from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Christopher Mahan stated for the record:

> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I suggest that the existing procedures are adequate for this.  If
>>someone
>>seems to be trying it on then we can tell them to change their
>>username
>>because misleading or disruptive usernames are not allowed.  If
>>they say
>>that is their real name we block them anyway.  No appeals.
>
>
> But what if it is their real name anyway? What if they fax a copy of
> their driver's license and birth certificate to Jimbo and it read "
> Jeremy Irons" or "Frank Zappa" or "Christina Applegate". What then?
> Do we say, sorry buddy, we know you've been a contributor for years,
> and you're a swell guy, but you gotta change your anme because some
> hollywood actor has more rights that you?
>
> I say if you can prove your identity, it's first come first served.
>
> (check out nissan.com. The guy, Uzi Nissan, registered nissan.com in
> 1995, to support his business, nissan computer corporation. Nissan
> Motors Corporation of Japan has been suing the living daylights out
> of him for 5 years (always denied, rejected, by US courts.))

I brought this up literally years ago, when the same "zero tolerance"
policy was being debated for "offensive" names.  The loudest-shouting
conclusion (I won't say "consensus") was that it didn't matter what your
real name was -- no matter how how many government-issued identification
documents you present or long ago your parents gave it to you, if a
handful of Wikipedians claim to find it offensive, you're not allowed to
use it.  The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi.  I
was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of
giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he
would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
  sean at epoptic.com | That alone should encourage the crew.
                   | Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
                   | What I tell you three times is true.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> I
> was told most emphatically that because his parents made the
> mistake of
> giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also
> chose, he
> would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

Perhaps the policy was short-sighted and needs a revisit?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> This is wholly inappropriate on Brion's part.

I did not say it wasn't.

You handle mediawiki 1.5 then, right?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Achim Raschka

subject: [Foundation-l] International Writing Contest

body:
Hello everybody,

the following text I posted in about 30 languages of Wikipedia:

---
In Berlin at Dezember 2004 there was the critique that there is not enough
connection in the work of all the different Wikipedias in their different
languages. I think, that an internationally linked writing contest should
be one possible chance to cooperate and work together. At March 1st there
will be the start of the second writing contest in the german Wikipedia so
I thought, we can start it as an international project. There had been
contests in the Wikipedia of the Netherlands
[[:nl:Wikipedia:Schrijfwedstrijd]], the german Wikipedia
[[:de:Wikipedia:Schreibwettbewerb]] and the english one
[[en:Wikipedia:Danny's contest]] and as far as I could see it, it worked
really good.

I hope you will join the Contest, please visit [[:meta:International
writing contest]] to find out more. -- [[Benutzer:Achim Raschka|Achim
Raschka aka Necrophorus]] 10:14, 11. Jan 2005 (CET)
----

It would be great, to discuss the contest and to coordinate stuff like
press releases, maybe extren judges, coordination on meta (if you likeI
will construct a Portal-Page on meta with joining languages and nominations
(as far as I?m able for that) and so on. I know, I didn?t discuss it on any
mailing list, but I think it?s a good idea so I started it. The time plot
was set before for the german contest and I think it?s time enough to
organize a contest in the other languanges until the contest starts at
March the 1st.

It would be great if I can get any reaction (maybe a bit more than to the
Wikikids-idea), I would tolerate all between "It?s a genius idea" and "What
in the hell?s came over you".

Greeting from Berlin, Achim aka Necrophorus


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews

body:
> I may have missed something entirely...
>
> Onymous just mentionned on #wikimedia that wikinews was now in public
> domain.
>
> Is that so ?
>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
>

Hello Anthere,

Wikinews has been in the public domain ever since it was launched as a demo.
Alas, I had forgotten to update MediaWiki:Copyright, so while the edit
submission screen said that all edits are in the public domain, the page
footer still said that the content is under the FDL. After this was pointed
out, I fixed it to be consistent.

We chose the public domain because we do not yet know whether Wikinews will
be licensed under a copyleft license. This depends in part on what our
experiences will be over the coming weeks with other people using our
content. For news, some people argue that the requirements of the GFDL in
particular (such as the requirement to reproduce the entire license) place
too much of a burden on potential third party users, and that at the very
least, a simplified copyleft license such as CC-BY-SA should be supported.

There is a straw poll at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll
where currently a majority favors a dual-licensing approach. This is,
however, not particularly helpful since the poll does not distinguish
between different dual licensing options. We should run an official vote on
the matter soon.

If the Board does not suggest another date, I suggest running the vote on
February 1.

All best,

Erik

--
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AKTION f?r Wechsler: DSL-Tarife ab 3,99 EUR/Monat + Startguthaben


subject: [Foundation-l] wikinews


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Christopher Mahan stated for the record:

> --- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>I
>>was told most emphatically that because his parents made the
>>mistake of
>>giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also
>>chose, he
>>would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.
>
>
> Perhaps the policy was short-sighted and needs a revisit?

"Short-sighted" is a much nicer word that I would use.  ;->

--
  Sean Barrett     | Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
  sean at epoptic.com | That alone should encourage the crew.
                   | Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
                   | What I tell you three times is true.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: axelclk at t-online.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Webservices

body:
-----Original Message-----
> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 09:14:21 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Webservices
> From: Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>

> There's a wiki-to-XML parser under development. It is mostly written
> in Bison and will compile to C/C++. Try the CVS module
> "flexbisonparse".
Hi

I started to write a renderer in Java for the previewer of the Wikipedia
Eclipse plugin:
http://phpeclipse.de/tiki-index.php?page=Wikipedia+Editor+Plugin
But the renderer is incomplete at the moment.
Does it make sense to use your C/C++ parser for preview rendering (i.e.
generate a HTML page without SQL access)?
If yes, is it possible to use templates for the generated HTML pages?
Are there binaries for Linux, Windows available?

Axel


list: wikien-l

from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Read the Signpost

body:
>It's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost.
>
>Excellent work, by the way.
>
>Josh Gerdes

Agreed.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Sj (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050111 05:47]:

> In the long run, philosophically, I think you're right.  In the short
> run, we should focus on usability and minimizing seek time -- an area
> where the site is already weak.
> If we're going to force people through a portal, it should be clear
> how to use it and should load instantly, not in 15 seconds.

The load time is problematic, but I think 'how to use it' is pretty damned
obvious.

A quick question: does *anyone* whose usual wikipedia is *not* en: like the
idea of www redirecting to en?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski (fallout at lexx.eu.org) [050111 08:53]:

> All the text (including the article count) could be repeated in all 6
> 50,000+ languages, though.

Just keep in mind it'll soon be 7 and then 9.

- d.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> This is wholly inappropriate on Brion's part.

While his use of language and threat was regrettable, the revert was justified
due to the very large amount of opposition to using flags.

-- mav

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Slowness of Wikipedia

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> It seems to me that there's been a change in kind, not degree, in the
> last 10 days. Any information from those who may know what has caused
> this would be much appreciated.

Ariel ran out of disk space and suda was made the master DB server.
We'll probably have to switch the site into read-only mode for a day or
so to fix this. Before we do that, we want to finish compressing the
database, which will probably take another few days.

In case you're wondering, the root cause of this problem was a lack of
available development and system administration expertise, coupled with
a poorly timed developer conference.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
While it isn't the highest of priorities, it seems we
need to establish a firm policy to go by on celebrity
usernames. While I'd rather they be blocked outright,
we at least need to ban people not only using the name
as their username, but

If [[user:Scott Peterson]] made an edit to [[lawn
fertilizer]], you'd tend to believe it more than with
the average user. Same as if [[user:Hillary Duff]]
made edits to the [[Disney Channel]], or if [[user:Joe
Scarborough]] made edits to [[United States House of
Representatives]], all things that were professionally
related to them in their lives.

I can almost live with [[user:Jerry seinfeld]], as he
admits to not be the comedian. But anyone else is just
trying out identity theft on us.

I propose we ink out a more direct policy stating that
"no user may impersonate another living person other
than themselves, particularly a person that is worth
encyclopedic note, and may or may not have a Wikipedia
article".

If a celeb does want to join, they should be able to
have "their people" phone one of us, possibly the
Foundation itself. Or, they would have to undergo an
extensive trivia process on their lives, which was
what I was going to propose for Miss Duff before she
was scared away.

Nick Moreau
"Zanimum"

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> I would like to object to being called a "nationalist hatemonger" by
> Brion Vibber:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979
>
> Brion also accused me of "nationalist vandalism" and threatened to
> block me from editing Meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979

This is wholly inappropriate on Brion's part.  There is a *lengthy*
discussion on the talk page over using or not using flags, which is
largely reasonable on both sides, and there was no indication on Jens's
part that he was adamant about including the flags, or would revert
their removal, merely that he thought their inclusion made for a better
page than not including them.  Brion did not participate in this
discussion, and merely came by later calling people names and
threatening to abuse his server admin access to block them.

