subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd article?

body:
> 	Something really strange is happening when I try to look at the
> article [[Laurent]] which was recently created. It crashes my browser
> (Galeon 1.2.9/Mozilla 1.3) whenever I try to look at it. I did a database
> query on it before the last crash, it's number 207611 I think (from
> memory), and the text in it looks normal. But when I try to get it, both
> Galeon and raw Mozilla crash, in different ways -- Galeon freezes up, not
> using clock cycles meanwhile; Mozilla dies instantly. On the other hand,
> it seems to work just fine in Lynx (I tried to wget it, but that didn't
> work, but neither does anything else; I'm guessing Wikipedia filters on
> HTTP-client to prevent excessive slurping?) Looking at the source now that
> I've got it, the only thing that seem at all irregular about the contents
> (the HTML, not the Wikicode) is that it's all in <pre> tags. (Disclaimer:
> I haven't looked at HTML source of Wikipages before, so I'm not entirely
> certain what would be irregular.)

Heya,

sounds like a browser bug to me. Works fine here in Moz 1.3/Linux, FWIW
(yes, I did use the previous revision). But <pre> is quite notorious and
has been a cause of problems in almost all browsers. If you can reproduce
the conditions (also check the skin in your preferences), you may want to
file a bug report at bugzilla.mozilla.org.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: ATTN Jason -- Re: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com indexed by Google

body:
Jason Richey wrote:
> I removed the VirtualHost entry for that name from the old server, so
> surfers going to that name will end up at www.bomis.com.  I'm not
> quite sure why that is...  The Apache setup on that machine is a
> little strange.
>
> do you want the name test.wikipedia.com pointed to the new server?

It seems sensible that anyone who visits http://test.wikipedia.com/*
be forwarded to http://www.wikipedia.org/*, rather than to the Bomis
homepage, which may astonish them.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> I think that without playing word games, the licence is asking us to
> list the individual responsible.

But we do.  The GNU FDL contains no prohibition on pseudonyms, and if
someone chooses to edit under the pseudonym 129.79.1.xxx, then we let
them do so.

> > I do agree, though, that at some point we will want to have a "sifter"
> > project or similar in order to create a Wikipedia release version 1.0.
>
> That sounds an interesting idea. But who would be responsible for
> determining what gets into the released version? Would it be some sort
> of... cabal? ;)

That's a good question.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Pleas support offsite images

body:
This is a policy issue which should be discussed on wikipedia-l, not
on wikitech-l.

But, basically, I remain firmly opposed to the mixing of non-GFDL
material into the encyclopedia as a matter of principle.

> I believe that this is to appease the forces that be so that they
> will have confidence in turning wikipedia into a marketable, paper
> product.

Well, I'm "the forces that be", and <sarcasm>yes, you're right, it's
all a scam to make money</sarcasm>.  :-)

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:George Washington (was: Weezer and Michael banned)

in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280CF695@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 07:03:03PM -0400

body:
In this case, I approve.  It's the stuff about George Washington's
penis that persuades me.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I banned User:George Washington because I'm pretty sure
> it's the same guy, based on jtd's comment to mav.
>
> See http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Maveric149&diff=812726&oldid=812709
>
> Ed Poor
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poor, Edmund W.
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 10:05 PM
> To: 'wikien-l at wikipedia.org'
> Subject: Weezer and Michael banned (was: Michael's threats)
>
>
> Okay, it took me a day and a half to get around to it, but I
> locked both of Weezer's user accounts.
>
> Ed Poor
>
> P.S. I hate doing this. I guess no one else likes doing it,
> either, which is why I generally wind up being the one who runs
> the "update queries" to enforce the bans.
>
> P.P.S. Does a hangman walk home whistling, afterward? (Right now, I have a headache...)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Removing material from the talk page for an article is inappropriate. To see
what RK did look at:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Idolatry&diff=809422&oldid=
808952

As you can see (regardless of its merits) the material RK removed is more or
less on-topic.

As I look back through the edits, Dietary Fiber's edits seem just as good as
RK's.

The actual issue in dispute is difficult to get at even with prolonged
reading, but here's one example of RK's tone:

:That's it. I am tired of your bald-faced lies. I '''never''' wrote any such
thing, Dietary Fiber, and you will be reported for fabricating quotes and
trolling. This is the second time today you fabricated a quote from me, and
attacked me for it. Each time I try to work with you, you respond with
personal attacks and fraud. Well, that's the end of your hateful attempts to
disrupt our encyclopedia. You are now under watch. [[User:RK|RK]] 00:25 Apr
9, 2003 (UTC)

I think that probably the person that belongs "under watch" is RK.

Fred

Although perhaps RK could point us to a "fabrication of a quote"?

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 17:36:57 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Problem with Dietary Fiber on idolatry article
>
> I am having some problems with User:Dietary Fiber, on the
> Idolatry article.  He started off by repeatedly criticising
> the article for pushing a religious point of view (which it
> clearly did not do).  He then went off-topic in the TALK
> page for this article, so I moved the off-topic part of
> this discussion over to his own home page so we could
> discuss things there; that is Wikipedia protocol.  In
> response, he deleted the discussion and labelled it as
> SPAM, and went back to attacking me!  This is a classic
> behavior of a troll, if not the very definition of one.
>
> He all of my attempts to dialogue, and fabricated a quote
> from me, and then attacked the position in this quote.
> Despite how angry I was at this, I tried again to clarify
> the issues that he seemed to be confused on.  In the end,
> he responded by creating another fake position, and
> criticised me for things I never said, and beliefs that I
> never have had.
>
> His most recent slander is this:
>> Is it appropriate to refer to all idol "worshipers" as
>> idolators, as RK suggests elsewhere?
>> [[User:Dietary Fiber|Dietary Fiber]]
>
> I never wrote any such thing.  In fact, I was the one who
> contributed material to this article, and to the article on
> Religious pluralism, on why so many liberal Christians and
> liberal Jews now have the OPPOSITE beliefs.  But Dietary
> Fiber just doesn't care. He is attacking positions I do not
> have, claiming that I am pushing these positions in the
> article, and then criticising me for those beliefs!
>
> I don't know what he is up to, but I smell a troll. I would
> keep a close watch on him.
>
> In frustration,
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> =====
> "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who
> knows he is righteous".
> The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
> http://tax.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problem with Dietary Fiber on idolatry article

body:
Robert,

I want to thank you publicly for the moderate tone of
your post regarding your interaction with user Dietary
Fiber. I, being much less patient, would simply have
told him, "Eat me!" (Or as Wormwood said to the junior
tempter in The Screwtape Letters, "Bring us back food
or be food yourself." ;-)

I have stayed out of the discussion on "idol worship"
and "idolatry" for a long time, but from the little I
can gather, the issue seems to boil down to this:

1. Some people believe that it is wrong to worship idols,
   i.e., that it is an evil practice forbidden by divine
   decree.

2. Some people (perhaps not exactly the same bunch
   mentioned in #1 above) use the word *idolatry* to
   mean "the evil practice of worshipping idols".

It would be unfortunate if we entitled a Wikipedia
article as [[Idolatry]], as that would connote that our
official position condemns idol worship. Although I
personally oppose idol worship, I agreed when I first
signed in that I would leave my beliefs out of the
articles. Rather, I promised to help write neutral
articles.

Whatever the various advocates in the scholarly or
religious world, or even in the general public, believe
about idols and their worship -- please allow me to
suggest that we simply DESCRIBE and REPORT those
beliefs.

* "Some Jews, Catholics or Unificationists believe X."
* "Some believe Y."
* "Mr. Z, author of The ABC of Idol Worship, believes
  PDQ."

As to the specifics, if Dietary Fiber actually *forged*
a comment from you, I'll have to have a talk with him.
But if he simply misunderstood you, that's different.

Humbly beseeching your continued restraint, I wish to
remain,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Poor


from_name: Jason Richey

body:
I agree.  The problem was that I couldn't figure out why it was
originally redirecting to Bomis in the first place...

Turns out it was using a "redirect" directive from the first
VirtualHost section (even though it didn't match the hostname).  So,
that's fixed...

Jason

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > I removed the VirtualHost entry for that name from the old server, so
> > surfers going to that name will end up at www.bomis.com.  I'm not
> > quite sure why that is...  The Apache setup on that machine is a
> > little strange.
> >
> > do you want the name test.wikipedia.com pointed to the new server?
>
> It seems sensible that anyone who visits http://test.wikipedia.com/*
> be forwarded to http://www.wikipedia.org/*, rather than to the Bomis
> homepage, which may astonish them.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: partnering with nytimes to avoid registration

body:
Below is a message from a new user that I think should be discussed here:

-----Forward----
I don't know how this works, but I know some sites like Google News and CNN
are partners with nytimes.com, which is frequently linked to from
Wikipedia.org

Being a partner allows users to click on a link and go straight to the
article, not having to sign-in or register from nytimes.com (which is free).

