already know Wikipedia, and know it is growing
fast, so it make sense to insist on another point,
perhaps the setting of the foundation, perhaps the
fact it is multilingue

This is different for some of us perhaps. Our medias
have never heard of the project. So, I think they will
not be very sensible to the fact we are bigger than
the english version since they do not know anything of
the english version itself. Similarly, I would not put
up a title about the foundation or the donation stuff
in a french media, since apparently, french donations
do not work. Or I would not talk of a foundation
setting, since they just do not know the project.

At this point, I think international wikipedias
(perhaps not all of them, that may depend on previous
release of course) would more benefit to insist on the
size of the project (and use the number of pages in
other languages to make it appear real huge :-)).

That is just a suggestion. I think I will stick to
"Wikipedia : more than 300 000 pages" (of course, as
usual french speaking can scream if they disagree :-))

Otherwise, I am purely delighted by the news our
technical problems will likely soon be over :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
On Sunday, Oct 12, 2003, at 01:46 US/Pacific, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Which reminds me, are we waiting for consensus on merging the user
> accounts of all the wikipedias into a single one, or is it just that
> noone bothered to implement it?

Seems to me it was mainly an implementation issue; also how to deal
with the existing duplicate account names.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Chong Yidong

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> writes:

> Now, I have created a (partly) working parser, written in C++. It is
> based on a string object I also wrote, natively using 16-bit chars and
> thus supporting unicode. (A function to actually import/export mysql
> unicode remains to be written, though).
>
> ...
>
> This could be the basis for several wiki(pedia) software projects:
> * Offline editor
> * Reader, to be distributed on CD/DVD
> * Wiki(pedia) apache module

I've been working on an Emacs major mode for editing wikipedia
articles offline (which I've placed at [[Image:Wikipedia-mode.el]],
for lack of a better location.) The major missing feature is the
ability to download and upload article source (i.e. the stuff in the
edit box) automagically to and from the Wikipedia. Is this the kind of
thing your parser can help with?

-- CYD


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion

body:
On Sunday, Oct 12, 2003, at 02:52 US/Pacific, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
> It's because an error I made in LangugeFr.php, which was quickly
> corrected and commited on CVS but is waiting to be updated on the
> server.

I installed the new file, let me know if anything's still wrong.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
Are you laughing because it's funny, or at how stupid I am for pointing out
something so obvious?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Frank" <JeLuF at gmx.de>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 4:22 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

> On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 09:29:06PM -0700, Andrew wrote:
> > I think the name is "jesuS islorD" backwards. er...
>
> *ROTFL*
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: SKARIA

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Kindly include my name in your mailing list
Skaria.c.d
trc_ceedsk at sancharnet.in
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
I would.

RickK

Andrew <imthesponge at hotmail.com> wrote:

So you would support a rule against any user name constituting an opinion?

-evil saltine

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would.
>
> RickK
>
>> Andrew <imthesponge at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So you would support a rule against any user name
>> constituting an opinion?
>>
>> -evil saltine

That's  bit broad, don't you think? Wikipedians are
allowed to have opinions. I see no reason why
usernames should be NPOV. I think this would be a
serious violation of freedom of speech.
LDan

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from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The mirroring makes the name [Drolsi Susej] more subtle.
 > I still don't like it but I'll hang.

Okay, considering your tolerance of Drolsi Susej (but not Jesus is
Lord), how would you feel about someone calling himself Uoy Kcuf?


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Rick wrote:
> I would.
>
> RickK
>
> */Andrew <imthesponge at hotmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>     So you would support a rule against any user name constituting an
>     opinion?
>
>     -evil saltine

You tell 'em, RickK!  Certainly Andrew there should not be allowed to
use a name advocating the qualities "manly, valiant, courageous."  On
the other tentacle, of course, the name "Richard" expresses the opinion
that its bearer is a "powerful ruler; brave one"....

--~~~~
the Epopt, who has not, in fact, been initiated into the Eleusinian
Mysteries


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
     > From: Matthew Woodcraft <mattheww at chiark.greenend.org.uk>

     > Daniel Mayer wrote:

     >> Where did I say that they should be banned? Changing a user name does
     >> not ban the user. Think of it as a dress code; the great majority of
     >> employers do not allow their employees to wear shirts expressing
     >> controversial opinions.

     > I think this is a good analogy.
     > And, as Wikipedia is not our employer, I think imposing a dress code is
     > inappropriate.

OK, I'll bite.

So how would Wiki contributors who are born-again Christians (or other
equally fervent varieties) feel about the hypothetical username
"ThereIsNoG-dButAllah"? (One of the main tenets of Islam, dontchankow.)