-Mark


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
I suggest that the existing procedures are adequate for this.  If someone
seems to be trying it on then we can tell them to change their username
because misleading or disruptive usernames are not allowed.  If they say
that is their real name we block them anyway.  No appeals.  No trivia
questionnaires, they're pointless because the celebrities in general know
rather less about such silly details than their more obsessive fans do.
I've seen two or three celebrities on Usenet use their real names online,
amid thousands of people who thought that a username like "Washington
Irving" marked them as real l33t d00dz.   It isn't likely to be a major
problem as long as our readers are aware that author identity is (as
elsewhere on the internet) a rather fluid concept.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.org cached (was Re: Portals, flags,
	chaos)

body:
Sj wrote:
> If we're going to force people through a portal, it should be clear
> how to use it and should load instantly, not in 15 seconds.

I've added some cache control headers, now it should be served from the
squid with a cache expiry time of one hour, no automatic purging. So
changes will take up to an hour to show up, but it should be fast to load.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] problems with 1.3.9 installation

body:
On Jan 11, 2005, at 12:27 PM, Florian Geierstanger wrote:
> i try to install mediawiki, it fails with the following error messages:

Try 1.4beta4. Many installation problems relating to template
compilation on limited-permission servers have been resolved in this
release.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki specialpage:makesysop error

body:
On Jan 10, 2005, at 1:41 PM, Justin M. Gregg wrote:
> Hi, I am new to using MedaWiki, and when I try to make a sysop from
> this page:
> http://www.glossologia.org/wiki/index.php/Special:Makesysop
>
> I get the following text:
[snip]
> *User "Bob" could not be made into a sysop. (Did you enter the name
> correctly?)"

I notice at this page:
http://www.glossologia.org/wiki/index.php/Special:Listusers
there is no user account "Bob" listed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
On Jan 11, 2005, at 10:05 AM, Delirium wrote:
> Jens Ropers wrote:
>> I would like to object to being called a "nationalist hatemonger" by
>> Brion Vibber:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
>> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979
>>
>> Brion also accused me of "nationalist vandalism" and threatened to
>> block me from editing Meta:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
>> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979
>
> This is wholly inappropriate on Brion's part.  There is a *lengthy*
> discussion on the talk page over using or not using flags, which is
> largely reasonable on both sides, and there was no indication on
> Jens's part that he was adamant about including the flags, or would
> revert their removal, merely that he thought their inclusion made for
> a better page than not including them.  Brion did not participate in
> this discussion, and merely came by later calling people names and
> threatening to abuse his server admin access to block them.

As you're aware, I'm a big jerk. However I didn't threaten to abuse my
server admin access to block him; if I were going to, I'd have no need
to call him names.

I do though predict that the sort of people who do the blocking thing
will end up blocking him eventually if he continues to abuse the open
editing system on the portal by returning them again after they were
correctly removed (again).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jakob

subject: [Wikitech-l] Propably just a chmod, please

body:
Hi again!

I urgently need the csv files that are generated by Erik Zachte's wikistat. They
were accesible via http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/ but the directory is
not accesible anymore. Can anyone just make it readable by Apache or tell me
where is it gone, please?

Thanks a lot,
Jakob


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Webservices

body:
axelclk at t-online.de schrieb:

>I started to write a renderer in Java for the previewer of the Wikipedia
>Eclipse plugin:
>http://phpeclipse.de/tiki-index.php?page=Wikipedia+Editor+Plugin
>But the renderer is incomplete at the moment.
>Does it make sense to use your C/C++ parser for preview rendering (i.e.
>generate a HTML page without SQL access)?
>
>
At the moment, the parser is (slightly) incomplete as well, but I'm
working to change that. It will be most useful for many purposes to have
a single, standardized parser (which will then be the "reference
implementation", I hope). No need to write a new renderer for our quite
complicated syntax each time.

So yes, I think it would make a lot of sense.

>If yes, is it possible to use templates for the generated HTML pages?
>
>
First, the parser generates *XML*, not *HTML*. The parser knows nothing
about the database or even the language of the underlying wikipedia. The
transition from XML to HTML has to be done in a second step, which is
relatively easy, as there are lots o' tools that can generate an XML
tree, in every programming language. I have done a XML-to-(X)HTML
conversion in ParserXML.php, which is part of the mediawiki CVS HEAD.

Second, if by "templates" you mean wiki {{templates}}, this is done in
the post-parser part described above. The parser generates a XML
structure for each {{template}} or {{{variable}}}.

>Are there binaries for Linux, Windows available?
>
>
On Linux, you can checkout the flexbisonparse module from the mediawiki
CVS, then just "make" it. The resulting executable is "wikiparse", into
which you pipe the wiki text and get the XML.

Magnus


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Greek pages disappearing

references:
<opsj40u0f72okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>
	<5DEA79BE-5F56-11D9-8744-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>
	<opsj5y0fut2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>

body:
On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:34:53 -0700, Muke Tever <muke at frath.net> wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 5, 2005, at 8:17 AM, Muke Tever wrote:
>>> Pages with Greek titles, that used to exist and are still listed in
>>> [[special:allpages]], are coming up empty on load, and the wiki is
>>> marking
>>> links to them as red.
>>>
>>> I have seen this happening on la: and more intermittently on en: --
>>> is this happening anywhere else, and is there a cause for it?
>>
>> Probably old non-normalized titles. Can you please prepare a complete
>> list?
>
> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
[...]

and on en:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????

Incidentally I noticed that in en:'s Special:allpages list, some
Greek titles are title-cased, and some are lower-cased in the list,
sorting after the title-cased ones, even though when they are
visited, they are all title-cased.  Some words appear to be listed
twice (such as ??????? and ???????, both of which are missing).
The missing ones among those are:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/???????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/??????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
As a member of the Dutch Wikipedia I would like to protest the current
division in categories by number of articles, especially when the
highest category is called "the 5 largest Wikipedias". The Dutch
Wikipedia is larger than the Swedish, we just have that size spread
out over less articles. Apparently that is a feat that is not being
appreciated by the international community.

Andre Engels

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 22:44:08 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> On 9 Jan 2005, at 20:40, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > (Of course, there's a good reason not to do *too* much special with
> > the top
> > several languages: at some point other languages are going to make that
> > list, and if we ever want to prune it back they'll resent being dropped
> > from that status.)
>
> My thinking is that ''instead'' of sticking with the exact numbers
> 50 000 +
> 10 000?50 000
> 1000?10 000 and
> 100?1000
> as selection criteria and promoting the various language Wikipedias
> higher as they meet higher thresholds,
> again, ''INSTEAD'' of doing that, we should keep roughly four groups
> and just ''adjust the thresholds''.
>
> So if in the future we were to have, say, 12 Wikipedias over 50 000 and
> 30 Wikipedias over 10 000, we should NOT have 12 and 35 items
> (respectively) in the top two groups, but we should adjust the
> thresholds -- of the top 12, maybe only 6 might be over 500 000 and of
> the 35 maybe only 15 might be over 50 000. So we simply make change the
> 4 group's thresholds to, for example:
> 500 000 +
> 50 000?500 000
> 10 000?50 000 and
> 100?10 000
>
> This would rightly give emphasis to our "most wanted" Wikipedias and
> avoids cluttering the screen too much.
>
> This concept only would need to be changed if, say, our 30 biggest
> Wikipedias were to turn out becoming very similarly sized.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>      www.ropersonline.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Licensing

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:

>
>
>>different licenses,
>>
>>
>
>Nobody hinders one to state on ones user-page that every contribution of
>that user is dual-licenced, as long as the second-licence is compatible
>to GFDL.
>
>
Correction: Practically almost all licenses are _incompatible_ with the
GFDL, including the various CC licenses. If the licenses were
compatible, there would be no need to explicitly state so, although it
might be a good idea. Rather, we allow people to license their
contributions under _any license_ because it is _their_ work, not ours.
They just have to agree to include the GFDL among the licenses they
release their work under.

John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> use it.  The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi.  I
> was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of
> giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he
> would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.

You were not told this by me, and there is no policy which would support
this.  Please don't confuse random emails from I don't know who with policy.

If there are actual cases of people with real names being barred from
editing wikipedia due to people being offended by those names, then
please tell me.

Otherwise, let's not get hysterical about a commonsense policy, huh?