The partner code is nothing special (just some suffixes on a standard URI), in
fact you can change the partner id in a url to anything and it will still
work, however I am sure there are steps to be legitimate with nytimes.com.

Such a feature--being able to click and access and article without having to
have an ID at nytimes.com--would be an advantage to both the non-nytimes.com
users and those who happen to be at a foriegn computer when using Wikipedia,
especially considering the importance of that paper and its hypertextual
prevalence here.

Thank you,
Ry Rivard


from_name: tarquin

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 03:58:28PM -0700, Hunter Peress wrote:
>
>
>>To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
>>acceptable. <snip>
>>
>>Thus, I hope that we discontinue going to great lengths to halt the nature of the internet within wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>NO !!!
>
>Wikipedia must remain free.
>
>I sometimes wonder if it isn't one of our proprietary competitors
>who send people with such suicidal ideas.
>
>
Offsite linking is also generally held to be bad netiquette.
When is the inclusion of an image *so* vital?
You could do what I have done on [[Spurn]] -- give a link to a webpage
which shows images.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
ATTN Jason -- Re: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com indexed by
	Google

body:
On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 04:58, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> It seems sensible that anyone who visits http://test.wikipedia.com/*
> be forwarded to http://www.wikipedia.org/*, rather than to the Bomis
> homepage, which may astonish them.

That would still astonish them, as test.wikipedia.com contained pages in
Polish. :)  If it must be redirected, it should be redirected to
pl.wikipedia.org/*.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
>Please DESCRIBE opinions...
Hasn't that been the policy all along?
-- LittleDan

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from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>):
> Below is a message from a new user that I think should be discussed here:
>
> [Notes about becoming a NYTimes partner]

Yes, direct links without registration would be nice, but I wonder
about the idea of encyclopedia articles linking to newspaper reports
in general.  Maybe for articles about historical events some coverage
about contemporary beliefs and attitudes is warranted, but in an
important sense, news and encyclopedic information are very different
things with different goals, and I don't want to encourage the habit
of linking to news reports and calling that an article.  Even if
there is some background information in the article itself, linking
to news reports legitimizes them as a source of information, when for
the most part all news reports are entertainment.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [WikiEN-l] tiny change to code

body:
Don't mind me; I'm just stupid. But for others like me, can you change that link to "User talk page" or something like that?
 "John R. Owens" <jowens.wiki at ghiapet.homeip.net> wrote:That's odd, I see one on User: pages. Though it's called "Discuss
this page", maybe that's why you think there isn't one?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
Maybe, when blocking someone, we should put a cookie on their computer that doesn't let them edit under any username or IP adress. I know this could be a breach of privacy, so maybe it could expire in a week. It would be easy to get around, just a deterent. (just as it is easy to get around blocking usernames)

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] DNS changes

body:
I am making a sweeping change in our DNS that shouldn't affect
anything...  Currently, *.wikipedia.com (the DNS entry) resolves to
the Bomis server that used to host all of the wikis. Any wikipedia.com
wiki that is loading from the newer server is doing so because an
explicit entry has been added to DNS for that wiki to make it point to
the newer server.

I am going to point *.wikipedia.com to the newer server, and add
entries for the wikis that are in use on the old server.

This will give our administrators on the newer server the ability to
handle DNS names that we don't officially support (test.wikipedia.com)
in whatever way they deem fit.  It will also allow them to add new
languages at will, since the hostnames will already be pointed to
the correct IP.  For me, it simplifies converting old wikis to the new
software, as removing a name from DNS is easier than adding one using
register.com's interface.  Also, it has the added bonus of making DNS
get simpler as we convert more old wikis, rather than having it become
more complex (as it currently does).

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 13:50, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Even if
> there is some background information in the article itself, linking
> to news reports legitimizes them as a source of information, when for
> the most part all news reports are entertainment.

That's an interesting assertion. Especially considering that pretty much
all the Wikipedia entries on current events rely on news reports for the
informational content.

It's certainly true that primary sources are preferable, but we need to
be realistic.

Finally, the concept that a Wikipedia entry linking to newspaper
articles legitimizes the articles as sources of information presupposes
an authoritative legitimacy of the Wikipedia entry itself, which one
would think would be based on a consideration of the legitimacy of its
sources, which are the samesaid newspaper articles.


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

in_reply_to: <20030409200353.38226.qmail@web41808.mail.yahoo.com>; from littledanehren@yahoo.com on Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 01:03:53PM -0700

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Maybe, when blocking someone, we should put a cookie on their
>computer that doesn't let them edit under any username or IP adress. I
>know this could be a breach of privacy, so maybe it could expire in a
>week. It would be easy to get around, just a deterent. (just as it is
>easy to get around blocking usernames)

I don't think it's a breach of privacy at all.  It actually sounds
pretty cute and good to me.  Yes, an advanced user could figure out
how to get around it, but if someone is going to all _that_ trouble,
we've got a bigger problem anyway.

The cookie could just say 'edit=no', say.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F4414@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 04:16:35PM -0400

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Banning policy is 100% in the hands of Jimbo, the site owner. He
>apparently favors permanent bans. Since he has the ultimate
>responsibility for the project I hate to second-guess him; but I've
>made my views known.

Actually, I support the idea of automatically expiring bans fully.  I
am not generally in favor of permanent bans.  There could be
exceptions, but usually the point is to ban someone until they get a
grip on themselves.

Not long ago, I suggested that the software be updated so that bans
can have an expiration date.  But beggars can't be choosers, so it's
up to the active developers to implement that.

Also, short-term bans, for a week or month say, would likely be less
controversial generally, so we wouldn't have to sweat them as much.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] DNS changes

body:
That sounds good to me.  Just make sure that no active "old software"
wikis break.  And we should rush along the process of conversion and
make sure that no one is on the old software at all.

Jason Richey wrote:

> I am making a sweeping change in our DNS that shouldn't affect
> anything...  Currently, *.wikipedia.com (the DNS entry) resolves to
> the Bomis server that used to host all of the wikis. Any wikipedia.com
> wiki that is loading from the newer server is doing so because an
> explicit entry has been added to DNS for that wiki to make it point to
> the newer server.
>
> I am going to point *.wikipedia.com to the newer server, and add
> entries for the wikis that are in use on the old server.
>
> This will give our administrators on the newer server the ability to
> handle DNS names that we don't officially support (test.wikipedia.com)
> in whatever way they deem fit.  It will also allow them to add new
> languages at will, since the hostnames will already be pointed to
> the correct IP.  For me, it simplifies converting old wikis to the new
> software, as removing a name from DNS is easier than adding one using
> register.com's interface.  Also, it has the added bonus of making DNS
> get simpler as we convert more old wikis, rather than having it become
> more complex (as it currently does).
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
>On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:46:58 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> gave
>utterance to the following:
>
>> I don't think it's a breach of privacy at all.  It actually sounds
>> pretty cute and good to me.  Yes, an advanced user could figure out
>> how to get around it, but if someone is going to all _that_ trouble,
>> we've got a bigger problem anyway.
>>
>> The cookie could just say 'edit=no', say.
>
>Although something more obscure would reduce the likelihood of
>circumvention.

Obscure enough to withstand the legendary "Remove All Cookies" attack?


body:
Well, sure, but until you've been party to an NPOV dispute, it may be hard for you to comprehend how easy it is to lose track of the difference between (a) really being neutral and (b) things like "getting to the bottom of the issue", "merely stating facts", etc.

We all need a little nudge now and then.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Ehrenberg [mailto:littledanehren at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 3:40 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Problem with Dietary Fiber on idolatry article

>Please DESCRIBE opinions...

Hasn't that been the policy all along?

-- LittleDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
We have many times discussed the idea of self-expiring (or temporary bans). That is the plan I have always favored. I think a 3-day or one-month ban on a problematic user has the potential to persuade them to "join us" rather than trying to "beat us".

Banning policy is 100% in the hands of Jimbo, the site owner. He apparently favors permanent bans. Since he has the ultimate responsibility for the project I hate to second-guess him; but I've made my views known.