(For those who don't know, the "-" is for Orthodox Jews, who do not like to
see the name of the deity written out in full.)

I mean, they are really perfect mirrors - TINGBA asserts that all other
beliefs are false, and JiL also basically makes the same statement.

I really like Mav's analogy - and please note that the dress code he speaks
of wasn't about collars, it was about "expressing controversial opinions".

	Noel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
> From: "Andrew Lih" <alih at hku.hk>
> Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!
>
> Perhaps I'm completely cynical, but the variety of
> suggestions about
> hiring experts to keep watch, or college professors,
> or
> "known-neutral-and-knowledgeable" folks is a bit
> troubling and un-Wiki.
> (And for those who know what I do for a living will
> find it ironic. :)
>
> If this route is considered, we should ensure no
> greater authority will
> be conferred upon this class of contributors.  So
> far, the suggestions
> by Delerium and Mav have been innocent enough, but
> could be dangerous if
> it becomes related to ownership, entitlement or
> keeper-status of certain
> topics.

I do not know what you do for a living :-)
But I feel equally troubled by this.
There are quite a bunch of "professionals" among us,
and it is certainly clear that being professionals do
not prevent bias for example.
So not only is it sort of putting again knowledge in
the arms of academics, but also fooling us in the idea
these academics are perfectly neutral.

Similarly, some french wants to press CD for
demonstration purpose to precisely these
professionals, for them to indicate to us where typo
is wrong, which fields are not covered enough, which
articles contain mistakes and so on.

I find this troubling and slightly insulting.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > The mirroring makes the name [Drolsi Susej] more
> subtle.
>  > I still don't like it but I'll hang.
>
> Okay, considering your tolerance of Drolsi Susej
> (but not Jesus is
> Lord), how would you feel about someone calling
> himself Uoy Kcuf?

Why does the meaning of a username matter? If someone
called themself Uoy Kcuf, or, for that matter, Fuck
You, and they made good edits, why do something like
forcing a name change that would deter them from using
Wikipedia?
LDan

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
> OK, I'll bite.
>
> So how would Wiki contributors who are born-again
> Christians (or other
> equally fervent varieties) feel about the
> hypothetical username
> "ThereIsNoG-dButAllah"? (One of the main tenets of
> Islam, dontchankow.)
>
> (For those who don't know, the "-" is for Orthodox
> Jews, who do not like to
> see the name of the deity written out in full.)
>
> I mean, they are really perfect mirrors - TINGBA
> asserts that all other
> beliefs are false, and JiL also basically makes the
> same statement.

I don't see why someone saying they're Muslim is
offensive. However, the statement "Jesus is Lord!" is
better-known, so that softens the blow, somewhat.
>
> I really like Mav's analogy - and please note that
> the dress code he speaks
> of wasn't about collars, it was about "expressing
> controversial opinions".
>
> 	Noel

Yes, but Wikipedia shouldn't be one to limit freedom
of expression, aside from NPOV in actual articles.
LDan

__________________________________
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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 16:54:18 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> The current balance in the Paypal account is $7,040.09 USD.
>
> This came as a complete shock to me and is primarily the result of a
> single large contribution of $5,000.
>
> I'm not sure of the proper etiquette here, I am bursting at the seams
> to thank this person publicly, but with no indication really that
> I have permission, I'll let them remain anonymous for right now!
>
I think it is for the best if they remain anonymous. I can see potentially
undesirable consequences of active wikipedians making large dontaions,
being named, and then, should some dispute arise invoving that person in
the future, the fact of the donation being misused with "proprietorial"
implications. The risk of it being used as an accusation against the donor
is probably greater than it being used by the donor or their advocate in
the dispute.
  And it's quite a nice feeling having mystery benefactors :-) And let us
not forget all the "widows mites" as well.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Saturday, Oct 11, 2003, at 15:15 US/Pacific, ray at ganymede.org wrote:
>> I see that there were, last January, discussions about being able to
>> be a replication client of the databases, but I do not any follow-up
>> on these discussions, so it is not clear that one can become a
>> replication client at this point.
>
> Not yet, no. A key issue is how to deal with the user tables.

Which reminds me, are we waiting for consensus on merging the user
accounts of all the wikipedias into a single one, or is it just that
noone bothered to implement it?

Magnus


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo consensus?

body:
Anthere wrote:

>any Nohat logo is good (2nd is the least good ihmo)
>
>Tarquin, can you put it on the fr wiki ?
>
>
>
I don't have server access.
but I support its presence on fr ! :)
could a dev take care of it please?