--Jimbo


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Possible 3RR breaches by sock puppets

body:
Thank you for your response.

regards
Robert

Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
Robert Brookes wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I would appreciate some assistence in this matter.
>
> While I appreciate that the use of sock puppets is no more than frowned upon at Wikipedia the using of sock puppets to breach the 3RR is certainly not allowed.
>
> Therefore it is requested that someone inform me how to establish how to do it myself (or if it is restricted) then to establish whether the following users are one and the same or just a clever tag-team arrangement.
>
> Michael Glass
> Robert Blair
> 207.69.137.205
> 207.69.138.202
> 207.69.137.136
> 207.69.137.206
> 4.231.23.133
>
> Much obliged
> Robert

Judging by the IP numbers, Michael Glass is different (different
country) and the rest are the same person.

-- Tim Starling

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

---------------------------------
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 Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 04:13:05PM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
> As a member of the Dutch Wikipedia I would like to protest the current
> division in categories by number of articles, especially when the
> highest category is called "the 5 largest Wikipedias". The Dutch
> Wikipedia is larger than the Swedish, we just have that size spread
> out over less articles. Apparently that is a feat that is not being
> appreciated by the international community.

And as we're at it, the Polish Wikipedia is also larger than Swedish,
we're just not overstubbing like them.


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Help with proofreading (Italian)

body:
Hi I am searching for an Italian mothertognue who could proofread an
article I translated on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/2/Founder/It

It is part of the newsletter.

I am German and translating from one foreign language into the other is
not too easy ;-) so sorry for some of those horrible errors ...

Besides that: the newsletter is not published very often and so it
should be quite easy to translate and proofread it if we are in many.

Is there a way to create a group of people interested in
translating/proofreading the newsletter into Italian? Please contact me
- if we organise things well no-one of us will have to work much and we
will have great results.

Ciao and thank you!!!

Sabine

*****
s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
skype: sabinecretella


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Help with proofreading (Italian)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> I do though predict that the sort of people who do the blocking thing
> will end up blocking him eventually if he continues to abuse the open
> editing system on the portal by returning them again after they were
> correctly removed (again).

He added flags once, they were removed, he reworked it and added them
again, posting a discussion of the changes and the reasons he thinks the
new version is better on the talk page.  Isn't this how wikipedia
editing is supposed to work?

After the first time he added them, three people commented they disliked
flags entirely, two people seemed (one facetiously?) to support the idea
of an animated gif scrolling through the flags of countries for each
language, and one person (Jens) supported the flags as-is.  After the
reworking, one person called his edits "nationalist hatemongering" and
reverted, one person said they were offended by the use of the Union
Jack to represent English, and one person said they applaud his changes
but consider them not terribly practical.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>Well, it would have to be *as well as* wiki-markup, not instead - else
>what would you edit? But I seem to remember storing parsed XML
>representations as a form of caching being discussed as part of the
>architecture of an XML-based parsing system.
>
>
It'd be possible to do XML-to-WikiMarkup for that, if it's acceptable to
have some sort of "canonical" formatting of the Wikimarkup rather than
the character-for-character original.

-Mark


from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
DG> (And I so hope Klingon doesn't make 100 articles.)
DG> - d.

If it does, it will be displayed as Tlhingan anyway :)

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
I would like to object to being called a "nationalist hatemonger" by
Brion Vibber:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979

Brion also accused me of "nationalist vandalism" and threatened to
block me from editing Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979

I'm hurt.

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

On 11 Jan 2005, at 03:57, Jens Ropers wrote:

> I've just given you all more to argue about ;-)
> at http://www.wikipedia.org
>
> But ''please'' read the Talk page before clicking that "edit" button:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:
> Www.wikipedia.org_portal#To_boldly_go_where_one.27s_been_reverted_befor
> e.3F
>
> Please don't kill me.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
On 11 Jan 2005, at 18:47, Jens Ropers wrote:

> I would like to object to being called a "nationalist hatemonger" by
> Brion Vibber:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979
>
> Brion also accused me of "nationalist vandalism" and threatened to
> block me from editing Meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Www.wikipedia.org_portal&diff=88985&oldid=88979

That was supposed to be
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:
Www.wikipedia.org_portal#To_boldly_go_where_one.27s_been_reverted_before
.3F

> I'm hurt.
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>
> On 11 Jan 2005, at 03:57, Jens Ropers wrote:
>
>> I've just given you all more to argue about ;-)
>> at http://www.wikipedia.org
>>
>> But ''please'' read the Talk page before clicking that "edit" button:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:
>> Www.wikipedia.org_portal#To_boldly_go_where_one.27s_been_reverted_befo
>> re.3F
>>
>> Please don't kill me.
>>
>> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>>     www.ropersonline.com
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wiki system message commons?

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> It was my hope that the MediaWiki namespace would largely do away with
> the need to create language files, however that need remained and recent
> developments (the growth in multi-language projects and the ability for
> users to select the interface language) have exacerbated our dependence
> on them.

Why not have a bunch of subpages off each MediaWiki message page? One subpage
per language. Default values would work as they do now.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
On Jan 11, 2005, at 6:51 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>> It was my hope that the MediaWiki namespace would largely do away with
>> the need to create language files, however that need remained and
>> recent
>> developments (the growth in multi-language projects and the ability
>> for
>> users to select the interface language) have exacerbated our
>> dependence
>> on them.
>
> Why not have a bunch of subpages off each MediaWiki message page? One
> subpage per language. Default values would work as they do now.

I'm fairly certain it already works this way, so you can customize
messages in each language on a given wiki if desired. The more general
issue, though, is updating those defaults.

When we basically only had one Wikipedia wiki per language, editing the
messages in that wiki was generally sufficient, but now we have several
wikis per language and _any_ of our wikis may be optionally displayed
in _any_ language.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
--- Josh Gerdes <wikipedia at gerdesfamily.com> wrote:
> I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were*
> to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be
> unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for that
> person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous
> person, though.

But what famous person in their right mind would want to use their real name?
In fact, famous people are likely already among us - blissfully incognito.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Help with proofreading (Italian)

body:
Sabine Cretella a ?crit:
> Hi I am searching for an Italian mothertognue who could proofread an
> article I translated on meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/2/Founder/It
>
> It is part of the newsletter.

Hi,
The current draft is visible at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/2

Some part of it (well identified) may already be translated; See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WQ/2

> I am German and translating from one foreign language into the other is
> not too easy ;-) so sorry for some of those horrible errors ...
>
> Besides that: the newsletter is not published very often and so it
> should be quite easy to translate and proofread it if we are in many.

This is obviously true for any languages :-)

> Is there a way to create a group of people interested in
> translating/proofreading the newsletter into Italian? Please contact me
> - if we organise things well no-one of us will have to work much and we
> will have great results.

Nod. Some of the people ready to help with translation are on the
translator mailing list :   translators-l at wikimedia.org

We may also contact all those who previously translated Quarto and are
willing to help : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Team

> Ciao and thank you!!!
>
> Sabine

I fixed for you the italian general page :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WQ/2/It%3A#4

Thank you :)

As a side comment : we are lacking nice pictures to illustrate the
Quarto. Do wikipedians have some nice features pictures they would
suggest to use ?

Anthere


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Christmas/Yuletide - A belated reply

body:
A very belated reply -- sorry about the delay.

On 29 Dec 2004, at 10:37, pinco wrote:

> Jens Ropers ha scritto:
>
>> I.
>> Christmas is the holiday previously known as Yule or Yuletide. It was
>> a  northern European seasonal festival since time immemorial. If (and
>> only  if) you consider Yuletide to have been a religious holiday, it
>> was a  NON-Christian religious holiday. But AFAIK Yuletide was a
>> seasonal  festival in the first instance -- only possibly with
>> associated  (non-Christian) religious connotations in the second
>> instance.
>>
>> II.
>> Yuletide became known as Christmas thanks to the goody old
>> three-E-method (of latter-day Microsoft fame): Embrace, Extend,
>> Extinguish. The Christian church of the day was running a major
>> conversion effort. They quickly found they couldn't beat old and
>> cherished traditions such as Yuletide. So they accepted it as a
>> legitimate festival into the church calendar, they added Christian
>> symbolism and merged it with Christian ideology (most notably the
>> holiday was "calculated"/defined to match Jesus of Nazareth's birth),
>>  and finally the entire festival got usurped and monopolized by
>> Christianity. (Yuletide symbols/traditions such as Christmas trees
>> and  mistletoe still remain. Even Santa Claus is based on a Yuletide
>> figure,  I hear.)
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm a little surprised, I knew that Christians moved the celebration
> of Jesus' birthday from January 6th to December 25th after the
> Constantine's edict by which the converted Emperor decided to unify
> Sol Invictus and Mithraic Sun cults of the time. with the Jesus'
> birthday.