I spend the bulk of my Wiki-time working on NPOV issues and trying to get my fellow contributors to work together in a spirit of harmony. I'm not sure how well I'm doing, but I occasionally get a thank-you on my talk page. ^_^

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Ehrenberg [mailto:littledanehren at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 4:04 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

Maybe, when blocking someone, we should put a cookie on their computer that doesn't let them edit under any username or IP adress. I know this could be a breach of privacy, so maybe it could expire in a week. It would be easy to get around, just a deterent. (just as it is easy to get around blocking usernames)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
It's easy to get around all of the banning tecniques, but this would be hard for someone who is just a passerby vandal, as opposed to an advanced cracker (who wouldn't even bother with Wikipedia, for it is too easy). Plus, what if they didn't know it was a cookie blocking them? Another thing, by all means, I don't want to require the enabling of cookies for use of wikipedia. That would be too much of an invasion of privacy, even if it *could* prevent vandals with that tecnique.
 Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz> wrote:So easy that I doubt it would be the least bit effective:
Cookies are - optional in the first place
- easy to find and delete
- unique to each browser (I have 8 to choose from!)
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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body:
On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 16:05, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Well, sure, but until you've been party to an NPOV dispute,
> it may be hard for you to comprehend how easy it is to lose track of
> the difference between (a) really being neutral and (b) things like
"getting to the bottom of the issue", "merely stating facts", etc.
>
> We all need a little nudge now and then.
>
Moreover, it's impossible to "really be neutral". We can try, but true
neutrality is impossible to achieve perfectly. Beware of those who claim
otherwise.


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
Perminant cookies would work, I'm just fundimentally opposed to them (actually, they would expire in 2038 (the end of the Unix Epoch) but that's different.). Jimbo- I think temporary bans would help for the reason Ed stated (but I accidentally deleted).  Perminant cookies are like spyware on someone's computer, whereas temporary cookies are like little temporary placeholders (I never was any good at anologies). Sorry for my slight randomness.
--LittleDan
 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:Banning policy is 100% in the hands of Jimbo, the site owner. He apparently favors permanent bans. Since he has the ultimate responsibility for the project I hate to second-guess him; but I've made my views known.

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikipedia-l] please support offsite imags

body:
Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous wikipedians nix each
others images because of fear of copyright violation. This respect for the GFDL which is extremely
vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.

To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
acceptable. Take http://news.google.com for example, which is greatly improved by the addition of
any image seen fit, also note that not a single image there is hosted on google. I emailed them,
and they  said that what they do eg:  <img src="http://anotherserver/file.jpg"/>  is completely
within the realm of copyright policy.

There would be no violation of GFDL here. As some people already suggested. And the jumbo about it
being bad netiquette is a weak argument against all thats just been laid out.

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body:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Hunter Peress wrote:
> Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous wikipedians nix each
> others images because of fear of copyright violation. This respect for the GFDL which is extremely
> vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.

Riiiight.

> To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
> acceptable.

No, that's not acceptable at all. If you want something to appear inline,
mixed into the page in Wikipedia, it should be *part* of Wikipedia. That
means it should be hosted on the Wikipedia server, and be easily packaged
with backups, distributions, and alternative published formats.

If you'd like to *link* to external images, just like any other external
resource, that's A-OK, fine and dandy.

> Take http://news.google.com for example, which is greatly improved by the addition of
> any image seen fit, also note that not a single image there is hosted on google. I emailed them,
> and they  said that what they do eg:  <img src="http://anotherserver/file.jpg"/>  is completely
> within the realm of copyright policy.

Copyright is an unrelated side issue here.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] please support offsite images

body:
>> To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
>> acceptable.

>No, that's not acceptable at all. If you want something to appear inline,
>mixed into the page in Wikipedia, it should be *part* of Wikipedia. That
>means it should be hosted on the Wikipedia server, and be easily packaged
>with backups, distributions, and alternative published formats.

>If you'd like to *link* to external images, just like any other external
>resource, that's A-OK, fine and dandy.

<img src> *is* simply linking the images, and you get the benefit of inlining any image on the
internet seen fit without having to go through the process of fumbling around for days and weeks
about copyrights which is too slow, non reliable, and rigorous compared with the option being
argued for.

The above arguments lack any support besides opinion and reptition ("No...it should"), then
counterpoints with more explatives, obnoxious posture, and more opinion.

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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
<clipped>
> It's easy to get around all of the banning tecniques, but this
> would be hard for someone who is just a passerby vandal
</clipped>

I agree, plenty of people I know have never (to the great admiration
of doubleclick anc Clique) cleared their cookies.

If it's quick to implement, it has my vote.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 04:47 PM 4/9/03 -0700, you wrote:
>Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous
>wikipedians nix each
>others images because of fear of copyright violation. This respect for the
>GFDL which is extremely
>vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.
>
>To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite
>images. This is perfectley
>acceptable. Take http://news.google.com for example, which is greatly
>improved by the addition of
>any image seen fit, also note that not a single image there is hosted on
>google. I emailed them,
>and they  said that what they do eg:  <img
>src="http://anotherserver/file.jpg"/>  is completely
>within the realm of copyright policy.

The major problem with offsite images isn't netiquette or copyright: it's
that the
image (whether of a news event or an animal) that you link now may disappear
without notice, or be replaced by something different. An article on the
fall of
Baghdad shouldn't suddenly be illustrated by a picture of a baby panda, or
the president of Congo, or whatever else gets dropped into that slot by the
external news source.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 19:47, Hunter Peress wrote:
> Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL
> righteous wikipedians nix each others images because of fear of
> copyright violation. This respect for the GFDL which is extremely
> vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.
>
What you don't seem to understand is that adherence to the GFDL is
intrinsic to the existence of Wikipedia. To be more specific, the
principles of Wikipedia aren't tied to the GFDL per se, but to the idea
of a permanently free resource defended by copyright, rather than
threatened by it.

It is not fear of copyright violation that propels us to shun using
unprotected (in the Wikipedia sense) resources, but the principled stand
that Wikipedia will be freely usable, undegraded, by all--and that
includes not just people who go to wikipedia.org to view entries, but to
people who may have some idea about how to reuse or refactor the
content, and to the future generations of people who will benefit from
this resource.

It is this long view that puts into relief the unnecessary folly of
using external images.

Another way to put it: Wikipedia is an experiment, with the premise that
a world-class resource can be created without relying on proprietary
resources and methods. Relying on external, copyrighted images signals a
failure of that experiment.


in_reply_to: <1049940882.26159.54.camel@venus.mit.edu>; from cunctator@kband.com on Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 10:14:41PM -0400

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> It is not fear of copyright violation that propels us to shun using
> unprotected (in the Wikipedia sense) resources, but the principled stand
> that Wikipedia will be freely usable, undegraded, by all--and that
> includes not just people who go to wikipedia.org to view entries, but to
> people who may have some idea about how to reuse or refactor the
> content, and to the future generations of people who will benefit from
> this resource.
>
> It is this long view that puts into relief the unnecessary folly of
> using external images.

Well said!

--Jimbo


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #261 - 12 msgs

body:
I am apalled by Fred Bauder's personal attacks on me.  He
claimed to have read the Talk page for the Idolatry
article, yet in point of fact Fred Bauder failed to mention
all of the flames that "Dietary Fiber" write about to me,
Fred failed to mention the fact that Dietary Fiber is on
some quest to attack my personal religious beliefs (which
is blatantly inappropriate on Wikipedia); Fred "overlooked"
the forged quote, and then Fred only quoted my response to
the trolling...and then stated that _I_ should be put on
some sort of watch.

I am saddened by his behaviour. If Fred Bauder cannot
control himself, let him go elsewhere until he calms down.
Some of us have serious work to do.

RK

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

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from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: please support offsite imags

body:
Another point that seems to be forgotten is how people
who are reading Wikipedia offline will be able to see
the offsite pictures...

Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
My homepage - http://www.ikso.net/~chuck
Enciklopedio - http://eo.wikipedia.org/

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from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 13:03:53 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Ehrenberg
<littledanehren at yahoo.com> gave utterance to the following:

>
> Maybe, when blocking someone, we should put a cookie on their computer
> that doesn't let them edit under any username or IP adress. I know this
> could be a breach of privacy, so maybe it could expire in a week. It
> would be easy to get around, just a deterent. (just as it is easy to get
> around blocking usernames)
>
So easy that I doubt it would be the least bit effective:
Cookies are - optional in the first place
- easy to find and delete
- unique to each browser (I have 8 to choose from!)
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


body:
Hunter Peress wrote:

>
><img src> *is* simply linking the images,
>
a link to the page containing the image is only a click away.

Again, I ask: when is an image *that* vital to an article?


subject: [Wikitech-l] image pages

body:
this is an old topic, but worth mentioning:

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

there's
* the auto-caption feature that's been discussed
* proposal for auto-formatting - this is good because it dramatically
cuts down on ugly HTML in wiki pages
* links to larger versions of images

have we sorted out the weirdness of using [[image: to link to soundfiles?


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous
> wikipedians nix each others images because of fear of copyright violation.
> This respect for the GFDL which is extremely vigorous, but I feel it is also
> very harmful to wikipedia.

You seem to be alone in this regard.