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Advertising for expert volunteers

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

>On Sun, Oct 12, 2003 at 03:13:18PM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
>
>
>>Perhaps I'm completely cynical, but the variety of suggestions about
>>hiring experts to keep watch, or college professors, or
>>"known-neutral-and-knowledgeable" folks is a bit troubling and un-Wiki.
>>(And for those who know what I do for a living will find it ironic. :)
>>
>>If this route is considered, we should ensure no greater authority will
>>be conferred upon this class of contributors.  So far, the suggestions
>>by Delerium and Mav have been innocent enough, but could be dangerous if
>>it becomes related to ownership, entitlement or keeper-status of certain
>>topics.
>>
>>
>
>How about advertising in scientific magazines? But before we do that we
>should make a survey what jobs and interests our readers have so we can
>focus one advertising in a Wild-West-magazine somthing like
>"Billy the Kid wanted! Write and article about him in the WP"
>Ads should be 1) cheaper than experts and 2) reach more people.
>
>
>
>
Advertising for expert volunteers in places where they might hang out
seems like a much better use of limited funds than paying for experts --
I think we have not even begun to tap the true range of potential expert
volunteers out there who are willing to contribute for the love of it.

Places to advertise:
* scientific journals (Nature ...)
* medical journals (NEJM, JAMA, The Lancet)
* popular science magazines (New Scientist, Scientific American)
* engineering journals (IEEE Spectrum ...)
* specialist games magazines, music magazines ...
* etc.

-- Neil


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion

body:
Anthere wrote:
> The undeletion system has stopped working perhaps a
> week ago on the french wiki.
>
> I supposed it bothers nobody else but me, since I am
> the only one to apparently have noticed :-)
>
> Could it be fixed please ? Thanks a lot
>

It's because an error I made in LangugeFr.php, which was quickly
corrected and commited on CVS but is waiting to be updated on the server.

-- Looxix


subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
On Sun, Oct 12, 2003 at 03:13:18PM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
> Perhaps I'm completely cynical, but the variety of suggestions about
> hiring experts to keep watch, or college professors, or
> "known-neutral-and-knowledgeable" folks is a bit troubling and un-Wiki.
> (And for those who know what I do for a living will find it ironic. :)
>
> If this route is considered, we should ensure no greater authority will
> be conferred upon this class of contributors.  So far, the suggestions
> by Delerium and Mav have been innocent enough, but could be dangerous if
> it becomes related to ownership, entitlement or keeper-status of certain
> topics.
>
> In the most extreme case, it reminds me of "The Simpsons" episode where
> the Mensa chapter of Springfield take responsibility for running the
> town (with their so-called "genius") only to have things go horribly
> wrong, and have Stephen Hawking come by to chastise them. :)

Agreed. For the programmers, I think we have real good ones. They are just
too busy keeping the site up on a day-by-day basis that they don't have
time to improve performance. Brion for example has some real good ideas
how to decrease DB-load dramaticaly using caching. Currently though he's
busy rebooting the machines and checking the databases after crashes.

Give them the new hardware and they will find more time to work on the
code.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

body:
On Sun, Oct 12, 2003 at 03:13:18PM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
> Perhaps I'm completely cynical, but the variety of suggestions about
> hiring experts to keep watch, or college professors, or
> "known-neutral-and-knowledgeable" folks is a bit troubling and un-Wiki.
> (And for those who know what I do for a living will find it ironic. :)
>
> If this route is considered, we should ensure no greater authority will
> be conferred upon this class of contributors.  So far, the suggestions
> by Delerium and Mav have been innocent enough, but could be dangerous if
> it becomes related to ownership, entitlement or keeper-status of certain
> topics.

How about advertising in scientific magazines? But before we do that we
should make a survey what jobs and interests our readers have so we can
focus one advertising in a Wild-West-magazine somthing like
"Billy the Kid wanted! Write and article about him in the WP"
Ads should be 1) cheaper than experts and 2) reach more people.

> In the most extreme case, it reminds me of "The Simpsons" episode where
> the Mensa chapter of Springfield take responsibility for running the
> town (with their so-called "genius") only to have things go horribly
> wrong, and have Stephen Hawking come by to chastise them. :)

A great episode.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	        Urlaub? http://www.tomk32.de/fewo-koll/
   / \              http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> On Sunday, Oct 12, 2003, at 02:52 US/Pacific, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
>
>> It's because an error I made in LangugeFr.php, which was quickly
>> corrected and commited on CVS but is waiting to be updated on the server.
>
>
> I installed the new file, let me know if anything's still wrong.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

OK it's working. Thanks

-- Looxix