> The fact that Christmas coincides with Yuletide is due to the fact
> that all over the world there were and still are Sun's rebirth
> (solstice) celebrations.

I guess you could also see it that way -- interpretations differ
somewhat. However, regardless of whose Yuletide celebration Christendom
adoped, it's pretty clear that "Christmas" was not originally a
Christian celebration, and early Christians put more emphasis on Easter
anyway (though even Christian Easter vs. various other pagan spring
celebrations might be another can of worms).

There is lots of info on the origins of Christmas out there on the web,
some of it conflicting. Google for Christmas and origins (or Yuletide
or Pagan or similar). These guys:
http://www.holidayorigins.com/html/christmas.html for instance think it
was the Romans that gave the Christian church Christmas, and that this
would have predated the compromise with/assimilation of pagan Yule.
This might match the info you quoted above. Again, the one thing where
most halfway thorough sources seem to agree is that the origins of
Christmas as we know it are not really Christian.

> Am I wrong?
>
> Even about Santa Claus I knew a different story (e.g.:
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm) :(

In Germany, there are actually TWO "purveyors of gifts": Sankt Nikolaus
(aka Der Nikolaus) and Knecht Ruprecht (aka Der Weihnachtsmann). The
German "Nikolaustag" (St. Nicholas day) is December 6th, and kids get
''smaller'' gifts there. Christmas proper is celebrated on Christmas'
Eve in Germany and that's where people get the big gifts. There
definitely is some overlap between both customs and they probably more
or less got back to a single origin. US Christmas gift giving custom
actually is similar to Germans gift giving customs on  "Nikolaustag",
but really as far as Germans are concerned, Knecht Ruprecht/Der
Weihnachtsmann is Santa Claus and der Nikolaus is another person.

> Can someone else give me more information?
>
> Thanks and happy new year to all people following the gregorian
> calendar,
> Nino
> PS I, an atheist (not a pagan), believe that Christmas remains a
> Christian celebration coinciding with a solstice.
>
> http://www.vessella.it (italiano, esperanto, kiswahili, english)
> http://www.changamano.org (Iniziative di solidariet? per la Tanzania)
> http://www.lernado.it (Articoli di quotidiani della Tanzania, Corso di
> lingua swahili, Corso di lingua esperanto, Vocabolario
> esperanto-italiano, Jifunze lugha ya Kiesperanto, Kamusi ya
> Kiesperanto)

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


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Propably just a chmod, please

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

Jakob wrote:
> Hi again!
>
> I urgently need the csv files that are generated by Erik Zachte's
> wikistat. They were accesible via
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/csv/ but the directory is not
> accesible anymore. Can anyone just make it readable by Apache or tell
> me where is it gone, please?
>
> Thanks a lot, Jakob

Hello,

Files in this directory are actually uncompressed, we probably want to
make them available on download.wikimedia.org/wikistats/ as tar.gz

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB5CiYpmyHQ2O4INERAlIEAKCP4TayBznreOmWqo5BWRMLdTonfACbBAi0
AFaSA58TJgptJcluDZ1UheM=
=UXzY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Josh Gerdes

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
Yes, but who would be offended by him?

Josh Gerdes
(en:User:JoshG)

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>> [No celebrity usernames]
>>
>> Such a policy would require defining when a person is a celebrity.
>
>
> ...perhaps the policy could be "everyone more famous than Jimbo", after
> all it would be quite embarassing if a policy required [[User:Jimbo
> Wales]] to change their name!
>
> Pete/Pcb21


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Never once did Sean say it was official policy, even if it were that
doesn't mean it was made by a declaration from you, nor did he mention
you once.

He said he was "told most emphatically", not that "Jimbo told me most
emphatically".

He really doesn't deserve to be accosted for such an e-mail as he wrote.

Mark

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:08:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > use it.  The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi.  I
> > was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of
> > giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he
> > would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.
>
> You were not told this by me, and there is no policy which would support
> this.  Please don't confuse random emails from I don't know who with policy.
>
> If there are actual cases of people with real names being barred from
> editing wikipedia due to people being offended by those names, then
> please tell me.
>
> Otherwise, let's not get hysterical about a commonsense policy, huh?
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
The answer to your question is, Michael Everson and Adam Carr
(although they're not celebrities of the level that they get a lot of
publicity)

Mark

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:59:48 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Josh Gerdes <wikipedia at gerdesfamily.com> wrote:
> > I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were*
> > to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be
> > unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for that
> > person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous
> > person, though.
>
> But what famous person in their right mind would want to use their real name?
> In fact, famous people are likely already among us - blissfully incognito.
>
> -- mav
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
> http://my.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were*
to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be
unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for that
person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous
person, though.

Josh Gerdes
(en:User:JoshG)

Sean Barrett wrote:
> Christopher Mahan stated for the record:
>
>> --- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I was told most emphatically that because his parents made the
>>> mistake of giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator
>>> also
>>> chose, he would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.
>>
>>
>>
>> Perhaps the policy was short-sighted and needs a revisit?
>
>
> "Short-sighted" is a much nicer word that I would use.  ;->
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Portals, flags, chaos

body:
It sounds good to me, and I spend most of my time on the English Wikipedia.

Josh Gerdes
(en:User:JoshG)

David Gerard wrote:
> Sj (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050111 05:47]:
>
>
>>In the long run, philosophically, I think you're right.  In the short
>>run, we should focus on usability and minimizing seek time -- an area
>>where the site is already weak.
>>If we're going to force people through a portal, it should be clear
>>how to use it and should load instantly, not in 15 seconds.
>
>
>
> The load time is problematic, but I think 'how to use it' is pretty damned
> obvious.
>
> A quick question: does *anyone* whose usual wikipedia is *not* en: like the
> idea of www redirecting to en?
>
>
> - d.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Portals, flags, chaos

body:
Jens Ropers (ropers at ropersonline.com) [050111 13:47]:
> On 11 Jan 2005, at 02:02, David Gerard wrote:

> >>All the text (including the article count) could be repeated in all 6
> >>50,000+ languages, though.

> >Just keep in mind it'll soon be 7 and then 9.

> No it won't.
> I mean, it needn't. See:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-January/036664.html

Heh. Considering pl: is only *just* over 50k and nl: is over 47k, I could
see nl: getting annoyed ;-)

- d.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Celebrity users

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>>use it.  The specific example I used was my colleague Moamar Qazafi.  I
>>was told most emphatically that because his parents made the mistake of
>>giving him a name that the parents of the Libyan dictator also chose, he
>>would not be allowed to edit Wikipedia under his real name.
>
>
> You were not told this by me, and there is no policy which would support
> this.  Please don't confuse random emails from I don't know who with policy.
>
> If there are actual cases of people with real names being barred from
> editing wikipedia due to people being offended by those names, then
> please tell me.
>
> Otherwise, let's not get hysterical about a commonsense policy, huh?
>
> --Jimbo

No, Jimbo, I was not told this by you, and I'm not concerned enough to
dig through the mailing list archives and find who did state it (it was
during the Affair of the Throbbing Monster Rooster), but published
policy can be and is interpreted as supporting this ridiculous position.
  [[Wikipedia:No_offensive_usernames]] states that "Wikipedia does not
allow ... Names which promote racial/ethnic/national/religious hatred
... Fairly or unfairly, the line between acceptable and unacceptable
user names is drawn by those who find the username inappropriate, not by
the creator of the name."

There is no exception in the policy for name proven to be real.

--
  Sean Barrett     | On the seventh day, the Others noticed
  sean at epoptic.com | what He was doing, and put a stop to it.


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Monday 10 January 2005 17:23, Magnus Manske wrote:

> While this is primarily intended for the wiki-to-XML parser, it might
> work for enforcing XML output for the current parser as well. We'd only
> have to run the wiki source through it before actually parsing.

just a thought that came to me:
would it make any sense to store parsed
XML in the DB instead of wiki-markup?

daniel


from_name: Florian Geierstanger

body:
hello,

i try to install mediawiki, it fails with the following error messages:
---------------
MediaWiki 1.3.9 installation

Please include all of the lines below when reporting installation problems.
Checking environment...