1) You do not just want to "link" to a picture on another site, you can
already do this now - you want to embed it and present it as if it were
your own. news.google.com at least auto-rescales the photos and hosts them
on its own servers. Not doing this wastes other people's bandwidth (costs
them money, which can get us into trouble) and makes us dependent on their
servers' reliability. As the number of offsite images grows, this means
Wikipedia becomes increasingly fragmented and unreliable.

2) You call the respect for the GFDL "very harmful to Wikipedia". Well,
perhaps you do not understand that Wikipedia is an open content project
and intends to stay that way. The more non-free images we include, the
harder it will become to distribute and re-use Wikipedia articles.
Building an encyclopedia is only half of our mission -- our encyclopedia
needs to be freely usable by everyone.

3) Offsite images invite photo vandals who post such nice pictures as
http://goatse.cx -- that was one of the reasons they were turned off in
the first place.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking vandals

body:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:46:58 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>> Maybe, when blocking someone, we should put a cookie on their
>> computer that doesn't let them edit under any username or IP adress. I
>> know this could be a breach of privacy, so maybe it could expire in a
>> week. It would be easy to get around, just a deterent. (just as it is
>> easy to get around blocking usernames)
>
> I don't think it's a breach of privacy at all.  It actually sounds
> pretty cute and good to me.  Yes, an advanced user could figure out
> how to get around it, but if someone is going to all _that_ trouble,
> we've got a bigger problem anyway.
>
> The cookie could just say 'edit=no', say.

Although something more obscure would reduce the likelihood of
circumvention.

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


body:
On 4/10/03 11:16 AM, "Robert" <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am apalled by Fred Bauder's personal attacks on me.  He
> claimed to have read the Talk page for the Idolatry
> article, yet in point of fact Fred Bauder failed to mention
> all of the flames that "Dietary Fiber" write about to me,
> Fred failed to mention the fact that Dietary Fiber is on
> some quest to attack my personal religious beliefs (which
> is blatantly inappropriate on Wikipedia); Fred "overlooked"
> the forged quote, and then Fred only quoted my response to
> the trolling...and then stated that _I_ should be put on
> some sort of watch.
>
> I am saddened by his behaviour. If Fred Bauder cannot
> control himself, let him go elsewhere until he calms down.
> Some of us have serious work to do.
>
Oh, please. Fred quoted actual material, while RK characterizes other
people's comments as "personal attacks", "flames", and "trolling", without
making direct quotes.

It is not standard Wikipedia policy to move discussion from entry pages to
user pages; it's not necessarily wrong to do so, but in the case of the text
RK moved
(http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Dietary_Fiber&oldid=8
09427), the text is clearly in context and impersonal, and RK's action was
inappropriate.

Then RK seemed to get a bee in his bonnet for DF's paraphrase of RK's
statement

    This article then points out that this view is not accepted
    by many liberal Chrisitans and Jews, is not accepted by
    modern historical studies of religion.

with this statement (by DF)

    You indicated that idolatry has a non-religious meaning by
    referring to a "liberal/scholary" view; as opposed to a
    religious view.

which certainly seems to be a fair paraphrase--though the quotes shouldn't
have been there. Then the discussion went southward. But RK certainly threw
the first punch.

In other words, RK is unjustifiably, and viciously, attacking first Dietary
Fiber, and now Fred Bauder. I'm appalled, and saddened. And appalled.

as always,
tc


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] In defense of non-monotheistic religions

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>It really amounts to a defense of non-monotheistic religions, against the accusation of "idolatry" from the monotheistic religions. As such, the article really requires a thorough rewrite.
>
>The article is not describing what "idolatry" is, let alone distinguishing facets such as "idol worship" or "polytheism". It's just saying, in effect, "You guys condemn us, but you don't even know what you're talking about. So there!"
>
>But the problem is not the personalities of the contributors, in this case. It's the focus of the whole article. Or, should I say the lack of focus.
>
>We need to identify just what it is, that the ancient verses condemned. We can report on the reasons various rabbis and priests have given over the centuries for this condemnation. We can even mention any relaxation of these prohibitions.
>
>Also, and most importantly, we need to distinguish clearly between:
>* what Jews and other monotheists condemn
>* what polytheists and the like say they are "really doing"
>
>Until we clarify these issues, the article will go nowhere because everyone is arguing at cross purposes.
>
I think I agree, especially on the matter of focus..I read through some
of the article, and easily decided that my time would be better spent on
something else.  Beginning the article with a simple definition of what
the word "idolatry" means would be a good start.

The other big problem with the article is that it has hopelessly muddled
two entirely different topics, idolatry and polytheism.  Both practices
are clearly condemned by the Abrahamic line of religions, but that is
not not enough to make them the same thing.  An idolater who worships
only a single idol is still monotheistic.  The article would benefit
greatly of all the mono-/poly-theism discussion were moved to another
article.

Eclecticology


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
I can't believe I've devoted so much time to this. I guess Rev. Moon's desire -- to unite the world via, among other things, inter-religious understanding -- has me in its grip :-)

I just finished reading talk archive #6 -- yes, their are FIVE previous talk archives on this topic! And I waded through the first half of the [[idolatry]] article.

It really amounts to a defense of non-monotheistic religions, against the accusation of "idolatry" from the monotheistic religions. As such, the article really requires a thorough rewrite.

The article is not describing what "idolatry" is, let alone distinguishing facets such as "idol worship" or "polytheism". It's just saying, in effect, "You guys condemn us, but you don't even know what you're talking about. So there!"

I think RK has been awfully patient, although he does tend to blow up now and then.

But the problem is not the personalities of the contributors, in this case. It's the focus of the whole article. Or, should I say the lack of focus.

We need to identify just what it is, that the ancient verses condemned. We can report on the reasons various rabbis and priests have given over the centuries for this condemnation. We can even mention any relaxation of these prohibitions.

Also, and most importantly, we need to distinguish clearly between:
* what Jews and other monotheists condemn
* what polytheists and the like say they are "really doing"

Until we clarify these issues, the article will go nowhere because everyone is arguing at cross purposes.

Ed Poor


from_name: Stephen C. Carlson

body:
On 04/10/03 01:31 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>:
>I just finished reading talk archive #6 -- yes, their are FIVE previous
>talk archives on this topic! And I waded through the first half of the
>[[idolatry]] article.
>
>It really amounts to a defense of non-monotheistic religions, against the
>accusation of "idolatry" from the monotheistic religions. As such, the
>article really requires a thorough rewrite.

I can see how one could get that impression, particularly if one reads only the first half (which I have just reorganized by moving it to the end), but the article as a whole seems fairly well-balanced and representative of many points of views related in a neutral manner.

There has been a lot work done on the article by a lot of people and certainly some sections need more bulking up, but on the whole I am fairly pleased with the way it is shaping up.  Of course, in the WikiWay, you and anyone else are perfectly free to give it a "thorough rewrite" if you think that would improve the article.

Stephen Carlson

--
Stephen C. Carlson,
mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35


body:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Chuck Smith wrote:
> > Another point that seems to be forgotten is how people
> > who are reading Wikipedia offline will be able to see
> > the offsite pictures...
>
> Maybe just the same way they submit changes to the article.

With an offline submission queue? Not yet implemented. :)

> If the original problem here was that selfappointed license policemen
> are erasing (URLs to) external images,

Nope.

Here's the situation: the use of full URLs to images creating tags to
embed/inline the external image directly into the wiki page has been
disabled on the English Wikipedia since some months ago.

This was done for three reasons:

1) We have support for uploading images directly, making the use of
external images redundant. The vast majority of images used on Wikipedia
at that time were in fact those uploaded to meta.wikipedia.com, and which
had been automatically transferred into the upload area and turned into
inline image links ([[image:foobar.jpg]]).

2) Concerns about continued availability of third-party resources. Links
die on a regular basis through moving or disappearance of the linked page.
The same happens with images; I at least would prefer that things we
embed directly into our pages should be available as long as our pages
are.

3) Somebody was inserting a lot of URLs to goatse.cx images, which we
would prefer to discourage. ;) It's harder to hide an image upload, which
goes into a big shiny log page, and quicker to remove the resulting file
and squash all uses of it.

Hfastedge's complaint, meanwhile, seems to be brought on by my deletion of
the Tibetmap.jpg which he had uploaded and inserted into [[Tibet]]. It was
a modified (removal of text) version of an image taken from a copyrighted
site, which itself was a modified (removal of logo and copyright notice)
version of an image taken from a copyrighted site which had a copyright
notice directly in the original image.

*Links* to images on external sites are absolutely okay and wonderful,
just as are links to text on external sites. But *links* do not embed
external resources directly into our pages as though we were publishing
them ourselves, but without all the benefits of maintainability.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Eric Demolli wrote:
> Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
> If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with Ogg/Vorbis
> sound any advice ?

Xvid is an MPEG-4 codec, right? "In theory" they should all be
player-compatible.

What's the patent situation with MPEG-4?

Audio is another matter; are there freely available players for Windows,
Unix, and MacOS that can play files encoded as your describe?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
MPEG-4 is massively encumbered by patents owned by Fraunhofer IIS.  I
wouldn't touch it with someone else's pole.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of Brion Vibber
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 15:46
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Eric Demolli wrote:
> Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
> If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with
Ogg/Vorbis
> sound any advice ?

Xvid is an MPEG-4 codec, right? "In theory" they should all be
player-compatible.

What's the patent situation with MPEG-4?

Audio is another matter; are there freely available players for Windows,
Unix, and MacOS that can play files encoded as your describe?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
> Does Wikipedia even want to consider hosting video until it gets its
> servers sorted out? Personally, I think that any high-bandwidth material
> should be served from a (third) machine independent of the (not yet
> implemented) web and database servers.

Bandwidth isn't our problem, though of course it would be nice to have a
separate media server too. Serving large static files is fairly easy to
do.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
> <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> gave utterance to the following:
> > Bandwidth isn't our problem, though of course it would be nice to have a
> > separate media server too. Serving large static files is fairly easy to
> > do.
> >
> But I thought available connections were. And media files will keep a
> connection tied up for a while. And the act of taking chunks of a file,
> packetizing them and pushing them out to the network still consumes some
> CPU, doesn't it?

Sure, some. But as long as we're hosting 750 megabyte backup dumps on the
main server, I don't think a few several-megabyte videos are going to be a
real big drop in the bucket.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Zoe

body:
"self appointed license policemen?  I hope *all* of us are license policemen, unless we really don't care if the Wikipedia gets shut down.  If you have approval for your information, then include it in the Talk page.  If you don't, it shouldn't be in the Wikipedia at all.  And support for linkage to offsite images has been removed after discussion here on the list.
Zoe
 Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:Chuck Smith wrote:
> Another point that seems to be forgotten is how people
> who are reading Wikipedia offline will be able to see
> the offsite pictures...

Maybe just the same way they submit changes to the article.

If the original problem here was that selfappointed license policemen
are erasing (URLs to) external images, perhaps the problem could be
settled by issuing an instruction that external image URLs should be
enclosed in a [URL external image] bracket, rather than removed.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
Forgive my naiveness, but what is a backup dump?

> Sure, some. But as long as we're hosting 750
> megabyte backup dumps on the
> main server, I don't think a few several-megabyte
> videos are going to be a
> real big drop in the bucket.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 17:28, Youandme wrote:
> I know that this issue is like a yo-yo, but maybe there's something
> more that admins can do.
> Somebody at Polish Wikipedia, looking for
>   wibrator site:org
> in Google, found this:
>   pl.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wibrator&action=edit
> And this is not the way we want to welcome newcomers, right?

I would *love* it if anyone knows how to fix this and can tell us how to
do so.

These pages are already forbidden by robots.txt and by meta tags in the
pages themselves. Either google is turning them up despite this
information, or it's somehow indexed them at inopportune moments (like
server being down) and includes them in results despite having gotten a
no response / 403 / 404.

Should I e-mail google about it?

> BTW, why don't we put just
>
>   Disallow: /wiki/Specjalna:

Not a bad idea, I suppose. (And yes, those ought to be localized.) I
have the vague memory that people wanted things like recentchanges to be
indexable, but I'm not sure it matters much.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] URL change? (was test.wikipedia.com indexed...)

body:
On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 18:12, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Currently the edit forms and other things are accessed by a URL
> similar to the one for viewing pages, but with an added query string:
> ..wiki.phtml?title=Name&action=edit vs. ..wiki.phtml?title=Name.

Well, not exactly. Viewing pages is done with /wiki/Name, which is very
distinct from other operations at /w/wiki.phtml?title=Name&otherstuff.
The primary advantage of this is being able to block off all non-view
operations from web search indexing in robots.txt.

EXCEPT FOR FRICKING GOOGLE GRRRRGH. :)

But I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Currently the edit forms and other things are accessed by a URL
similar to the one for viewing pages, but with an added query string:
..wiki.phtml?title=Name&action=edit vs. ..wiki.phtml?title=Name.

It might be easier to play nice with bots and indexers if we change
the non-viewing URLs to something entirely different, say
..edit.phtml?title=Name, ..special.phtml?title=Name, etc.  This
might make it easier to use robots.txt to exclude things, for
example, since some bots apparently don't listen to meta tags the
way they should.

On the other hand, it would break whatever tools already depend on
the old URLs, like Magnus's offline reader, etc.  Do the techies
think this might be worth the hassle?

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 19:58, Nick Reinking wrote:
> I think the misunderstanding is not on Google's part.  As far as I can
> tell, Google isn't indexing that page.
>
> A quick search on google for "wibrator wikipedia" shows a subsection for
> the edit link.  Note that it doesn't have any 'Cached' link.  This means
> that google saw a link to the edit page in a page that could be indexed.

I didn't say it was being cached, that its content could be
word-searched, or that it had been spidered through to other pages. I
said it was *indexed*. Now, maybe Google uses some word other than
"indexed" to mean "contained in a database of links which are shown to
users when they search for words contained in the link". I'll buy that.
Maybe the word they use is "florble". In that case, the page is being
florbled despite our best efforts to stop it from being florbled.

Is there any way we can tell google not to florble pages that are
explicitly excluded by our robots.txt file so that people will stop
complaining to *us* about google's overzealous florbling?

Hypothetically we could jimmy the page to not produce edit links if the
user agent is googlebot, but that would be very annoying for several
reasons:
  1) The google-cached page would be missing those links.
  2) This would screw with page caching. Google hits a lot of pages, and
we'd have to either not cache any of its hits or be very careful in
coding around it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Nick Reinking

body:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 07:50:04PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 18:12, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > Currently the edit forms and other things are accessed by a URL
> > similar to the one for viewing pages, but with an added query string:
> > ..wiki.phtml?title=Name&action=edit vs. ..wiki.phtml?title=Name.
>
> Well, not exactly. Viewing pages is done with /wiki/Name, which is very
> distinct from other operations at /w/wiki.phtml?title=Name&otherstuff.
> The primary advantage of this is being able to block off all non-view
> operations from web search indexing in robots.txt.
>
> EXCEPT FOR FRICKING GOOGLE GRRRRGH. :)
>
> But I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I think the misunderstanding is not on Google's part.  As far as I can
tell, Google isn't indexing that page.

A quick search on google for "wibrator wikipedia" shows a subsection for
the edit link.  Note that it doesn't have any 'Cached' link.  This means
that google saw a link to the edit page in a page that could be indexed.

So, stop being mean to my pet.  <pats google softly on its head>

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


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Chuck Smith wrote:
> Another point that seems to be forgotten is how people
> who are reading Wikipedia offline will be able to see
> the offsite pictures...

Maybe just the same way they submit changes to the article.

If the original problem here was that selfappointed license policemen
are erasing (URLs to) external images, perhaps the problem could be
settled by issuing an instruction that external image URLs should be
enclosed in a [URL external image] bracket, rather than removed.

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


body:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 08:46:21PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 19:58, Nick Reinking wrote:
> > I think the misunderstanding is not on Google's part.  As far as I can
> > tell, Google isn't indexing that page.
> >
> > A quick search on google for "wibrator wikipedia" shows a subsection for
> > the edit link.  Note that it doesn't have any 'Cached' link.  This means
> > that google saw a link to the edit page in a page that could be indexed.
>
> I didn't say it was being cached, that its content could be
> word-searched, or that it had been spidered through to other pages. I
> said it was *indexed*. Now, maybe Google uses some word other than
> "indexed" to mean "contained in a database of links which are shown to
> users when they search for words contained in the link". I'll buy that.
> Maybe the word they use is "florble". In that case, the page is being
> florbled despite our best efforts to stop it from being florbled.
>
> Is there any way we can tell google not to florble pages that are
> explicitly excluded by our robots.txt file so that people will stop
> complaining to *us* about google's overzealous florbling?
>
> Hypothetically we could jimmy the page to not produce edit links if the
> user agent is googlebot, but that would be very annoying for several
> reasons:
>   1) The google-cached page would be missing those links.
>   2) This would screw with page caching. Google hits a lot of pages, and
> we'd have to either not cache any of its hits or be very careful in
> coding around it.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I've always understood 'indexed' to mean 'downloaded the entire page and
added its contents to a searchable database.'  As far as I know,
robots.txt just tells google (and everybody else) not to download the
page; it doesn't say they can't link to it.  Since Masturbacja says to
follow links, but robots.txt says not to index edit links, Google
does the sensible thing: creates the link in its database, but doesn't
index the content.  Go figure; the Google engineers would probably
cooperate with you if you asked them nicely.  :)

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


from_name: Eric Demolli

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with Ogg/Vorbis
sound any advice ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
> Audio is another matter; are there freely available players for Windows,
> Unix, and MacOS that can play files encoded as your describe?