      Warning: set_time_limit(): Cannot set time limit in safe mode in
/mnt/kw1/02/103/00000015/htdocs/install-utils.inc on line 27
    * PHP 4.3.9: ok
    * Warning: PHP's safe mode is active! You will likely have problems
caused by this. You may need to make the 'images' subdirectory writable or
specify a TMP environment variable pointing to a writable temporary
directory owned by you, since safe mode breaks the system temporary
directory.
    * PHP server API is cgi; using ugly URLs (index.php?title=Page_Title)
    * Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
    * PHP's memory_limit is 8M. If this is too low, installation may fail!
Attempting to raise limit to 20M... failed.
    * Have zlib support; enabling output compression.
    * Found GD graphics library built-in, image thumbnailing will be enabled
if you enable uploads.
    * Installation directory: /mnt/kw1/02/103/00000015/htdocs
    * Script URI path: /werkbankdeutschland.de
      Warning: $wgProxyKey is insecure
---------------------
can anybody help me what to do?

thank you in advance,
florian (from munich, germany)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki Webservices

body:
hi!

> I have a quick question: What is the best way to integrate wikipedia
> into other applications without using the html interface?

press the management to enable JeLuFs SOAP code ;)
but: i do not know whether that code is ready for production.

daniel


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site

body:
I certainly see the attraction of a 'never post links to a site you're
associated with' rule - it's an easy solution, and people rarely spam
sites they're not associated with.  It seems to avoid messy arguments
about content and relevance.

However, I think it's an easy and wrong solution.  It's hard to prove
someone's associated with a site they're spamming, after all, and this
stops those knowledgable from posting informative links to external
content they've been involved with.

I do not think there should be an /a priori/ rule that posting links
to your own sites is forbidden.  On the other hand, one should expect
a certain amount of scrutiny if one does.

In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
in a more peaceable manner.  I don't agree with removing it and citing
as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
NSK schrieb:

>On Tuesday 11 January 2005 22:27, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
>
>
>>just a thought that came to me:
>>would it make any sense to store parsed
>>XML in the DB instead of wiki-markup?
>>
>>
>
>My software (will) work like this.
>
>
Will you use this (wikipedia's) to-be XML markup, or your own brand?

Might just as well create a standard here ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>[No celebrity usernames]
> Such a policy would require defining when a person is a celebrity.

...perhaps the policy could be "everyone more famous than Jimbo", after
all it would be quite embarassing if a policy required [[User:Jimbo
Wales]] to change their name!

Pete/Pcb21


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
On Jan 11, 2005, at 9:59 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Josh Gerdes <wikipedia at gerdesfamily.com> wrote:
>> I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person
>> *were*
>> to have the same name as a different, better known person, it would be
>> unfair to block the less known person. It would be a good idea for
>> that
>> person to say on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous
>> person, though.
>
> But what famous person in their right mind would want to use their
> real name?
> In fact, famous people are likely already among us - blissfully
> incognito.
>
> -- mav
>

I can think of two right off.


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
<snip>
> I do not think there should be an /a priori/ rule that posting links
> to your own sites is forbidden.  On the other hand, one should expect
> a certain amount of scrutiny if one does.
>
> In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
> Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
> in a more peaceable manner.  I don't agree with removing it and citing
> as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.

Ditto'd. A little extra scrutiny is not unreasonable, but calling it
spam simply because it's his own site is pretty much off the deep end.


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:27:23 +0100, Daniel Wunsch <the.gray at gmx.net> wrote:
> just a thought that came to me:
> would it make any sense to store parsed
> XML in the DB instead of wiki-markup?

Well, it would have to be *as well as* wiki-markup, not instead - else
what would you edit? But I seem to remember storing parsed XML
representations as a form of caching being discussed as part of the
architecture of an XML-based parsing system.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
One should note that many with-permission images are useable under
PermissionAndFairUse, of course.  Permission does not remove the
ability for reusers to claim fair use. ~~~~


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Argh, don't you hate it when you use wiki markup outside wikipedia and
it doesn't work?

-Matt (User:Morven)

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:47:00 -0800, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> One should note that many with-permission images are useable under
> PermissionAndFairUse, of course.  Permission does not remove the
> ability for reusers to claim fair use. ~~~~
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
You made some good points. Yes, I know that many people have the same
name, even mine. :-) If there were a famous person named Josh Gerdes,
though, I would want to mention that I am not him, especially if there
were an article about him. It is true, though, that fame is often
somewhat localized.

Josh Gerdes
(en:User:JoshG)

Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Josh Gerdes wrote:
>
>> I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person
>> *were* to
>
>
> Actually it isn't.  It is quite common for people to have the same name
> regardless of how famous they are.  This is the main reason police
> habitually refer to people using their full name (including middle name)
> if they have one.
>
> Type your own name into www.switchboard.com and be disappointed about
> how many people have your name in the US alone :)
>
> I used to work with Jim Carey.  The real Jim Carey?  Well the one I knew
> was real, although he wasn't famous.  I've heard of many other examples
> of a person having the same name as someone who is famous.
>
>> on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.
>
>
> If it were me I'd be inclined to let people figure it out for themselves
> :)  In fact if it were me and someone insisted that I put a marker on my
> home page indicating I was not the other "famous" Robert Brockway I'd
> likely be insulted and that'd be the last you'd see of me.
>
> Besides, who is famous is culturally dependent.  As an Australian I am
> certain I could name people who I consider to be famous but who
> non-Australians would not.  What if we encounter Bruce Paige or Ray
> Martin?  I may wonder if they are the famous person but you may not
> (unless you are also Australian).  In the case of Bruce Paige you'd
> probably need to be from my home state to recognise the name.  I just
> looked up Ray Martin in Wikipedia.  He's a Canadian politician?  But I
> thought he was an Australian TV presenter.  Another couple of people
> with the same name.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob
>


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Tuesday 11 January 2005 22:27, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> just a thought that came to me:
> would it make any sense to store parsed
> XML in the DB instead of wiki-markup?

My software (will) work like this.

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Jack Lutz

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
{{Nonfreedelete}} on en Wikipedia is a template that specifies a with-permission etc. non-free image may be deleted within 30 days if a free license isn't granted. I noticed it because bot PocciScript has slapped it on a number of images. The template has two edits, one of which was merely to correct a link, and there is no discussion page. What's with it? Obviously we are not purging all fair use and with-permission photos, so what is this for?

[[en:User:119]]


body:
Well, the site does not really look like spam to me, and it certainly
seems informational. Does it provide any information that it not in any
of the other links, though? (I do not know, as I have not read the
content of the other linked sites.)

Josh Gerdes
(User:JoshG)

NSK wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Please check
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=0&oldid=9300527
>
> It is about the removal of an external link to my site that I first inserted
> in October. See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=6952756&oldid=6952087
>
> The link is this: http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103
>
> I insert only links that I truly believe are informational and I have no
> interest to insert any bogus links. I truly believe that my report is
> informational.
>
> Please explain why it was considered inappropriate and give me a link to any
> external links policies that you may have.
>
> The link was removed by Adam Bishop. He contacted me through e-mail and I
> answered promptly. I explained my concern that my link was removed because it
> was pointing to a "competing" wikisite. He said that the link was spam
> because it was pointing to my site.
>
> Other links to my site removed by Adam Bishop have been featured on
> Slashdot.org - check: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/28/1825218 and
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/19/174240 - Links to wikinerds.org
> that were featured on these Slashdot stories were added (and subsequently
> removed by Adam Bishop) in this article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation_Europe - I have since
> inserted links to the Slashdot stories because I believe that they are
> informational.
>
> All that happened the same day I decided to start contributing some of my
> articles on Wikipedia (and thus relicensing some CC content under GFDL for
> your use) - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsync
>
> I don't agree that I should not be allowed to post links to my site just
> because it is mine. This isn't spam.
>
> I post this message on the mailing list because I want a clear answer on
> whether my link about Homo Floresiensis was spam or not. If the other admins
> agree with me that self-linking is not spam then I would like Adam Bishop to
> reconsider and post a public apology on his userpage stating that my link on
> Homo Floresiensis was not spam. If you decide that the link was not
> informational, I have no problem with this. But I truly believe that
> describing it as spam was unfair. Adam Bishop stated in the History log of
> the Homo Floresiensis article: "01:45, 12 Jan 2005 Adam Bishop (removing
> spam)"
>
> I also promise to not post any other external links without asking on the
> mailing list or the village pump first.
>


from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Greek pages disappearing

references:
<opsj40u0f72okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>
	<5DEA79BE-5F56-11D9-8744-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>
	<opsj5y0fut2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>
	<opskgmo9eh2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>

body:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:42:35 -0700, Muke Tever <muke at frath.net> wrote:
>>> Probably old non-normalized titles. Can you please prepare a complete
>>> list?
>>
>> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
> [...]
>
> and on en:
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
[...]

and on nl:

http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????????
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/????????
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/?????

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


subject: [Foundation-l] journal du net

body:
http://www.journaldunet.com/0501/050112wikipedia.shtml

A really nice article from Nicolas Rauline.
It comes from a long interview of Yann and additions of myself on our economical model. Thanks Yann !
Till now, their website had only written articles about wikis and once published a small announcement after I sent them the 1 000 000 article press release.

The journal du net is an important reference on the net in France, in particular in business/marketing.

With Nicolas, I raised up three issues I believe are important with regards to our future.
The first is about our financial resources and how we are gonna come up with our growth, as well as possibly finance distribution by other means than internet.
Second is about uses of our financial resources, and in particular whether we should soon hire (or pay by whatever mean) technical people to help support the project.
Third is about our involvement in political fights, such as copyright issues and such, which may impact our ability to raise funds.

I am interested in any input on these topics.

Cheers

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.


subject: [Foundation-l] journal du net


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Yes, it is kind of frustrating. Have you looked at #154 of the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Are_You_a_Wikipediholic_Test
recently? ;-)

Josh Gerdes
(User:JoshG)

Matt Brown wrote:
> Argh, don't you hate it when you use wiki markup outside wikipedia and
> it doesn't work?
>
> -Matt (User:Morven)
>
>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:47:00 -0800, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>One should note that many with-permission images are useable under
>>PermissionAndFairUse, of course.  Permission does not remove the
>>ability for reusers to claim fair use. ~~~~
>>


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Tuesday 11 January 2005 23:29, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Will you use this (wikipedia's) to-be XML markup, or your own brand?

It will use a standard wiki markup which I will create.

It is my intention that my wiki software should provide lots of
parsers/converters for other markups, including HTML, XHTML, OpenOffice,
MediaWiki, TikiWiki, WikkaWiki et cetera, probably after the 1.0 version.

Find out more at http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/NGWP

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Jack Lutz wrote:

>{{Nonfreedelete}} on en Wikipedia is a template that specifies a with-permission etc. non-free image may be deleted within 30 days if a free license isn't granted. I noticed it because bot PocciScript has slapped it on a number of images. The template has two edits, one of which was merely to correct a link, and there is no discussion page. What's with it? Obviously we are not purging all fair use and with-permission photos, so what is this for?
>
>
I believe we are purging all with-permission photos: Anything except
copyleft, public domain, and fair use.  See [[Wikipedia:Possibly unfree
images]]

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] I get many errors at wikipedia.org, like this one

body:
 Warning: mysql_query(): Unable to save result set
in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Database.php on line 312

Database error


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
Andre Engels (andreengels at gmail.com) [050112 02:13]:

> As a member of the Dutch Wikipedia I would like to protest the current
> division in categories by number of articles, especially when the
> highest category is called "the 5 largest Wikipedias". The Dutch
> Wikipedia is larger than the Swedish, we just have that size spread
> out over less articles. Apparently that is a feat that is not being
> appreciated by the international community.

You haven't been reading the list, have you? I've been pointing it out
repeatedly ... you should go through and reply to some of the messages so
far.

That said, the 50k division is arbitrary and you have about 2500 articles
to go.

*That* said, I think we do need some sort of division on the portal page -
otherwise it'll be even worse visually.

(And I so hope Klingon doesn't make 100 articles.)

- d.


from_name: Robert Brockway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Josh Gerdes wrote:

> I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were* to

Actually it isn't.  It is quite common for people to have the same name
regardless of how famous they are.  This is the main reason police
habitually refer to people using their full name (including middle name)
if they have one.

Type your own name into www.switchboard.com and be disappointed about how
many people have your name in the US alone :)

I used to work with Jim Carey.  The real Jim Carey?  Well the one I knew
was real, although he wasn't famous.  I've heard of many other examples of
a person having the same name as someone who is famous.

> on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.

If it were me I'd be inclined to let people figure it out for themselves
:)  In fact if it were me and someone insisted that I put a marker on my
home page indicating I was not the other "famous" Robert Brockway I'd
likely be insulted and that'd be the last you'd see of me.

Besides, who is famous is culturally dependent.  As an Australian I am
certain I could name people who I consider to be famous but who
non-Australians would not.  What if we encounter Bruce Paige or Ray
Martin?  I may wonder if they are the famous person but you may not
(unless you are also Australian).  In the case of Bruce Paige you'd
probably need to be from my home state to recognise the name.  I just
looked up Ray Martin in Wikipedia.  He's a Canadian politician?  But I
thought he was an Australian TV presenter.  Another couple of people with
the same name.

Cheers,

Rob

--
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (www.spi-inc.org)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Yet another portal page

body:
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski (fallout at lexx.eu.org) [050112 04:37]:

> DG> (And I so hope Klingon doesn't make 100 articles.)

> If it does, it will be displayed as Tlhingan anyway :)

Good!

- d.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] tingxi memory usage

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

Hello,

tingxi is a 512MB apache and I noticed it is swapping "a bit":

$ free -m | grep -i swap
Swap:         1019        280        738
$

I then looked at RSS of the various process. With 715060 of RSS httpd
comes first, which is not surprising, the followers are:

python  20312
stream  24756
tail     4760
php     91036
- -------------
total  140854

All are related to the irc bots.

Maybe by putting bots on another machine we can save some memory on
the tingxi apache server ? Or is swapping fine ?

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB5KtwpmyHQ2O4INERAhhZAJ9rewqtQK2F693xD9zEKvERrZbfXACgtypY
0/xAJVAnrdcQbv69qQGaYv0=
=LZYw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: article import

body:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 07:31:03 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> What is the 21C3?

It was the 21st annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club, held in
Berlin last month. It included the MediaWiki developer conference, a
presentation by Jimbo, and a Wikimedia workshop.

http://www.ccc.de/congress/2004/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/21C3
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/21C3/MediaWiki_developer_conference
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chaos_Communication_Congress
(translation at http://tinyurl.com/44m56 )

Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: article import

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

NSK wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is it within your roadmap to include the wikixml import capability in
> MediaWiki 1.4?
>
> thnx,

Hello,

Do you mean Special:Import ?

Brion talked about it during the 21C3. IIRC: when the script imports an
history line in 'cur', the previous history entry is moved to 'old'. So
when you import 10 history lines, the script writes the whole article
text 10 times in cur, deletes it 9 times in cur, writes it 9 times in
old. The end result is that it is not efficient :o)

The issue will be solved in 1.5 with the new database schema (wich will
avoid the need to write/delete the whole textn only dealing with metadata).

In conclusion, and if I am not wrong, Special:Import will be shipped in
1.5 or later.

cheers,

- --
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org
"This signature is a virus. Copy me in yours to spread it."
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

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B1PAbMfXZhdCrUd3YvkwblI=
=3+j7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] External links and self-linking to my site

body:
Hello.

Please check
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=0&oldid=9300527

It is about the removal of an external link to my site that I first inserted
in October. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=6952756&oldid=6952087

The link is this: http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103

I insert only links that I truly believe are informational and I have no
interest to insert any bogus links. I truly believe that my report is
informational.

Please explain why it was considered inappropriate and give me a link to any
external links policies that you may have.

The link was removed by Adam Bishop. He contacted me through e-mail and I
answered promptly. I explained my concern that my link was removed because it
was pointing to a "competing" wikisite. He said that the link was spam
because it was pointing to my site.

Other links to my site removed by Adam Bishop have been featured on
Slashdot.org - check: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/28/1825218 and
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/19/174240 - Links to wikinerds.org
that were featured on these Slashdot stories were added (and subsequently
removed by Adam Bishop) in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation_Europe - I have since
inserted links to the Slashdot stories because I believe that they are
informational.

All that happened the same day I decided to start contributing some of my
articles on Wikipedia (and thus relicensing some CC content under GFDL for
your use) - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsync

I don't agree that I should not be allowed to post links to my site just
because it is mine. This isn't spam.

I post this message on the mailing list because I want a clear answer on
whether my link about Homo Floresiensis was spam or not. If the other admins
agree with me that self-linking is not spam then I would like Adam Bishop to
reconsider and post a public apology on his userpage stating that my link on
Homo Floresiensis was not spam. If you decide that the link was not
informational, I have no problem with this. But I truly believe that
describing it as spam was unfair. Adam Bishop stated in the History log of
the Homo Floresiensis article: "01:45, 12 Jan 2005 Adam Bishop (removing
spam)"

I also promise to not post any other external links without asking on the
mailing list or the village pump first.

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] article import

body:
Hi,

Is it within your roadmap to include the wikixml import capability in
MediaWiki 1.4?

thnx,
--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] block on meta

body:
Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
threatening them with banning".

Anthere

(cough)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: block on meta

body:
You are spoiling my fun Tim :-)

Tim Starling a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Brion Vibber is blocked on meta for "calling people names and
>> threatening them with banning".
>
>
> He blocked himself. Don't worry Brion, I'm getting the joke, even if
> no-one else is.
>
> -- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: article import

body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 07:20, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Do you mean Special:Import ?

Yes.

> Brion talked about it during the 21C3. IIRC: when the script imports an

What is the 21C3?

> In conclusion, and if I am not wrong, Special:Import will be shipped in
> 1.5 or later.

Thank you very much for replying!

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Jack Lutz stated for the record:

> {{Nonfreedelete}} on en Wikipedia is a template that specifies ...

Is there a way to get a list of all /images/ I've contributed?
I'm afraid my "my contributions" list is too long to be useful.

--
  Sean Barrett     | The government is not your daddy.
  sean at epoptic.com | The government is not your mommy.
                   | The government is not your friend.


body:
NSK a ?crit:
> On Wednesday 12 January 2005 08:47, Rebecca wrote:
>
>>(snip)
>
>
> If you really believe what you said (and was not because our site is also
> wiki, so "competitive" in the minds of some ppl) then the admins of Wikipedia
> can have a discussion and decide on whether I should leave or not. I promise
> you that if all admins agree that I must leave from Wikipedia and the mailing
> list, I will do that, just to show you that my intention has nothing to do
> with promoting my websites.

This is not the point.
I tend to agree with Rebecca in the sense that you are overly
advertising your website NSK, and from time to time, you tend to be a
bit too insisting on the mailing lists on topics which either hurt or
irritate some people. You are welcome to be part of Wikipedia community,
we need all sort of people to make a world, but I am certain you would
be "more" welcome if a little less trolling. I feel quite confortable
saying this as I sometimes troll a bit as well myself :-) So do not see
that as an insult. I wish that you be a little lighter though.

> Also consider that I have placed links to other people's sites, too, and that
> all the links I place are relevant and beneficial to the reader. On occasions
> where some of my links where removed with a good reason, I didn't reinserted
> the link. A true spammer would just repost his spamlinks, but I didn't. See
> for example [[University of Oxford]] where I posted a link to my report on
> the University's computing facilities. The remover didn't say it was spam,
> and I considered his reason not entirely invalid.

Hmmmm, I think a spammer does not necessarily resend several times. At
least, my mail box is filled with messages sent only one time, but spam
though. But I agree defining spamming is not easy. In this situation,
though I would not say your link was spam or not, I'd say your general
behavior tends to be spam.

> I don't care whether the links will be removed or not, but I just want to
> emphasise that it is *not* an attempt to spam Wikipedia.
>
> I have also contributed and relicensed under the GFDL some of my articles, and
> posted them on Wikipedia. If that's not a contribution, then what is
> considered to be a contribution?

Agreed. This is a contribution. All the opinions you voice around here
are contributions as well.

Anthere


body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 07:39, Josh Gerdes wrote:
> Well, the site does not really look like spam to me, and it certainly
> seems informational. Does it provide any information that it not in any
> of the other links, though? (I do not know, as I have not read the
> content of the other linked sites.)

Thank you for responding. I believe that my report is informational and useful
to the reader, but in the end this is something that will be decided by the
readers and Wikipedia users themselves. What I insist, though, is that it was
not spam. If the link is about to be kept removed, it should be for another
reason (non-informational or otherwise, I welcome any constructive criticism)
but not because someone thought it was spam. I hope you can understand me.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] {{Nonfreedelete}}

body:
Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett said:
>
>
>>Is there a way to get a list of all /images/ I've contributed?
>>I'm afraid my "my contributions" list is too long to be useful.
>
>
> Go to [[Special:Contributions]] and ''then'' select "image:" space from
> the drop down box.

As that great philosopher said, "D'oh!"

That was much too easy.

Thanks!

--
  Sean Barrett     | The government is not your daddy.
  sean at epoptic.com | The government is not your mommy.
                   | The government is not your friend.


body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 08:22, Matt Brown wrote:
> In this case, it looks like your link is on topic and relevant.
> Whether it is needed is another matter, but one that can be resolved
> in a more peaceable manner.  I don't agree with removing it and citing
> as the sole reason that it's a site you put up.

Thank you very much for your valuable and insightful input.

I would like to add that it would be beneficial for Wikipedia to have a formal
policy on external links, and that all admins should agree on what is and
what isn't spam.

I personally would never post a link to my site (or to anybody's site) if it
was not relevant to the subject and if I hadn't the belief that it is
beneficial to the reader.

I also would like to point out that on our JnanaBase wiki it is allowed for
people to post links to their sites. A person has already did that and wrote
a nice informative article, he/she even included a link to us on his/her
forum saying we have a great site. But also, many times other people are
posting links that I recognise as spam. How I define spam? Well, spam is any
link or reference inserted for advertising purposes that hinders the quality
of our site and is not beneficial to the reader.

I have also linked to Wikipedia numerous times. Even the article in question
includes a direct link to Wikipedia.

By including that link in Wikipedia I wanted to offer something beneficial to
its readers. My intention was *not* to have free advertising. Actually, I
have paid money to Google (AdWords) and www.LinuxISO.org for displaying my
textad and banner, and I am just an unemployed Computer Science student.

Thank you very much for reading my message.

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


body:
On Wednesday 12 January 2005 08:47, Rebecca wrote:
> (snip)

If you really believe what you said (and was not because our site is also
wiki, so "competitive" in the minds of some ppl) then the admins of Wikipedia
can have a discussion and decide on whether I should leave or not. I promise
you that if all admins agree that I must leave from Wikipedia and the mailing
list, I will do that, just to show you that my intention has nothing to do
with promoting my websites.

Also consider that I have placed links to other people's sites, too, and that
all the links I place are relevant and beneficial to the reader. On occasions
where some of my links where removed with a good reason, I didn't reinserted
the link. A true spammer would just repost his spamlinks, but I didn't. See
for example [[University of Oxford]] where I posted a link to my report on
the University's computing facilities. The remover didn't say it was spam,
and I considered his reason not entirely invalid.

I don't care whether the links will be removed or not, but I just want to
emphasise that it is *not* an attempt to spam Wikipedia.

I have also contributed and relicensed under the GFDL some of my articles, and
posted them on Wikipedia. If that's not a contribution, then what is
considered to be a contribution?

--
NSK
Visit my wiki at http://jnana.wikinerds.org


from_name: Paul Youlten

subject: [Wikitech-l] Iinformation Architectures

body:
I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database. So if
I search from the German start page - I might get results that were
originally added in Spanish or French.

Is there an elegant way of achieving this?

Paul Youlten

----- Original Message -----
From: "NSK" <nsk2 at wikinerds.org>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 12:52 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] I get many errors at wikipedia.org, like this one

Warning: mysql_query(): Unable to save result set
in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Database.php on line 312

Database error

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the
software. The last attempted database query was:
SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title FROM `cur`,`links` WHERE cur_id=l_to
AND
l_from=1387711 FOR UPDATE
 from within function "LinkCache::preFill". MySQL returned error "1213:
Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try restarting transaction
(10.0.0.1)".

Article
Discussion
Edit this page
History
Move

--
NSK
Come to see the new wikiprojects at http://portal.wikinerds.org
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links and self-linking to my site (NSK)

body:
Looks like a borderline case to me, because

a) It's not at all clear to me that http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/103 adds
much to the http://en.wikipedia.org/Homo_floriensis article

b) Even if it does, it's not clear that the Wikinerds link is the best
source, or even a particularly good source for that information. It is not
nearly as close to the source, or as authoritative as several of the other
links that are already in the article.

c) NSK does have a clear promotional interest in wanting to build up his
site.

There is such a thing outright gross spamming. I don't think NSK is doing
this. In the email world, outright gross spammers are the people who simply
pump the stuff out in bulk, more or less acknowledge that it's spam, hang
tough, and just defy anyone to stop them. In Wikipedia, it is people who
systematically add links as fast they can type (or as fast a Wikipedia's
servers can accept them!) There was (for example) a used bookstore site that
was planting literally scores of links to the site, one in every article
about an author whose books they carried.

NSK isn't doing anything like this.

On the other hand, my perception is that he _is_ seeking to find ways in
which he can simultaneously help Wikipedia _and also_ promote his site as a
byproduct.

This is skating on thin ice, and NSK should know it.

There's a wide variation in peoples' attitude toward and trigger-happiness
with things that are perceived as spam. NSK should not be surprised that some
editors are going to delete this kind of link, with varying degrees of
politeness.