So far I've testted Xvid with silent video it works fine.

MPEG-4 is standard but I had problem with the FourCC code in an avi file.

MPEG-4 is an ISO standard but there seems to be some controversy about
patents, who knows more ?

With the Windows Media Player sound will work if you have the Xvid and the
Ogg/Vorbis codecs installed
With Linux it depend which player you use but the best one are now codec
compatible with  Windows
With a Mac well I don't know....

Who can clarify the MPEG-4 patent issue ?

See http://www.xvid.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

> On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Eric Demolli wrote:
> > Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
> > If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with
Ogg/Vorbis
> > sound any advice ?
>
> Xvid is an MPEG-4 codec, right? "In theory" they should all be
> player-compatible.
>
> What's the patent situation with MPEG-4?
>
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
Today High quality stereo MP3 will use more bandwith than a 350x240 silent
MPEG-4.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Grevers" <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 1:02 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

> On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 00:36:24 +0200, Eric Demolli <demolli at unice.fr> gave
> utterance to the following:
>
> > Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
> > If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with
Ogg/Vorbis
> > sound any advice ?
> >
> Does Wikipedia even want to consider hosting video until it gets its
> servers sorted out? Personally, I think that any high-bandwidth material
> should be served from a (third) machine independent of the (not yet
> implemented) web and database servers.
>
> --
> Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Youandme

body:
On 8 Apr 2003 at 11:20, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 08:34, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> > Googling for something for the Polish Wikipedia I discovered that
> > the test site test.wikipedia.com is indexed by Google robots even
> > with edit pages.
> >
> > We surely don't want this to happen ?
>
> I forgot that even exists... That's on the old server, which I have no
> control over. It should be removed entirely, or at least the DNS
> pointed at the new server.

I know that this issue is like a yo-yo, but maybe there's something
more that admins can do.
Somebody at Polish Wikipedia, looking for
  wibrator site:org
in Google, found this:
  pl.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wibrator&action=edit
And this is not the way we want to welcome newcomers, right?

Another issue:
looking at http://pl.wikipedia.org/robots.txt
we can see (caution: the address below may cause misunderstanding
but that's what one can see!)

  # robots.txt for http://www.wikipedia.org/

  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /wiki/Special:Maintenance
  Disallow: /w/

If so, then how _our_ Special pages are excluded from indexing?
To remind you, our namespace is called Specjalna, so I suggest
replacement:

  Disallow: /wiki/Specjalna:Maintenance

BTW, why don't we put just

  Disallow: /wiki/Specjalna:

Regards
Youandme


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Friday 11 April 2003 02:49, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

Hiya,

> Forgive my naiveness, but what is a backup dump?

I think Brion refers to this:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

best regards,
  Marco

--
Marco Krohn
Theoretical Physics
University of Hannover


body:
Lee-
> On the other hand, it would break whatever tools already depend on
> the old URLs, like Magnus's offline reader, etc.

It is doubtful whether any new scheme would stop search engines from
indexing the content. The thing is, search engines try increasingly to get
snapshots of dynamic web content, so they grab almost everything.

In addition, existing links would stop working. I may be the only one who
does such a bizarre thing, but I occasionally pass around direct edit URLs
to Wikipedia articles to demonstrate how it works ("take a look at _this
article_, and if you find an error, you can _edit it_ right now").

Perhaps we should return an HTTP error code for known search engine agents
accessing edit pages? No search engine I know indexes 403 or 404 pages.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: audio formats (was re: video formats)

body:
Brion writes:
> Audio is another matter; are there freely available
> players for Windows, Unix, and MacOS that can play
> files encoded as your describe?

windows: winamp 3.0 comes with ogg support already;
pre-3.0 will require an ogg plugin (which winamp's
site pulled, probably because they want people using
the new & inferior version.  The codec is still
available at other sites).

mac: there are iTunes plugins for the .ogg codec; and
vorbis has ported oggdrop also, so playing and
encoding .oggs on a mac (os 9 and os X, at least) will
not be a problem.

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 05:46, koyaanis qatsi wrote:
> Brion writes:
> > Audio is another matter; are there freely available
> > players for Windows, Unix, and MacOS that can play
> > files encoded as your describe?
>
> windows: winamp 3.0 comes with ogg support already;
> ...
> mac: there are iTunes plugins for the .ogg codec; and

Can winamp and iTunes play video files (?AVI? Quicktime? no details
here...) encoded with Xvid for video and vorbis for audio, as was being
suggested?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we do things Fred and Cunctator's way, or act like adults?

body:
I should point out that the Cunctator's remarks about the
dispute in the Idolatry Talk page were dishonest and
misleading.

I was angered at Dietary Fiber for making certain remarks,
especially the ones in which he/she attacked my religious
beliefs, and made me out to be someone slandering all
polytheists. (And I have never done this.) I was also
bothered by Dietary Fiber's fake quotes (which my critics
here are blatantly lying about)

Yet Cunctator ignored those particular remarks, and implied
that they didn't even exist.  When Cunctator did make some
brief quotes, he left the particular quotes in question
out! A lie by omission is a lie nonetheless.

Hey, maybe we should edit some Wikipedia articles today!
We can forge a quote from Cunctator, questions his
religious beliefs, and attack positions he does not have!
We can also do the same thing to Fred Bauder!  And then
when they complain,  we can insult them, and deny that
these attacks against them even exist!  Hurrah!  How
wonderfully fun it would be to join in with this type of
trolling!

Or we can cut the crap and learn to act like adults.  Some
of us are here to do some serious work on this encyclopedia
project.

RK

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Jason Richey

in_reply_to: <1050032780.4137.29.camel@frank.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 08:46:21PM -0700

body:
I don't think it would be a good idea, but we could replace the edit
this page link with a form and button that does the same thing.
Surely, google doesn't post forms when indexing (btw., I was quite
amused by the florbling discussion).

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 19:58, Nick Reinking wrote:
> > I think the misunderstanding is not on Google's part.  As far as I can
> > tell, Google isn't indexing that page.
> >
> > A quick search on google for "wibrator wikipedia" shows a subsection for
> > the edit link.  Note that it doesn't have any 'Cached' link.  This means
> > that google saw a link to the edit page in a page that could be indexed.
>
> I didn't say it was being cached, that its content could be
> word-searched, or that it had been spidered through to other pages. I
> said it was *indexed*. Now, maybe Google uses some word other than
> "indexed" to mean "contained in a database of links which are shown to
> users when they search for words contained in the link". I'll buy that.
> Maybe the word they use is "florble". In that case, the page is being
> florbled despite our best efforts to stop it from being florbled.
>
> Is there any way we can tell google not to florble pages that are
> explicitly excluded by our robots.txt file so that people will stop
> complaining to *us* about google's overzealous florbling?
>
> Hypothetically we could jimmy the page to not produce edit links if the
> user agent is googlebot, but that would be very annoying for several
> reasons:
>   1) The google-cached page would be missing those links.
>   2) This would screw with page caching. Google hits a lot of pages, and
> we'd have to either not cache any of its hits or be very careful in
> coding around it.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should we do things Fred and Cunctator's way, or
	act like adults?

body:
I must admit to personal prejudice in this matter. Robert is quite difficult
and I assume he is probably giving as good as he gets. The article and talk
pages are a huge mass of tangled spite spaghetti the analysis of which are
beyond my time and energy recourses. To find an article for
Internet-Encyclopedia I went back to edit number 1 (way way back in the
history) and used it. All this fussing does not make a better article it
seems.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 08:06:25 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we do things Fred and Cunctator's way, or act like
> adults?
>
> I should point out that the Cunctator's remarks about the
> dispute in the Idolatry Talk page were dishonest and
> misleading.
>
> I was angered at Dietary Fiber for making certain remarks,
> especially the ones in which he/she attacked my religious
> beliefs, and made me out to be someone slandering all
> polytheists. (And I have never done this.) I was also
> bothered by Dietary Fiber's fake quotes (which my critics
> here are blatantly lying about)
>
> Yet Cunctator ignored those particular remarks, and implied
> that they didn't even exist.  When Cunctator did make some
> brief quotes, he left the particular quotes in question
> out! A lie by omission is a lie nonetheless.
>
> Hey, maybe we should edit some Wikipedia articles today!
> We can forge a quote from Cunctator, questions his
> religious beliefs, and attack positions he does not have!
> We can also do the same thing to Fred Bauder!  And then
> when they complain,  we can insult them, and deny that
> these attacks against them even exist!  Hurrah!  How
> wonderfully fun it would be to join in with this type of
> trolling!
>
> Or we can cut the crap and learn to act like adults.  Some
> of us are here to do some serious work on this encyclopedia
> project.
>
> RK
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
> http://tax.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 00:36:24 +0200, Eric Demolli <demolli at unice.fr> gave
utterance to the following:

> Is there a standard video format for Wikipedia ?
> If  not I suggest Xvid (as efficient as Divx and GNU GPL) with Ogg/Vorbis
> sound any advice ?
>
Does Wikipedia even want to consider hosting video until it gets its
servers sorted out? Personally, I think that any high-bandwidth material
should be served from a (third) machine independent of the (not yet
implemented) web and database servers.

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatic vandalism detection?

body:
On 4/11/03 10:46 AM, "Marco Krohn" <marco.krohn at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I saw just by chance that [[Rust]] was vandalized by simply adding the word
> "bull shit" to the text. Thinking about this I asked myself if it wouldn't be
> possible to add an automatic detection for this kind of vandalism? Something
> in the way the spam detection programs work. For the beginning a very simple
> heuristic algorithm that detects certain word  / word combinations would be
> sufficient.
>
> Of course the algorithm should not block the modification, simply because it
> is impossible to prevent false positives, but it could add the page to a new
> special page, making it easier to detect obvious cases of vandalism.
>
> Being still quite new to wikipedia I am not sure if this fits well in the
> wikipedia framework and if it is realizable, but nevertheless I would like to
> hear your comments.
>
Without calling it "vandalism", a word I still think is inappropriate for
Wikipedia, automatic sifting of contributions is certainly a good idea.

It would indeed be very interesting to see what would be the result of
Bayesian ranking of contributions.


body:
Robert,

Either develop a "thicker skin" or just pay no attention to Cunc's remarks at all.

Meanwhile, while describing the monotheistic religions' approach to idol worship, etc., I hope you have been reading my comments here on the mailing list, as well as at [[talk:idolatry]].

Apparently some proponents of polytheism feel their POV has been mischaracterized. So you and they may be arguing at cross purposes.

One of the benefits of a truly neutral religious article is (or should be!) that all parties will agree that the article describes the religion in question, accurately.

Perhaps we need to focus more on:
* what various polytheists believe
* whether anyone ever worshipped idols (or still does)
* what the ancient Bible verses meant: "have no other gods", "do not make or worship idols"

Just to change the subject slightly, I wonder whether modern Krishna Consciousness devotees would concede that they "worship idols"? I was invited to view the inner recesses of a Hare Krishna temple and shown what one young, enthusiastic devotee called "dolls" -- full-size mannequins which resembled pictures of various Hindu deities. The devotee's task was to wash and dress these "dolls", as he called them.

And one more possible red herring. Members of the Unification Church bow down in front of a photograph of the "True Parents" (as we call Rev. & Mrs. Moon) in a weekly and monthly Pledge Service. Are we worshipping idols? (Don't worry: I won't fight with you on this -- ask Vicki, I'm very nice when it comes to interacting online with others who don't share my faith!)

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert [mailto:rkscience100 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 11:06 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we do things Fred and Cunctator's way, or act
like adults?

I should point out that the Cunctator's remarks about the
dispute in the Idolatry Talk page were dishonest and
misleading.

I was angered at Dietary Fiber for making certain remarks,
especially the ones in which he/she attacked my religious
beliefs, and made me out to be someone slandering all
polytheists. (And I have never done this.) I was also
bothered by Dietary Fiber's fake quotes (which my critics
here are blatantly lying about)

Yet Cunctator ignored those particular remarks, and implied
that they didn't even exist.  When Cunctator did make some
brief quotes, he left the particular quotes in question
out! A lie by omission is a lie nonetheless.

Hey, maybe we should edit some Wikipedia articles today!
We can forge a quote from Cunctator, questions his
religious beliefs, and attack positions he does not have!
We can also do the same thing to Fred Bauder!  And then
when they complain,  we can insult them, and deny that
these attacks against them even exist!  Hurrah!  How
wonderfully fun it would be to join in with this type of
trolling!

Or we can cut the crap and learn to act like adults.  Some
of us are here to do some serious work on this encyclopedia
project.

RK

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 16:13:09 -0700 (PDT), Brion Vibber
<vibber at aludra.usc.edu> gave utterance to the following:

> On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> Does Wikipedia even want to consider hosting video until it gets its
>> servers sorted out? Personally, I think that any high-bandwidth material
>> should be served from a (third) machine independent of the (not yet
>> implemented) web and database servers.
>
> Bandwidth isn't our problem, though of course it would be nice to have a
> separate media server too. Serving large static files is fairly easy to
> do.
>
But I thought available connections were. And media files will keep a
connection tied up for a while. And the act of taking chunks of a file,
packetizing them and pushing them out to the network still consumes some
CPU, doesn't it?
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/


body:
Brion writes:

> Can winamp and iTunes play video files (?AVI?
> Quicktime? no details here...) encoded with
> Xvid for video and vorbis for audio, as was being
> suggested?

[smacks forehead]  Of course you knew there was .ogg
support; it's a question of video on those platforms
with .ogg support.  I've derailed the conversation,
sorry.  That's what happens when trying to answer
email between editing video and negotiating where to
lunch.  I'll go back to lurking.  :-)

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for video format

body:
Having searched on the web it seems that MPEG-4 lpatent issues are
problemetic. VP3 would be a better choice.

see http://www.vp3.com


body:
On 4/11/03 11:06 AM, "Robert" <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I should point out that the Cunctator's remarks about the
> dispute in the Idolatry Talk page were dishonest and
> misleading.

They may have been misleading, but they certainly weren't dishonest. I'm
appalled, insulted, and angered that Robert would impugn my honesty.
Actually, I'm not, but I thought Robert might feel better if I reacted as
emotionally to his statements as he did to mine and DF's.

> I was angered at Dietary Fiber for making certain remarks,
> especially the ones in which he/she attacked my religious
> beliefs, and made me out to be someone slandering all
> polytheists. (And I have never done this.) I was also
> bothered by Dietary Fiber's fake quotes (which my critics
> here are blatantly lying about)
>
> Yet Cunctator ignored those particular remarks, and implied
> that they didn't even exist.  When Cunctator did make some
> brief quotes, he left the particular quotes in question
> out! A lie by omission is a lie nonetheless.

I did not ignore those particular remarks. Because Robert failed, in his
complaints on the mailing list, to include any relevant passages, I was
forced to rely on my judgment as to what he was talking about. And I quote
from my earlier post:

: Then RK seemed to get a bee in his bonnet for DF's paraphrase of RK's
: statement
:
:    This article then points out that this view is not accepted
:    by many liberal Chrisitans and Jews, is not accepted by
:    modern historical studies of religion.
:
: with this statement (by DF)
:
:    You indicated that idolatry has a non-religious meaning by
:    referring to a "liberal/scholary" view; as opposed to a
:    religious view.
:
: which certainly seems to be a fair paraphrase--though the quotes shouldn't
: have been there. Then the discussion went southward. But RK certainly
: threw the first punch.

Robert complained that I ignored the statements DF made that angered and
bothered Robert. Most of those statements were in succeeding passages, which
I refered to as "Then the discussion went southward". I did in fact refer to
the first time DF incorrectly (or falsely, though I would be less quick to
assume offence) put quotes around a characterization of RK's words, and said
"the quotes shouldn't have been there".

In short, Robert is complaining that I didn't attack DF for attacking
Robert.

And that's not true. I'll be more explicit: DF was wrong for putting quotes
around a paraphrase of Robert's position. He was wrong for responding to
RK's tone in kind.

But Robert was wrong, and is more wrong, for introducing and ratcheting up
an adversarial tone into the discussion.

In other words, while DF said things he probably shouldn't have, so did
Robert, and Robert started it.

That's my honest interpretation of the situation, and I encourage everyone
else to review the discussion and come to their own conclusion.

> Hey, maybe we should edit some Wikipedia articles today!
> We can forge a quote from Cunctator, questions his
> religious beliefs, and attack positions he does not have!
> We can also do the same thing to Fred Bauder!  And then
> when they complain,  we can insult them, and deny that
> these attacks against them even exist!  Hurrah!  How
> wonderfully fun it would be to join in with this type of
> trolling!

Robert is attacking positions I do not have, and insulting me.

I am not denying that attacks against RK exist; I am only saying that he is
engaged in a mutually adversarial discussion.

> Or we can cut the crap and learn to act like adults.  Some
> of us are here to do some serious work on this encyclopedia
> project.

Is Robert implying that I'm not? I'd hate to think so.


body:
> windows: winamp 3.0 comes with ogg support already;
> pre-3.0 will require an ogg plugin (which winamp's
> site pulled, probably because they want people using
> the new & inferior version.  The codec is still
> available at other sites).
There is also a Directshow version of the codec which works with M$ Windows
Media Player.
For linux XMMS support ogg and there must be other players.


body:
IMO the audio question is already resolved.
But what about video ?