I don't think there's any need for NSK to "leave Wikipedia" but I don't think
he should be too surprised or indignant if links of this kind are removed. A
reasonable reaction would be for him to exercise more restraint in adding
them, and adding them only when it is clearer that the Wikinerds link
_really_ is valuable. NSK should keep the frequently low. Add a note on the
talk page justifying the link, because some people will tend to be trigger-
happy on anything that looks spammish, even if it really isn't. And if the
links get deleted as spam, shrug it off.


from_name: Andy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Iinformation Architectures

body:
Paul Youlten wrote:
> I want to start a wiki where users have the option to use a different
> language front-end - but all the data is held in one central database.
> So if I search from the German start page - I might get results that
> were originally added in Spanish or French.
>
> Is there an elegant way of achieving this?
>
> Paul Youlten

I believe this should be a new message, but to answer your question, no,
there's not really any easy way to do this, unless you're able to write
a really good translator (which is relatively difficult).


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:58:12 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2005, at 6:51 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > Why not have a bunch of subpages off each MediaWiki message page? One
> > subpage per language. Default values would work as they do now.
>
> I'm fairly certain it already works this way, so you can customize
> messages in each language on a given wiki if desired.

Wow! I have tried that (locally, of course) and it works! (e.g.
MediaWiki:Something/en) But, obviously, the basic idea of someone
manually copying some 1000 messages of a single translation to
hundreds of Wikimedia sites (not to mention he/she would need sysop
privileges on all wikis to do that) is useless.

> When we basically only had one Wikipedia wiki per language, editing the
> messages in that wiki was generally sufficient, but now we have several
> wikis per language and _any_ of our wikis may be optionally displayed
> in _any_ language.

A problem that is not mentioned is also that the translations of
MediaWiki should be included in its distribution, so that someone who
installs MediaWiki should not get messages suitable for some two years
old version (if he gets anything at all).

I think the problem is that translators have to be able to write
(correct) PHP code and the file is security-sensitive. If we would
split the LanguageXx files to the low-level part (implementation of
the respective Language subclass) and the high-level part (plain
message catalog), the latter could be implemented in some other way
than direct PHP code, e.g. using GNU gettext. I have no idea what the
performance would be, but it would be much easier for anyone to
publish updated translation, and the developers would not need to do
detailed analysis of the code. (There are probably be _some_
security-sensitive items in the current version, but hopefully not
many, and even those could be (I believe) solved in future versions of
MW.)

-- [[ cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>I personally would never post a link to my site (or to anybody's site) if
>it
>was not relevant to the subject and if I hadn't the belief that it is
>beneficial to the reader.

While that is a good start, it's clearly not enough to ensure that a link is
valuable.  I'm sure all the people who post links to their collected sermons
of their favorite religious sect feel that their links are relevant to the
subject and highly beneficial to the reader as well.

Jay.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Petr Kadlec wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:58:12 -0800, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Jan 11, 2005, at 6:51 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Why not have a bunch of subpages off each MediaWiki message page? One
>>>subpage per language. Default values would work as they do now.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm fairly certain it already works this way, so you can customize
>>messages in each language on a given wiki if desired.
>>
>>
>
>Wow! I have tried that (locally, of course) and it works! (e.g.
>MediaWiki:Something/en) But, obviously, the basic idea of someone
>manually copying some 1000 messages of a single translation to
>hundreds of Wikimedia sites (not to mention he/she would need sysop
>privileges on all wikis to do that) is useless.
>
 A more sensible way would be in having a bot look at differences
between system messages and the content of the PHP file. Some changes
can be done automagically eg where a message says: "Wikipedia" it can be
changes to SYSTEMNAME (or whatever the standard name is for the
application). As far as I know, there is someone looking into this.
Obviously there are several things that are to do with local policies
like provide a link to enable a one click creation of a new article etc.
These are the pitfalls of moving stuff back to the PHP file.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:40:51 -0500, Stephen Forrest
> <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I suspect that the idea behind James' question was to share MediaWiki
>>system messages across Wikipedias in the same language.  (This is
>>because I happen to know that the Language*.php system is not used on
>>the Anglo-Saxon wikipedia.)
>
>
> Unless I'm much mistaken, this is simply a case of no-one having
> created the LanguageAng.php file yet. Surely, once all the messages have
> been defined, you can *create* that file, and thus copy all the
> changes to new wikis. Or is there some reason that Anglo-Saxon has
> been denied its own translation file?

LanguageXx.php files are complicated, hard to create and hard to update.
Every language file has to be carefully checked by a developer for
security flaws, and 9 times out of 10 there are PHP syntax errors. They
also require much developer attention to commit to CVS and to put on to
the live server. You can be sure that any proposal to reduce the need to
use them will get my attention.

It was my hope that the MediaWiki namespace would largely do away with
the need to create language files, however that need remained and recent
developments (the growth in multi-language projects and the ability for
users to select the interface language) have exacerbated our dependence
on them.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML-to-XML

body:
On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 01:13:13AM +0200, NSK wrote:
> Find out more at http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/NGWP

Shouldn't it be named NGMW ;-)

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

> I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
> [[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old,
> but its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright
> notice associated with it and was never published until it was
> captured by the Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair
> use for Wikipedia's purposes, but I'd like to determine what its
> copyright status really is.  Can anyone help me?

In the absence of more detail about the document I would say it's still
covered by copyright until the end of 2052.  But then I prefer a
conservative approach when facts are missing.  I presume that this a
German language document by a German citizen so German law should
apply.  Copyright notices were a uniquely US requirement.  The copyright
notice or the fact that the document was stolen by an allied soldier
should have no bearing on the matter.  The fair use claim is only
meningful if the document continues to be protected by copyright, but
ultimately you would have the burden of proof for such a claim.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: I get many errors at wikipedia.org, like this one

body:
Please don't start your line of thought from the subject line, repeat
the subject in the body.

Subject: I get many errors at wikipedia.org, like this one

NSK wrote:
> A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the
> software. The last attempted database query was:
> SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title FROM `cur`,`links` WHERE cur_id=l_to AND
> l_from=1387711 FOR UPDATE
>  from within function "LinkCache::preFill". MySQL returned error "1213:
> Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try restarting transaction
> (10.0.0.1)".
>

Here's my answer that I gave at the Village Pump:

"In most browsers you can just hit refresh, your browser will point out
that you're posting data and ask you if you are sure you want to repeat
the operation, say yes. Deadlocks can be dealt with in software, but
it's hard to know in advance what parts of the software will cause them."

The way we deal with them in software is just to repeat the transaction,
so by hitting refresh you're doing the same thing manually.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?
>
>Fred
>
>
>>From: Sean Barrett
>>
>>I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
>>[[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old, but
>>its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright notice
>>associated with it and was never published until it was captured by the
>>Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for Wikipedia's
>>purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status really is.
>>Can anyone help me?
>>
>>
Who the copyright belongs to is a different issue.

I would venture to guess that the vast majority of material that is
protected by copyright lacks an owner who would have rights to be
protected.  This may have some bearing on the desire of major copyright
holders to have criminal law apply.  I would suggest that in criminal
law it may not be necessary to prove who owns the copyright, while in
civil law the complainant needs to have standing.

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

body:
Robert Brockway said:
>
> Type your own name into www.switchboard.com and be disappointed about
> how  many people have your name in the US alone :)

Nobody with my name is listed at Switchboard.  What does this prove?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Maps: An alternate approach

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Imagine this for the U.S.: If we had the border data for all counties,
> and want to draw a world map with the U.S. as a single entity, the
> county polygons would be fused into state polygons, which then would
> be fused into a few country polygons (continental, Hawaii, Alaska).
>
> In my implementation, all data sets can carry meta information as
> well. The Danube in the example is painted in blue because it carries
> a "type:river" marker. Different object groups can be defined for
> different purposes (political, geographical, etc.) Also, objects can
> be labeled in all languages in-place. I currently don't show the
> labels, though.

Isn't this reimplementing some sort of a GIS data format and
visualization system?  I think there was at least one person on this
list who claimed to have significant knowledge of the GIS field, and I
know there are some open-source systems already available.

Stuff tends to get pretty complex as you go along: dealing with
projections (since the earth isn't flat), 3d data, increasing/decreasing
resolution as you zoom in/out, and even automatically placing labels.

-Mark


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Obscure Copyright

body:
I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during
[[World War II]].  Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old, but
its author didn't die until 1982.  The document has no copyright notice
associated with it and was never published until it was captured by the
Allies after the war.  I can justify a claim to fair use for Wikipedia's
purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status really is.
  Can anyone help me?

--
  Sean Barrett     | I have a plan so cunning you could shave with it.
  sean at epoptic.com |