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:

> Yes, direct links without registration would be nice, but I wonder
> about the idea of encyclopedia articles linking to newspaper
> reports
> in general.

I have a twist on that notion.

Since when does an encyclopedia have to quote sources of its
information? Isn't the point of an encyclopedia to be authoritative,
a resource which is quoted by others?

I don't mind a link. I don't mind external resources. To me they fall
under the "see also" heading.

As far as articles in development, yes, sources should be quotes to
allow fellow editors to check and recheck and so on, but once the
article is formalized, all that should just go to the talk page.

Makes sense?

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


body:
Hi all,

I saw just by chance that [[Rust]] was vandalized by simply adding the word
"bull shit" to the text. Thinking about this I asked myself if it wouldn't be
possible to add an automatic detection for this kind of vandalism? Something
in the way the spam detection programs work. For the beginning a very simple
heuristic algorithm that detects certain word  / word combinations would be
sufficient.

Of course the algorithm should not block the modification, simply because it
is impossible to prevent false positives, but it could add the page to a new
special page, making it easier to detect obvious cases of vandalism.

Being still quite new to wikipedia I am not sure if this fits well in the
wikipedia framework and if it is realizable, but nevertheless I would like to
hear your comments.

best regards,
  Marco


body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

> It would if the premises were correct. It is true that the point of
> an
> encyclopedia is to be authoritative. But it does not follow that
> encyclopedias do not list references. Most do, in fact. They may
> call it
> "further reading" or somesuch, but they're references.
>
> Moreover, traditional encyclopedias assert authoritativeness by
> having known
> experts write the entries.
>
> For example, Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on baseball includes
> the
> following "further reading" (written in paragraph form in EB):
>
> * Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, The Image of Their Greatness:
> An
> Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 to the Present, updated
> ed.
> (1984);
> * Lawrence S. Ritter (comp.), The Glory of Their Times: The Story
> of the
> Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, new ed.
> (1984).
> * Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970, reprinted 1984).
> * David Quentin Voigt, Baseball, an Illustrated History (1987)
> * The Official Baseball Guide, The Sporting News
> * Official Baseball Register, The Sporting News
> * Joseph L. Reichler  (ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia, 7th rev.
> ed. (1988).
> * Joe Brinkman and Charlie Euchner, The Umpire's Handbook, rev. ed.
> (1987).
> * Bill James and John Dewan, Bill James Presents the Great American
> Baseball
> Stat Book, ed. by Geoff Beckman et al. (1987)
>
> and is written by
> Jerome Holtzman, "Baseball columnist, Chicago Tribune. Elected to
> the
> Writers' Wing, National Baseball Hall of Fame, 1990. Coauthor of
> Three and
> Two; editor of No Cheering in the Press Box; Fielder's Choice."
>
> Since Wikipedia cannot assert authoritativeness based on the
> entries being
> written by experts (that's the Nupedia project, more or less), it
> can only
> do so through listing references.
>
> References other than newspaper articles should generally be
> preferred, but
> they're better than nothing.

Ok, I hear you.

But then, do they need to be links?
I think the reference should be listed as one might do in a research
paper (do we have a reference style?), and include a link for
convenience only.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


body:
Brion wrote :

:>Can winamp and iTunes play video files (?AVI? Quicktime? no details

>here...) encoded with Xvid for video and vorbis for audio, as was being

>suggested.

See my other messages at second though a non MPEG-4 format like vp3 might be
better.


subject: [WikiEN-l] VP3 is a better video format ?

body:
> MPEG-4 is massively encumbered by patents owned by Fraunhofer IIS.  I
> wouldn't touch it with someone else's pole.
Yes it appears that XVID is MEPG-4. We don'care a lot with it in Europe but
this a serious issue elsewhere.
That's why I suggest VP3  as a better solution. Any advice ?


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: partnering with nytimes to avoid
	registration

body:
On 4/11/03 6:19 PM, "Christopher Mahan" <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, direct links without registration would be nice, but I wonder
>> about the idea of encyclopedia articles linking to newspaper
>> reports
>> in general.
>
> I have a twist on that notion.
>
> Since when does an encyclopedia have to quote sources of its
> information? Isn't the point of an encyclopedia to be authoritative,
> a resource which is quoted by others?
>
> I don't mind a link. I don't mind external resources. To me they fall
> under the "see also" heading.
>
> As far as articles in development, yes, sources should be quotes to
> allow fellow editors to check and recheck and so on, but once the
> article is formalized, all that should just go to the talk page.
>
> Makes sense?
>
It would if the premises were correct. It is true that the point of an
encyclopedia is to be authoritative. But it does not follow that
encyclopedias do not list references. Most do, in fact. They may call it
"further reading" or somesuch, but they're references.

Moreover, traditional encyclopedias assert authoritativeness by having known
experts write the entries.

For example, Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on baseball includes the
following "further reading" (written in paragraph form in EB):

* Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, The Image of Their Greatness: An
Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 to the Present, updated ed.
(1984);
* Lawrence S. Ritter (comp.), The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the
Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, new ed. (1984).
* Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970, reprinted 1984).
* David Quentin Voigt, Baseball, an Illustrated History (1987)
* The Official Baseball Guide, The Sporting News
* Official Baseball Register, The Sporting News
* Joseph L. Reichler  (ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia, 7th rev. ed. (1988).
* Joe Brinkman and Charlie Euchner, The Umpire's Handbook, rev. ed. (1987).
* Bill James and John Dewan, Bill James Presents the Great American Baseball
Stat Book, ed. by Geoff Beckman et al. (1987)

and is written by
Jerome Holtzman, "Baseball columnist, Chicago Tribune. Elected to the
Writers' Wing, National Baseball Hall of Fame, 1990. Coauthor of Three and
Two; editor of No Cheering in the Press Box; Fielder's Choice."

Since Wikipedia cannot assert authoritativeness based on the entries being
written by experts (that's the Nupedia project, more or less), it can only
do so through listing references.

References other than newspaper articles should generally be preferred, but
they're better than nothing.


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
> Yes it appears that XVID is MEPG-4. We don'care a
> lot with it in Europe but
> this a serious issue elsewhere.
> That's why I suggest VP3  as a better solution. Any
> advice ?

I've never heard of vp3, is it like mp3 with video?
What players support it?

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


body:
> For linux XMMS support ogg and there must be other
> players.

XINE works for everything and it is on Linux (I hate
XMMS). I assume it works for .ogg

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] backup dump

body:
Wow! all of wikipedia (and everything else related) is
only 235 mb? Somehow I assumed it was more than that

>
> I think Brion refers to this:
>
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
>
> best regards,
>   Marco

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] backup dump

body:
On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 20:03, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Wow! all of wikipedia (and everything else related) is
> only 235 mb? Somehow I assumed it was more than that

When heavily compressed, and not including old revisions, images, and
runtime helper information (link tables, recentchanges, etc), then yes.
:)

Including old revisions it comes to nearly a gigabyte compressed.
Tossing in the uploaded images & media files would add another gig or so
if I recall. Hmm, which reminds me, I should set up a mechanism for
backing up the images more regularly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 19:51, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I've never heard of vp3, is it like mp3 with video?
> What players support it?

http://www.vp3.com/index.shtml

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complete Wikipedia on Pocket PC/Palm/EPOC device

body:
Today I released v1.1 of the Wikipedia to TomeRaider conversion script.
See the script for version history:
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/WikiToTome.pl

If someone mails me FTP upload parameters I will upload 4 TomeRaider
databases (ready for browsing, conversion already done) :

Complete English Wikipedia: 104 Mb
Complete Dutch   Wikipedia:   5 Mb
Complete German  Wikipedia:  10 Mb
Demo     English Wikipedia:  47 Kb

TomeRaider versions exist for Windows/Pocket PC/Palm/EPOC handhelds.
See http://www.tomeraider.com (also preview versions available)

Screenshots and much more info on my site:
http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/

Erik Zachte
epzachte at chello.nl


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] STATUS

body:
FYI I'm off for a week-long vacation to Death Valley. So my silence does not
mean I'm ignoring anybody. We can take care of the email server thing after I
get back. Cheers!

--mav


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] New source release...sort of...

body:
I did a major re-organization of the source, but I want to get some
feedback on it before I commit it to CVS.  There's a source release
zip file at <ftp://ftp.piclab.com/pub/phase3.zip> or
<http://www.piclab.com/pub/phase3/zip>.  It should now be very
straightforward to install a new system or update one.  Brion, I'd
appreciate it if you'd install it at test.wikipedia.org and tell me
if you had any problems.  It passes the testsuites.  If all goes well
I'll check it in and get to work on the bug list and other things I
have on the back burner.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC